An open letter to Chrystia Freeland

Canadian Bolivarians: Because SOME of us DO understand Venezuela.

Dear Chrystia:

Hi, you don’t know me from Adam’s housecat. I didn’t vote for your party, and I most certainly didn’t vote for YOU.

But since your party won the last election, and you apparently represent my country (and by extension, ME) on the global stage, I feel compelled to write this open letter to you. It’s an open letter because I have the feeling that a more “closed” one will simply get lost in the shuffle of all your official correspondence. And because I want the world to see just what I think of you, and how badly you’ve embarrassed us when it comes to so many things where you really ought to know better.

There are many things about you that embarrass me as a Canadian. Your Nazi grandfather, whom you whitewashed as a simple Ukrainian “patriot”, for one. That one sticks in my craw, since I’m of German descent and have lost family members to Hitler’s wars and the poverty and plagues they engendered. My own grandparents’ lives were blighted by the Nazis in ways you can’t even begin to fathom. And then there’s the fact that you apparently see no problem in selling Saudi Arabia all kinds of weaponry so that they can bomb an already desperately poor country — that’s Yemen — back to the Stone Age. That’s a big one, and one that makes it awfully hard for us Canadians to hold our heads up and remind the world of our sacrifices in the name of UN peacekeeping. But what embarrasses me the most is your stance on Venezuela.

You see, Chrystia, you’ve been consorting with fascists. Just like your granddaddy, you seem to have no problem boogying with the worst of them, and doing yeoman’s work in producing their crapaganda for them, or at least parroting it back to us in English and French. And just like your whitewashed old grandpa, you paint them as “democrats” and “patriots”, which they most certainly are not.

Anyone who’s been paying serious attention to Venezuela will know that the likes of Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles Radonski are not heroic dissidents, as the Anglo media paint them, but fascists, putschist thugs who have no problem calling for riots and lynchings in their futile efforts to overthrow an elected, popular president, and with him, an entire democratic process. A process which is, in fact, far more democratic than Canada’s own, that holdover from settler-colonial times that somehow put you in charge of our foreign trade relations, and which will somehow not hold you accountable for bungling them as badly as you are doing right now.

Yet even though you can’t have NOT heard what those guys are really up to down there, you still support them. I would ask why, Chrystia, but I already know. Your objectively pro-fascist track record speaks volumes, as does your willingness to turn a blind eye to Saudi human rights abuses while lambasting a South American president who has not committed any. You are no progressive, Chrystia, and that’s obvious from the way you lay into all the real ones at every opportunity. It’s also obvious from the way you pick your cronies from the region.

But since your dear ol’ grandpa didn’t teach you this, Chrystia, let me be the one to remind you: You’ve made your bed with some mangy, scroungy dogs. Do you know what you’ll be getting up with? If you don’t know yet, don’t worry. The itching will make your hide want to crawl right off your carcass in acute embarrassment. And I’ll be right here, laughing and pointing while you scratch and whine.

Meanwhile, the people of Venezuela still have a democratic process in place, one that allows them to vote for those who will rewrite their constitution for them, and which also allows them to vote yea or nay on the final outcome of that process of public consultation. They have a voice in their political process that I, as a Canadian, can only admire. And they are steadfast in upholding it, no matter how many firebombs the racist, oligarchic opposition throws at courthouses, military vehicles, or persons on the street. That too, I admire.

I have no idea if my fellow Canadians still have that much of a spine, but if they’re not standing outside your office demanding your resignation right now, I have no great confidence that they do.

Any more than I have confidence in your ability to manage our international trade relations.

Most sincerely NOT yours,

Sabina C. Becker.

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This entry was posted in Canadian Counterpunch, Confessions of a Bad German, Crapagandarati, Do As I Say..., Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Huguito Chavecito, Human Rights FAIL. Bookmark the permalink.