by Judi McLeod
January 20, 2005
"Is Prime Minister Paul Martin stupid or arrogant?" anna, a Canadian-born journalist now living in England asked me on the telephone yesterday.
Like others, the journalist is aghast about the recent conduct of Martin in Sri Lanka, and couldn't fathom how he could visit Tamil Tiger terrorists, including two refused as immigrants to Canada last year, in the midst of so much human suffering.
"He's neither stupid nor arrogant. He's only the latest scion in the Power Corp.-influenced Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and likely just following orders," was my terse response.
It's not that prime ministers before Paul Martin did not follow the orders of the PMO power brokers. They were only not so obvious about it. In language and gesture, some of them tried to show a little spunk from time to time, and they were absolute masters at taking the media off target.
When the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau used the F-word, he told reporters he had really only uttered "Fuddle Duddle".
In musings about weapons of mass destruction, Martin's immediate predecessor, Prime Minister Jean Chretien left some of us scratching our heads when he said out of nowhere: "Da proof is da proof and when you have da good proof, it's proven."
Bland in all of his blandishments, Martin always sounds as if he's been vaccinated by United Nations proclamations. "Canada is a multicultural state," is his oft-repeated mantra.
although he carried into his swearing-in ceremony the same Canadian flag that flew at half-mast atop Parliament on Sept. 14, 1992, the day his father died, Martin continued with a ceremony that tried to be tragically hip.
Sworn in under a haze of burning sweetgrass in an aboriginal Indian smudging ceremony, Canada's 21st Prime Minister enlisted U2 singer Bono as a keynote speaker.
a longtime Liberal cabinet minister, who failed three successive times to win the party leadership, Paul Martin Senior was apparently devastated when his son suffered the same fate in a failed 1990 leadership battle.
Martin was teary-eyed when he spoke of the flag at the ceremony. Curiously enough, his longtime mentor and present day advisor Maurice Strong told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that he had been teary-eyed at the advance of Paul Martin to the PMO. Curious, because population control advocate Strong shows little emotion for the human race, which he contends is deliberately destroying the planet.
Since his election, Martin has become the quintessential "Yes" Man". Some are worried that he says yes to the wrong things. Yes to dining with Tamil terrorists on the eve of an election, yes to meeting Tamils on their own turf in stricken Sri Lanka and yes to China in its emerging role as the world's economic leader.
Ultra politically correct and trying to be all things to all people, Martin is determined to align Canada even closer to Maurice Strong's beleaguered UN.
all PR efforts from above to humanize Martin have failed. "Flat Mark", designed by school children as a paper doll to travel the world with the PM, fizzled out. What was to be Martin's big moment in Sri Lanka failed when it was identified in the mainline media as only a weeklong "photo op" gone wrong.
according to Canadian documentary filmmaker Garth Pritchard covering the tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka… "The padre was shoved out of the way; a couple of women from the PM's office were running around yelling at people. It got out of hand. It was crazy."
In a smarting snub to all Canadians, Martin did not even bother to visit military personnel with DaRT (Disaster assistance Response Team) on the scene doing the real work.
While a long line of Canadian prime ministers have marched to the orders of the same power brokers and dangled on their strings, they never made it quite so obvious.
While it was never easy to ignore Chretien, if only for his outlandish wisecracks, it's easy to ignore Flat Mark Martin.
Unfortunately, the powerbrokers tugging Martin's strings are very cognizant about the not advancing status of Canada's Conservative Government-in-Waiting, and that at the rate things are going, their boy Martin will likely form a majority government in the next federal election.
No, anna, Paul Martin's not stupid or arrogant. He's the first Canadian emperor showing himself without any clothes.
See today's cover story, Tete a tetes with terrorists.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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