News Flash: Saudis using Canadian-built combat vehicles for combat purposes!

Well isn't that just a shocker!

What did the dweebs in Ottawa think the Saudi's were going to do with those combat vehicles?

Give the Indonesian guest-workers rides to the beach?

Ferry the at-risk Riyadh fairies home from the gay bars after a night on the town?

What, they've been reading this blog or something?

How retarded are these people?

Of course combat vehicles get used for combat!

Two years too late, Canada's mainstream media are waking up to the fact that Canada sold thousands of combat vehicles to one of the most enthusiastic human-rights violators on the planet?


JournalismIS... what?

They've got POTUS, we've got POTHEAD

That's short for Pierre's Offspring The Hottie Elected As Dictator, in case you're wondering.

So how's POTHEAD doing these first few months?

Too soon to tell in my books. I certainly liked that "hey, let's make a guy with a turban Minister of Defence" gambit, but that could have been a deke for all I know. Maybe the turban guy is gonna make the Harper crew sorry they didn't shove him in there back when Mackay was fucking up the file.

Time will tell...

Speaking of which, it seems that the "biggest win in Canadian export history" is coming back to bite the new government. That was the sale of 5,000 armored cars out of General Dynamics London Ontario plant which was announced two years ago. At the time, the mainstream media were up and down about this. The business pages were clapping so hard their hands fell off. Among the editorializers you saw even in those early days some concerns about the appalling human rights record of Saudi Arabia.

Well, now that POTHEAD is parked in the big chair, there's a clamour rising that he should cancel the deal. This is already way louder than any calls that arose two years ago not to do the deal in the first place.

POTHEAD needs to take a deep breath and ignore those braying imbeciles. The think tank here at Falling Downs spelled it out way back when the deal was first announced.

Those 5,000 armored cars are no threat to human rights in Saudi Arabia. In fact, they are a giant step forward. Those armored vehicles will be used to transport the Bangladeshi guest workers to the beach or to the border, wherever they wish to go. Not to mention giving the regulars in Riyadh's underground gay scene a safe ride home at the end of the evening...

So stand tall, POTHEAD; don't let those media hucksters talk you into cancelling this deal.

After all, 3,000 Canadian jobs depend on it.

There's nothing funny about human rights

Well, maybe... maybe not! I suppose it depends which humans' rights we're talking about.

Bangladeshi guest workers in Saudi Arabia?  And the fact that our BFFs in Riyadh spent billions on a fleet of Canadian-made armoured taxis to chauffeur them around... well, I thought it was funny at the time.

Especially funny that this armoured car deal was allowed to pass virtually without comment at the time.

What's not so funny is that it takes an election a year and a half later for the public to notice.

Saudi cleric gets three months in jail for rape and murder of five year old daughter

Because apparently that's how they roll in The Kingdom.

One can scarcely imagine the outrage from our media and our punditocracy were this story from Iran or Syria. But because it comes from our best friends in the Arab world, response has ranged from none to muted.

Had this happened in Syria or Iran it would be featured for days on end on CNN and FOX. It would be cited as evidence of the barbarism of "those" people. The White House would release a statement condemning the state that permitted such a travesty of justice.

But it happened in Saudi Arabia. We need their oil. We need them to buy the products of our military industrial complex.

So we'll pretend we didn't see this story...

Business as usual.