Far From the Cenotaph

Tomorrow is Remembrance Day, and while this page recognizes the service and sacrifice of Canadian veterans and current military personnel, I will not be publicly observing the occasion.

There is an air of jingoism and manipulation surrounding this November 11 that this page finds disgusting and frightening. Watch as the Harper Conservatives try to bolster faltering public support for the mission in Afghanistan. Either the government has no idea what they're doing, or they're in denial that the real mission is to help secure oil pipeline construction from the equally reviled American occupation of Iraq. Already in the past few days, the Prime Minister has taken numerous photo ops with troops and cadets, while right wing mascot Don Cherry cheered him on during his visit to Parliament Hill.

It's obvious that Remembrance "Week" marks the kick-off of a Conservative propaganda campaign that would bring cheer to Karl Rove in his current hour of need. Cherry plans a "salute to the troops" during his Hockey Night in Canada appearance on November 11, which will no doubt slander peace activists and anyone else who isn't following along blindly. After Saturday, expect shots of soldiers in Kandahar watching the Grey Cup game, and a couple of weeks later wishing they could go home for Xmas, but they can't leave until the job is done, and as Harper keeps bleating with Goebbels-like precision, "Canadians don't cut and run". At this point the right wing noise machine will chime that only the Harpercons can accomplish this mission, and the public goes to the polls early next year feeling helpless and without a real choice.

This sense of militarist hegemony is backed up by that bastion of inebriation and intolerance, the Royal Canadian Legion. The Legion has decided that only they have the right to distribute replica poppies, and that the current round of white poppies in remembrance of civilian casualties are an abomination. This page has never had anything to do with the Legion, largely because my father (a WWII veteran) quit because they didn't want his African-Canadian friends (who were also veterans) joining him at the local branch for a beer. Correct this page if I'm wrong, but didn't Canadians sign up to fight in World War II to protect democracy, human rights, AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, or am I missing something here? In trying to suppress the white poppy campaign, the Legion looks more like the enemies they were fighting than the heroes we should be saluting on Saturday.

I also won't be going to Tim Horton's, either. Is it just me, or does anyone else have a problem with sharing a remembrance Day symbol with the Taliban's #1 cash crop?