[Gunnair]

Quote:

In a televised town hall-style infomercial, paid for by the Liberal party and aired on Sunday, Michael Ignatieff assures us that he is not “a standard-issue academic.” In sharp contrast to that tedious breed, he portrays himself as an interesting man who has led an interesting life. He’s been “out where it’s mucky and dirty and violent and scary,” dodging bullets as a war correspondent.

In 1993 he related one of his tales of derring-do in the introduction to his book Blood and Belonging. The setting is the war-torn Balkans, in the conflict zone between Serbian and Croatian territory. Our intrepid correspondent describes what happens when he and his film crew try to cross a UN checkpoint into Serb-held territory. Two Canadian infantrymen, whom Ignatieff dismissively refers to as “anxious adolescents,” man the checkpoint.

The Canadians wave Ignatieff’s party through, but their van is immediately surrounded by 15 Serbian paramilitaries, drunk from a wedding in a neighbouring village. They accuse the crew of being Croatian spies. The drunkest one (“with dead eyes and glassy, sweat-beaded skin”) seizes the van’s steering wheel and starts to drive off.

One of the Canadian soldiers, “breathing heavily,” attempts to stop him. “We’ll do this my way,” he says, pulling and cajoling the drunken Serb out of the driver’s seat. But the Canadian soldier is in turn pushed aside by a young Serb in combat gear, who seizes control of the van, arrests Ignatieff and his crew and takes them to a Serbian police station. There they wait anxiously, until an order for their release arrives, apparently from “a local Serb warlord.”

The anecdote captures Ignatieff’s thesis in Blood and Belonging, a thesis he summarizes as follows: “The key narrative of the new world order is the disintegration of nation-states into ethnic civil war; the key architects of that order are warlords; and the key language for our age is ethnic nationalism.” International agencies such as the United Nations are powerless to intervene and Ignatieff is contemptuous of their attempts to do so.

Eighteen years later, Ignatieff told the story again during his infomercial, but this time, with significant alterations. In the updated version, the Canadian soldier is transformed from “anxious adolescent” into a confident, Rambo-type figure. His words are nearly the same: “We’re going to do this my way.” But this time, no longer “breathing heavily,” he clicks off his assault rifle’s safety in a masterful gesture and prevails over the drunken Serbs, rescuing Ignatieff and his crew.

In the new version there is no arrest by a young Serb in combat gear. No detention in a Serbian police station. No release ordered by a mysterious local warlord.

Ignatieff also reverses his position about the efficacy of peacekeeping, citing the Canadian soldier (from Moncton, NB) who possibly saved his life as his “example of how Canada ought to be in the world.” He continues: “We ought to be out there on the front lines making sure people don’t kill each other. It’s a good thing for Canada to do. We’re respected, we’re trusted and we’re darned good soldiers.”

Ignatieff is of course welcome to jettison the thesis he put forward in a book he wrote almost 20 years ago. People are entitled to change their minds. But it would be naive to think that his reversal is not driven to some extent by political expediency. The book’s proposition that nation-states will inevitably devolve into feuding ethnic communities implied a troubled future for the Canadian federation. And no aspiring prime minister can be seen to have slighted the Canadian Forces. Indeed, it’s de rigueur to heap praise on them, as Ignatieff now does, turning the story of an anxious Canadian soldier easily pushed aside into a moment of heroism for the army, with a selfless warrior, weapon in hand, standing up to drunken thugs and saving a helpless journalist.

But it’s one thing to change a political position. It’s a different matter altogether to change the facts of a story for cheap political gain.

While running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. 2008 presidential election, Hillary Clinton was taken to task for inventing a tale about coming under gunfire while visiting Sarajevo airport (opponents of Clinton quickly found archived news footage of the event, showing her casually strolling off the aircraft to be greeted by friendly school children). Ignatieff’s transgression is greater. Clinton’s fib was silly, spontaneous and ultimately inconsequential. Ignatieff’s deceit is contrived, calculated and self-aggrandizing.

