Here's another idiot that evidently believes in the tooth fairy and an end to war:
OTTAWA -- A B.C. feminist told a cheering
audience here that the United States
government is more threatening to the world
than international terrorism.
Sunera Thobani received several standing
ovations from about 500 delegates attending
the Women's Resistance Conference on
Monday.
Her comments caused a political uproar, with
opposition MPs condemning Secretary of State
Hedy Fry for sitting silently as Thobani spoke.
MPs called on the government to fire Fry,
charging that she should have immediately
condemned Thobani's statements.
"Today in the world the United States is the
most dangerous and the most powerful global
force unleashing horrific levels of violence,"
said Thobani, a women's studies professor at
the University of British Columbia and former
head of the National Action Committee on the
Status of Women.
"From Chile to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Iraq,
the path of U.S. foreign policy is soaked in
blood."
Thobani said she empathizes with the human
suffering following the Sept. 11 terror attacks in
New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania that
left more than 6,000 people dead or missing.
"But do we feel any pain for the victims of U.S.
aggression?"
In an interview with The Vancouver Sun
Monday night, Thobani said her comments were
directed at George Bush, not the American
people.
"I made a 40-minute speech. I provided a
contest for those comments. I was basically
advocating an end to war," she said.
"If America wants to lead this war, then I'm
against American foreign policy."
In her speech, Thobani also ridiculed any suggestion that the U.S. would be
advancing women's rights by ousting Afghanistan's Taliban regime, which has
forbidden women from working, attending school, or showing their faces in
public.
"It's really interesting to hear this talk about saving Afghani women," she said.
"Those of us who have been colonized know what this saving means."
The Tanzanian-born Thobani became the first non-white president of the NAC
in 1993, a position she held until 1996.
As the outspoken leader of the NAC, Thobani created much controversy when
she said in 1995 that only white, middle-class women had benefited from the
feminist movement.
Monday she said women will never be emancipated until the U.S. and the West
stop dominating the world.
"The West for 500 years has believed that it could slaughter people into
submission and it has not been able to do so. And it will not be able to so this
time, either."
After Thobani's speech, opposition MPs said Fry, the Chretien government's
secretary of state for multiculturalism and the status of women, who also
delivered a speech at the conference and was on the podium while Thobani
spoke, should have sent an immediate message that the speech went too far.
"She should apologize to Canadians and our American cousins for not
condemning these comments and walking out on this insulting and
inflammatory speech," said Chuck Strahl, deputy leader of the
Tory-Democratic Representative coalition.
New Democratic Party leader Alexa McDonough, whose party was once a close
ally of NAC's, said Fry should have offered "an unequivocal rejection of the
kind of cheap sloganeering, of the excessive rhetoric.
"This is a time to be building tolerance, to be building bridges, not to create
greater divisions," McDonough said.
Fry defended freedom of speech within Canada, but said she didn't applaud
and immediately left the event after Thobani spoke.
"I condemn that speech," the Vancouver Centre MP told jeering opposition
MPs.
"I thought the speech that was made by the expert of NAC to be incitement."
Opposition MPs said Fry, who wrongly portrayed Prince George as a haven for
cross-burning racists earlier this year, has made one too many blunders and
must be fired.
"The history of this minister is not a very happy one and I think it is time for a
change," said Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day.
McDonough said Fry doesn't have the credibility to travel across Canada and
speak publicly against intolerance.
poneil@sns.southam.ca
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