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Goderich Signal Star, 2017-01-04, Page 76 Signal Star • Wednesday, January 4, 2017 Goderich Signal -Star VOL. 26 – ISSUE 10 PUBLISHED WEEKLY — EST. 1860 Signal Star Publishing 120 Huc.kins St. Goderich ON N7A 3X8 519-524-2614 www.goderichsignalstar.com POSTMEDIA JOHN BAUMAN Group Manager, Media Sales jbauman@postmedia.com ext. 232 JANET SHRIER Office Manager jashrier@postmedia.com ext. 220 DARRYL COOTE Editor dcoote@postmedia.com ext. 211 SUSAN MCINTOSH Sales gss.ads@sunmedia.ca ext. 228 TARA CORRAN Sales goderich.ads@sunmedia.ca STACEY SCOTT inside Sales focus.ads@sunmedia.ca ext. 229 RHONDA BUTT Accounting rhbutt@postmedia.com MARY JOHNSTON Accounts Receivable majohnston@postmedia.com CURTIS ARMSTRONG Group Director of Media Sales 519 376-2250 ext. 514301 or 510 364-2001 ext. 531024 Editorial Deadline - Friday 2 p.m. Advertising booking deadline - Friday 1:30 p.m. SUBSCRIPTION RATES ADVANCE: Regular $50.00 includes GST (12 months) Seniors $50.00 indudes GST (14 months) US $249.00 plus GST Foreign $416.40 plus GST Single Copy $1.50 indudes GST Publications Mail Agreement No. 40064683 RETURN UNDEUVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES: CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 120 Huckins St., Goderich ON N7A 3X8 For any non -deliveries or delivery concerns: 519-524-2614 Goderich Signal Star is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an independent ethical organization established to deal with editorial concerns. For more information or to file a complaint go to www.mediacouncil.ca or call toll free 1-844-877-1163. The Goderich Signal Star shall not be liable for failure to publish an ad for typographical errors in publication except to the extent of the cost of that portion of the ad in which the error occurred. The Goderich Signal -Star reserves the right to reject or edit any advertisement. The Goderich Signal -Star is a proud member of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association (CCNA) and The Ontario Community Newspapers Association (OCNA). We acknowledge the financial support of the Govemment of Canada through the Canadian Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities. anaad" Member d the Canadian Community Aoc la Newspaper Association and the Ontario Community Newspapers Association Terry Glavin: The UN is useless, America elected a gargoyle and Europe is splintering. 2016 was a filthy year There's no getting around it. 'the year 2016 was a dirty, filthy year. A look back over the annus horribilis reveals a bleak and broken corpse -strewn terrain. There were rays of light, and there is a case to be made for optimism in the long run. We'll come to that. But first, the hard part. Never in its 71 -year history has the United Nations proved so useless to the solemn declarations set out in its founding covenants. Vladimir Putin, a petty thug presiding over a decrepit kleptocracy with an eco- nomic footprint smaller than Italy's, finally broke the UN's back in 2016. He was aided and abetted at every turn by Xi Jinping, the princeling megalomaniac who oversees an increasingly dystopian Chinese police state. A half dozen times since 2012, Putin has used Russia's veto to block United Nations Security Council efforts to staunch the hemorrhaging in Syria. Worse, the explicit instruc- tions of the UN's 192 -member Gen- eral Assembly to the Security Coun- cil regarding Syria have been rejected or simply ignored bythe Security Council a dozen times. Because that's what Vladimir Putin wanted. The last time the General Assem- bly was rebuffed was just three weeks ago. On Dec. 9, a resolution drafted by Canada, carried by a 122- 13 vote, begged Russia and Iran and Bashar Al-Assad's regime in Damas- cus to stop their bombing and com- ply with the UN's several previous Column Terry Glavin entreaties and allow a reprieve of East Aleppo. All the hospitals had been destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were cowering in the rub- ble. Food stockpiles were exhausted. No aid had been allowed through for 150 days. Putin said no. The slaughter continues, and the Security Council has been rendered incapable of holding anyone to account for the deaths of nearly half-- a alf—a million Syrians, so far. The torture and murder of thousands of prison- ers in Assad's dungeons, even the ghastly atrocities of the Islamic State — all of it is going unpunished. A 2014 Security Council resolution would have extended the jurisdic- tion of the International Criminal Court to Syria, but Putin said no. Jin - ping said no. After eight years of retreating from its role as the world's sole super- power in the course of Barack Oba- ma's pursuit of calamitous foreign- policy vanity projects, most notoriously his attempted rap- prochement with Iran's "moder- ates;' the United States ended up with the Kremlin -fancying Donald Trump getting himself elected presi- dent in a campaign that 17 Ameri- can intelligence agencies concluded was hacked by Russia in collusion with the Wikileaks counterculture superstar Julian Assange. That so many Americans were prepared to vote for a reality -televi- sion gargoyle and real-estate swindler in the first place, though, should tell you something about the state of America in 2016. It's not just the United Nations that's broken. 