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Mumbai: An Assault on Us All
From the CBC – The National
http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/transcripts/mumbai_an_assault_on_us_all.html
Rex Murphy - Point of View
November 27, 2008
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Most of the Western
world, certainly here in North America, people are
absorbed - understandably so - by the financial
crisis. Deep as that is, one crisis is not an
embargo on all others. Horrible consideration must
be given that the malignant forces of terrorism have
used the financial crisis as a backdrop and an
amplifier, for yet another.
Yesterday's full scale terror assault on the
financial capital of the world's most populous
democracy is an awful warning that however far out
we are from September 11, 2001, the world is not
done with terrorism.
I think it has been very appropriately said that
this is India's 9-11, a direct assault on its
stability, on the security of its citizens, on its
financial capacity. We may perhaps, even at our
great distance from the actual event, understand the
great wave of shock and misery coursing through
Mumbai, and all of India. Citizens killed and
injured, their city violated and thrown into near
chaos; explosions, gunfire, their historic buildings
occupied, some in flames, their city in the amazed
eyes of the world. Remembering the awful days of
aftershock here in North America 7 years ago will
give us a very feeling window on what the citizens
of India must be going through today.
Terrorism isn't dead, nor are we here in North
America exempt from its operation, because - at
least since 2001 - there has not been another
episode directly on our doorstep. But remember,
there have been bombings in Bali, in Madrid, in
London, and there have been multiple murderous close
calls besides, some that we know about, and some
that we do not.
Yesterday's outrage in India is, actually, in one
sense, very much on our doorstep. Not just because
some Canadians, unfortunately, are caught up in the
chaos. Rather because, as the ongoing financial
crisis has already made very clear, the modern world
is very much one place. Instability in one country
can start an avalanche of instability in many. The
grief and fear in India today thickens the
atmosphere of all the democracies; and even here in
'tranquil' Canada, the assault on a sister open
society has instant repercussions. It affects us
directly too.
It is also on our doorstep, because it deepens that
atmosphere of anxiety that is both the fuel and root
of the financial crisis and the general malaise of
this moment. Anything that heightens anxiety,
destabilizes, spreads confusion or uncertainty, eats
away at confidence and trust. The bombings and
assaults in India were intended to intensify our
sense of disorder, to layer one set of anxieties
with another, and compound them both. Mumbai was the
immediate and primary target: the confidence of
nations, the secondary one.
We know terrorists have unbounded ruthlessness; they
are cold and vicious. A hundred dead, or a thousand
maimed for life, is as nothing to these assassins.
Suffering is their coin. We should not see what
happened yesterday in India - what is happening - as
something in a distant country, but as a chilling
and depraved assault on on what all decent people
share in common. Terrorism is the murder of
innocents as a tactic in the service of fanaticism.
It is the anti-politics of our time. It is a threat
to us all. The blast was in Mumbai, but its
vibrations are meant for every civilized city of the
planet.
There is no Canadian city, major or minor, that
doesn't have a connection to Mumbai, in the form of
Canadian citizens with friends, relatives or family
in that city. This is one of the truths of our
multiculturalism. It is merely right therefore that
we give our thoughts to their particular plight -and
offer - to these, our fellow citizens - our alert
and full sympathy.
For the National, I'm Rex
Murphy.
Posted by The National on November 27, 2008 03:42 PM |
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To Save The Economy, Feds Need To Close Door To
Immigrants
Posted By RICHARD ROHMER,
O. C., Q. C.
http://www.theenterprisebulletin.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1319892
Notwithstanding yesterday's attempt by Jim Flaherty,
the federal Minister of Finance, to paint an
optimistic picture for Canada's economic and fiscal
condition, he misses/ignores a major factor that
negatively impacts the Canadian economy.
That negative factor is the federal government's
"wide open" immigration policy.
Wide open? Try letting in some 300,000 new
immigrants each year while attempting to increase
that number. The waiting line is said to be in the
one-million range. Where will those immigrants end
up when they arrive? Mainly to the Greater Toronto
Area and to a handful of cities across Canada.
In Ontario it's like dropping a city the size of
Kitchener's population right out of the blue sky
(all by air) on top of a heavily-populated area that
is already overstretched for hospital care
facilities, basic educational services and is seeing
jobs disappearing by the carload.
The agony that the U. S. auto industry is suffering
is having-- and will have--disastrous employment
consequences particularly in Ontario with GM, Ford
and Chrysler plants from Oshawa to Oakville to
Windsor facing bankruptcy and shut downs. We're
talking of tens of thousands of jobs at risk. Plus
those in the auto parts manufacturing such as the
great Magna International based in Aurora with units
across Ontario and Canada and Europe.
Add to those potential huge job loss numbers the
3,500 car dealers who employ some 140,000 people
across Canada with roughly half of those in Ontario.
If the U. S./Canada automobile industry shuts down,
the job impact in this country will be devastating.
Then there are other sectors that will be at
prejudice. Try the housing industry, which is the
other main production leg of Canada's economy. If
you let in 300,000 immigrants each year, where will
they find accommodation let alone jobs?
The Government of Canada appears to be absolutely
blind to the fact that a reversal of economic/
employment good times requires a dramatic reversal
of its long-standing and entrenched wide-open
immigration policies.
What is urgently needed is a complete immigration
policy review that reflects the reality of a
Recession-- which is what the U. S./ Canada joint
economy is clearly into. Parallel to that urgent
review, the Government should declare an immediate
Moratorium on Immigration.
Generally speaking, the immigration factor is not on
this government's radar screen. But what is on it?
The potential for deficits and the probability of
deficits can only be increased by allowing hundreds
of thousands of immigrants into a nation without
jobs. |
