The apologist for fascism and apartheid who disgraced the CBC’s “Canada Reads” program a couple of days ago is sticking to her guns.
…[S]he has no regrets about calling [Carmen] Aguirre - who now lives in Vancouver - a terrorist, and pointed to the sympathies Aguirre expresses for controversial groups and to the transportation from Bolivia to Chile of “goods” left unnamed in the book.
“Let her tell us that it was just pound cake or bottles of tequila,” she said, “and then I will happily apologize publicly and say ‘you love the terrorists, but you’re not yourself a terrorist.’”
Goldwater says she stands by her assertion that Aguirre should not have been let into Canada. “Once a terrorist, always a terrorist, that’s for sure,” she added: “We have to be careful who we let into this country; we really do. It’s not funny any more.”
No doubt she would include elderly members of the French Resistance. In fact, given her politics, I’m sure she would.
She herself is married to a person described as a “refugee from El Salvador,” one Leonel Zelaya-Perez. Back in those days, there really were only two sides in that country: those who fought the tyranny of the government, the coffee-growing “50 families” and the paramilitary death squads—and those who didn’t.
Given her open support of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, I think we can surmise which side hubby was on. Perhaps she comes by her support of Latin American fascism honestly.
The CBC’s part in all this is shameful. Radio-Canada had already given her a program of her own, which admittedly doesn’t showcase her repulsive politics. But Jian Ghomeshi was Tweeting defensively yesterday, claiming that CBC lawyers had found nothing defamatory in her remarks. Apparently calling someone a “bloody terrorist” on national television is not actionable—or so he claims.
I spoke to a lawyer well-versed in the intricacies of defamation law earlier this morning. Not only did he dismiss Ghomeshi’s comments as nonsense—Goldwater was, after all, making a claim of fact, not merely offering an opinion—but he wondered aloud how a practising lawyer, an officer of the court, can get away with obvious defamation without being brought to heel by her law society.
We may hear more about this. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I’ll be giving “Canada Reads” a wide berth. It’s been poisoned beyond repair by a broadcaster seemingly bound and determined to further vulgarize and SUNify its once-civil programming.
