Big Steve didn't wait long before gloating over the death of Hugo Chavez.
Maybe now the Venezuelan people can build a "better, brighter, future."
Well maybe, but lets have a look at how Venezuela under Chavez compares to three of the countries in the neighborhood that Harper has been busy cozying up to and signing free trade agreements with.
Canada struck a free trade agreement with Honduras in 2011, two years after a coup deposed the democratically elected but vaguely leftist President Zelaya. Venezuelans enjoy a substantially higher literacy rate, a substantially higher life expectancy, and a per capita income almost triple that of Honduras.
Harper's government signed off on a free trade deal with Colombia last year. Chavez bad. Uribe and Santos good. Venezuelans enjoy higher literacy rates and a higher GDP per capita than Colombians.
Harper's government signed a free trade deal with Peru in 2009. Venezuelans enjoy longer lives, higher incomes, and fewer infant deaths than Peruvians. But Peru is a popular destination for Canadian mining conglomerates, so the Harper gang avert their eyes and hold their noses and go with the flow.
The profit flow!
That Chavez chap was a bit of a radical though. Didn't believe in selling his country to foreign multi-nationals. Obviously not the kind of guy we can do business with.
So thank God he's dead, and maybe now the Canadian mining co... oops, I mean the Venezuelan people, have a chance at a better, brighter, future.
Showing posts with label Canadian hypocrisy on human rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canadian hypocrisy on human rights. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Khadr case makes mockery of Canada's human rights pretensions
Omar Khadr's legal reps are once again pleading with Canadian authorities to repatriate the poor bastard from Gitmo, like they promised to do a year ago.
It's all over the news.
It's been informative to see how the big media handle the story. I've seen headlines referring to Khadr as a "convicted war criminal" and a "convicted terrorist".
What Omar Khadr was at the time of his alleged crime was a child soldier. He was a fifteen year old Afghan kid who allegedly threw a grenade that killed a US soldier.
This happened in Afghanistan.
From some perspectives this would make him a great Afghan patriot.
Because Khadr had dual Canadian-Afghani citizenship, and Canada is a NATO/ISAF stalwart, from the Canadian perspective this makes him a "war criminal".
But as the whole world knows, Canada is the most do-goodery of all the do-good nations. The most virtuous by far of the Nations of Virtue.
After all, Canadians are so overbearingly virtuous that they came up with R2P, the "responsibility to protect".
That's a little slice of do-gooder flim-flam that allows virtuous and powerful nations to make war on weaker nations on the pretext that if they don't, bad stuff might happen to citizens of said weaker nation. It is especially applicable if said weaker nation happens to sit astride serious oil reserves.
This was the rationale behind the war on Ghadaffi.
So it's not surprising that the virtuous Canadians were also leading the fight against the use of child soldiers. They were one of the biggest promoters of UN resolution 1261.
So here is a child soldier, a Canadian citizen, tortured by the Nations of Virtue into a "confession", and more than ten years after the facts Canada still refuses to honor its obligations under UN resolution 1261, and indeed, its obligations under the Geneva Convention.
To say nothing of common sense and common decency.
All for the sake of making brownie points in Brussels and Washington.
SHAME!
It's all over the news.
It's been informative to see how the big media handle the story. I've seen headlines referring to Khadr as a "convicted war criminal" and a "convicted terrorist".
What Omar Khadr was at the time of his alleged crime was a child soldier. He was a fifteen year old Afghan kid who allegedly threw a grenade that killed a US soldier.
This happened in Afghanistan.
From some perspectives this would make him a great Afghan patriot.
Because Khadr had dual Canadian-Afghani citizenship, and Canada is a NATO/ISAF stalwart, from the Canadian perspective this makes him a "war criminal".
But as the whole world knows, Canada is the most do-goodery of all the do-good nations. The most virtuous by far of the Nations of Virtue.
After all, Canadians are so overbearingly virtuous that they came up with R2P, the "responsibility to protect".
That's a little slice of do-gooder flim-flam that allows virtuous and powerful nations to make war on weaker nations on the pretext that if they don't, bad stuff might happen to citizens of said weaker nation. It is especially applicable if said weaker nation happens to sit astride serious oil reserves.
This was the rationale behind the war on Ghadaffi.
So it's not surprising that the virtuous Canadians were also leading the fight against the use of child soldiers. They were one of the biggest promoters of UN resolution 1261.
So here is a child soldier, a Canadian citizen, tortured by the Nations of Virtue into a "confession", and more than ten years after the facts Canada still refuses to honor its obligations under UN resolution 1261, and indeed, its obligations under the Geneva Convention.
To say nothing of common sense and common decency.
All for the sake of making brownie points in Brussels and Washington.
SHAME!
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