It appears Lloyd Axworthy touched a nerve.
The former foreign affairs minister, who currently serves as president of the University of Winnipeg, has touched off a cyber-tidal wave with his sharp-tongued rebuke of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a Free Press column published last week.
Axworthy's missive, distributed widely on the Internet, has become a touchstone for citizens on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border who are frustrated with a wide range of U.S. policies.
A well-established critic of the Bush administration, Axworthy normally uses the restrained language of diplomacy he learned while serving as Canada's foreign minister. In contrast,
the letter to Rice has been dubbed by some blog fans as a professional wrestling-style "smackdown."Since it first appeared in the Free Press on March 3, the article has been posted on a number of Internet sites which specialize in politics, such as truthout.org, one of the more popular political online news and current affairs sites. It was also posted on dailykos.com, a blog site. One of those involved in the rambling debate posted Axworthy's contact information at the University of Winnipeg.
As a result, Axworthy said he is receiving more than 100 e-mail messages a day, and fielding inquiries from media around the continent for interviews. Paid sub only; hopefully Will Pitt at TruthOut will carry this full article too (HINT, WILL!)
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ailto:dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
Heh! Way to go, Lloyd!
Some of the responses to Lloyd's smackdown of Rice and bush:
"I wanted to thank you for the blunt and eloquent open letter that you sent to Condi Rice. I am a U.S. citizen, but I feel that your letter does a much better job of expressing my feelings toward the Bush administration than have many elected Democrats, let alone other government officials. I am sure that you will be receiving plenty of criticism from Bush supporters, so I am writing this in order that you do not think your views are entirely without support on this side of the border."
"The people who need to see this powerful letter (and other statements like it) are those Americans capable of thinking for themselves who have been hypnotized by the right's grand pageant of the last 10-15 years. The right has slid through the easier sell part of their agenda. Now the going gets tougher as their positions become less and less clearly populist. They need to be skewered with the truth of what they have done and what they represent."
"Awesome way to cut right to the heart of so many of the most egregious wrongs of this administration! Too bad Condi will probably never read the letter, and we know for certain her boss (or is that husband?) won't either."
"Any day now Donald Rumsfeld will declare that Canada has weapons of mass destruction and members of the Canadian Parliament have ties to al-Qaida."
"I think I'm in love with Mr. Axworthy. Wow. I hope this is reprinted in U.S. papers."
And The Original Smackdown:http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/030405C.shtml
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