2018 is turning out to be the Year of the Cynic, where truthfulness, honour and dignity of purpose are abandoned on the world stage, and are now supplanted by pugnacious arrogance, international selfishness, purposeful deception and political stupidity.
These are not new happenings of course. The centre of hope for mankind following the Second World War was supposed to be the United Nations and, most prominently, the Security Council. At the core was the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Published in over 500 languages, the first of the 30 articles is the most important – “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in the spirit of brotherhood”. The drafters were from 10 countries – Lebanon, U.S.S.R., China, France, United Kingdom, Australia, Chile, U.S.A. (Eleanor Roosevelt) and John P. Humphrey of Canada.
How far we have come. Canada was a positive role model on that world stage. Then we steadily declined, troughing out in 2009 when Prime Minister Stephen Harper bypassed a speaking engagement to the UN General Assembly to open a Tim Hortons coffee outlet in Oakville. The gathering of world leaders at that meeting was discussing nuclear proliferation, global peace and climate change.
The UN Security Council has never ‘secured’ anything, quite the reverse – ask Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire. The Middle East has become an inferno of cruelty not seen since Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade in 1095. China is returning to the totalitarian years of Chairman Mao Zedong. Xi Jinping is now the permanent General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People’s Republic of China and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. He has embarked on militarily colonizing the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii. Vladimir Putin is successfully bullying Europe, the U.S.A. and surreptitiously supporting North Korea. His active willingness to do to Syria what NATO did to Libya will consolidate a major Russian naval base in the Mediterranean Sea. Add this to Ukraine and Moscow political thuggery and he has become a model reincarnation of Joseph Stalin. And what of the United States of America? The Presidency, and Congress are on the brink of self-destruction. The Supreme Court and the fourth estate have become hopelessly politically partisan. The only glimmer of hope for recovery of national sanity is a fragile army of determined high school students taking on the National Rifle Association.
As far as Canada goes, Prime Minister Trudeau’s political hubris is driving him to get a seat on the UN Security Council. This will require bribing UN diplomats and sending Canadian troops on another Rwanda type exercise in Mali. His proclamation that Canadian independent business people and professionals are crooks and tax evaders is demeaning. His visit to India embarrassed us all indelibly. These all undermine his high vision to bring full rights and equal privileges of Canadian citizenship to women and our Indigenous people.
And then there is a 13-year-old boy in Uganda wearing a hockey shirt and a sign saying “Humboldt Strong Sending Love from Uganda.”
Makes one think again.
Alan Murdock is a local pediatrician.
