In response to yesterday's post about Stephen Harper's boycott of a major climate change summit hosted by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York on September 23, Anon wrote the following, and offered this video which, I think you will agree, is a most appropriate choice:
Harper, early on, seemed to care about human rights and UN initiatives:
"'I think Canadians want us to promote our trade relations worldwide, and we do that, but I don't think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values,' Harper said.
Chinese President Hu Jintao won't meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Hanoi, which is being seen by some as a snub over Canada's criticism of China's human rights record. 'They don't want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.'"
After that crazy talk, I think Harper's sponsors sat him down in a boardroom in Calgary and explained the facts of life to him. The fact that he always was, and always would be, an Imperial Oil mail room clerk. I imagine that meeting would have gone something like this:
Petit fonctionnaire. Technocrats, the lot of them. It's the utter lack of coherent vision that gives them away. The result is a disjointed, irrational and contradictory narrative. Harper is big on the north and northern security but does nothing tangible to deal with those needs. Harper is big on defence and Canada punching above its weight but guts the DoD budget to levels not seen since before WWII. He's all for human rights except when the boot beneath which they're trampled is on the foot of some country he likes or chooses to accommodate. Ours is a belief-addled, mid-level bureaucrat.
ReplyDeleteAs apt a description of our dysfunctional government as I have read anywhere, Mound.
DeleteLoved the clip! Thanks, Anon.
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