Bush is getting bolder.
His first post-presidency Canadian speech was made in ultra-neo-conservative Calgary, Alberta in March of 2009. You can understand it...Calgary being the most corporate, Big Oil, Americanized city in Canada. Plenty of people willing to drop $400-a-plate to listen to a war criminal wax poetic about his days in office. Among them journalist and now Conservative-appointed Senator Pamela Wallin and ex-hockey player Kelly Hrudey.
Two hundred protesters showed up in downtown Calgary to voice their disapproval of Bush being in town - and being paid handsomely to be in town. Four were arrested for very minor offenses.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police dropped $125,000 to police the event and protect vulnerable little Bushy. $125,000 of public dollars spent for a 24-hour visit to the city. By a war criminal. And it was the PROTESTERS who were arrested. Funny little world we're living in, isn't it?
Apparently, Bush's speech in Calgary went over so well that he is now planning to continue his Canadian tour in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on October 21, 2009. My home province.
There is definitely a large and very vocal contingent of neo-conservatives in Saskatchewan who I'm sure are just salivating at the chance to back-slap old Bushy and congratulate him on a job well done. (And what job is that? Entering a war on false pretenses, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraquis, 4,000 dead U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands wounded, 129 (and counting) dead Canadian soldiers, torturing prisoners and detaining them without due process, stripping citizen's civil rights through the Patriot Act, FEMA camps, deregulating derivatives, collapsing the economy, bankrupting the nation, millions unemployed, etc.)
But Saskatchewan is a much more libertarian province than Alberta. Saskatoon is a much different city from Calgary. So this is going to be very interesting.
The outcry is already well under way: "Bush Protest In Works" from the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.
This story comes from the same newspaper I interned for in 1999 that denied my story on protesters heading to the Battle in Seattle and then (once it became a sexy story) censored my subsequent stories on it.
Signs of progress!
Editor's note: Oh, scratch that "signs of progress" thing. It turns out the Saskatoon StarPhoenix newspaper is one of the SPONSORS bringing Bush to town! hahahaha How's that for a free and fair press? They're not even going to bother pretending anymore...
1 comment:
When the oil industry collapses due to the ramifications of peak oil, so too will the financial support for its' beneficiaries. I'm sure Bush is trying to milk his family ties for all they're worth, while he can.
But then again, the Bush family has a long and dubious history of slithering away from one wreck (literally in Poppy's case) to leeching off of another. Until they are exposed AND tried for their crimes at The Hague/International Criminal Court, they'll just keep turning up again, and again, and again.
Post a Comment