JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

“Canada is blaming China for being “obstructionist” on a climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.’

I read a number of newspapers each day, and it could not be clearer that China has demonstrated a new and exceptional willingness to cooperate on climate change, indeed, even indicated a willingness to lead.

Peter Kent, know-nothing pretend minister for a pretend portfolio, already has made a fool of himself at the conference.

So now what does he do? Why of course he attacks China, thinking he has killed two birds with one stone.

The “two birds” are finding someone else to blame for his own inept and embarrassing performance as well as reverting to that favorite of ignorant Cold Warriors, China as the “yellow peril.”

Kent is incompetent, utterly.

China right now is doing more on climate change – everything from experimental power stations and other technologies to being the world’s chief producer of solar panels – than Canada could even dream of doing.

Given their status as a country that only began emerging from third-world status thirty years ago, they absolutely put us to shame on this matter, and Canadians should realize that on a per capita basis – the only fair way to look at it – China is responsible for only a fraction of Canada’s emissions.

This performance of Kent’s reminds me strongly of Peter MacKay’s whiny-baby performance in Parliament over his abuse of helicopters for private use.

Meanwhile Canada proceeds with the world’s filthiest energy project, the tar sands – truly filthy by every measurement, not just carbon emissions – happily ignoring the consequences.

You truly could pull some people off the street and get some better-performing and more thoughtful ministers than this sad lot of Harper’s.

By the time Harper is ready to pick up his pension, he will have wrecked Canada’s international reputation on every possible front.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Oh, here we go again, blame the Chinese for something.

Who cares, even if this report were true?

If you copy the horrors of others from more than half a century ago, only you are to blame.

This is even more true when you are supposedly a democracy valuing human rights, and the people you copy were under an absolute government of the darkest nature.

By the way, I think America has little to be taught about brutality.

Good God, in the revolt in the Philippines, American soldiers were torturing with waterboarding.

The Army’s School of the Americas has been teaching unpleasant South American regimes techniques of policing, control, and torture for decades.

America sells more arms abroad to more repressive regimes than anyone.