I’m not entirely sure what Ignatieff means by “standard-issue academic” (except that it connotes “boring”). But I suspect that such a creature has moral ascendancy over a once-respected scholar who appears to have abandoned the academic standards to which he once presumably subscribed.

National Post

[RUEZ]

Nice.

[ShepherdsDog]

Will the real Michael Ignatieff please step forward.

[Freakinoldguy]

Given the Liberals current free fall in the polls, i'd hazard a guess that most Canadians had already figured out Iggy before tha article even came out.

Maybe next time the Lib's will let their party members acutally pick who they want to be Beloved Leader, rather than going Chairman Mao all over the place.

[raydan]

Michael, Michael, Michael...

[Gunnair]

Dumb.

[Freakinoldguy]

And for your entertainment here's more of Iggy's life story.

Quote:

Why is Count Michael Ignatieff pretending he comes from humble roots?
By Ezra Levant on March 22, 2011 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (47)


My Sun column from today:


The Liberal Party has released new TV ads featuring Michael Ignatieff talking about his family.

It's heartwarming stuff : Ignatieff describes his dad as an immigrant who "came off a boat in 1928 without anything" and worked his way "up the ladder one rung at a time."

"Nothing is ever given to you, everything has to be earned."

Ignatieff told CTV his "family lost everything in the Russian revolution. They started over again in Canada. They came here with nothing."

But according to Ignatieff's own book about his family, The Russian Album, that's just not true. Ignatieff's family weren't regular Russians. They were high-ranking ministers in the government of the czar. They're aristocracy, actually -- Michael Ignatieff himself is a count, a title he will pass on to his son,Theo, and so on.

The Ignatieffs were powerful players in the czar's dictatorship. When the Russian revolution succeeded, the Ignatieffs fled the country.

But like so many, they were able to squirrel away money. The Ignatieffs fled to London in 1919, where they had
£
25,000 waiting for them in a bank. That's worth more than $2 million in today's currency. The Ignatieffs lived there for nine years before moving to Canada in 1928.

Why is Ignatieff trying to revise his family's history to make them sound like poor working class shlubs?Why did he say his dad came herewith nothing -- when in fact his family were the equivalent of multi-millionaires?

Ignatieff is desperate to come across as a regular Joe. But did he really think no one would notice the contradiction between the new airbrushed story, and the one he described in his family autobiography?

Last year Ignatieff went further, telling reporters "you're looking at a guy whose dad was a political refugee."

A refugee? Really?

Earlier this year, the brother-in-law of the deposed Tunisian dictator applied for refugee status here in Canada -- and was laughed out of town.

Technically, perhaps, he is a refugee -- he'd face persecution back in Tunisia. But to call an aristocratic dictator a "refugee" is to stretch the definition of the term.

Same thing for Ignatieff 's family. Ignatieff's great-grandfather, Nicholas, was personally responsible for some of the most brutal laws inflicted by the Russian czars.

He drafted Russia's May Laws one history book described as "forbidding Jews to move into the countryside, to acquire land, or to open their shops on Sundays."

"When the Jewish leaders asked why they were not entitled to the same protection by the police as other Russian subjects, Ignatieff replied they were not like other Russian subjects ... Jewish shops were smashed and burned ... Delegations of Jewish leaders came to see Ignatieff at the Ministry of the Interior. They told him they were in bondage as under Pharaoh. 'So when is your Exodus, and where is your Moses,' he is supposed to have said in reply."

That history book was written by Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff is not responsible for the anti-Semitism of his greatgrandfather or the tyranny of czars. He's his own man.

It's just strange he would throwhis family's history down the memory hole to win a few votes. And it's stranger still that, having chosen to use his family as a campaign theme, he is surprised and outraged his opponents would correct the record.

http://ezralevant.com/2011/03/why-is-co ... tieff.html

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Makes ya wonder what colour the sky is in Iggy's world.

