Saturday, September 26, 2015

UPDATED: It Has Come To This

I am prefacing this by reproducing a comment I made 0n kirbycairo's post, A Dark Hour Upon Us. Kirby, one of our top-shelf bloggers, always provides insightful analysis and commentary, and in yesterday's piece, he offered a rather gloomy assessment of the human condition.

I wrote back:

I find myself in agreement with your gloomy assessment of the human condition, Kirby. While we have certainly experienced social evolution in the past century, it always seem to take very little to rip away the veneer of civilization we encase ourselves in. As you well know, that is why demagogues are so dangerous.

We are part of the animal kingdom, something we are reminded of on a daily basis. However, like other animals we do have the capacity or potential to be good and philanthropic. Of that I have no doubt. But that capacity has to be carefully nurtured in order to express itself and grow. Today, we have no one in the political arena willing to do the hard lifting required of leadership that would bring out the best in us. And we, of course, are the enablers of that weak leadership that exploits and manipulatse our passions and our prejudices.

In my view, we all are to blame for our abject failures.


I have been avoiding political shows for the past week, for reasons of burnout that I wrote about recently. Yesterday, however, I tuned into the first part of Power and Politics, as they were discussing that morally repugnant $15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, a followup to the justification that Stephen Harper gave yesterday for pursuing it:
At a campaign stop in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., Harper was asked whether he was putting Canadian jobs ahead of human rights concerns.

"As I've said in the debate, it's frankly all of our partners and allies who were pursuing that contract, not just Canada. So this is a deal frankly with a country, and notwithstanding its human rights violations, which are significant, this is a contract with a country that is an ally in the fighting against the Islamic State. A contract that any one of our allies would have signed," he said.

"We expressed our outrage, our disagreement from time to time with the government of Saudi Arabia for their treatment of human rights, but I don't think it makes any sense to pull a contract in a way that would only punish Canadian workers instead of actually expressing our outrage at some of these things in Saudi Arabia."

So, essentially it has come to this: jobs before morality. A greater indictment of the Harper regime I cannot think of. However, as you will see in the following video, despite the commendably tenacious efforts by P+P host Rosemary Barton, who never fails to impress, neither of the opposition party representative would answer her question of whether they would cancel the contract, although near the end, Paul Dewar does get pinned down.



A bankrupt nation, some would describe Canada as.

UPDATE: While Canada continues to parcel out its collective soul to the highest bidders, Germany, as it has with the refugee situation, is showing real leadership:
Germany has decided to stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia because of “instability in the region,” German daily Bild reported Sunday.

Weapons orders from Saudi Arabia have either been “rejected, pure and simple,” or deferred for further consideration, the newspaper said, adding that the information has not been officially confirmed.

4 comments:

  1. "a country that is an ally in the fighting against the Islamist State." Whom might that be, the Houthi rebels of Yemen? They're certainly fighting ISIS and some al Qaeda affiliates. But wait, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are bombing the Houthi, flying air support FOR ISIS. Curious, that. And who raised, equipped and funded ISIS. Oh, that must be our allies, Saudi Arabia and the sheikhs, emirs and princes of the Gulf States, right!

    And just what is Saudi Arabia going to do with all those light armoured fighting vehicles? What, they're part of a massive re-armament scheme (they're buying every bit of lethal gear they can get their hands on) to prepare for a war of extermination, Sunni versus Shiite. Prince Bandar let that cat out of the bag. Name one other conceivable use the Saudis have for those light tanks? Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot. They're also dandy for the democracy suppression mission when the plebs get uppity.

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    1. You have nailed it, Mound. For our politicians to pretend the truth is otherwise is beyond denunciation. To look for hope in the political arena is becoming increasingly difficult, almost a fool's errand.

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  2. .. I see 'frankly' has been added to the harper lexiCon as he drones his ingrained talking 'deflection' points.. Thus 'As I've said' 'clearly' 'look' 'permanent deficits' 'obviously' 'economic chaos' 'fragile global reality' 'paramountcy' are the pablum spilling from his mealy mouth, endlessly..

    In BC its Jihadists under every bed, in PEI its a Lobster in every Pot, in Ontario its jobs/Crusade making arms & weapons to drive the economy, in the prairies its potash, Quebec - health asbestos, Alberta has 'ethical oil' unlike Saudi Arabia's tainted oil ..

    Harper runs a Las Vegas style tilted table circle game of shells and shills & pipelines it via a willing Mainstream Media. he's a fake - naked ideological egotism dressed up as a dutiful aw shucks Public Servant .. its the partisan dance macabre now.. with how many MP marionettes a dancin n twitchin ?

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    1. Kind of makes you want to give up on contemporary politics as the answer to anything, doesn't it, Salamander?

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