Saudis retaliate after Canada criticizes human rights violations

"New video shows two types of Saudi Arabia's Canadian-made armoured vehicles - GDLS - LAVs and Streit Groups - rolling through Yemen."

https://twitter.com/anthonyfenton/status/1030925535008808960

As a Saudi Student Being Forced To Leave Canada, I'm Going Through the 5 Stages of Grief

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/saudi-arabia-student-leave-canada...

"About 8,300 Saudi post-secondary students living in Canada were left shocked and scrambling earlier this month when Saudi Arabia abruptly ordered them to withdraw from their studies and leave Canada by Aug 31. Here, one of these students shares his story..."

America's War on Yemen Exposed

https://journal-neo.org/2018/08/14/americas-war-on-yemen-exposed/

"...A recent row between Canada and Saudi Arabia over supposed 'human rights' concerns appears to have been a vain attempt to salvage the credibility of at least some nations involved in the now 7 year-long war - the last 3 years of which has seen direct military intervention by Saudi Arabia, its partners and its backers - including Canada. The Guardian in an article titled, 'We don't have a single friend: Canada's Saudi spat reveals country is alone,' attempts to portray Canada as taking a lone, principled stand against human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, abandoned even by Washington.

Canada's feigned concern for 'human rights' in Saudi Arabia comes at a time when the Canadian government continues approving hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms sales to Riyadh. This includes small arms and armored personnel carriers Saudi forces are using in their ongoing invasion and occupation of neighboring Yemen.  The feigned divide between Ottawa and Washington over Saudi human rights violations is overshadowed by years of commitment by both North American nations in propping up the Saudi regime, and aiding and abetting the very worst of Riyadh's human rights abuses unfolding amid the Yemeni conflict.

Canada's apparent role is to help compartmentalize the worst of the West's decaying moral authority, containing it with the US and taking up a more prominent role in the West's industrialized 'human rights' and 'democracy' leveraging racket. While Canadian armaments help fuel genocide in Yemen - Canadian diplomats around the world fund agitators and directly meddle in the internal political affairs of foreign nations predicated on promoting 'human rights' and 'democracy.'

However, Canada faces the same problem that has permanently eroded American credibility. And as its role in perpetuating real human rights abuses worldwide continues to be exposed, its feigned concern over token or even manufactured human rights concerns will increasingly appear hpocritical and hollow, undermining the West's collective ability to leverage and hide behind human rights and democracy to advance their self-serving agendas."

"Saudi Arabia is using Canadian-made deadly weapons in its monstrous war on Yemen. By continuing to allow arms sales to the Saudis, Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland have made themselves complicit in the mass starvation of Yemeni children."

https://twitter.com/dimitrilascaris/status/1031943060148518912

There is much in what you say Jatt47. 'We pretend to be morally righteous atop a throne of skulls' is particularly apt in Canada's case. The Saudi monarchy is indeed a creation and longtime tool of western imperialism. In fact it is a critical partner and financier in the bloody business of Yemen, Syria etc. initiated in Western capitals.   Neither am I under any illusions as to the  human rights theatrics of the Prime minister, his foreign ministry or entities such as Human Rights Watch. That being said, the Saudi monarchy is a loathsome thing, as are its western partners Canada, USA , Israel et al. May they all go to hell. But for now this  is what it is and we will see where it goes.

"Scott Taylor, another who made the connection that few journalists dared to:

'In other words, the armoured vehicle deal was signed well after Saudi Arabia began its overt and blatant interference in Yemen. Instead of waiting for the Saudis to drop the other shoe, we should correct our previous hypocrisy and cancel this deal ourselves.

It is embarrassing to watch Chrystia Freeland preach about defending human rights, while she simultaneously fears the cancellation of a contract to supply a repressive regime with the combat capability to commit further repression."

https://twitter.com/anthonyfenton/status/1032137646481580032

Jatt47 wrote:

 

I guess the western impulse of destroying the enemy who dares to resist w/e the current craze, has not waned.

 

Previously it was Christianity, today it's Progressivism.

 

Either structure your society & customs exactly how we do or we'll use the advantage of 3 continents worth of loot to shut you out of international commerce so you all starve.

 

Except that Canada isn't actually doing anything to "shut out", much less "starve", Saudi Arabia. Nothing even remotely close. The only side that is shutting out Saudi Arabia is Saudi Arabia itself, with its limited economic retaliation and removal of exchange students.  

So much of this debate comes off like a discussion on an alternate-history forum. "Imagine Canada is taking a stand against Saudi Arabia over human-rights. What could they do, and would it be a good idea?"

How Britain Carved Up the Middle East and Helped Create Saudi Arabia

http://markcurtis.info/2016/11/02/how-britain-carved-up-the-middle-east-...

"The British strategy of colonial divide and rule, and reliance on Muslim forces to promote imperial interests, reached its apogee in the Middle East during and after the First World War..."

Saudi seek death penalty for woman activists for incitement to prtotest and providing moral suuport to rioters.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/saudi-arabia-death-penalty-women-activists-...

