Originally Posted by
carpathian
I just finished working my first season in the booming mining industry here in BC. I have had the opportunity to travel all over the province and beyond, make good money, learn new skills and make new friends. At most jobs you are spending days and weeks out in remote camps working and living with random co-workers. I have enjoyed talking with people who have different backgrounds then myself. Though most of the time, my co-workers are locals of America and Canada, I have had the opportunity to talk politics with people from far off lands.
Back in August and September I was working with a young Mexican fellow named Eric. He was born in Mexico and moved to Northern BC as a young boy while his family kept strong ties back home. He is a second-generation minerals prospector and we were working on the remote and rugged west coast of Haida Gwaii looking for evidence of gold and copper.
As we clambered through the dense jungle foliage one afternoon I asked about the political scene in Mexico. We don’t really hear about our third neighbor here in North America other then stories about illegal aliens or how to pay off the Federales or the Banditos if you are a traveling gringo.
I asked what it is like in the media and the way people talk about the president and politics in general. He bluntly said that you can’t really say anything that undermines federal policy or you will “…disappear. You don’t criticize the president publicly because that is not tolerated.†I asked if that has to do with the flood of immigrants in the U.S., as that seems obvious. He said, “They are never going to completely shut down illegal Mexicans crossing the border because they work at a lot of jobs that Americans won’t do.†I had to ask if it was that “or the fact that they are illegal and that is the only job they can get?†Even the lowest paying illegal work in the states will pay more then the average legal job down south, if there is any jobs in the first place.
On my next job a few weeks later, I met my work partner at a motel diner in Houston, BC. So here I am having breakfast with this young, bookish looking geophysicist and an older man named Thomas, who had a thick Eastern European accent. I recognized the same sound in my father-in-law’s accent and guessed correctly that this guy was from Yugoslavia. He was about to hit the road to head home and I was his replacement. After a few minutes of chitchat, Thomas was somehow telling us this story about a confrontation he had had with a Vietnam draft-dodger.
Apparently the dodger had said something about “getting out of Vietnam ASAP†and Thomas told us how he told the guy that he “should be ashamed of himself for being cowardly and ignorant.†The geo and I kind of looked at each other and I piped in about how I had dodged the imaginary U.S. draft of May 2004. But I quickly explained that I had come to understand the threat of Communism and more recently the threat of Islamofacism.
Then, as if on cue, he goes into this story about how back in the 80’s he was visiting an old friend in Moscow who happened to be a fairly high ranking military officer in the army of the USSR. Sometime during dinner with the officer and his large family, Thomas asked a question about the politics in the USSR. The officer’s face darkened and he silenced the room with a brief, icy stare and a turn away to other conversation.
“Whoa!†he thought.
Later, after dinner, the officer took the friend aside and scolded him for endangering his life and career and family by asking anything about politics. “I don’t know who at that table would say something to someone and the next day I would be taken away, never to be seen again.â€
Most recently, I was working on a job with a 21-year old guy from East Germany named George, who is working legally in Canada on a tourist visa. As I fueled the chainsaw or sharpened the chains cutting teeth, we’d go over world issues. One day I asked if Germans take offense to people comparing Bush to Hitler as if they are some how similar. He said, “You can’t compare Bush to Hitler because Hitler was a great man.†He was quick to follow saying, “ I know he did all the bad things and that is bad but he still had more charisma and moving power over the people because he was a dictator and Bush is just a front man.â€
After I picked my jaw off the ground I asked if “he or his parents miss Communism?â€
“Not at all, socialism is just not working,†he continued, “though, even the system they have now is not really working because there is still strong communist undertones in the memory of the people.â€
I said, “There seems to be a few people around here who don’t know anything about the Holocaust in general so they might be more inclined to believe someone like Ahmadinajad. You know, how the Holocaust never happened because it is part of the Zionist revisionist plot? What do Germans think about a president of a country saying something like that?â€
“Well, that is our history and we know that it happened†George said. I then asked about “the apparent mass influx of Muslim immigrants coming to Europe and not integrating while at the same time making more demands for ‘cultural respect’ and eventual Sharia law?†George then asked me if I had heard about the Van Gogh murder or the theatrical play that was censored by sensitive multiculturalists. “That will be the end of free speech,†he lamented.
Then he asked if I had read Orwell’s “1984â€? I laughed because I knew where he was going with it. “That is what it is like in a Communist/Fascist state. Islamofacism draws the same passion from its followers no matter how disastrous the results.â€
I kept chain sawing through another tank of gas. Later I asked about “how difficult it was to start a business in Germany?â€
“Very difficult,†he said, “you need $30-50,000 of backup money and there are tons of government loops to jump through.†I told him about how I had come to Canada and started a small video production company with a $16,000 grant from the Canadian government. The program is used to keep people off of welfare and to diversify the economy.
“Wow, that is opposite of Germany! I need to move here.â€
“You should,†I said and drop started my chainsaw and went back to work, feeling like a redneck.
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