17 December 2009

Lets just cut off foreign aid entirely, huh?

The next time the so-called "loyal Opposition" starts screaming about Stephen Harper supporting the corrupt Karzai administration... you might wanna remind them that the word corrupt applies to pretty much the rest of the third world.
-- ISLAMABAD -- Pakistan's top court struck down a 2007 decree protecting President Asif Ali Zardari and other senior officials from past graft charges, in a ruling that could lead to a challenge to the legitimacy of his election.
And we're not just talking a couple of shady, under the table transactions here. President Zardari, the husband of the late Benazir Bhutto, was known in Pakistan as "Mr Ten Percent"... the amount of vig he reputedly skimmed off every deal he was ever involved in.

So what's the deal here? Well... it's a brazen "get out of jail free" doddle that would have made Jimmy Hoffa blush.
The amnesty decree, known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance, was introduced in October 2007 by then-President Pervez Musharraf as a part of a deal -- brokered by the U.S. and Britain -- which allowed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to return from exile for elections.

The decree released thousands of politicians and bureaucrats from charges of graft and other offenses.
And truthfully, worldwide... Pakistan isn't even on the top ten offenders list. And, to its credit, the Pakistani court system has actually risen up struck down this egregiously self-serving law.

The fact is, if Canada pulled back financial aid from every country that was riddled with graft, corruption & human rights abuses... we'd be well on our way to reducing our own national debt.

That, of course, is not how we operate. We, as Canadians, do what we can to effect positive change and swallow back the bile... knowing that the governments of most, if not all of these countries use most, if not all of our aid money to line their own pockets. In Afghanistan, we've gone further... committing the lives of our brave soldiers... to try turn a savage medieval theocracy into a semblance of a functional democratic state.

It's interesting though, how Iffy and Jacko are simply all about the corruption in Afghanistan... and strangely silent about the rest of the third world welfare recipients.

Fun & games, huh?

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RELATED: With friends like Pakistan...
-- ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Parts of the Pakistani military and intelligence services are mounting what American officials here describe as a campaign to harass American diplomats, fraying relations at a critical moment when the Obama administration is demanding more help to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
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