Even better, Count Igula works on two levels now

[martin14]

For some, depending on what you had back in the old country, 2 million could be considered 'nothing'.


Anyway, I have no idea why politicians always try to paint themselves as the
the "Little Guy", when anyone with a brain knows it's BS.


I want the smartest bastards we can get our hands on in office, who would actually take time out from their working life to do their bit for Queen and Country.

Instead, we get a pack of fucking liars, jackals and thieves, who
whore their way to power any way they can get it.

So Iggy is failed Russian royalty and servant to the Czar,
Jack has politics in the family for generations,
and Stevie comes from oil.


Not good enough....

[2Cdo]

He was probably thinking nobody had ever read his books thus he would never be outed as a lying poser.

[BartSimpson]

Freakinoldguy wrote:

Quote:

Same thing for Ignatieff 's family. Ignatieff's great-grandfather, Nicholas, was personally responsible for some of the most brutal laws inflicted by the Russian czars.

He drafted Russia's May Laws one history book described as "forbidding Jews to move into the countryside, to acquire land, or to open their shops on Sundays."

"When the Jewish leaders asked why they were not entitled to the same protection by the police as other Russian subjects, Ignatieff replied they were not like other Russian subjects ... Jewish shops were smashed and burned ... Delegations of Jewish leaders came to see Ignatieff at the Ministry of the Interior. They told him they were in bondage as under Pharaoh. 'So when is your Exodus, and where is your Moses,' he is supposed to have said in reply."

Quite bluntly, this has nothing to do with Iggy. Blaming Iggy for the behavior of his grandfather who was not immoral in his time is simply character assassination.

None of us would care to have the words of our grandparents and great-grandparents held against us.

I utterly oppose the politics that Iggy represents but I'll also stand to and say that this kind of attack is foul and an utter affront to fairness.

Edit: I'll also add that changing the colour of the retelling of his tale would have more to do with his changing perceptions as a maturing man than any errancy of fact.

There's people who I once thought were a-holes who I now recognize were trying to do the right thing once upon a time. It doesn't make me a liar to see the past through a different lens.

[Freakinoldguy]

BartSimpson wrote:

Freakinoldguy wrote:

Quote:

Same thing for Ignatieff 's family. Ignatieff's great-grandfather, Nicholas, was personally responsible for some of the most brutal laws inflicted by the Russian czars.

He drafted Russia's May Laws one history book described as "forbidding Jews to move into the countryside, to acquire land, or to open their shops on Sundays."

"When the Jewish leaders asked why they were not entitled to the same protection by the police as other Russian subjects, Ignatieff replied they were not like other Russian subjects ... Jewish shops were smashed and burned ... Delegations of Jewish leaders came to see Ignatieff at the Ministry of the Interior. They told him they were in bondage as under Pharaoh. 'So when is your Exodus, and where is your Moses,' he is supposed to have said in reply."

Quite bluntly, this has nothing to do with Iggy. Blaming Iggy for the behavior of his grandfather who was not immoral in his time is simply character assassination.

None of us would care to have the words of our grandparents and great-grandparents held against us.

I utterly oppose the politics that Iggy represents but I'll also stand to and say that this kind of attack is foul and an utter affront to fairness.

Edit: I'll also add that changing the colour of the retelling of his tale would have more to do with his changing perceptions as a maturing man than any errancy of fact.

There's people who I once thought were a-holes who I now recognize were trying to do the right thing once upon a time. It doesn't make me a liar to see the past through a different lens.

The point being made was Iggy trying to pass himself off as just another poor immigrant, when the reality was something totally different. It had nothing to do with Iggy's grandad except to make the point that he wasn't just another run of the mill Ukranian or Russian peasant who came over here for a better life.

But since you seem bent on claiming the moral highground by labeling me a character assassin for posting this article, you may want to revist you stand on Obama's birth place and every post you've ever made about Islam.

[Curtman]

ShepherdsDog wrote:

Will the real Michael Ignatieff please step forward.

