Ramping up the hokum at Global Affairs Canada

Never imagined I'd say this, but I miss Bullshittin' Baird.

Those were simpler days, and Big John always wore his heart on his sleeve. When John was "deeply concerned" you always got a sense that, at some level, he probably was.

With the Trudeau crowd, you're pretty sure they're only "deeply concerned" if the object of their concern has passed muster with the usual partisan focus groups.

With the Harper Gang, the hypocrisy was hit and miss.

With the Sunny Daze Gang, the hypocrisy is systemic.

Take a gander at the Global Affairs website. The last three news items are about gender equality in Ethiopia, Canada's leadership in global gender equity, and Canada's leadership role in calling out the horrific human rights situation in Iran.

You know Iran; the only Middle East country outside of Israel where Jews are constitutionally protected, and a country where women have never NOT had the right to drive cars. Ya, that country. We're really upset about their human rights...

Yup, no way we'd ever sell those guys military hardware, because that would just be wrong, and besides, our besties in Likud wouldn't like it. We'll call out human rights in Iran, but we'll spout nonsense non-stop about Israel's right to defend itself while the human rights of Palestinians are trampled underfoot.

And while the KSA is setting liberal hearts a-flutter by allowing some women to drive, we'll not get too bothered about their overall track record on human rights, because, after all, they buy military stuff from US branch plants in Canada that employ Canadian workers.

And how lovely that we're gung-ho for gender equality in Ethiopia and beyond.

By the way, women in Canada are still a good distance away from achieving gender equality, but that's no reason not to champion ideals globally that we've not yet achieved here at home.


How about we address the beam in our own eye before we lecture the rest of the planet about the mote in theirs.

Canada to ship feminist sniper rifles to Ukraine

We know that these are "feminist" sniper rifles because Canada has a feminist foreign policy, as Sunnydaze Trudeau never tires of reminding us.

This deal was allegedly conditional on Ukraine making progress on cleaning up the rampant corruption that permeates their political culture. I guess someone somewhere told somebody at Global Affairs the clean-up is going swimmingly, and that's good enough for us.

Here's a discussion about Ukrainian corruption in Foreign Policy. It's telling that the Americans are reluctant to send advanced military hardware to Ukraine for fear that the thieves and scoundrels of the Verkhovna Rada would sell it on to their supposed arch-enemy, the Russians.

In spite of their misgivings, the Americans did approve the sale of $40 million worth of US made sniper rifles last December. Those wouldn't be feminist sniper rifles though, so we still have the moral high ground.

By my estimation the US and Canadian deals combined represent something in the order of 4000+ sniper rifles, to be used primarily against the Donbass separatists. Even if only half the shipments find their way to the Russian mafia, that's still going to translate into many more dead Ukrainians.

How does arming one side in a civil war further our standing as a champion for human rights everywhere?

Justin Trudeau's "feminist foreign policy" comes down with cramps

Back in the bad old "Big Steve" era, thinking Canadians would cringe when Bullshittin' Baird used to go on about how Canada punches above its weight, blah blah blah.

Now we tweet above our weight instead. Usually, nobody gives a shit, but last week our good pals in the Saudi dictatorship took umbrage.

Poof!

Fifteen thousand Saudi students paying extravagant "foreign student" tuition, gone from our universities.

Canada's biggest industrial export contract in history at risk.

Prospects of further lucrative contracts from the KSA?

Nil.

The response from Canada so far has been to double down on a really dubious idea; that you can cosy up to repressive regimes to take their money, and then turn around and criticize them for being repressive.

Which is par for the course for the team of Dumb and Dumber running the show in Ottawa. To hear them tell the tale, nothing is ever going to prevent us from tweeting for human rights.

We're very selective of who we champion in those tweets, of course. If you're a victim of Bad Vlad's machinations in Ukraine, hey, we've got your back! We'll at least tweet our support, if nothing else.

If you're a Romani victim of Ukrainian racists, not so much.

If you're a Palestinian in Gaza, forget about it.

But that's Canada, eh?

We can't figure out the mysteries of providing clean water to Indian reservations.

We can't run an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women.

Hell, we can't even figure out how to pay our civil servants on time!


But, we are absolutely top-shelf, top-drawer, top 'o the heap when it comes to lecturing others on how to manage their affairs.