A Quick One from Doug Draper, NAL
Posted January 29th, 2016 on Niagara At Large
Someone who is a regular reader and supporter of Niagara At Large sent me the following image of a police surveillance camera scanning a neighbourhood in front of the London, England home of the late George Orwell, author of the 1984 – a nightmarish vision of a future where ‘Big Brother is Watching’ and where ‘war is speace’, ‘freedom is slavery’, ‘ignorance is strentch and where fear and paranoia are used to keep people compliant and under control.
The image was emailed to me with a caption that read; ‘The ultimate irony.” And if you look at it closely enough, you can see the round blue plaque with Orwell’s name on it fastened to the wall of his old home behind the probing camera.
Back at the beginning o this 21st century, just a few years before he died in 2005, the former Rolling Stone magazine journalist Hunter St. Thompson wrote the following words that can be found in a collection of some of his essays called; ‘Kingdom of Fear’.
“We are living in dangerously weird times now,” Thompson wrote. “Smart people just shrug and admit they’re dazed and confused. … The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.”
Those words came to mind as I took my first glance at the image of Orwell’s house with the surveillance camera in front of it. And as gloomy as they are, it must be remembered that Thompson wrote them when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney where in control of the White House, commanding, from afar, their “shock and awe” bombing and bulletting campaigns in the Middle East while keeping the fear level high in the populace back home.
Over the past 10 years in Canada, we had a government run by Stephen Harper that played on anger, fear and intolerance toward others to diminish democratic rights and freedoms here.
Fortunately, Bush and Cheney’s record has been largely discredited in the U.S. and this past October in Canada, a federal election threw out Harper and hopefully the country now has a federal government less inclined to use terror and intolerance of others as power tools.
Hopefully.
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Thompson was not a Honda. He terrified his son. Juan F. Thompson’s memoir, “Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up With Hunter S. Thompson,” is a calm book about a wild man. It’s a careful yet
Niagara At Large 
An irony indeed. I am still scared even if Cheney-Bush are discredited. Just look at the Very Scary men (and one woman) running for the Republicans in the U.S. this year. Or the battle of the billionaires, Trump and Bloomberg, the 1 percent. Hear that the Taliban actually owns more land in Afghanistan than before troops went in to help there. And the PSTD suffered by vets returning. Then there is our shameful legacy with our indigenous peoples, and how to undo it, or even address it. Then there is Ebola and now this new mosquito born virus. In this province, there is no interest whatsoever in valuing our architectural or natural heritage. Development takes over: “We’re Open for Business” as many governments have crowed.
So, yes, I am a scaredy cat. I read the print Globe and Mail each morning now that I am retired, and listen to CBC radio One at the same time. Sometimes I just have to stop reading and listening ’cause the news ‘aint good.
Yes, we live in a wonderful country. Without doubt one of the best currently, but still, Thatcherism lives in the U.K., Stephen Harper’s shadow still looms over Canada, and all the “resourcefulness” to quote PM Trudeau, may not be good enough. I remember the good old days when I worked with Pollution Probe Niagara, starting the first recycling in the city, or Pflag, trying to help families in crisis with their children, PALS, (preserve agricultural lands society) or any other social justice cause. It all seems so quaint now.
Yes, Pflag and Pals still continue, without my help at all. But ……
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A lady friend and I are looking forward to a trip to expats heaven “Ecuador”, a trip to listen, learn and to contemplate just what it is that is drawing peoples from the four corners of this globe to give up and look for a new and hopefully a better life south of the equator?
One converted American expat and his wife wrote the following;
It seems his wife a former teacher drawing Social Security and he still a working from home Structural Engineer decided to move to Ecuador because of distrust and total despair over the horrific events that has shaped America over the past two decades. Events beginning with the refusal of a recount in Florida that literally gave Republican George Bush the Presidency of the USA followed by war after war that has bankrupted and literally ruin the the reputation and economy of that country and then again the NRA and the rabid supporters of the 2nd Amendment, gun supporters who have transformed America into a kill zone for every nut who has an AK47 or lethal weapon.
These words were offered by an American expat living in Cuenca, a city that has seen its population explode with peoples looking for a more serene and peaceful life style. There are many such testimonies from Ecuadorian expats from all over the world, people sick to death of war mongering by corrupt politics and politicians who live at the trough and live the Creed of Greed to the fullest.
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