I still read too much in the early morning but only after a coffee and a few minutes staring out the window at the winter wreckage of my patio garden and promising myself that I really will get some seedlings started. Then I go see what has come into my in-box while I've slumbered.
The Tyee is always a first read. This morning there was an article by Christopher Holcroft, a writer and principal of Empower, another online journal. Well, the Tyee reprints articles from many sources and I've come to trust them, having met, and listened to presentations by, the founder. This morning I decided to do what I have advised so any others to do and fact check this author's assertions. You've all seen those bits of text that are underlined as links to source material. Those were the ones I checked.
It was a good history lesson, but not one you may want to join me on. If so, you can:
(a) Just read the original Holcroft article by clicking on the link at the top.
(b) Go look at your own garden and make whatever March promises you want.
(c) Go back to bed.
Here's the piece and the source material. I have used excerpts of source documents because historians and archivists are more fussy than I am (and wordier).
Notes on Holcroft Article in The Tyee for March 12, 2025
full article here:
Black text is excerpt from Holcroft with coloured text being reference for assertions.
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From Elon Musk encouraging the global far right to Vance mocking disinformation’s threat to democracy to the White House’s efforts to challenge the sovereignty of its allies, the message team Trump is sending the world is one of cruelty and chaos, ignorance and idiocy.
That message hit home hard this week. Trump, who has been pressing for Canada’s economic destruction, public humiliation and, ultimately, political annexation since returning to office, launched an illegal trade war against our country March 4.
(from Policy Magazine)
Canada’s response should include:
Taking retaliatory action against the United States, as the government, the provinces and individual Canadians are already doing.
Working with the many Americans who have an interest in restoring conditions of open and predictable trade, in order to promote this common objective.
Using the dispute settlement provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) — a process our WTO ambassador, Nadia Theodore, initiated on Tuesday — and the CUSMA to establish that the American actions are illegal and to demonstrate that Canada continues to believe in the rule of law in international trade relations.
Consider, it was Canadians who played a pivotal role in forming the United Nations, a Canadian who authored the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Canadians who were at the forefront of establishing the International Criminal Court.
(from Newmarket Magazine)
Canadian diplomats actively participated in the drafting of the UN Charter during the San Francisco Conference in 1945. Lester B. Pearson, who later became prime minister of Canada, was one of the key figures in these negotiations. William Lyon Mackenzie King was part of the inaugural meeting of the world powers charged with the establishment of the UN.
(from Gov't of Canada information post)
Canada played a crucial role in establishing the International Criminal Court. The ICC initiative was facilitated by an earlier draft Statute prepared by the International Law Commission (begun after World War II and finally adopted in 1996)
Canada supported the ICC effort in the 1990s and continues to support the ICC with crucial leadership, advocacy and resources.
In 1998, Philippe Kirsch, a senior Canadian diplomat, was chosen by acclamation to chair the Committee of the Whole at the Diplomatic Conference in Rome. The Committee of the Whole acted as the pivotal negotiating body at the conference.
Canada at the Rome conference played a brokering role in negotiations that concerned the jurisdiction of the Court, the definitions of crimes and the Court’s procedures and general principles. The Canadian delegation addressed legitimate concerns in creative ways, while preserving the principles required to maintain a strong Court.
**note from Wikipedia: Countries refusing to sign on to the Rome Statute
"According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a state that has signed but not ratified a treaty is obliged to refrain from "acts which would defeat the object and purpose" of the treaty. However, these obligations do not continue if the state has "made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty".[63] Four signatory states (Israel, Russia, Sudan, and the United States) have informed the UN Secretary General that they no longer intend to become parties to the Rome Statute, and as such have no legal obligations arising from their signature."
(from UESCO Archives)
Ottawa, December 5, 2023 – To mark the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10, 1948), McGill University and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO are pleased to announce the addition of the archives of John Peters Humphrey to the Canada Memory of the World Register.
This archive includes the first handwritten draft of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as typed subsequent versions written by Humphrey (1905-1995), Canadian law professor and human rights advocate.
Humphrey was a Professor of Law at McGill University when he was invited to work with a committee of the United Nations Secretariat chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt to help the organization draft a statement on human rights. Following the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, Humphrey continued working with the UN in various roles, returning to McGill to serve as Professor of Law and Political Science in 1966. A French delegate claimed to have written the first draft of the declaration and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1968. However, Humphrey’s first handwritten drafts were later discovered and published. He is now widely accepted as the Declaration’s first author.
It was also a Canadian who created the concept of international peacekeeping, a Canadian who kick-started the nuclear disarmament effort, and a Canadian who rallied the West in opposing apartheid. Today, it is Canadians who are leading the global fight against disinformation and the protection of our shared environment.
