Of course, our voice on China does matter, Marcus Gee.
But you do have to be IN China to have your voice heard, much less paid any attention to. It is foolish to say otherwise, but then this article is nothing except foolishness. Just listen to yourself.
“Long before Mr. Chrétien was jetting off to Beijing to advise well-heeled clients about doing business with China…”
What a ridiculous sentence to write. You are a neo-con. Since when to a conservative is someone’s being “well-heeled” a sin or aspersion?
I guess only when you want to write the kind of shabby propaganda this article represents. You duck into the kind of language a member of the 1960 British Labour Party might have used just to make a cheap point.
International business does tend to be done by “well-heeled” people. So far as I see the average small Canadian businessman couldn’t afford the air fare.
“You want me to tell the president of a country of 1.3 billion people you should do this and do that, but I don't dare to say what to do to the premier of Saskatchewan?”
That is not a “laugh line” as you assert, that’s a cogently-put truth by Mr. Chretien. If you disagree, go argue the point with Danny Williams. Simply a limp, pitiful statement, Marcus Gee.
“Canadians are fighting and dying for human rights in Afghanistan.”
Now there IS a “laugh line,” Marcus Gee, a very dark and bitter one.
Actually, it is more a deliberate misrepresentation (aka: a lie) or evidence of your lack of knowledge.
Canadians are in Afghanistan for one reason only.
Mr. Chretien kept us out of the mass murder of Iraq, and we avoided being mucked up in American missile defence (aka: the weaponizing of space).
The folks in Ottawa simply declared “we owe one to the Pentagon,” and when they said that they thought they would face the kind of mild service most others in NATO face, who are all putting in time to keep the embarrassed U.S. from blowing a fuse.
They had no idea they would end up in the hell-hole they now find themselves in.
“Should we stay silent about our most basic beliefs because Beijing feels slighted?”
There is perhaps your most uninformed line of many, Marcus Gee.
Basic beliefs?
The U.S. occupies two nations, threatens a third, and has begun threatening a fourth. It has killed perhaps a million innocent people. The CIA runs an international torture gulag. We have the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. We’ve had the horrors of white phosphorus used as a weapon and the ghastly use of cluster bombs which almost make land mines look humane. We have new ugly, intrusive laws within the U.S. New powers for the FBI, an organization with a dreadful human-rights record. And we have a long trail of documented lies from the White House.
But we’ve heard nothing from you, Marcus Gee, on any of that and still more. Indeed, your political hero, Mr. Harper (aka: Steve to George Bush) does every petty thing he can think of to please and flatter the most incompetent and dangerous president in American history.
You do not understand what is in front of your face. The Chinese are coming out of a hideous Secular Dark Ages, and it is clear that today they enjoy freedoms unheard of only a few decades ago. The evidence is everywhere. Watch some documentaries, read some books, talk to Chinese people, and, if you had an open mind, you would be astounded by the relative freedom. China’s advance and development on every front – economic, political, and social – is the miraculous story coming for this generation to watch.
But clearly, you do not have an open mind, Mr. Gee, you are nothing more than a dreary, full-time propagandist.
Two views of Canada's remarkable statesman, Harper
