HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1995-06-28, Page 5International Scene
mond Canon
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 1995. PAGE 5.
OK fellow Canucks.
Let's whine
Canada's national bird should be the grouse.
Aton
Okay, fellow Canucics...all together now,
in three-part harmony, ah-one and ah-two
and ah-three...
Let's bitch.
Let's whine, let's complain, let's beat our
breasts and gnash our teeth and tell each
other one more time how miserable it is to
be Canadian.
The country's too cold, too big, too
developed, too raw. The inhabitants are too
coarse, too nice, too unimaginative.
Our politicians stink. Our armed forces are
a joke. We don't make very good wine. wed
rather watch Three's Company on the boob
tube than Colm Feore on the Stratford stage.
Our taxes are too high. Our wages are too
low.
Our golfers never win the PGA. Our tennis
players blow it at Wimbledon. Our nags
always fade in the stretch in the Kentucky
Derby. We can't even keep an NHL
franchise in Quebec City.
Then there's Quebec, always threatening to
leave home and asking for the car keys.
There's Newfoundland, an economic basket
case. There's the West, ever ready to mount
up and ride off into the sunset with the
Nasty little war
in Algeria
In case you haven't noticed it yet, there is a
nasty little civil war going on in the North
African country of Algeria.
For those whose history and geography are
not exactly strong points in their education,
Algeria is a former French colony which
eventually gained its independence but not
before it caused the French government a
great deal of political pain, not to mention
military losses when it attempted to keep the
lid on. It took the return of Gen. Charles De
Gaulle to the political scene to get the matter
under control; it is fair to say that the right
wingers never forgave him for setting such
countries as Algeria, Morocco and Tunesia
free.
That is all in the past; what is very much
in the present is the fate of Algeria, which is
mainly Moslem. At the present time, the
government, which over the years has been
something of a dictatorship at times, is made
up of the more liberal elements of Islam but
they are hard put to keep the fundamentalists
down.
Every once in a while the western press
sees fit to publish the killing of a Westerner
in Algeria; that is only the tip of the iceberg
and it is the work of these fundamentalists.
At this point another explanation is in
order. The current Algerian government, as I
indicated above, is made up of what can be
called modernist Moslems. These are by and
large ecumenically oriented, prepared to
maintain an historical Islamic commitment
to protect the religious liberty of such groups
as Jews and Christians.
The traditionalists, on the other hand,
consider such groups to be part of the
"infidel West" and to attack them whenever
Preston Manning posse.
There's the robber barons of Bay Street,
bleeding the rest of the country white.
Oh, it's pretty tough, living in Canada,
right?
You think so? Tell it to Alfred Nasseri.
Alfred's not hard to track down. You'll
find him sitting on a plastic bench at the
Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris. Terminal
One, Boutique Level, to be precise.
How do I know he's there? Easy. That's
where he's been for the past six years.
Mister Nasseri's predicament — his
nightmare — began with the accident of his
birth. He was born in 1944, in part of Iran
which was under British jurisdiction at the
time. Because of the British connection he
got to leave Iran to go to university in
Britain when he was 18. But when he
returned to Iran he was declared a traitor and
thrown in jail. The Iranians eventually let
him out, but confiscated his passport and
gave him exit papers.
It meant he could leave Iran, but he
couldn't return. Mister Nasseri appealed to
the United Nations. The U.N. Office granted
him asylum and gave him precious papers
that allowed him to apply for residence in
any country in Europe.
Which is when Nasseris' bad luck really
started to unfold.
His papers were in a suitcase which was
stolen in Paris. Mister Nasseri got a flight to
London, but the British refused to take him.
They popped him right back on to a flight
bound for Charles De Gaulle Airport.
it suns their purpose.
However, all this is, to a certain degree,
just by-play compared to the question of the
role of women in society. The modernists
argue that the Koran gave women full civil
and religious rights; they could take part in
both social and political life as long as
sexual segregation was maintained and the
proper rules on clothing adhered to.
The fundamentalists argue that women's
place is in the home and that is that! These
fundamentalists, although they dislike the
Saudis and their petrodollars, are in tune
with the role of women in Saudi Arabia
.where females are all but socially invisible
in public.
Algeria has not been the first country to
suffer the split over women's rights or lack
of them. They are one of the main bones of
contention in such countries as Egypt and
Pakistan, while the question of women's
right to vote was one of the main causes of
the breakdown in the 1990 peace agreement
in Afghanistan.
Most recently it came up at a U.N.
sponsored conference in Cairo, where the
Moslem fundamentalists found themselves
in a rather strange alliance with the Roman
Catholics, when it came to the question of
certain rights of women such as abortion.
Stranger alliances have happened and too
much should not be read into this.
The last time that Algeria had anything
that could safely be called a free election, the
results became meaningless when the
government in power got the impression that
the fundamentalists would either hold the
balance of power or else take over
completely. The party was then made illegal
and its leaders thrown in jail.
The killings of Westerners, among others,
to which I referred above, is a result of this
crack-down. However, how does one get
away from such a drastic move so that the
killings will stop and yet the fundamentalists
That was in 1988. Mister Nasseri is still at
the airport. He sits on his plastic bench,
guarding a luggage cart which holds all his
worldly possessions — a cardboard suitcase,
some garbage bags full of clothes and a
diary that now runs to 6,000 pages.