Union Calls For Canada to Buy Back Canadian Wheat Board from Saudis Over Spat

https://t.co/6SoNmoE7ac

"The union says Saudi Arabia's decision to stop buying Canadian wheat and barley shows it won't put the interests of grain farmers first. UCTE president Dave Clark says having a foreign country managing an important Canadian asset is wrong and should be reversed."

Re- Nationalize Canadian Wheat Board. Boycott Saudi!

Since Canada contributes to the Saudi-Western killing machine with billions in arms, it seems only proper to post the latest warcrimes in Yemen in this thread:

Saudi-Led Airstrikes Kill 27 Civilians in Yemen's Hodeidah: Health Official

https://t.co/tTQCk5uMfP

"Airstrike hits fleeing civilians killing dozens ['mostly children'] after earlier attacks in residential neighborhood left four dead..."

The Saudis, like its partner Israel, seem to have purchased an obscene silence/impunity from the 'international community' no matter how barbaric their crimes. Western leaders, like Justin Trudeau take no concrete measures or positions that would  pressure compliance with universally accepted standards of human rights. Clearly, profits matter more than the lives of brown kids killed with western arms.

NDPP wrote:

Union Calls For Canada to Buy Back Canadian Wheat Board from Saudis Over Spat [...]

Re- Nationalize Canadian Wheat Board. Boycott Saudi!

I don't really see the problem with the Saudis owning the Canadian Wheat Board while refusing to buy Canadian wheat. What are you, some kind of socialist?

"Why doesn't the CDN media ask Ottawa to comment on the spate of recent Saudi/UAE/US war-crimes in Yemen?"

https://twitter.com/anthonyfenton/status/1033514195533234176

What a good question! Why not fwd this tweet to all your  journo friends?

Probably because  few Canadians ask this question of Ottawa either.  Canadians usually only do that if/when corporate media dogwhistles them to. (Just wait until the corporate propaganda media start railing about Idlib and Syria. The same ones silent on Yemen or Palestine will suddenly be cursing Assad/Putin and tearing their hair out with wild abandon.)

"I think Canada should smooth over this with Saudi Arabia by acknowledging its right to exist as a hereditary dictatorship forever, and also acknowledging its rights to some of Yemen's land."

https://twitter.com/justinpodur/status/1034620033815793665

But we're still buying Saudi oil and they're still taking our LAVs, so the rest is mostly theater.

Strange case. The fact that the Saudi consulate staff apparently can't just say "No, we gave him his marriage license, and then we watched him walk out of the office"(bonus points if they actually saw him leave the building), is a pretty clear indication that something is going on.

But what, exactly? The Saudis just murdered him right there in the consulate, and smuggled the body out? Or kept it there in a deep-freezer? That would be pretty brazen, given that at the very least, his fiance would know that he never left the building.

voice of the damned wrote:

But what, exactly? The Saudis just murdered him right there in the consulate, and smuggled the body out? Or kept it there in a deep-freezer? That would be pretty brazen, given that at the very least, his fiance would know that he never left the building.

Chopped it up into a dozen pieces and brought it out in diplomatic pouches would be my guess. There's a long history of Vienna Convention privileges being used to do stuff like that.

josh wrote:

voice of the damned wrote:

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has asked Canada to apologize for demanding the release of Saudi women's rights activists and stop treating the kingdom as "a banana republic" if it wants to resolve a diplomatic dispute between the two countries.

https://tinyurl.com/y8l72y9r

The Saudis have a long way to go to achieve banana republic status.

They have to start growing bananas there, for a start.

cco wrote:

Not to mention do something about that monarchy.

Like the Canadian government buying out the Saudi 'jeep' contract, embargoing Saudi oil and giving the Saudi  princeling a hearty 'piss off, mate'. 

Principles, by their very nature have a price attached to them. Virtue signalling attempts to circumvent the price part. Oscar Wilde, once again comes to mind.

Latest on Canada's Saudi regime customers:

Journalist Reported Tortured and Slain in Saudi Consulate

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/09/saud-o09.html

"Whatever Khashoggi's services to the Saudi monarchy and US imperialism, his reported  torture, murdering and butchering  at a government consulate in Istanbul, if true, represents an act of savagery that exposes the essence of Washington's closest ally in the Middle East and, more generally, US policy throughout the region."

I agree. If Canada was serious about human rights, (it isn't) it would cease supplying arms to the butchers of Yemen. It hasn't.  Here's one of the reasons Canada hasn't moved to stop its arms tranfers to the Saudis for their war in Yemen:

"The realignment in the Middle East - where the Israelis are de facto allies and partners with the Saudis and UAE regimes, even while maintaining the facade of distance - has been one of the most under-discussed stories..."

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1051659620178104320

The reason that the killing of Khashoggi has gotten American politicians and elite journalists so upset is that they see him as one of their own. He lived amongst them, and wrote for the WaPo, and no doubt attended their dinner parties. So, they identify with him, unlike the poor victims of war in Yemen and so many other places, who are nothing more than numbers to these U.S. big shots. Quite disgusting, but nothing new.

Indeed, it is a measure of the power of this elite media that one can post articles on a subject till the cows come home but little notice is taken until or unless it is in the NYT, WaPo or The Guardian, The Globe, etc. This is something liberal progressives must overcome as a diet almost exclusively of elite media sources tends to make them stupid and reactionary just as it is designed to do.