The real Michael Ignatieff is in Winnipeg tonight. No registration required. He wont even kick you out if you have a picture with Harper on your Facebook.

[commanderkai]

Curtman wrote:

The real Michael Ignatieff is in Winnipeg tonight. No registration required. He wont even kick you out if you have a picture with Harper on your Facebook.

Is that the 1993 version? The 2011 version? Something in between?

[Curtman]

His father was an immigrant, like mine and many, many other Canadians.

Here's what The Government of Harper has to say about him:

Forging Our Legacy: Canadian Citizenship and Immigration, 1900–1977: The Return of Peace

Quote:

George Ignatieff: Peacemonger

George Ignatieff (1913–1989), one of Canada’s most celebrated diplomats and a man devoted to the cause of peace, was among the comparatively small number of Russian newcomers who landed on Canadian shores in the 1920s.

Ignatieff, whose father was a famous Russian aristocrat, was born in St. Petersburg on 16 December 1913. Within a few brief years, the Russian Revolution and civil war had put an end to his sheltered childhood and the wealth and privileges enjoyed by his family. His public–spirited and highly respected father, once an education minister under the Czar, was arrested and jailed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks, but then was miraculously released in time for the family to escape to England.

In England, the neophyte émigrés operated a dairy farm. Young George attended St. Paul’s, a boarding school, until the sale of the farm forced the family to move once again. While his father tried to raise funds in Europe for Russian refugees, Mrs. Ignatieff set out in 1928 with George and his brother, Leonid, for Canada, where two other brothers of George’s, Nick and Jim, had already settled.

Although there was barely enough money for basic necessities, George’s resourceful mother managed to squeeze enough out of the household budget to send her young son to Montreal’s exclusive Lower Canada College. The stock market crash of 1929, however, put an abrupt end to George’s private–school education. With the advent of the Great Depression, Ignatieff and the rest of his family united under one roof in Thornhill on the northern outskirts of Toronto.

After graduating from Toronto’s Jarvis Collegiate Institute, George Ignatieff enrolled at the University of Toronto as a student of political economy. This turned out to be a particularly fortunate move because at the university he was exposed to the innovative ideas and influence of Donald Creighton and Harold Innis, then the rising stars of Canadian political and economic history. From these two inspiring teachers Ignatieff gained, in his words, “an insight into both the unity and the diversity of the country, the need to balance its cohesive forces against its economic regionalism and the cultural duality of the founding races.”

Graduation from the University of Toronto was followed by a stint at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. George Ignatieff’s time at Oxford coincided with the Spanish Civil War and the growing militarization of the Axis powers. To make sure that he was not misinterpreting what he believed were the portents of another world war, Ignatieff travelled as often as he could in Italy and Germany. Some chilling discoveries awaited him, especially at Nürnberg. There he was appalled by the sight of a sea of storm troopers parading in front of the Führer.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, George Ignatieff enlisted in the British army. He was still in the army when, at the urging of Lester B. Pearson, then serving at the Canadian High Commission in London, he wrote the examination for the position of third secretary in Canada’s foreign service. His top standing in the exam landed him a post in Canada’s Department of External Affairs in 1940.

As a civil servant, George Ignatieff developed an expertise in East–West relations, particularly at the United Nations, where he served as Canadian Ambassador from 1966 to 1969 and as President of the Security Council from 1968 to 1969. He also served as Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1956 to 1958 and as Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from 1963 to 1966. During the 1950s and 1960s Ignatieff participated in highly charged negotiations involving most of the world’s hot spots—the Middle East, Suez, Korea, Czechoslovakia, Cyprus—and discussed disarmament with anybody who would listen to him.

After retiring from the Department of External Affairs, George Ignatieff served as Provost of Trinity College, University of Toronto, from 1972 to 1979 and as Chancellor of that university from 1980 to 1986. In addition to his work in higher education, he continued to champion the cause of disarmament, speaking frequently and eloquently on the subject.