June 2020 – Page 3 – Babel-on-the-Bay

Pestilence rides the pale horse.

June 5, 2020 by Peter Lowry

The cull continues. The deaths mount. Do the continuing failures of those who govern America take precedence over the battle with covid-19? Does pestilence allow a time-out for protest? And what of the other three horsemen? Is famine reserved for other parts of our world? Is the war with the police but a minor skirmish of the war to come?

My Bible reading as a child never got as far as the Book of Revelation. I do not know if this is the Apocalypse?

Mr. Trump continues to fortify the white house. The choppers are on alert and make their presence known overhead. The army stays in readiness. They are making the white house the final battleground.

And in the meantime, pestilence rampages unstopped, across an uncoordinated, defiant America.

The only positive we have noted lately is the speech presumptive presidential candidate Joe Biden gave the other day in Philadelphia.

It was a message of hope. It was a presidential speech. It was inclusive, not divisive. While he named Mr. Trump as the problem, he did not over do it. He asked “Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?

We can only hope that a lot of Americans give those words the thought they deserve.

Biden has a difficult task ahead. He has to use the anger of America as a positive force. He has to get it focussed on the November election.

What America has now seen is that Donald trump is not an instrument of change. He actually imperils America’s future. His promises ill-considered and hollow.

He is a hypocrite and a sociopath, a misogynist and a liar. He endangers world peace. He blames others for his errors. He insults America’s friends and cozies to its enemies. Maybe it is Trump who rides the pale horse.

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Scorched earth for Beijing.

June 4, 2020 by Peter Lowry

There is a very simple answer for the problem of Beijing coming down so hard on Hong Kong. It means that the leaders in Beijing are breaking their bond. Their promises are hollow. Leaders who betray their own are not honourable people.

The answer is to deny them the very value of the possession. And that value is the people. Take away the entrepreneurs, take away the business, banking and shipping experience. Take away the skilled workers and what is left?

Some in Hong Kong will want to go to New Zealand or Australia. Some will try for extensions of the limited overseas passports to become residents of the United Kingdom. More than 300,000 Canadians, who are now working and living in Hong Kong will want to return to Canada. Canada is the most attractive country to most Hong Kong residents. The Cantonese dialect used in Hong Kong has many who understand it already in Canada. And what Canada has over other countries, is the ability to absorb a million Chinese into its mix of races.

And yes, there will be some bigotry and code words developed to show the objectors but the Hong Kong people would get that if they moved somewhere in Mainland China. There are always people wary of strangers, sceptical of people who are different. They get over it.

But Canada’s need for accelerated immigration is too great to dismiss. Just 35 million Canadians are not enough. We have to maintain our sovereignty over the north. We have to build a stronger trading nation. We have land for modern farming. We have cities to grow and expand. We have technology to utilize. We have the structures and teachers to grow greater universities. Canada has an amazing future. Our progeny can all be part of it.

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Trump’s Terror.

June 3, 2020 by Peter Lowry

We were spell-bound Monday evening watching the television coverage of events around the American white house. We had heard recordings of what he had said to many of the U.S. state governors earlier in the day and dreaded how it might play out through the evening. This was the belligerent and threatening Donald Trump that we were watching.

We were rapidly coming to the conclusion that the man is intent in launching another American civil war. Though, he brought no honour to it. He is no Abraham Lincoln. He had military and massed police forces at the ready around the white house.

The police practiced their cotillion moves to the surprise of the few spectators come to see the events of the evening. The big surprise was the Secret Service and their back-up of city and park police using flash-bangs and tear gas to clear the most peaceful protest of the week in Lafayette Square.

It was not until Trump and his Men in Suits sallied from the white house through Lafayette Park and across to the boarded-up St. John’s Episcopal Church, that had been cleared of protesters. The ‘Hypocrite-in-Chief’ wanted a photo op of himself, in front of the church, holding an old Bible, he must have found in the white house. He is always thinking of the looming election these days. He needs that picture to impress the religious conservatives across the U.S. They like to think their Mr. Trump is at that church on Sundays instead of usually playing golf at one of his East Coast resorts.

