Saudi-funded, pro-Gaddafi, Nazi-loving, "Human Rights Watch" condemns Canada's Foreign Minister Baird

The so-called "Human Rights Watch" is a group that gets money from a similar icon of "Human Rights," Saudi Arabia.

One of their top officials, who happens to be anti-Israel, just by coincidence I'm sure, is a Nazi aficionado.

And best of all, they were boosters of that other "Human Rights" paradise, Libya's Gaddafi regime.

But they do hate the pro-western, liberal democracy of Israel, and they are now condemning Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.

And The Globe and Mail, as our "unbiased" Canadian mainstream media so often does, credulously promoted that without an iota of context or research.

(Update) PLUS,  as an indication of where The Globe and Mail is these days, see "Omar Khadr is a good kid"

h/t Blazing Cat Fur

Nut-job UCLA professor wants people with "Jewish-sounding names" to lobby Congress to accept Obama's capitulation to Iran

...Pressed in a follow-up email to explain his reliance on non-Jewish people who may have a “Jewish sounding name,” Kleiman again lashed out at Adelson, who donates to many pro-Israel causes.

“Because – given the false impression cultivated by Adelson’s money – an email from someone named Shapiro has a surprise factor not generated by the same email from someone named O’Hara,” wrote Kleiman, who also blogs for “The Reality-Based Community.”

When asked by the Free Beacon to provide some examples of “Jewish sounding” names, Kleiman recommended that a reporter “go play in traffic.”

“OK, I’ve played your silly game long enough,” he wrote. “Please take your concern trolling with you and go play in traffic.”

It remains unclear if Kleiman is Jewish or just has a “Jewish sounding name.”

Michael Den Tandt: On foreign policy, Tories closer to Main Street than critics suggest

Stephen Harper and his Conservative government have, it is a given, laid waste to Canada’s formerly sterling international reputation.

We know this because various and sundry former diplomats, led by the venerable Paul Heinbecker, have been telling us so for years. They’re backstopped in this by a cohort of thoughtful, stern-minded academics, most recently the University of Ottawa’s Peter Jones writing in Thursday’s Globe and Mail, saying more or less the same thing: Harper and foreign minister John Baird are blinkered Visigoths, stomping about the world stage with their good-versus-evil, black-versus-white world view, shattering the fine china of international diplomacy as they go.

This portrait is eagerly embraced by the opposition parties, of course, because it helps create ideological distance between them and the government — a logical necessity if change (beyond putting new behinds in old seats) is ever to be embraced.

But then along comes something like the New York and Copenhagen-based Reputation Institute’s list of the world’s 50 “most reputable” countries — an online survey of 27,000 respondents from across the G8 — to give that thesis a hard shake. The G8 includes the United States, the U.K., France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Russia. If this sampling, published last summer in Forbes Magazine, is to be believed, Canada’s international reputation is in fine health. Indeed, we’ve topped the ‘global reputation’ survey for the past three years.

More at The Vancouver Sun

Two wasteful Canadian institutions bite the dust

Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the part that allowed for kangaroo court Human Rights Commissions to fine and censor Internet and phone messages based on the "likelihood to cause hate" has finally been voted out of existence by Parliament. There will be a one year phasing out period.

And in other good news, the wasteful Canadian International Development Agency, which was a trough for lunatic, anti-Western NGOs in Canada to feed from, has been eliminated and its functions merged into the new Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development.

Despite the warnings of fear mongers, Hate Speech will remain illegal in Canada, but prosecutions will have to meet the standards of courts of law, not the opinions of 3rd rate patronage appointments without law degrees.

Canada will also continue to provide foreign Aid, but in a more sensible, cost effective way.

Selling "Stop Harper" T-shirts and allied with anti-Semites, Alternatives International still gets Canadian charitable status and tax dollars

As this blog has already noted, Alternatives International is a fanatical, Marxist influenced organization that gets over a million dollars a year from Canadian taxpayers. Among its "allies" are the anti-Semitic Canadian Arab Federation, the Young Communist League of Cuba, and the violent, anti-capitalist group, Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. It was the conduit of funds for the Sea Hitler boat that tried to break Israel's blockade to prevent arm smuggling to Gaza.

The organization sells "Stop Harper" T Shirts. And it is a registered charity.

Hopefully, now that the Canadian International Development Agency is being brought under the aegis of the Department of Foreign Affairs, someone in government will take notice of what that despicable organization is doing and cut off its funding and charitable status.

The sooner the better.

Think Again: The Republican Party

The Republicans are facing some tough questions following their election defeat in November.

Former Presidential Candidate and current US Senator John McCain thinks this article from Foreign Policy Magazine addressing some of those questions should be required reading for Republican leaders.

Must-read for every Republican leader @foreignpolicy: "The future of the GOP - after the debacle" foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/… @dpletka
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) January 8, 2013

Live Debate Coverage - Obama vs Romney Foreign Policy Debate

The debate begins at 9 PM Eastern time

Live coverage can be seen here

In case you doubted Niall Ferguson knows what he's talking about

This video is well worth watching. It was recorded about a year and a half ago just after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. In it British historian and author Niall Ferguson precisely predicted the events that have now unfolded with the recent election of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate for Eqypt's presidency.

What is also worth noting are his criticisms of US President Obama's dismal failure to have a handle on foreign policy. That applies now as much as it did when he made these remarks.

Survey shows that Canadians support the government on its mideast policies

A new survey indicates that most Canadians think the government is on he right course with its policies involving Israel and the Palestinians (that's if you include the 3% who think Mr. Harper is too pro-Palestinian.)

But the real results of the survey should come as no surprise to people who follow the issue: Most Canadians just don't care all that much about the issue.

NATO's Secretary-General on the lessons of Libya

The mission in Libya has revealed three important truths about military intervention today. First, to those who claimed that Afghanistan was to be NATO's last out-of-area mission, it has shown that unpredictability is the very essence of security. Second, it has proved that in addition to frontline capabilities, such as fighter-bombers and warships, so-called enablers, such as surveillance and refueling aircraft, as well as drones, are critical parts of any modern operation. And third, it has revealed that NATO allies do not lack military capabilities. Any shortfalls have been primarily due to political, rather than military, constraints. In other words, Libya is a reminder of how important it is for NATO to be ready, capable, and willing to act.

More at Foreign Affairs

Elliott Abrams on the folly of Obama's Israeli settlement freeze demand

This single-minded focus on a construction freeze was clearly a mistake in the sense that it failed: the Israeli government did not agree to a freeze in East Jerusalem. Nor could any earlier Israeli governments have accepted such a demand, even if they, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had been open to partial or time-limited freezes in the West Bank. John Kerry (D-Mass.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed the situation well when he said in April 2011, "I was opposed to the prolonged effort on the settlements in a public way because I never thought it would work and, in fact, we have wasted a year and a half on something that for a number of reasons was not achievable." What is more, the Obama administration's demand had the effect of cornering Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who could not ask for less than Washington; if the U.S. president thought a total freeze was a prerequisite to negotiations, Abbas would have to think so, too. As a weary Abbas told Newsweek in April, the Obama administration led him up a tree and then "removed the ladder."


Read all of this very interesting analysis in Foreign Affairs Magazine