Liberals refuse to disclose report on human rights in Saudi Arabia

[CaptainCrunch]

over time? His first few months have featured a lot of broken promises or promises that just can't be executed.

When you campaign on hope and change and making a lot of promises the first few months becomes a major downfall.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by flylock shox

Trudeau's positive campaign was a masterstroke.

It was almost exactly the same as Obama's in 2008.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...ticle28068909/

You mean Steven Harper isn't this evil man after all? Possibly the new guy is the same guy just a better car salesman? Say it isn't so.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

over time? His first few months have featured a lot of broken promises or promises that just can't be executed.

When you campaign on hope and change and making a lot of promises the first few months becomes a major downfall.

I expect pretty well any newly elected politician to break election promises as they are nothing more than sales pitches to get the job. Doesn't really bother me much the Jr. is breaking some of these far fetched promises as anyone that's followed politics would know that it's par for the course and it's up to the voters not to fall for the same sales pitch they got fell for in the past. I'm more worried about the big picture and how much of a disaster he's going to leave the next PM to clean up as Jr. and his party are going to do far more damage to this country than many could imagined when all is said and done.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by T@T

General Dynamics (London Ont.) claim 500 employee's depend on the Saudi contract.

Considering Alberta is loosing at least 500 jobs a week partly because of Saudi Arabia I think the plant should be moved here.

Spoiler!

I'll personally develop a secret self destruct mechanism in them for these desert turds.

Good luck with that. The manufacturing sector in Ontario is one of least efficient yet most heavily subsidized industries in Canada.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by T@T

General Dynamics (London Ont.) claim 500 employee's depend on the Saudi contract.

Considering Alberta is loosing at least 500 jobs a week partly because of Saudi Arabia I think the plant should be moved here.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Saudi's are deplorable and deserve to be bombed into the stone age more than Iran, for their human rights issues, womens rights issues, and overall circa-1200A.D policies and view on the word.

But lets at least get our facts right. From the article

"The transaction will support 3,000 jobs in Canada for nearly 15 years – many of them in the London area."

500 employees outputting $15B over 15 years is about $2,000,000 of reatil value output per employee per year. Those must be some skilled machine operators and assembly line operators.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

The simple fact is that this is a transaction where the counterparty is Apartheid South Africa on steroids.

If we're cool with selling weapons to that sort of country, well, okay, but let's be clear about that.

[corporatejay]

Is this the same contract that Mulcair said we should cancel and then got a very angry phone call from the union and then "stepped back" from that position?

Edit; Yup, ####ing hypocrites.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/ca...ant-job-losses

[karl262]

I don't have a problem with this deal going through. Extracting money from SA is a good thing.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by karl262

I don't have a problem with this deal going through. Extracting money from SA is a good thing.

Well why don't we just start selling arms to ISIS then and take their money too?

[karl262]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

Well why don't we just start selling arms to ISIS then and take their money too?

Because ISIS doesn't have 15 billion dollars to buy brand new kit from us.

[FunkMasterFlame]

Well since the Saudis already finance and arm ISIS, I don't think its much of a stretch to say that by dealing with the Saudis we would be indirectly arming ISIS as well.

I mean, its already happened before. Its no coincidence that after Raytheon supplied the Saudis with 15,000 TOW Anti-Tank Missiles in 2013, ISIS and other Syrian rebel groups suddenly began posting dozens of videos of themselves using said TOWS to blow up Syrian Army tanks and bunkers.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

over time? His first few months have featured a lot of broken promises or promises that just can't be executed.

When you campaign on hope and change and making a lot of promises the first few months becomes a major downfall.

Wow, don't let your viewpoint and politics cloud you or anything.

The immigrant promise is being kept in spirit, and is only a broken promise in the very strictest of terminology.

The numbers will be here, and fairly quickly when you look at how our neighbour to the north is dealing with this 'problem'. I don't think any of the voters care about a few extra months to get it right. Especially when the PC's options were allow little to none in. I consider it a promise kept. The only people that want to rake him over the coals on this, are the ones who want to make him look bad. Ohhh, it's taking a few extra months, he's a liar!