(Canadian War Museum files) The 1956 Suez Crisis
The 1956 Suez Crisis was the result of Britain, France, and Israel’s invasion of Egypt to regain control of the Suez Canal. Canadian Secretary of State Lester B. Pearson proposed at the United Nations that an armed, impartial peacekeeping force could be inserted between Israeli and Egyptian forces to enforce a ceasefire and stabilize the situation.
On 26 July 1956, Egypt nationalized the British and French-owned Suez Canal. The move infuriated Western countries, who relied on the Suez Canal to transport supplies, and especially oil. France, Britain and their regional ally Israel plotted a military response. The two opposing superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were taken by surprise with the invasion of Egypt, and were almost drawn into the conflict. The Cold War threatened to erupt into violence.
After Pearson’s peacekeeping compromise, military personnel from 10 different countries, including Canada, began to arrive in the Middle East in mid-November 1956 as part of the first United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). This impartial, international military presence ended the crisis and preserved peace in the region for 10 years.
Pearson won the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in creating UNEF and it set the precedent for future UN peacekeeping missions.
(CBC Archives)
A year after his meeting with Tutu in Ottawa, and fresh off securing an initial agreement among Commonwealth leaders to impose limited economic sanctions against South Africa, Mulroney warned the government in Pretoria that Canada was prepared to go further.
"My government has said to Canadians that if there are not fundamental changes in South Africa, we are prepared to invoke total sanctions against that country and its repressive regime. If there is no progress in the dismantling of apartheid, Canada's relations with South Africa may have to be severed absolutely."
Stephen Lewis, Mulroney's ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988, described the prime minister's warning to South Africa as a pivotal moment in the General Assembly.
Members of the Trump-backed “Freedom Convoy,” for example, have been quick to demonstrate they are not on Team Canada.
@AntonioTweets2
I will not support Canadian anything
Nobody supported me and the Freedom Convoy other than real
Canadian patriots.
So no. Fuck you and your "let's buy Canadian Bullshit"
That’s also true, it seems, for Canada’s largest newspaper chain, the U.S.-owned Postmedia. Following the federal government’s announcement of retaliatory tariffs, the National Post proceeded to call Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “a wuss” and urged Canada to return to “stroking” Trump’s ego while “giving him something,” further advising the government to not, in any circumstances, intervene to support Canadians financially devastated by the impacts of the tariffs, because “people will adapt.”
National Post: Mar 4/25
A swift and solid recovery relies on letting markets work, and not having meddling politicians sabotage it by moving us towards a more socialized system for political gain.
Additionally, prominent Postmedia columnists mocked Canadians’ fear over Trump’s annexation threats, lecturing that we should “get a grip.”
Unsurprisingly, Canada’s U.S. dark-money-supported think tanks are leveraging this moment to push their MAGA-style policies. The Fraser Institute has been encouraging an unprecedented economic union with the United States. The Montreal Economic Institute is pushing its radical anti-tax, pro-deregulation agenda. SecondStreet.org is promoting the possibility of a “$21-billion private insurance market” to disrupt medicare. For its part, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy seems to be just accepting U.S. narratives.
Fraser Institute
COMMENTARY
JANUARY 31, 2025
Canada should consider economic union with the U.S. in light of Trump tariffs
By: Cornelis "Kees" van Kooten, University of Victoria
Most troubling is federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who once again failed to meet the moment. On the day the U.S. trade war began, Poilievre’s response was an atrocious, campaign-style speech focused on his Trump-adjacent politics rather than the welfare of the nation.
In between running down the country and repeating Trump’s lies about our border, Poilievre repeated his COVID-emergency pledge that he would not, in fact, have Canadians’ backs, dismissing any consideration of new government social spending. Poilievre’s plan to support Canadians affected by the trade war is to declare that “almost every penny of the tariffs collected should go to tax cuts,” declining to recognize that a tax cut is useless if you have no income because of job loss. Poilievre also reiterated his promise to eliminate the carbon and capital gains taxes, measures that benefit only wealthy Canadians. Finally, the Conservative leader made his customary pitch to unleash fossil fuel pollution by gutting environmental regulations, thus giving up the fight against climate change.
The parallels between Poilievre and Trump continue to be striking: both eschew norms of civility and decency, both are comfortable engaging with the far right, and both are intent on gutting the civil service, slashing foreign aid, ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and undermining public health science.
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So, that wasn't too bad was it? I'm going to go charge my EV now and have a snack. Tomorrow night I have tickets for Beverly and I to see No Other Land. This is the Oscar -winning documentary that no theatre chain in North America will screen. Fortunately we have a couple of independent theatres in Victoria. What have you folks got?