HA HA! Harper gang infighting between far-right and far-far-right over honoring Norman Bethune

[JohnyCanuck]

Does Bizarre Bethune brouhaha signal ideological rift within Harper Conservatives?
By David J. Climenhaga

Is the bizarre brouhaha over who stood up for the Chinese national anthem and what its words are evidence of a serious ideological split within Prime Minister Stephen Harper's ruling Conservative Party of Canada?

If you think stuff like that only matters in places like Communist China and North Korea, maybe you should think again!

Apparently public signs of an ideological spat can signal trouble among party cadres, not to mention the apparatchiks who support various party ideological factions, in pretty well any old secretive and authoritarian regime.

That said, it may require the services of a skilled "Kremlinologist" to get to the bottom of the battle within Harper's CPC that began on July 11 when Treasury Board President Tony Clement attended a ceremony in his Ontario riding marking the reopening of a spruced-up museum honouring a Communist saint all but forgotten anywhere but China.

It does seem as if the fight between people associated with ultra-right-wing Calgary West MP Rob Anders and ideological moderates like Clement and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird over tax money spent on the museum may be a sign of deepening fissures within the CPC.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/djclimenhaga/2012/07/does-bizarre-bethune-brouhaha-signal-ideological-rift-within-har

The article above which has some fun with the infighting between the conservatives over this issue also seems to imply that Bethune was really somewhat sloppy as a surgeon (Bethune died in China after contracting septicemia after accidentally cutting himself during surgery), and the Chinese communists made more of his medical contributions to their cause than was warranted, presumably for propaganda purposes. Another take on the same issue by a different author presents another picture altogether re. Bethune's ability as a medical practitioner noting some of his contributions to civilian and battlefield medicine and surgery (in both the Spanish civil war and Sino-Japanese war).

Dumb as dirt: Bethune, Mao, Anders and the new McCarthyism
By Christopher Majka

Last week the Canadian government opened a new $2.5 million visitor's centre at Bethune Memorial House in Gravenhurst, Ontario where physician Dr. Norman Bethune was born. A Parks Canada National Historic Site, it commemorates the life and achievements of this outstanding Canadian surgeon who pioneered techniques in thoracic surgery and provided care to wounded combatants in World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and during the second Sino-Japanese War, where he perished in the course of his service. However, that's not the view of Conservative Member of Parliament for Calgary West, Rob Anders, who criticized the move in print, radio, and television interviews:

"The idea that taxpayer money is being used to glorify somebody who was a propagandist for Mao - there's a lot of taxpayers out there who would say that was an inappropriate use of resources." -- Victoria Times Colonist

snip

Anders correctly criticizes the Chinese communist government for its policies of forced abortions, the persecution of Falun Gong, and the suppression of freedom of speech in Hong Kong, however these have nothing to do with Mao (who was long dead before their implementation), nor Bethune, who died even earlier. This attempt to tar everything connected to Mao Zedong with one brush is revisionist historical nonsense. One wonders, for example, how Anders would regard former American Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger (hardly a communist sympathizer), who actually did lionize Mao Zedong calling him a "philosopher king" and wrote in his book On China that "If China remains united and emerges as a 21st-century superpower," many Chinese may come to regard Mao as they do the early emperor Qin Shihuang, "whose excesses were later acknowledged by some as a necessary evil."

The New McCarthyism

Beyond the sheer absurdity of Anders' claims lie more serious issues. On July 10 hundreds of scientists gathered on Parliament Hill to protest the actions of the Harper Government in what was called the Death of Evidence rally. The hallmark of the protest was the slogan "No Science, No Evidence, No Truth, No Democracy." This slogan and the concept of "Death of Evidence" can equally be applied to a plethora of policies being pursued by the Harper Conservatives, including historical revisionism of the kind represented in this story. To abandon fact, knowledge, reason, logic, science, and other evidence-based methods of decision making is to abandon rationality itself and with it democracy. This is an express train to chaos, absurdity, stupidity, mob rule, and overt manipulation as methods of governance.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/christophermajka/2012/07/dumb-dirt-bethune-mao-anders-and-new-mccarthyism

[riverbendviewgal]

1. I will have to make a point to visit this

memorial...


Bethune deserves the honor.

The next election Harper will be voted out...