What's Past Really is Prologue

Image: John_Baird_"Talk_is_Cheap".
I drew the above caricature of John Baird back in the mid-2000's when he and Harper were telling lies about Canada and the world -- and what do you know, it's still valid.
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What's Past Really is Prologue*

It can lead to something better, or else reprise the bad
 .... The Resurrection of the NeoCons in Canada

Try reminding some people of the past and they will retort, "Forget the past; this is now." Well, politically speaking, this is the past, right here, right now, still in our faces -- because a past not examined and learned from repeats and repeats and repeats like a cracked Whitney Houston record. 

John Baird has returned from exile to further exercise his jaw muscles; Stephen Harper has re-embedded himself into Canadian politics with an eye to (1) selling his book, and (2) a win for right-wing dissembler-in-training Andrew Scheer (who doesn't want it said out loud that his party is "all for diversity, just not more diversity" before the next federal election); plus the rise from the backwaters of the shoddy Ford clan to rule again, this time in the province of Ontario's Queen's Park -- and next time in the "province of Toronto"?

Baird, in particular, has stirred up another *Tempest of self-serving contradictions. He previously wandered around in various political guises from the provincial (Ontario) government to the federal (during the Harper years) and has now emerged from the infamous "private sector", with his mouth wide open as usual -- keep reading.

Meanwhile, as if in concert with these ongoing returns from the netherworld, Maclean's has published an opinion piece that serves not only to keep "clown prince" bin Salman alive -- when there's absolutely no proof presented anywhere -- but also to rebuke Baird for his rebuke of Trudeau, and in the process reveal a stark cognitive dissonance:

• Jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi quoted Albert Camus: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

and then ...

• His wife, Ensaf Haidar, fled to Canada ... and celebrated by calling on Doug Ford to ban the niqab.

So, hallelujah! Ensaf Haidar is now free to work against the freedom of Canadian Muslim women to choose their own style of attire.

Meanwhile, the uproar over bin Salman's purported tantrum against Canada smacks of yet another Shakespearean jewel: "Methinks thou dost protest too much" to be believed. (Hamlet, roughly).

Personally, I'll believe bin Salman still exists when he appears at a bona fide press conference and is videoed by dozens of media outlets discussing the issue of his spat with Canada. He's not the King yet, so such an appearance should not be beneath his regalness.

I would also believe bin Salman is alive were John Baird to be videoed sitting down with him in conversation, instead of merely advising Trudeau to do it, when he knows, of course, that Trudeau isn't about to.

Talk really is so bloody cheap.

But here's the thing: the Trudeau/Freeland combo are just as duplicitous as the US, UK, and Israel in having profited (and still wanting to) from the sale of war implements to the Saudis while closing their eyes to the continual slaughter going on in Yemen, with the ultimate goal being unfettered access to that region's resources, which include -- you guessed it -- oil and gas.

The video below is useful in that Baird reveals just how monetarily fruitful Canada's relationship with the Saudis (including his own) has been and how he is working to maintain the status quo:

• On August 11, 2018, during an interview on the Saudi-owned pan-Arab television channel Al Arabiya, former Harper government Foreign Minister John Baird praises "friend and ally" Saudi Arabia and says Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should travel to the Kingdom in an effort to repair relations between the two countries. Baird fails to mention his own business dealings with the Kingdom.

Recently on YYC:
 - First Bin Laden, Now Bin Salman
 - Canada: Something Wicked This Way Comes
 - Canada's Phoney War of Words With the Saudis