BlackRain
08-01-2004, 11:35 AM
Canada's bark lacks international bite
Source: Calgary Sun
Canada's foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew, we were told last week, has "put Iran on notice" over the state murder of an Iranian-born photographer who had become a Canadian citizen.
This came after the Iranian prison guard accused of fatally beating photographer Zahra Kazemi was acquitted of murder by an Iranian court after a two-day trial.
Kazemi had been arrested for taking pictures of a student protest.
The court said the evidence against the guard was insufficient, so the Iranian government offered her family something between $12,000 and $18,000 in compensation. The family turned this down and demanded an appeal. An exiled Iranian journalist simply scoffed.
"Nothing will happen," he said. "Their whole aim is to close down the file."
Canada has already recalled its ambassador from Tehran over the case and now must consider what further steps can be taken.
You can easily imagine the reaction of the Ayatollah-run Iranian government when it received "demands" from Canada.
"Canada?" they would have sneered.
"Canada is going to get tough with Iran? What a joke. Canada can't get tough with anybody."
They know that there's not one significant thing, beyond recalling our ambassador, that Canada can do to Iran.
Thanks to endless years of Liberal government, we have almost no army or air force left, and the B.C. Ferry Service has more ships than our navy.
Pettigrew talks vaguely of imposing "sanctions," but what sanctions? What does Iran buy from Canada that it couldn't buy in a dozen other places?
Iran knows this, and so, surely, does Pettigrew.
So why all this issuing of demands and threats with nothing at all to back them up?
Because, of course, Pettigrew isn't talking to Iran. He's talking to Canadians.
He's trying to reassure us that Ottawa could really do something about it, if one of us were arrested by a totalitarian government. What we're discovering is that it can't.
But that, of course, is the optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that Pettigrew, himself, doesn't understand this. He actually thinks that, when he mouths off like this in the name of a place called Canada, that totalitarian governments will listen. That is, he's been so imbued with the values of the '60s that he genuinely believes that cries for human rights and justice will be heard and respected by places like Iran.
This would be very sad, because it would mean that Pettigrew has not discovered the facts of international life -- any more than his fellow-Quebecois, the Great Buffoon Jean Chretien, understood them. Facts like this:
1. The respect paid a country on the international stage varies directly with the competence and strength of its armed forces.
No guns, no respect.
2. Small countries, of which Canada is one, can acquire international protection only by leaguing themselves with larger, more powerful allies. Thus Canada, for the first 80 years of its existence, allied itself with the British Commonwealth, and thereafter with the American commonwealth.
3. However, to sustain the protection of the larger nation, the smaller one must contribute what it can to assist the armed forces of its protector. This, Canada for many years did, until a succession of smart-ass Liberal prime ministers, starting with Pierre Trudeau, began to play the field, dabbling with other alliances.
He flirted with Soviet Russia, for instance, they of the Gulag who, at the time, had some 20 million slaves in prison, and he made friends with Cuba's Fidel Castro. Then came the Great Buffoon, one of whose paid flacks publicly proclaimed the American president a "moron" and was never disciplined for it.
The Americans put up with this for years, chiefly because they never thought much about their pipsqueak northern neighbour anyway, and when they did they would dismiss us as a kind of spoiled-brat child.
However, you get the impression that they are now becoming more aware of the brat and are beginning to lose patience.
Maybe they're saying: If they want to go it alone, let' em try.
Well, one of the first things we discover as we go it alone is that other countries such as Iran can walk all over us, jail and murder our citizens, and then laugh at our absurd protests and demands. They know we're powerless.
The question is: Do we?
Link: http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Ted_Byfield/2004/08/01/565034.html
Source: Calgary Sun
Canada's foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew, we were told last week, has "put Iran on notice" over the state murder of an Iranian-born photographer who had become a Canadian citizen.
This came after the Iranian prison guard accused of fatally beating photographer Zahra Kazemi was acquitted of murder by an Iranian court after a two-day trial.
Kazemi had been arrested for taking pictures of a student protest.
The court said the evidence against the guard was insufficient, so the Iranian government offered her family something between $12,000 and $18,000 in compensation. The family turned this down and demanded an appeal. An exiled Iranian journalist simply scoffed.
"Nothing will happen," he said. "Their whole aim is to close down the file."
Canada has already recalled its ambassador from Tehran over the case and now must consider what further steps can be taken.
You can easily imagine the reaction of the Ayatollah-run Iranian government when it received "demands" from Canada.
"Canada?" they would have sneered.
"Canada is going to get tough with Iran? What a joke. Canada can't get tough with anybody."
They know that there's not one significant thing, beyond recalling our ambassador, that Canada can do to Iran.
Thanks to endless years of Liberal government, we have almost no army or air force left, and the B.C. Ferry Service has more ships than our navy.
Pettigrew talks vaguely of imposing "sanctions," but what sanctions? What does Iran buy from Canada that it couldn't buy in a dozen other places?
Iran knows this, and so, surely, does Pettigrew.
So why all this issuing of demands and threats with nothing at all to back them up?
Because, of course, Pettigrew isn't talking to Iran. He's talking to Canadians.
He's trying to reassure us that Ottawa could really do something about it, if one of us were arrested by a totalitarian government. What we're discovering is that it can't.
But that, of course, is the optimistic view. The pessimistic view is that Pettigrew, himself, doesn't understand this. He actually thinks that, when he mouths off like this in the name of a place called Canada, that totalitarian governments will listen. That is, he's been so imbued with the values of the '60s that he genuinely believes that cries for human rights and justice will be heard and respected by places like Iran.
This would be very sad, because it would mean that Pettigrew has not discovered the facts of international life -- any more than his fellow-Quebecois, the Great Buffoon Jean Chretien, understood them. Facts like this:
1. The respect paid a country on the international stage varies directly with the competence and strength of its armed forces.
No guns, no respect.
2. Small countries, of which Canada is one, can acquire international protection only by leaguing themselves with larger, more powerful allies. Thus Canada, for the first 80 years of its existence, allied itself with the British Commonwealth, and thereafter with the American commonwealth.
3. However, to sustain the protection of the larger nation, the smaller one must contribute what it can to assist the armed forces of its protector. This, Canada for many years did, until a succession of smart-ass Liberal prime ministers, starting with Pierre Trudeau, began to play the field, dabbling with other alliances.
He flirted with Soviet Russia, for instance, they of the Gulag who, at the time, had some 20 million slaves in prison, and he made friends with Cuba's Fidel Castro. Then came the Great Buffoon, one of whose paid flacks publicly proclaimed the American president a "moron" and was never disciplined for it.
The Americans put up with this for years, chiefly because they never thought much about their pipsqueak northern neighbour anyway, and when they did they would dismiss us as a kind of spoiled-brat child.
However, you get the impression that they are now becoming more aware of the brat and are beginning to lose patience.
Maybe they're saying: If they want to go it alone, let' em try.
Well, one of the first things we discover as we go it alone is that other countries such as Iran can walk all over us, jail and murder our citizens, and then laugh at our absurd protests and demands. They know we're powerless.
The question is: Do we?
Link: http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Ted_Byfield/2004/08/01/565034.html