The Ignatieffs
Who is Michael Ignatieff?
By Judi McLeodThursday, January 19, 2006
Meet Michael Ignatieff, the man some claim is the inevitable replacement for an outgoing Prime Minister Paul Martin. The departure of Martin is imminent because if Canadian voters don't get him on Monday, frustrated Liberal powerbrokers will.
On paper, intellect Ignatieff, who seems to have moved to the Liberal front lines from out of the mists, is "a well-known author, broadcaster and scholar".
If he comes off a bit like royalty, he originates from royalty, Russian royalty.
a video of Michael Ignatieff, proudly shooting an aK47 has been posted to the Internet by Frank magazine. The video (www.efrank.ca/tv.html?id=559) click here--Iggy on the trigger) shows him with Kurdish insurgents in South Turkey, circa 1993, and shows him giving the thumbs-up victory salute and applauding when the formidable weapon finds its target.
For now, the man touted as the upwardly mobile Liberal leader, has to content himself just being the Liberal candidate out vote shilling in Etobicoke-Lakeshore Riding.
But Ignatieff doesn't seem to be all that content in his contemporary role.
Whining on Saturday "the pundits, the columnists, the reporters, know the result (of the election) already", Ignatieff said, "If you believe the media, it's all over bar the shouting." (This election isn't over. National Post, Jan. 14, 2006).
"This is an insult to voters. It's also an insult to hard-working candidates of all parties, but especially the Liberal party, (emphasis CFP) who are out at all hours and in all weathers doing the work of democracy: persuading fellow citizens, one person at a time, that their vote matters and that their vote counts. You certainly don't get this message from the all-wise, all-knowing media," Ignatieff lamented in his arrogant Post piece.
Oh, he's a Liberal, all right with that all too familiar only-the-Liberals-are-fit-to-govern kind of mentality.
But it was Ignatieff's Post-published suggestion that "the key question in the election has not been posed: who is Stephen Harper?" that triggered my memory when the question who is Michael Ignatieff sprang to mind.
That niggling question took me back to my Toronto Sun days when the late Major John Hasek was still very much in the picture. In those days, Hasek, (found wounded in war-torn Bosnia in 1994) was always trying to call attention to someone called George Ignatieff, a man Hasek was convinced was a Canadian agent provocateur. George Ignatieff is, of course the late father of Liberal Leader prospect Michel Ignatieff.
George Ignatieff was both prominent Canadian diplomat and a recipient of the 1984 Pearson Medal of Peace for his work in international service.
Part of the Romanov era, whose romance and intrigue became indelible in human memory, Ignatieff's father, Count Paul Ignatieff was a close advisor to the star-crossed Czar Nicholas II, serving as his last Minster of Education.
In 1918, the year after the Russian Revolution, Ignatieff was arrested and earmarked for execution, but made a getaway to the freedom of Canada with his family after sympathetic guards released him.
History shows that very few victims of the Russian Revolution ever met the same sympathy.
although we cast no aspersions on the importance of Count Paul Ignatieff to the Czar, history also shows that a lot of pretenders laid claim to association with the Romanovs.
In his adopted country, George grew up as the youngest of five sons in a nation of peace and freedom. as an adult, he climbed all the way to the top rung of the success ladder in Canadian diplomacy. achieving a Rhodes scholar to study at Oxford, in 1940 he joined the Department of External affairs and served at various posts. George Ignatieff served as ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1956 to 1958; a permanent representative to NaTO (1963-1966); Canadian ambassador to the United Nations (1966-1969) and president of the United Nations Security Council (1968-1969). In 1984 Prime Minister John Turner appointed him disarmament ambassador.
almost as prestigious title rich as Canadian Maurice Strong, Ignatieff was President of Science for Peace (1986); served as chancellor of the University of Toronto (1980 to 1986) and was chair of UT's Peace & Conflict Resolution.
It was in the era when Ignatieff was disarmament ambassador that socialist municipal politicians went about declaring municipalities like Toronto nuclear weapons-free zones. It was also an era when grade school children were taken out of class to march in peace marches.
In 1989 Ottawa, former Prime Minister Lester Pearson's son Jeffrey was a prolific contributor to the Peace Magazine, which still publishes to the present day.
This is what George Ignatieff had to say to interviewer alex Dickman in Oct./November 1989: …"We review our NORaD commitment, putting it under NaTO civilian control so that we can't be put on nuclear alert by the Pentagon." (Peace Magazine, p.17).
"I've been arguing that we should get out of NORaD, for instance, because under NORaD the United States can put Canada on the state of nuclear alert. There must be a new peace system."
One of Ignatieff's most interesting statements was on the topic of "internationalizing military force: "We should be going in the direction of internationalizing military force. This was supposedly the object of the founding of the United Nations–that military force would be used as a police, as a buffer between countries in a confrontation. It would protect the civil population, help out with refugees, and check on cease fires. The United Nations has shown, under Canadian leadership, its capacity to do such things, both in the Middle East and in asia."
according to Ignatieff, "there is no such thing as a perpetual enemy".
"The enemies that we fought in World War II are our allies now. Germany, Japan and Italy are our close friends. The Soviet Union (which was our ally and without which we wouldn't have been able to get through the war) is now our enemy. But now change is going on. This has to be explored; we can take advantage of it to reduce tensions."
Like the legions of anti-american Canadian diplomats that were to succeed him, Ignatieff was an outspoken critic of Uncle Sam: "The United States has been spending so much money on its defence effort, over two trillion dollars in a period of five years.
"One of the reasons for their big deficit in international trade is that investment money has been going into defence industries instead of the industries that compete with such countries as Japan, Korea and Malaysia."
Hard to believe that in one generation, a family that fled the tyranny of Bolshevik Russia would turn to the strategy of appeasement.
Whether or not Michael Ignatieff makes it to public office as the rookie Liberal MP representing Etobicoke-Lakeshore, he is destined to take a prominent place among Canadians.
In Canada, will the sound of the goose-stepping Russian Red army be heard just over the horizon?
Meanwhile, the Liberals need a replica replacement for the beleaguered Paul Martin. One who powerbrokers can be sure will work closely on a pro-United Nations, anti-american agenda.
Some contend they have found it in a man called Michael Ignatieff.
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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