The Lebanese Interior Minister, Mr. Mohamed Fahmy, expressed his ideas on why Lebanon is back to the lockdown and fear of the spread of the coronavirus.
According to him, in addition to people’ irresponsible behaviour, “eroding the Lebanese society is a Zionist goal that ‘corona’ is achieving”.
The question is the following: Is this politician (whom Bambi does not know) silly… or does he think that citizens are stupid?
Why don’t politicians, especially in the Middle East, resort to logic ONLY?
This sentence does not make any sense whatsoever, even if Israel is not the friendliest neighbour on earth, even if Hezbollah and Israel have issues, AND even if Hezbollah’s weapons are Lebanon’s most serious issue since the end of civil war… in addition to corruption!
A recent clever New Wark Times article, entitled
“experts warn Sackville town councils new code of conduct could shut down
dissent” interviewed our own Dr. Geoff Martin, Dr. O’ Byrne from UNB, and
M. Murray, the NB Ombudsman about the new so-called “code of conduct”. They provided
informative insights:
Today, in reflecting about Mr. Wark’s article, a few thoughts
crossed her mind:
First, how odd that an administrative creation of a
province, the municipalities, cannot benefit from a clean-up by this “creator”.
In other jurisdictions, we have seen municipalities being amalgamated with other
sister municipalities. If we have created them, we can also dismantle them.
Well, at least, Québeckers do municipal cleaning up
from time to time.
Of course, by no means, Bambi is saying that we have the
same issues here in NB or to the same extent.
However, who can deny that we have serious issues in
our sweet little Sackville? Indeed, the culture of its governance seems to look
like a mini-authoritarian entity than a healthy democracy.
Is this some older feudal region of Lebanon or is this
Canada in 2020?
Second, and in trying to make sense of all this, Bambi
chatted with her spouse, Louis (a lawyer in another jurisdiction of Canada)
about Mr. Wark’s article.
The first words that came out of his mouth were: “The
First Amendment… The Americans understood it all in the 1790s”.
“What is that about?”,
Bambi asked.
“Why don’t you google it first”, Louis
replied?
Bambi did so (she sometimes listens to her spouse ?) and came across the following text:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.
A picture taken from Wikipedia showing the handwritten copy of the proposed Bill of Rights (USA, 1789). This text was later ratified as the First Amendment.
Bambi returned to Louis for more insights.
This is what he said: “The Canadian Charter of Rights
and Freedoms does apply to municipalities and should be relevant to this type of
situation”.
“However, this is meaningless. In reality,
it is BS”, said Louis in all honesty.
“What they were nailing me for was testifying
before the Assessment and Planning Appeal Board. I will even note that no one
challenged the veracity of the testimony. These are the kinds of anti-democratic
methods so popular in this town and province apparently. These are all just
excuses to shut down dissenters.
In a real democracy, the courts would be a
brake on this kind of excess via an application of the likes of the Charter,
but around here, many judges are no more than politicians by another name. In
fact, it’s shocking how many are retired politicians.
Phinney, whether you like him or not, was
elected by the people of this town. But what I’d like to know if, if ‘they’
just decide not to let him in to the Council chamber any more or otherwise interfere
with him, who is going to stop them? That’s a question that everyone should be
asking themselves. Because around here, the answer is far from obvious.”
Sadly, Louis is right, all this is truly meaningless…
if we recall the legal saga between him and the Town of Sackville that went all
the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
So, what should we do as a society? Shut up and not express
any dissent. In other terms, resign to that unfair reality? Pretend that life
is good and hide in our intellectual or moral bubble.
As Louis commented on this blog earlier (see the link
above):
“At the very least, this should be a reminder that we should all vote for Phinney at the upcoming election, if the minions allow us to. He’s the only player in there we can all be sure isn’t in on any of the games.“
In addition to Louis’ comments, Bambi will allow herself to cite at the end of this post the own words of Sackville prominent citizens, as published in the New Wark Times: Ms. Sharon Hicks, Mr. Shawn Meshau (the citizen in him, not the Councillor), and earlier comments to a related article by Ms. Azi, Mr. Joel B, Mr. Norman Cole, Mr. Percy Best, and Mr. Harold (in the earlier post reported above, we an read Ms. Sharon Higgs’ wise words).