Flight attendants know him - they should,
after six years — and they keep him supplied
with shaving kits, toothbrushes and soap.
Some of them also give him their meal
tickets. Alfred Nasseti cat washes in the
airport washroom, reads newspapers from
the trash cans, watches TV in the airport
lounge.
"What I want" he says, "is a passport."
But in the grand new European
community of communities, there is not one
country willing to give him the little book he
needs.
He's broke, but he's honest. Twice now,
Alfred Nasseri has turned in billfolds full of
money that passengers have lost.
"It's not a good solution to live a long time
like this" says Nasseri, in the understatement
of the year. "Living without a bed and
without a room — it's depressing."
Probably even worse than being Canadian.
You want to do something positive? Drop
Nasseri a line. His address is Charles De
Gaulle airport, Terminal One, Boutique
Level, Paris, France.
Enclose a few bucks, if you're feeling
flush.
And then count your blessings. Starting
with that little blue book with your name in
it.
will not be allowed to get too much power.
That is a question for which the Algerian
leaders would like plausible answers. There
may well not be any.
Algeria lies a long way away from North
America and one might easily ask what that
has got to do with us. I can reply by stating
that the same question could have been
asked at one time about Yugoslavia and look
what that area is costing the United Nations
and NATO today in the way of headaches
and uncertainty. It could well be Algeria
tomorrow or perhaps even some other place
we know as little about.
Of such surprises is the modern world
made.
Letter to
the editor
THE EDITOR,
As June 6, 1944 marked D-Day, the
beginning of the Battle of Europe, so June 9,
1995 marked the beginning of what will
apparently be a "battle" for the control of
Blyth.
This fight, however, will be in the
courtroom.
The Corporation of the Village of Blyth
and the Blyth PUC have been served papers
for wrongful dismissal by Clerk-Treasurer
Helen Grubb. Ten citizens have also been
named.
This case is significant for a number of
reasons:
1. If the Corporation and the Commission
are found guilty of wrongful dismissal, the
taxpayers will have to make restitution.
2. Did the councillors act in their
respective capacity as village officials? Did
they act as individual citizens?
3. If these gentlemen acted on behalf of
the Corporation or Commission, the
taxpayers will have to pay all legal and court
costs.
4. If the ruling requires that Mrs. Grubb be
Continued on page 9
The
Short
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Coming to
my 'scents-es'
As I trudged to the backyard, burdened not
just by a basket bearing several days' worth
of laundry, but by the oppression of
humidity, I felt close to buckling under the
weight of adult responsibility. It had been
seven days of work, running and organizing
and I was eagerly anticipating that day of
rest someone had told me we are supposed
to expect.
And it was becoming less than
exhilarating for me to realize that I didn't see
it arriving in the near future.
Then as I stooped to begin my labours, my
nostrils were assailed by a heady sweetness
that transported me back to childhood, to the
fragrant beauty of my grandmother's
bounteous garden. A source of many hours'
labour for Grandma, as well as much pride
and joy, that garden was a wondrous setting
for my cousin and I to enjoy. We picked its
fresh fruit and watched the insects dance
from petal to petal among the many
colourful blossoms that thrived there.
And fascinated, we inhaled the glorious
fragrance from the brightest, biggest of these
blooms.
Today the power of the scent of the peony
stirs memories in me of that youthful
innocence, that wonder and my
grandparents' home where I spent so many
carefree hours. It is the aroma of summer.
The sense of smell is one of the strongest
for humans and studies have shown it is also
the one that will elicit recollection and
conjure images from our past better than any
other.
There are other things that will remind me
of happy times and places, or that will cause
an unsettled feeling. Music, for example,
also has the ability to make me think of
where was and how life felt when I first
heard a particular song, but nothing seems to
have the unconscious potentcy to lift me
away from the present as much as an odour,
a fragrance or yes, even a smell.
The stink of a cattle barn has never been
unpleasant for me, as it is reminiscent of my
summers spent on the farm of my aunt and
uncle. Also, while modern man may eschew
the potent perfume of Old Spice, in favour of
today's trendier, more subtle colognes, it is
to me, the scent of my grandpa, my father,
my uncle.
There are of course, smells that have
almost universal appeal, such as the aroma
of Christmas dinner, but most of us have our
special ones that give to us the gift of the
past at every breath. They may not
necessarily be pleasant; I know someone
who loves the smell of a wet dog, and I'm
probably the only person who finds comfort
in the smells of an auto body shop; but the
memories are.
These thoughts all came flooding to me as
I stood in my backyard basking in the heady
aroma of summer and my nostalgia.
The scents around us are something we
don't always pay as much attention to as we
might, usually because we're too busy these
days for such frivolous introspection.
However, after this brief pause in my busy
day I was refreshed and, in returning to the
present, ready to take on the challenges.
It reminded me that, too often, we feel so
hassled and encumbered because we let
ourselves be weighted down with
responsibility. We need to remember the
important things, primarily our well being
and our family's, and take a moment to stop
and smell the peonies.
Arthur Black