Harper takes a pass on UN blowhard opportunity

[Locutus]

Good for him.

via sda: Are We Still A Member Of This Thing?


Hmmmm.... Stephen Harper won't address the UN General Assembly when it gathers in New York this week, just as he didn't address it last year or the year before.


The Prime Minister will be in New York, but won’t make the trip to UN headquarters to join other government leaders at the podium. John Baird, the Foreign Affairs Minister, will get that honour, as he has for the past two years. Instead Harper will co-chair a session on health issues for women and children in developing countries, part of a Conservative initiative launched in 2010, and take part in a discussion on the economy at the Canadian-American Business Council.

New Democrats consider this an outrage. “It’s embarrassing that the Prime Minister — for the second year in a row — will be in New York during the opening ceremonies of the UN General Assembly, but apparently can’t be bothered to show up, stand up, and speak up on behalf of Canada,” intoned Paul Dewar, the NDP critic.

Mr. Dewar speaks before he thinks. Other than a few leaders — the U.S., China or Russia — General Assembly speeches draw little attention beyond the leader’s own delegation. But they’re very popular with international despots who enjoy the chance to harangue less repressive countries under the protection of the UN banner.


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Harper takes a pass on UN blowhard opportunity | National Post

 

[Goober]

Political pandering is what this is. Why not get up and let them have it.

 

[taxslave]

The only outrage is that our tax dollars are going to this useless group of parasites.

 

[damngrumpy]

It is the avenue to solve a host of other problems unofficially and the Prime
Minister is showing disrespect when he does not attend. Officially the UN
does not amount to much in my view however the unofficial meetings and
get togethers are of great value it is the route to which the world works and
only someone like Harper would not understand that.
Oh well we may not have to worry much longer Harper will not be around
much longer anyway.

 

[petros]

If he has trouble with speeches he could always borrow Obama's teleprompter.

 

[tay]

Stephen Harper gives cold shoulder to Ban Ki-Moon on Climate Change

Now that Harper has majority he has become full time salesman for oil companies, Tar Sands, Crude-oil pipeline and The People's Liberation Army..............





Nexen, the Chinese Communist Party's anchor in Athabasca, is urging Canadian National Railways to start shipping bitumen by rail car to Prince Rupert where it can then be loaded on supertankers for transport to the Peoples' Liberation Army and other users.

Apparently China is getting impatient with Comrade Steve's inability to make headway on the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat and so they've taken matters in their own hands. For some strange reason, opponents of the Northern Gateway aren't mollified by the proposal to ship bitumen across B.C. by rail. This will give you some idea why:







Much of northern British Columbia is mountainous. We don't build rail lines over mountains but around them, through the valleys. Really scenic stuff. Something else runs through those valleys - rivers. You can blame that on gravity. That's the same gravity that would send a bitumen spill in the same direction, downhill, right into those rivers as they wend their way inexorably to the sea or, as the Harper government calls it, "tidewater."

Now a little bit of bitumen goes a long way. Just ask the people of Kalamazoo, Michigan. The river in the picture isn't like the Kalamazoo River. In Michigan, spill workers were dealing with a slow moving, soft-bottom, shallow river surrounded by open, level ground with easy road access. As the photo above reveals we have very fast moving, very rocky bottom rivers, that are extremely hard to access and may not have a road anywhere nearby. What the photo doesn't reveal is that these rivers are where our salmon come from. They feed the spawning beds.

In oil spill recovery, rapid containment is the name of the game. How in hell do you contain a bitumen catastrophe in a raging, mountain river in the wilderness of northern B.C. at all much less rapidly?

The totalitarian government's attitude (China, not Ottawa) seems to be just get the stuff to a northern port and our supertankers will take it from there. We're still back to the same supertanker threat as the Kitimat proposal but that's obviously no problem for the Beijing Politburo.

And so, Canadian National, should they decide to accept Beijing's overtures, is as much a threat to British Columbia as Enbridge. Just another fight.

 

[Goober]

The only outrage is that our tax dollars are going to this useless group of parasites.

And Harper has had numerous opportunities to address this at the UN.

Stupid move in my opinion.

 

[B00Mer]

Go Harper!!! I think we make him the King of Canada..

 

[tay]

Go Harper!!! I think we make him the King of Canada..

He already thinks he is and that's the problem.



Of course he may wish to be called Supreme Leader...........

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Looking down his nose at the rest of the world is a Harper value, not a Canadian one. I'm really looking forward to the day when he's not misrepresenting us to the rest of the world.

 

[BruSan]

Looking down his nose at the rest of the world is a Harper value, not a Canadian one. I'm really looking forward to the day when he's not misrepresenting us to the rest of the world.

Don't hold your breath waiting! I prefer my Prime Ministers to have some form of moral imperatives and neither Mulchair or Trudeau meet that requirement but I'd bet my last dollar they'd jump at the chance to play the organ grinder's monkey to that august body of irrelevant members.

