The sweet sound of the familiar wafts out of the new Obama administration.  Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, in her recent trip to China states that human rights must not get in the way of dealing with the economic crisis.  Although President Obama will be closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, he has decided to continue to support the policy of extraordinary rendition which is the practice of having others do your torture for you.  I have more respect for the torturer than the sanctimonious hypocrite. 

But I guess change and a new approach don’t last as long as they used to.  A nation wept with joy and expectation as the first Black man was inaugurated as president of the United States, a country with a horrific history of civil and human  rights abuses.  The hope and the promise was that this would be a new dawning of the American dream; that all humans would be treated equally and with respect and dignity.  How could it be otherwise?  How could a Black man in the United States turn his back on civil and human rights?  How could he compare himself to Abraham Lincoln and use slavery as a backdrop for the significance of his presidency while blindly ignoring slavery in those countries he interacts with?  It seems absurd but few are questioning him on it.  Those who try are pushed to the side by the ‘mainstream Left’ who are gushing like schoolgirls in the glow of the new messiah. 

The masses that enjoy the opulence and relative ease of our society have no stomach for a debate on human rights.  I guess the condition is that rights are good as long as they don’t affect our lifestyle.  For years the United States and its industrialized friends have chided China for its human rights record at Hollywood fundraising events or at galas with other progressive groups while conducting business as usual in the corridors of power.  It is a metaphor for our time.  The ultimate Potemkin Village.  While we swim in the filth of reality we see only the crystal waters of our self-induced mirage.  So who can we really blame, the politicians that encourage our delusion or ourselves for knowingly embracing it?  What is the fear?  Could it be that we know that our society is as cold and uncaring towards us, its own members, as it is toward those who suffer the indignity every day of not being considered fully human? 

I wonder.

Now maybe I am warped, okay I am, but still there seems to be an irony here.  Here is probably the most recognizable symbol of Canada, the country known around the world for peacekeeping, human rights and all that other touchy feely stuff, and it is being made in China.  It was bad enough when Disney owned the copyright to mountie paraphenalia (actually I don’t know whether they still do or not).   But China internationally stands for everything Canada is supposed to be against.  At least with Disney there was only the problem of our country being mistaken for a cartoon.  Come to think of it we do kind of have a mickey mouse prime minister at the moment. 

China uses slave labour.  China violates the right of self determination for the Tibetan people (of course many English Canadians would gladly violate that same right for French Canada if they try to leave).  China practices religious intolerance.  China has some of the worst pollution in the world.  Now China has been trying to kill our children by putting plastic in milk and lead in plastic.  

Question:  Why are we still buying anything from China at all? 

Answer:  Greed, Capitalism and all those other related things that we really stand for.  We are told that if we engage China their human rights and environmental records will improve.  That is why we awarded them the 2008 Olympics.  Remember they promised that they would clean up their record by the time of the games.  Oh yeah they cleaned up all right.  They cleaned up the streets by arresting anyone who might criticize the government or challenge the veracity of their public statements.  They cleaned up by arresting foreign journalists who dared to photograph anything not pre-approved by the Beijing government.  Environmentally they ordered wealthy government apparatcheks to refrain from driving for a few weeks until the games were over. 

Message to Western governments:  Engagement doesn’t work!  The Chinese are laughing at you.

But I guess before we remove the speck from China’s eye, we should remove the beam from our own.  This year has seen a plethora of food contamination problems in Canada and when was the last time you felt really safe driving a North American car.  And when it comes to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, what do you want to bet they bus the homeless and street people to Alberta.  Except for the prostitutes of course.  We wouldn’t want all those foreign dignitaries to have nothing to do at night.