Heavens to Murgatroyd! New Boss like Old Boss?

[Barney Google]

On Saudi arms deal, the new boss in Ottawa is just like the old boss

Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion's memo green-lighting the bulk of the Saudi arms deal could have been written by former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper, Neil Macdonald writes. (Canadian Press)

"Well. If further proof was needed that the sunny new regime in Ottawa is perfectly capable of behaving just like the un-sunny previous regime, we now have it, in a memo that was stamped "Secret," then rather inconveniently laid bare in the Federal Court of Canada.

The document, signed by Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion, is a gem of hair-splitting, parsing, wilful blindness and justification for selling billions worth of fighting vehicles and weaponry to Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth. ..."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada- ... -1.3534795

[The Green Barbarian]

and yet, if the Liberals had not backed these sales (and agreed to drop the Union Accountability act), they wouldn't have gotten the unions to migrate from the NDP. I don't get the arm-wringing and screaming about Saudi Arabia. If Canada didn't sell them these armoured carriers, someone else would. And they'd get all of the jobs and economic benefit. I also don't understand the brainless leftists here crying about Saudi Arabia, while warmly embracing Iran, who on a regular basis calls for the complete annihilation of Israel, and who executes people for the crime of being gay. It seems folly to me to want to end this trade deal purely because it will help destroy Canada's economy, and really serve no other purpose. But that's brainless leftists for you, as long as it hurts the economy, they are all over it like the NDP on a bad idea.

[maryjane48]

and yet, if the Liberals had not backed these sales (and agreed to drop the Union Accountability act), they wouldn't have gotten the unions to migrate from the NDP. I don't get the arm-wringing and screaming about Saudi Arabia. If Canada didn't sell them these armoured carriers, someone else would. And they'd get all of the jobs and economic benefit. I also don't understand the brainless leftists here crying about Saudi Arabia, while warmly embracing Iran, who on a regular basis calls for the complete annihilation of Israel, and who executes people for the crime of being gay. It seems folly to me to want to end this trade deal purely because it will help destroy Canada's economy, and really serve no other purpose. But that's brainless leftists for you, as long as it hurts the economy, they are all over it like the NDP on a bad idea.

great that you support arming terrorists . im sure isil will send you a thank you card

[hobbyguy]

I have a great deal of distrust for the Saudis.

GB - do some reading about the influences of Wahhabism, and remember that the Saudis are not a democracy, have been shown to allow funding to flow to ISIS, have only put up a pretense of fighting ISIS, and have had a member of the ruling elite declare that all Sunnis should be eliminated.

http://nortonsafe.search.ask.com/web?q=Wahabism&o=APN10505&prt=NIS&chn=retail&geo=CA&ver=21&locale=en_CA&tpr=111&gct=sb&qsrc=2869

"In July 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism"

"Two forms of Wahhabism were emerging: where Ibn Saud was happy to enforce Wahhabi Islam with the sword to enhance his political position"

"young men from the poorer Muslim countries, such as Egypt and Pakistan, who had felt compelled to find work in the Gulf to support their families, associated their relative affluence with Wahhabism and brought this faith back home with them, living in new neighbourhoods with Saudi mosques and shopping malls that segregated the sexes. The Saudis demanded religious conformity in return for their munificence, so Wahhabi rejection of all other forms of Islam as well as other faiths would reach as deeply into Bradford, England, and Buffalo, New York, as into Pakistan, Jordan or Syria: everywhere gravely undermining Islam’s traditional pluralism.

A whole generation of Muslims, therefore, has grown up with a maverick form of Islam that has given them a negative view of other faiths and an intolerantly sectarian understanding of their own. While not extremist per se, this is an outlook in which radicalism can develop. In the past, the learned exegesis of the ulema, which Wahhabis rejected, had held extremist interpretations of scripture in check; but now unqualified freelancers such as Osama Bin Laden were free to develop highly unorthodox readings of the Quran."

It is a tough spot. The Saudis are obviously not the "good guys" in my books. But I am also not a fan of an absolutism that would cut them off from trade and diplomacy. Arms trading though - that one bothers me.

[The Green Barbarian]

GB - do some reading about the influences of Wahhabism, .

Yawn

Somehow when you talk about Muslim terrorists the People come out of the woodwork screaming "Islamaphobe" and "Racist"!! but yet you can go on about how bad Saudi is (and I agree with you) and no one says boo. You can't have it both ways.