{"id":390,"date":"2019-09-28T00:52:13","date_gmt":"2019-09-28T03:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/?p=390"},"modified":"2019-09-28T11:32:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T14:32:19","slug":"climate-strike-so-many-contradictions-for-a-single-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/2019\/09\/28\/climate-strike-so-many-contradictions-for-a-single-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Strike: So many contradictions for a single day!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday, on September 27, 2019, an impressive number\nof Canadian youth (and older folks) walked for the climate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many were of course likely happy to skip school. They\nwere paradoxically encouraged by their school boards\/teachers to do so (usually\nwe do not strike in conformity but rather in opposition!). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others may have been genuine carers for the environment,\nsimply keen to show their care. Bravo to them in that case, perhaps even more\nso to those who took the initiative to clean the mess after the walk (like some\ndid in Montreal).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet other folks walked to score political points, to signal\ntheir virtue, and to perhaps gain a few more votes (in French, we can say, they\naspire to be or appear to be *VERTueux*\/*VERTueuses*). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who knows? Maybe others walked without knowing precisely\nwhy they did so. Perhaps they did not want others to take a guess neither. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last but not the least, other walkers almost received a\ndozen eggs on their heads (oups not a vegan projectile; how daring). Aye for\nthis gesture! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That egg incident in Montreal reminded Bambi of a trip\nshe made to Beirut in 2000. On that same trip, she visited Lebanon, Syria, and\nFrance. In each country, a historic event happened: In Lebanon, Israel withdrew\nits army after 20 years of occupation. Wow. In Syria, Assad the father (BIG\ndictator who has occupied Lebanon as well) died. Yes, even dictators die too. In\nFrance, their national soccer team (\u201cLes Bleus\u201d) won the European Championship.\nBambi still recalls how she has naively (OK stupidly) cheered by standing up and\napplauding to a German goal (the opponents of the French, her favourite team in\nthe world). All this happened at a pub of a small village filled with excited\nsoccer fans. Wrong team or wrong country ?.\nAye for Bambi who managed to return safely to Canada! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyhow, to come back to the eggs that Mr. Trudeau almost received on his head yesterday in Montreal, well, Bambi saw a sort of an avalanche of eggs from balconies meant to fall on the heads of Hizbollah militia parading in their tanks in a Beirut neighborhood after the historic withdrawal of Israel mentioned above. The irony of the contradiction then was that people seemed to be thrilled yet they did not appreciate seeing Lebanon being oriented too much toward Iran. Plus, they would have preferred to see this group return their weapons like all the other groups who participated in the ugliest civil war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, as our Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau represents all the contradictions we have been observing in our country lately, not just during an electoral campaign. In Bambi\u2019s mind, he also represents a lack of efficient leadership for all sorts of reasons beyond this post (although somehow related too).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the apparent contradictions that has attracted Bambi\u2019s attention the most were four other interesting events:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Mr. Legault, Prime Minister of Qu\u00e9bec published an open letter to the youth of Qu\u00e9bec reaching out to them on this important day (when they were going to be on the streets). A smart gesture by a pragmatic man who seems to behave like a leader of a real country would:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.journaldequebec.com\/2019\/09\/27\/lettre-a-la-jeunesse-quebecoise<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. An article informed us of Prince Harry\u2019s eco-anxiety: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/prince-harry-eco-anxiety-leaves-me-struggling-to-get-out-of-bed<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bambi will not comment!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Mayor Val\u00e9rie Plante, who has been saying that Montreal is an unceded indigenous territory, even a Mohawk one (considered a controversial sentence in December 2017), came up with a platitude that goes like follow: As adults *we do not inherit* earth from our ancestors but we rather *borrow it* from our children. Doesn\u2019t the later contradicts the former? In other terms, our ancestors\/elders do not matter any more now? Only kids and babies\u2026 oh no, babies YAK to them when we are going toward a mass extinction! Many young women have been deciding not have children anymore. A large number came together to sign a document and put pressure on politicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Last but not least, perhaps the most ironic (disturbing) message Bambi heard today whilst working in her office was the chanting of young kids outside: \u201cStop the violence, stop the hatred\u2026 keep the oil in the ground\u2026 no pipeline on stolen land\u2026<\/em>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Violence and hatred. Did Bambi hear\nwell? Is this a song by strikers in the Middle East or in Congo? Oups, no. It\nis in Sackville, NB, Canada, one of the most peaceful places on the face of\nearth! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are we teaching (brainwashing?) our young kids? Plus, what is meant by stolen land? What about first nations folks who work or aspire to work in the oil industry anywhere in Canada? Don\u2019t they deserve to have their voices heard too? And wouldn\u2019t their opinion be perhaps different from the spirit of this chant?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we keep going down this road of radicalism\n(\u201c\u00e0 la Greta\u201d with her apocalyptic message at the UN), we could\/would risk one\nday silencing dissident voices; just like the Hizbollah can at times do to folks\nfrom its own community who do not believe in its methods of fighting potential occupations\nor wars with Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To conclude this post, what really\nand seriously worries Bambi is to see the beautiful, noble, and necessary\necologism being hijacked by radicalism (a bit like how Islamism hijacks Islam).\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Montreal, Greta T. talked again about\nthe need to listen \u201cto the scientists. Which ones? Bambi wondered to herself?\nOnly those who would say: Transfer those funds, keep that oil in the ground, trash\n\u201ceconomic growth\u201d, limit people\u2019s freedoms, add taxes\u2026 because the end is near?\nWhat if their scientific studies and predictive models do not yield similar\nresults? Or what if they keep in mind the bigger picture of the climate in\nconnection to the economy and\u2026 reason? What if they stand up to tell Greta and\nher movement that this does not seem to make sense anymore? Would Greta tell\nthem at the next UN meeting: \u201cHow dare you too?\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, one more question: Why doesn\u2019t\nGreta ask us to listen to engineers too? After all, it is them who will be innovating\nsolutions in order to transition to other forms of energies one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the pace things are evolving in\nour world, it will surely take many years to de-radicalize our young people\u2019s brains,\nunless people will start opening their eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As one of the smartest men Bambi\nknows said once: If we keep moving in this direction, it is Alberta who would\nrisk leaving our beautiful Canada… before Qu\u00e9bec. The latter, despite its impressive\nelectrical power and potential for more of it, as Mr. Legault pointed out to in\nhis letter to the youth. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, on September 27, 2019, an impressive number of Canadian youth (and older folks) walked for the climate. Many were of course likely happy to skip school. They were paradoxically encouraged by their school boards\/teachers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":403,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390\/revisions\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bambisafkar.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}