But it was the anti-Christ in him that lead him to demand that the governors come down hard on the protestors. He wanted them to deploy the National Guard to ‘dominate’ street demonstrators. He told them, he would send in the army to do the job, if they did not.

For Canadians, the most telling scene of the following day was the question to prime minister Justin Trudeau outside the cuckoo clock at Rideau cottage. The media wanted to hear his reaction to the American president’s actions. He made them wait. You could easily imagine the range of thoughts as the PM considered possible answers. His answer was to never say the name of the problem.

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Needed but not essential.

June 2, 2020 by Peter Lowry

We are talking about hockey here. And yes, I confess, I am one of those long-forgotten Toronto Maple Leaf fans. I remember as a youngster I walked by that sainted temple built by Conn Smythe at Carlton and Church on the way to and from school. I remember celebrating with green seats when I first took my young son to a Leaf’s game. Because of the miracle of television, he could quickly tell me how each of my favourite players were doing. He recently turned 50 and he has still never seen the buds win a Stanley!

I admit, I was not overly hopeful for that fresh young team with which the Leafs opened the season last year. They just looked good and the wife and I enjoyed watching the occasional CBC Saturday night game—until the world stopped turning for a pandemic.

You would think we would be dancing around celebrating the announcement of a series of quasi-playoffs over the summer. Well, we aren’t. Frankly, we are stunned by the greed of the owners.

It is easier to understand the greed of premier Jason Kenney in Alberta, who wants his province to be a hub of play for this farce. Kenney has already written to Justin Trudeau asking (or demanding?) that the NHL be declared “essential” so that there would be no delays in bringing players back and forth across the border.

I guess the league will offer some payment to the players for the games but this is all raw greed on the part of the NHL owners. Nobody I know would be eager to run a tag day for those vultures.

This entire scheme is nothing more than a desperate attempt to rescue some of the television revenue that the league has come to enjoy. You can also imagine the sports channel chiefs salivating at the thought of some decent revenue during this pandemic.

I think we can boil this all down to two words we would like to offer to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman: Get stuffed.

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Have a happy insurrection.

June 1, 2020 by Peter Lowry

From Hong Kong to Washington, from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, it is a time of insurrection. It boils over with the night and it rests and renews in the day. It is us versus them. It is authority versus anarchy. It is young versus old. It is rich versus poor. It is not a failure to communicate, it is a failure to care. It is a deep desire to inflict pain, as though you can transfer your pain to others through destruction.

Of course, there are causes. Impatience with the pandemic is everywhere. Washington rebels against the failures of Donald Trump. Hong Kong fights for democracy and the millionaires that the city state creates. Despite the many who have their ticket away from Hong Kong, they still want the opportunity to fight the autocracy of Mainland China. They fight on in what they know is a lost cause.

Lost causes are the battle cry of American blacks, trapped in the ghettos of ugly discrimination. Add the frustration that only one in ten will break free of low-paid service jobs in their lifetime. Add the bigotry of to-day’s white house and compound it with the continued, casual murder of blacks by police. Hell, I would also want to be out there getting even.

But there is another element entirely that wants to be part of the fun. They come for the destruction, the mayhem, the thrills and the notoriety. An element of Toronto blacks, who are trying so hard to stir resentments and racial hatreds, had their day of protest over a little understood event that is still under investigation. A woman, black and maybe mentally ill, fell from a 24^th floor balcony. Since the police had been called to help, they were being carelessly blamed for the incident.

But it was the radical element who led the protest march down to police headquarters. And there they waited, for the cover of night, for the actions of radicals, to hide their pleasure in destruction. They had little knowledge of the cause that brought them there.

Watching the world-wide struggles on the late news last night, the only smart person we saw was an American sheriff, not carrying a gun, not wearing a helmet or armour, who marched with the protestors.

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