You are currently browsing The Arbourist’s articles.
Given how the world works, I find it hard to believe that Canada is taking a principled stand on human rights in Saudi Arabia. Western democracies certainly try to own the rhetoric when it comes to democracy, peace, and freedom – but their realpolitik is quite similar to the nations they routinely criticize for being autocratic dictatorships that are terrible to their people.
My skepticism aside, this is the tweet that started the diplomatic furor between Saudi Arabia and Canada:
Well, the powers that be in Saudi Arabia didn’t like that one bit:
“We consider the Canadian ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia persona non grata and order him to leave within the next 24 hours,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said on Twitter.
“Any other attempt to interfere with our internal affairs from Canada, means that we are allowed to interfere in Canada’s internal affairs,” it said.
“Saudi state television later reported that the Education Ministry was coming up with an “urgent plan” to move thousands of Saudi scholarship students out of Canadian schools to take classes in other countries.”
“Saudi Arabia said it is also freezing all new trade and investment transactions with Canada and “reserves its right to take further action.” Saudi Arabia is one of Canada’s largest export markets in the region, and some 10 per cent of Canadian crude oil imports come from Saudi Arabia.”
“Of course the major worry for Canada will now be the fate of a $15-billion contract for almost 1,000 light armoured vehicles between the Saudi government and London, Ont.’s General Dynamics. The controversial deal, struck in 2014 and approved in 2016, called for the vehicles to be delivered starting in 2017, but it’s not clear how many have already been sent as Ottawa refuses to release the “commercially confidential” information.”
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is reportedly selling off its assets in Canada and will stop buying Canadian wheat and barley, in the latest escalation in the sudden diplomatic dispute between the two countries.”
“The national Saudi Arabian airline, Saudia, said this week that it would suspend all flights between the country and Canada, starting next week.”
I think I speak for many Canadian when I say. “WTF just happened here?”. The Saudi record on human rights isn’t a particularly deep dark secret and to call for a what seems to be a bit of leniency in one specific case doesn’t seem as beyond the pale as the Saudi’s seem to think it is.
Would Canada recall its ambassadors and impose sanctions if Norway made light of our decidedly horrible treatment of our First Nations people? I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t. Most likely some diplomatic hand-waves and some impassioned statements about how we’re working hard (we’re not) to improve the lives of all Canadians and then the issues would pass.
What is more intriguing is that despite the Saudi backlash, Canada’s government isn’t backing down:
“Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says Canada isn’t backing down from its position that led to diplomatic sanction from Saudi Arabia.
Freeland made the comments Monday afternoon in Vancouver a day after Saudi Arabia announced it would cease new trade deals with Canada and expel the Canadian ambassador.
“I will say Canada is very comfortable with our position. We are always going to speak up for human rights; we’re always going to speak up for women’s rights; and that is not going to change,” she told a news conference.
“Canadians expect our foreign policy to be driven by and to embody Canadian values, and that is how we intend to continue our foreign policy.”
On Friday, Global Affairs Canada had tweeted, “Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia, including Samar Badawi. We urge the Saudi authorities to immediately release them and all other peaceful human rights activists.”
This is post is just full of WTF’s. Freeland seems to be articulating a values based position on a foreign policy issue. It makes little sense has Saudi Arabia is clearly demonstrating their willingness to go full-trump and punish Canada economically for having the ‘bombast’ to ask them to release a blogger they have detained and are torturing (sorry folks, flogging is torture any way you want to slice it.)
It’s sad that I’m feeling so cynical about this particular story, and continue to look for the angle that the Canadian government is not sharing with the press. Like, since when do nations actually take ethical stands on any issue these days? It just isn’t good for business.
I’m going to continue to follow this story folks, because something just isn’t adding up.
Just about everything becomes more interesting if you can film it in slow motion.
Chalmers Johnson wrote this piece for Tom’s Dispatch in 2009. I think the prescription remains as accurate, perhaps even more so in today, as we witness the untrammelled bellicose behaviour of the US on the international stage. The interesting part of the current republican administration’s method is that, in fact, the bluntly brutish bulling behaviour of the American empire is not a new feature of the American geopolitical strategy. Trump knows not of the (small) mailed fist in the velvet glove, as we witness US foreign policy initiatives bash their way across the globe imprudently applying sanctions and threats. It’s just that this imperial behaviour has almost been cloaked in diplomatic language and carefully scrubbed for domestic consumption in the past. It is just so much easier to see now.
The Era of the American Empire is coming to a close. I just hope that they realize they can drawn down voluntarily(ish) as Britain did, and not choose option B – internal dissolution and collapse – which is the route the Soviet Union chose.
Here are what Chalmers Johnson believes to be the way out for the USA.
“1. We need to put halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide. We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves.a
2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the “opportunity costs” that go with them — the things we might otherwise do with our talents and resources but can’t or won’t.
3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. In the 1960s and 1970s we helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and Chile and underwrote regimes of torture that prefigured our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. (See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors [Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture abroad.
4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters — along with their expensive medical facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and so forth — that follow our military enclaves around the world.
5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense. These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic research. Ending empire would make this happen.
6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world’s largest exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for immediate closure is the so-called School of the Americas, the U.S. Army’s infamous military academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military officers. (See Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)
7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote militarism in our schools.
8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (See Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]). Ending empire would make this possible.
9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.
10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.
Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is foreordained.”
Tough sell politically speaking, but necessary if the US wishes to be an important power in the world.
This is a PSA in support of the Untameable Shrews – support them and their work in getting the radical feminist message out and fighting patriarchy in the streets.
Just watching the manly magic in action. I apologize for the acronym heavy preface, it hurts the rational brain, but it is an example of the language and ideology being used to push women (adult human females) to the margins.
Also, this example #439024 of why movements cannot be all-inclusive. You cannot include members of the class that oppresses you in your movement. It is like a union asking management to join their ranks. It just doesn’t work.
Men have barged into feminism proper and are demanding it be reshaped to meet their qualifications. You know, just like it is in everyday society – the replication of patriarchal structures and hierarchies lies behind the thin edge of the wedge of ‘inclusion’.
Feminism is the movement to liberate females from the oppressive structures of society, it is female centred and female led. If you are pulling for a movement that doesn’t support those goals, then what you are doing *isn’t* feminism.
http://engelswasaterf.tumblr.com/post/176651297089/spencer-shayy-probablyaterf
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…