November 29, 2004
Memo to: Professor of Law Michael Mandel, Osgoode Hall, York University, Lawyers against War (LaW) activist Gloria Berger et al: In your bullying tactic of threatening the editors of Canada Free Press (CFP) with jail time for supporting President George Bush, we are setting it straight for the record, that we do not, as you charge in your signed letters, despise anti-Bush protesters. (CFP by "its tone" shows "obvious despisal" for anti-Bush protesters.)
CFP editors do not despise the anti-Bush protesters. Plain and simple, CFP is ashamed of them.
It’s a free country and CFP believes in freedom of speech, individual rights and the anti-Bush cabal’s God-given right to protest.
We are not ashamed of the protesters’ boast that they will "toke-up" on marijuana while protesting Bush’s Canadian State visit.
We are not ashamed that leftwing protesters always seem to come to the masses with their hand out, and in this case are asking sympathetic Ottawa homeowners to billet them, rather than pitching up at hotels and motels.
CFP editors are not ashamed of the anti-Bush protesters on the East Coast, where surfers with surfboards emblazoned with peace slogans are being piped into the frigid atlantic waters by kilt-wearing bagpipers. We are not ashamed that protesters took the trouble to inform the mainline media that that all hot food served up to warm Parliament Hill protesters will be strictly of the vegan variety with no meat allowed.
(The Enemy, meanwhile, will be dining on Calgary beef at the Museum of Civilization dinner being held in his honour.)
But CFP is ashamed of protesters who promise that they will behave--as long as the police do, especially given that the job of the police and security is to protect public safety.
We are ashamed that a Conservative Ottawa MP has to be concerned that the slogan for the protest marking tomorrow’s state visit--"When Bush comes to shovel"–may be "a call to violence".
But CFP is most profoundly ashamed of the protesters because of their demonstration’s main symbolic move, albeit one that is one geared to score television camera attention: the toppling of a large paper mache statue of Bush, to mimic the same manner in which the statues of Saddam Hussein were brought down after the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Equating President George W. Bush with Butcher of Baghdad Saddam Hussein is not only an insult to Bush and a rebuke to average Canadians who do not feel that the protesters represent them–but also an insult to the entire Free World.
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