And as far as Saudi Arabia, yeah, it's against his politics, but I don't remember any promises on him being tough on Saudi Arabia or anything like that.

I probably missed one, but, I don't see the 'lots' you obviously see.

[Coach]

As a Liberal voter, I am extremely disappointed with this. This is exactly what they want from their economic warfare. Have a sack.

[karl262]

I find it hilarious if anyone thought the ugly side of government and politics would be any different at all because we now have a friendly talking, selfie taking handsome PM.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by karl262

I find it hilarious if anyone thought the ugly side of government and politics would be any different at all because we now have a friendly talking, selfie taking handsome PM.

I think most people are just happy there's a positive side now.

[Crumpy-Gunt]

At the end of the day, as long as the Saudis help keep the American dollar alive, albeit on life support..it doesn't matter to the majority of western nations what is happening in the KSA. If they wanted they could start shooting brand new born babies out of cannons and nobody would really care. Simply because it's not on the news and people aren't taught to be scared of the KSA or see the pain and suffering the people go through in that 'Kingdom'.

[Crumpy-Gunt]

Conversely, a man like Colonel Gaddafi, who the western nations supported basically since he came to power, who had his fair share of mishaps and wrong doings, but certainly wasn't jailing and beheading people for criticising the King, nor was he refusing women the right to drive and legally forcing them to basically be 99% covered, nor was he supporting terrorist groups like ISIS, etc.

Actually in Libya electricity was 100% paid for by the government for all citizens, free medical, made sure a home was basically a constitutional right, kept only super educated female military guards (uncovered and allowed to do anything a man can do), 100% free education, gave something like 50,000 USD to all newlyweds as it's known financial problems cause divorce. He made sure there was a state/national bank. He offered 5000 or so USD to all mothers of newlyborn children. Began a plan to literally irrigate the desert, successfully, providing food and water to many people basically living in barren, arid lands.

Obviously as I mentioned above, the man wasn't a perfect leader and things in Libya were far from perfect. So I'm not trying to paint him and his Libya as some sort of beacon of democratic leadership. But he was also a FAR better leader than you find in the KSA.

The problem was when Colonel Gaddafi came up with an idea, and held a conference of African countries to propagate his idea.

What was his idea? To stop trading his countries oil for petro dollars (US dollars) and demand gold as the only accepted payment for oil. A lot of nations were on board.

However, the USA looked at this and was enraged. The problem is the US dollar isn't just an American currency. In fact the majority of American money that switches hands in the world is outside the continental USA. This surely would have crashed the American dollar, or at the very least crippled it. To give some perspective, Libya has half the amount of gold that the U.K. Possesses, however they have 10x less people. So overnight in terms of their local currencies - Libya would be technically "richer" than the UK in their local currency of gold. Quite problematic for the west.

Another person did something quite similar. One Saddam Hussein, he purposed the vast oil reserves in Iraq would only be traded for Euros. Obviously since this would have the same effect on the US dollar they had to act, it would be catastrophic otherwise, especially if the trend caught on. Thus Iraq was invaded under the false pretence of al-Qaeda (which never existed in Iraq at that point in 2001), and weapons of mass destruction - which we know weren't in Iraq. In fact the WMD we were looking for in Iraq was sold to them by the USA in decades ago to be used on Iran. But the morally troubling thing here is the USA didn't give two craps when saddam was literally slaughtering thousands of Shia citizens in stadiums while people cheered on, but they were there in a second when he threatened the Petro dollar.

So the moral of the story is - if you don't mess with the US currency - and you are helping the US keep their currency afloat - you can do whatever you want, including refusing people basic rights, preventing women from driving, beheading protestors and those who slander the King, etc. However if you have any idea or plans that would jeopardise the American dollar, you will be destroyed, your nation will be destroyed, your people will be destroyed and the whole world will laugh at you

Then the USA will then look around at the mostly corrupt puppet leaders of the other nations, many of which the USA helped rise to power, and say something like;

Lessons learned? Good.

[afc wimbledon]

In the immortal words of Lydon B Johnson, 'he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch!'

[Thor]

Can't wait til the day comes where oil isn't the source of such power and wealth. The middle east will be such a different place and the west won't have to play nice with awful regimes like the Saudi's.