[R-G] Imperialism and Holding the Bullys Coat

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

Engler may well have been paid by the U S to trash her book,and/ or he
wants to curry favor with the U S and the recent Blair government.
There are reams of people in the U S who are ready willing and able to
smear any publication that criticizes government figures or policies.
That Linda Mc Quaig seems unaware of this army of misinformationists,
well paid by the intelligence servies, surprises me.  Legislation was
passed by both House and Senate to make such disinformation both legal
and very well funded.

respectfully, Suzanne de Kuyper

suzannedk at gmail.com

On 7/5/07, Sid Shniad <shniad at sfu.ca> wrote:
>
>    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>    From: "Linda McQuaig"
>    Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2007 17:33:00 -0400
>    Subject: RE: Imperialism and Holding the Bullys Coat
>    Sid;
>    I read and appreciate much of the material you send out every day.
>    I'm struck by the fact that I've never seen any reference to my new
>    book, Holding the Bully's Coat, in anything you've sent out (even
>    though
>    the book would fit with much of your material) until now, when you
>    choose to send out a negative review by Yves Engler.
>    Engler is right that I don't deal with the role of Canadian
>    corporations
>    abroad. I never intended to. I agree that that would make a good book,
>    but it's not the book I set out to write. The fact that I didn't write
>    the book Engler would like to see written doesn't seem like a good
>    reason to trash my book.
>    It's true that I prefer the Canadian UN peacekeeping tradition to our
>    current junior partner role in the U.S. "war on terror," but I'm not
>    blindly supportive of the earlier role, as Engler suggests.
>    In fact, I'm somewhat mixed in my review of the Pearson legacy. I
>    point
>    out clearly that Pearson's key motive in the Suez crisis wasn't
>    high-minded helpfulness but a desire to avoid a clash between Canada's
>    two key allies, Britain and the U.S. I do praise Pearson for his
>    critical remarks at Temple University criticizing the U.S. bombing of
>    Hanoi, although I point out that other parts of his speech were
>    supportive of Washington, and that much of his writings were
>    "downright
>    deferential to U.S. power."
>    More importantly, I go on at length (five pages) about the complicit
>    role Canada played under Pearson in the U.S. military build-up in
>    Vietnam, through our failure as a member of the international
>    commission
>    monitoring the north-south truce to properly report serious U.S.
>    violations. I make it clear that Canada behaved as little more than a
>    choreboy for the U.S., just as Poland was for the Soviets, and that
>    Canada's complicity helped Washington whitewash its behaviour in front
>    of the world. I describe all this as an early example of Canada
>    "holding
>    the bully's coat." So I'm not as enamoured with Pearson as Engler
>    suggests.
>    I also make clear that UN peacekeeping and Canada's role in it has a
>    blemished record. I specifically point to the example of Haiti in this
>    regard, noting that Canadian peacekeepers helped prop up the ruthless
>    right-wing regime following the U.S. overthrow of the
>    democratically-elected Aristide government, (page 107). Later in the
>    book, I return to this subject for two pages, raising the question of
>    Canada's possible involvement in the overthrow of Aristide, and in
>    fact
>    citing Engler's book favourably on this subject in my footnotes.
>    Oddly,
>    Engler doesn't acknowledge any of this in his review.
>    I'm sure there are many shortcomings in my book. But I'm amazed by the
>    way Engler chose to completely avoid dealing with any of its main
>    themes -- Canada's involvement in the "war on terror," the increasing
>    adoption of a militaristic, pro-war approach by Ottawa, the rise of a
>    mini-military-industrial complex in Canada, the dramatic growth of our
>    military budgets, the media support for all this.
>    I'm sure most of your readers aren't aware of my book, since (unlike
>    my
>    previous books), it's received relatively little media attention. (It
>    hasn't even been reviewed in The Toronto Star, where I've been a
>    columnist for the past five years.) So the first that people will have
>    heard of it may well be this negative (and in my mind completely
>    unfair)
>    review by Engler.
>    Regards,
>    Linda
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