human rights aren't just for the "good guys"...

This is upsetting. I wish I understood how, nearly a decade into the 21st century, the leader of our nation doesn't grasp that human rights are not something we can choose to discriminately bestow on certain groups at the expense of others, but are in fact UNIVERSAL. This is one case where "you're either with us or against us" can never apply.

Harper's "below-the-belt" tactics in the Commons I'm used to. His staggering indifference towards universal human rights, a pillar of global political stability and the last best hope of resolving many of the festering post-invasion messes left by the Americans, I'm not willing to concede as allowable in any way shape or form.

The press will likely contain this to a 'spat' between the PM and Dion, and largely under-report on the implications this episode will have on Canada's standing as international peace keeper and above-the-board diplomatic agent. We are fast losing all credibility on the world stage: Kyoto is a joke; bilateral trade agreements with the US are a mess; our positive/neutral approach to the middle-east is over; and now we are rolling back one of our greatest achievements - the concept of universal human rights. I'm not sure it can get much worse than this.

Sadly there is almost nothing to be done: we are living through a very dark political moment, not just in Canada but across the globe.

Economists still happily predict, after well over a century of doing so, that one of these days market forces will re-balance the systemic and rampant inequality that plagues the planet. Meanwhile politicians seem to have embraced pure demagoguery. The new politics is comprised of transparently false 'spin' and fanned by the cynical manipulation of a reactionary citizenry that seems satisfied with action of ANY kind (no matter how inappropriate) at the expense of well-conceived and considered approaches to major societal and global problems.

And so it goes...