To conclude this post now, Bambi would like to thank Mr. Wark again for his rigorous journalism and for giving voices to citizens and experts.
In addition, MANY thanks to Mr. Percy Best and Ms. Sharon Hicks for having been our eyes, ears, and mouth in all town council meetings over the last four years.
Ms. Sharon Higgs:
“As Professor Geoff Martin points out, while there are some good points
about Sackville’s new Code of Conduct for Members of Council, the ultimate
effect is to basically shut down any ‘real’ open discussion between our elected
representatives who sit on Council.
Professor Martin alluded to the fact that Councillors are elected by
citizens, and they need to maintain autonomy – in other words they need to be
able to speak up on behalf of the constituents who put their trust in them.
He also points out that Councillors are not “town staff’, yet this Code
of Conduct would seem to place than at that level, or actually below that
level, as he points out that it places them under the “supervision of the
council majority and the staff”.
My understanding of how the dynamics of a municipal governing body
functions has always been that the Mayor and Council are there to ‘direct’
staff to work on projects for the betterment of the Town, and that part of the
Mayor’s role is to only relay the wishes of Council to the staff, via the Town
Manager (called the chief Administrative Officer [CAO] here in Sackville).
For those of us who follow local Town Council meetings and activities on
a regular basis, what we see has become the total opposite, especially over the
past four years under our current Mayor. How did this model become so
completely turned around?
The experts consulted for this article have made the point that the
wording and intent of this new Code of Conduct sets up an ‘invitation’ for an
ongoing litany of petty complaints, which would end up with councillors
basically ‘fighting amongst themselves’.
It could be seen as a convenient ‘tool’ with which to ‘divide and
conquer’ Councillors, with the resulting in-fighting distracting their focus
and attention away from more important issues, allowing free reign by the mayor
and town management.
Who would that benefit? Certainly not the Councillors. And certainly not
the residents of Sackville.”
Mr. Norman Cole:
“I think this comment is well thought out and maybe the other councillors might want to [revist] their thoughts as to why they were elected and what their mission should really be. There seems to not be enough Accountability as to the way decisions are made on some really important issues. You are all elected and expected to have the whole town’s best interest as top priority.“
Mr. Shawn Meshau:
“**The following comment I am making is not the views of council.
These are my personal views only.**
I want to thank Mr. Wark for playing a very important role in our
community of bringing information to the forefront so we can garner
perspectives around many important issues our community is subject to.
It was reassuring to see that some of the concerns raised in the article
by these experts were in line with what I raised during council’s opportunity
to deliberate the code of conduct as presented.
I believe a code of conduct is important to ensure councillors and the
Mayor conduct themselves professionally and respectfully.
It was my hope that the code implemented by council would be a work in
progress and amended as required based on what we learned from its existence.
If it creates barriers for a councillor to be able to uphold the Local
Governance Act which indicates a councillor must consider the welfare and
interests of the entire community, the opportunity does exist to amend the
code.
Where the code is mandated by the Local Governance Act, I believe
municipalities should be provided guidance from the Department of Local
Government in producing an effective code in the spirit of good governance.
In fact not all municipalities have the ability to afford legal advice in
formulating a code of conduct, so why wouldn’t this department not strive to
ensure each municipality utilizes a standard means to govern its elected
officials’ conduct.
We must not forget our purpose as elected officials or let policy
determine who we are as an individual councillor.
Bureaucracy/policy, although required to deliver services, can be cold and calculating and we forget that it takes the empathy of council and administrators to ensure it is developed in a manner that best represents democracy.“
“Thank you Shawn Mesheau”
And from earlier posts…
Ms. Azi:
“In my experience, Mr. Phiney is a very
reliable, honest, and responsible councilor. This kind of action by some other
councilors/mayor makes me have even more respect for him.”
Mr. Joel B:
Bruce Phinney is one of the best councillors Sackville
has ever had and something doesn’t sit well with me here .
Percy Best:
“If Councillor Phinney said something at a meeting, and that portion of
the meeting has never been revealed to the public, then how the heck can he be
subjected to a bylaw infraction that says that any councillor cannot reveal to
the public something that was told in confidence. It does make one wonder WHO
actually owes WHO an apology here.
If the Mayor reveals to the citizens of Sackvile, the 37 seconds of audio
that the Town is hiding, then they possibly have a beef with Councillor Phinney
not abiding by this bylaw, but that willnot be the case until we all
hear the audio.”