'Ihe Republican Party is riven with resentments and th-I3emocratic Party has all but collapsed. Ameri- can power is broken. You could find a silver lining around that cloud if you squinted hard enough. The illiberal vanguard of American liberalism is finished. "Political correctness" doesn't come close to describing it properly, because the term can take in the ordinary restraints a decent society places on racist loudmouths, Mus- lim -haters and gay -bashers. But it's close enough. The hysterical speech - policing, the ever -multiplying safe - space sub -tribes of hypersensitive, intersectional identity groupuscules, the routine campus eruptions of privilege -checking race and gender moral panic episodes — it's all finished. American confidence is broken, and Europe isn't far behind. Move- ments from the far -right fringe are feeding into anti -European political parties in Austria, France, Hungary, Denmark, and Italy. In June, British voters opted to pull out of the Euro- pean Union altogether. The European malaise derives in no tiny measure from the arrival of about a million refugees by boat in 2015, perhaps half of them from Syria.Thousands drowned in the effort. The good news is that 2016's flotillas brought only about 300,000 refugees across the Mediterranean. That's mostly because Ankara struck a deal with Brussels to keep the refu- gees from leaving Turkey by sea, or by land into Bulgaria, and also to take them back if Europe didn't want them. But that's also the bad news. On the pretext of an absurdly quixotic and quickly failed military coup last July, Turkish strongman Recep Erdogan has been remaking himself in the image and likeness of a tyrannical Ottoman caliph. He has accelerated a brutal war on Turkey's Kurds, jailed thousands of judges and opposition leaders, shuttered newspapers, summarily fired tens of thousands of teachers, purged the civil service, and obliterated civil rights. Last month, Erdogan threatened to let loose as many as three million Syrian refugees in Europe if Brussels didn't accede to his increasingly deranged demands for Turkey's full admission into the EU. Opportunis- tically, Erdogan has at the same time pulled Turkey ever deeper into the Russian -Iranian orbit. Throughout the world, democ- racy is in retreat, for the tenth year in a row, the blue-chip foundation Freedom House reports. Freedom of expression, the rule of law, and free- dom of association are shrivelling. Press freedom is at its lowest point in -12 years. In the Western democra- cies, Islamist lunatics spent 2016 driving buses into holiday crowds and blowing things up and plotting bedlam and driving wedges between innocently devout Muslims and everyone else, from Berlin to San Bemadino. — letter to the editor `l, along with many local residents, do not always agree with elitist extreme left liberal idealism' I refer to the editor's remarks printed in the Nov. 23, 2016, issue of The Signal Star. Mr. Coote, along with the majority of U.S. Demo- crats, is obviously in a state of shock and disbelief that the Ameri- can voters could make such a hor- rific mistake on Election Day. Whether you love or hate Trump is irrelevant. The real point is that the American voters were fed up and sick and tired of big unaccountable government, and the constant forcing of political correctness down their throats: I suspect there are a growing number of Canadian voters who feel the same way. As for the people of Huron County, Mr. Coote, I, along with many other residents of the area, do not always agree with your elit- ist extreme left liberal idealism. This, however, does not give you the right to label us as inexcusable hate -filled bigots. Hard working Canadian taxpayers have every right to stand up and protect the culture and moral values upon which our democracy was created. Anyone who would pretend that the jihadists and radicalized Islamic extremists at our borders have any less hatred for us than they do for our American neigh- bours, is being unrealistic and careless. Their one and only mis- sion, is to destroy and eliminate all western style Democracy, and replace it with an Islamic Cali- phate under Sharia Law. If an increase in vetting immi- grants at our boarders will help pre- serve our very lifestyle, then so be it I pray that my grandchildren, and all future generations in Can- ada may live in a free and demo- cratic society, without the fear of being brutally forced into a bar- baric system of government based on Sharia Law. We cannot allow that to happen here. Respectfully in closing, and being politically incorrect, Merry Christmas to everyone. R.G. Armstrong. Goderich On. LETTERS TO THE EDIT9R Signal Star welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must include the writer's full name, address, daytime phone number and signature (for verifica- tion). Anonymous letters will not be published. We reserve the right to edit all editorial submissions including letters for clarification, style and length. Let- ters must be signed and be in good taste and follow the laws of libel and slander.