I for one agree with him taking a pass on speaking before the assembly as it has become nothing more than an opportunity for desposts to pass gas. Libya dictator Ghaddafi being one notable example, with Iran's Admanidajad being another.

The U.N. original charter was created with Canada being one of the founders and look what it's turned into in contrast to the early founding principles. Our contributions over the years List of Canadian peacekeeping missions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to places lke the Suez are all but forgotten when the most bellicose and belligerant of nations have permanent seats on the security council with veto votes.

What's the damn point of even throwing money down that chit hole when every single vote to address some nefarious deed currently happening gets stymied by one or the other of the permanent members with vetos?

Veto votes should be outlawed or ALL other members should abstain from attending in protest.

I'd personally prefer Canada to simply hand in it's membership card and say "don't call us, we've gone fishing. Let us know when you resume some form of relevancy."

 

[Colpy]

Stephen Harper gives cold shoulder to Ban Ki-Moon on Climate Change

Now that Harper has majority he has become full time salesman for oil companies, Tar Sands, Crude-oil pipeline and The People's Liberation Army..............





Nexen, the Chinese Communist Party's anchor in Athabasca, is urging Canadian National Railways to start shipping bitumen by rail car to Prince Rupert where it can then be loaded on supertankers for transport to the Peoples' Liberation Army and other users.

Apparently China is getting impatient with Comrade Steve's inability to make headway on the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat and so they've taken matters in their own hands. For some strange reason, opponents of the Northern Gateway aren't mollified by the proposal to ship bitumen across B.C. by rail. This will give you some idea why:







Much of northern British Columbia is mountainous. We don't build rail lines over mountains but around them, through the valleys. Really scenic stuff. Something else runs through those valleys - rivers. You can blame that on gravity. That's the same gravity that would send a bitumen spill in the same direction, downhill, right into those rivers as they wend their way inexorably to the sea or, as the Harper government calls it, "tidewater."

Now a little bit of bitumen goes a long way. Just ask the people of Kalamazoo, Michigan. The river in the picture isn't like the Kalamazoo River. In Michigan, spill workers were dealing with a slow moving, soft-bottom, shallow river surrounded by open, level ground with easy road access. As the photo above reveals we have very fast moving, very rocky bottom rivers, that are extremely hard to access and may not have a road anywhere nearby. What the photo doesn't reveal is that these rivers are where our salmon come from. They feed the spawning beds.

In oil spill recovery, rapid containment is the name of the game. How in hell do you contain a bitumen catastrophe in a raging, mountain river in the wilderness of northern B.C. at all much less rapidly?

The totalitarian government's attitude (China, not Ottawa) seems to be just get the stuff to a northern port and our supertankers will take it from there. We're still back to the same supertanker threat as the Kitimat proposal but that's obviously no problem for the Beijing Politburo.

And so, Canadian National, should they decide to accept Beijing's overtures, is as much a threat to British Columbia as Enbridge. Just another fight.

So I guess I can quote you on your approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline??

The oil will move. By rail or pipe.........take your pick.

Oh....and there has been NO warming of the earth in 15 years....none.

Al Gore and David Suzuki are con men made rich by the gullible.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Don't hold your breath waiting! I prefer my Prime Ministers to have some form of moral imperatives and neither Mulchair or Trudeau meet that requirement but I'd bet my last dollar they'd jump at the chance to play the organ grinder's monkey to that august body of irrelevant members.

I for one agree with him taking a pass on speaking before the assembly as it has become nothing more than an opportunity for desposts to pass gas. Libya dictator Ghaddafi being one notable example, with Iran's Admanidajad being another.

The U.N. original charter was created with Canada being one of the founders and look what it's turned into in contrast to the early founding principles. Our contributions over the years List of Canadian peacekeeping missions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia to places lke the Suez are all but forgotten when the most bellicose and belligerant of nations have permanent seats on the security council with veto votes.

What's the damn point of even throwing money down that chit hole when every single vote to address some nefarious deed currently happening gets stymied by one or the other of the permanent members with vetos?

Veto votes should be outlawed or ALL other members should abstain from attending in protest.

I'd personally prefer Canada to simply hand in it's membership card and say "don't call us, we've gone fishing. Let us know when you resume some form of relevancy."

To heck with that noise, if Harper is so great then let him stand up in front of the world and prove it instead of sniping at people he holds in contempt from the margins.

He's taking the same kind of course the Nazis and Imperial Japanese did in the years right before WW II, they also thought they were so superior to the rest of the world and tried to impose that insanity on it. The UN like everything is imperfect, just because Harper has deluded himself into thinking he's reached some plateau of christlike perfection doesn't mean we should abandon our responsibilities.