Mr. Harold:
“It is rather confusing — perhaps
intentional — to refer to “elected officials” as “public servants”. It implies
that they serve at the pleasure of the Town, not the will of the electorate. I
wonder why all the other councillors accepted this? Do they think they are Town
employees?”
In the video below, you can see a group of musicians at a Lebanese hospital, singing to thank the nurses and the latter taking the time to dance.
You can also see a mobile clinic of the Lebanese American University in action, testing citizens in a neighborhood of Beirut.
Finally, this post ends with a moving picture published by the l’Orient Le Jour yesterday, a few hours before the stricter four-day lockdown. It shows two friends hugging each other in the middle of a soccer game (as described by the newspaper in question). Obviously, these boys were too happy to see each other, after a LONG confinement, that they forgot about social distancing… whilst wearing their masks.
These kids’ happiness did not last long, as everyone is back to the lockdown now. Soccer will have to wait…
Isn’t this a bit too much? At one point, we need to start being reasonable, even in a pandemic and even if Mr. Trudeau told us that the clean-up of all the CERB fraud concerns will take place later, “after the fact”:
This is even more worrisome, given that Canada does not have a budget.
Mind you, even Santa has a budget, especially in poorer households or countries.
Mr. Trudeau, without wanting to for sure, you may be perhaps starting to fall into the trap of “Lebanonizing” Canada in the process of assisting us.
As a reminder, Lebanon spent beyond its means for years (in addition to corruption or fraud here and there, for sure)… See what happened in the article further below, as a result.
Of note, this company could have links/partnerships with the “Chinese Communist Military”, according to Asia times, Bangkok Post, and Mr. Spencer Fernando:
How can Canadians trust China and the scientific quality of its vaccine, after having experienced defective PPE? And why would their country deal with China and not with another company, perhaps older (scientifically more experienced) or perhaps located in a more trustworthy country?
Mind you, Bambi has nothing against this particular company. She is just questioning the logic behind this choice?
Did Canada consider other options? On which criteria did it base its decision?
Does Canada care about Canadians’ opinions or feelings? Many may also be questioning all this.
Who knows? Perhaps many Canadians will instantly trust this vaccine (perhaps in order not to be called “racists” like Mr. Bryan Adams). Perhaps this vaccine will hopefully work? Perhaps China will finally behave?
Perhaps all this… but Bambi, as a deer with a memory and an intuition, will be reluctant to trust, both China and… the judgment of Mr. Trudeau et al. since the beginning of the pandemic.
Didn’t Mr. Trudeau say in 2013 the following: “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime“?
Let’s conclude this post with some older humour… It is sometimes better to smile to what we find absurd in life.
Cartoon from 2019 by Mr. Yannick Lemay, Journal de Québec
Lebanon has known several days with just 5 new cases of covid-19 (0 cases in many of its regions). However, as described in earlier posts, these numbers have increased to 13 and even 36 per day due to lack of discipline of some citizens.
Too bad. Good luck! One must say that what is MUCH more worrisome than the coronavirus is this country’s economic tragedy. The pandemic is the icing on the cake.
Indeed, in addition to hearing stories of food prices literally spiking (e.g., bags of rice over 6.5 times more expensive), Bambi chatted with a friend who broke her heart with the following story: Her spouse went to shop for the groceries. He witnessed a sad incident where a man stole a woman’s grocery bags, after tricking her into thinking that they made a mistake by taking each others’ bags. To use the word of her friend, “such a sad incident would have never occurred had the man not been desperate to feed his family. Who can blame him for that?” (mind you, the incident happened in a typical, middle-class, Beirut neighbourhood). Citizens have been brought to their knees, so to speak… How sad. How unfair.
To conclude this post with her friends’ own description: “our confinement in Lebanon actually began on October 17, 2019” (the day the revolt started following a massive financial crisis). Since then, people cannot have access to their savings, many lost their jobs, and schools stopped for a long period. When people manage to get money out of banks, it is still a small amount per week and the Lebanese “Lira” lost much of its value, lately reaching 4,500 to the US dollar.
Although Bambi is usually an optimistic deer in life, she has trouble seeing the rainbow of hope for Lebanon, not the one related to the pandemic. She can see the latter more easily. It is the one related to the metastatic cancer of systemic corruption that is harder to envision. Of course, Lebanon will re-invent itself and rise again in the end, as always throughout history. However, getting rid of corruption is the true battle here.
Luckily, despite the misery and even if people may perhaps not be able to have access to their savings, they still have their sense of humour. Indeed, below the France 24 news documentary, you can see a picture with a joke that has recently circulated on Whats’App. Thanks Joëlle for sharing it :).
This picture shows two men who died and went to heaven. An angel welcomed them, saying: “Welcome to heaven. Here, we have no work, no money, no schools, no hospitals, no state, each individual does what he/she wants“. One of the newcomers said: “Holy cow (OK, he used the shit word rather :)), we are back to Lebanon“.
Don’t journalists have anything more important to do
than this?
Or are they somehow diverting our attention from the main issue, cleverly raised by Mr. Lilley yesterday and that should matter more here:
Why isn’t Canada joining the USA, Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, the European Union, the African Union, and even countries like Kenya, Uganda, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria in condemning China?
To come back to Mr. Adam’s “racism”, are people in
Taiwan racists too ??
Anyhow, Bambi as a deer who loves eating meat (minus
bats) is more disturbed by Canada’s silence, about China’s attitude at the
beginning of the pandemic, than by Mr. Bryan Adams’ words.
China may have not been responsible for the beginning of
the tragedy (it could have started anywhere else).
However, sadly yet perhaps not surprisingly, China had
a dictatorship’s reflex in dealing with the tragedy when it started and for
that, it should be held accountable.
As a reminder, China’s initial response was to hide the truth (not just deny it, as this would have been a typical first reaction, especially when frozen by fear). Specifically, the Chinese government oppressed healthcare providers and citizens talking about the coronavirus, kept secret the seriousness of the outbreak, played political shenanigans within the World Health Organization to deceive us all even longer, collected protective medical equipment from all around the world, and then profited from our misery by selling us personal protective equipment, etc. (some of which were even defective).
Anyhow, this story makes Bambi recall “Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy” (or mad cow disease). At that time, people were criticizing British animal husbandry practices and rightly so:
Why wasn’t this criticism racist back then? And why is it now?
To conclude this post on a lighter note, let’s imagine for a second that the virus did not originate from the pangolin and then moved to the bat as an intermediate host. Let’s imagine that it all started in a shawarma (like donair but, of course, tastier ?)!
If people start criticizing Lebanese hygiene in cutting shawarma, will they be racist? Even if they use the full F. word, they won’t be racist. Guess what? The people of Lebanon themselves would be using it too, just like people in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
After a relatively excellent job in its fight against
the coronavirus (with 0 new cases in many regions), Lebanon is now seeing a
surge in its covid-19 cases, with 36 new cases on Sunday (13 on Saturday, and
12 on Friday).
As a result, Lebanon has extended its curfew, from 7
PM to 5 AM. It is even, considering a full lockdown again, which could last
from 48 to even 72 hours, according to the Health Minister:
Journalists from the MTV Channel tried to get information
from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The latter declined to offer any
explanation, stating that its repatriating mission ends when the doors of the airplane
close. The journalists then turned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The
latter sent them to the Ministry of Health.
From what Bambi understood from the documentary above
(Arabic content), the first two steps of the repatriating mission were conducted
in a rigorous manner by the Ministry of Health, as reported in earlier posts.
However, it seems that some Lebanese expats who have been quarantined in hotels in Beirut until their test results, forgot about the strict instructions of the Ministry of Health. As soon as they returned their regions/villages, they engaged in social activities. One expat from Nigeria received friends over (a Lebanese tradition to welcome newcomers). Others literally left their places. Some even attended social events, including Iftar dinners with loved ones, after a day of fast (Ramadan month is still on).
After investigations by the health authorities, it
turned out that the person who received his friends over infected them all with
the coronavirus. One of those infected guests happens to be a soldier who works
in the military tribunal. Well, he then had an Iftar with 12 of his colleagues.
They are now all infected.
Why can’t some citizens be covidwise? Is using one’s brain too much to ask for, even if we are happy to be back home or even if we are celebrating a holy month? Don’t we have a collective duty in a pandemic, toward our fellow citizens? The latter have been sacrificing, by putting their lives and economy on hold, for over three months. They deserve some respect and consideration.
