STIRLING: Canada voted to put Iran on a UN Human Rights Committee — why?

Many Canadians were alarmed to hear that Canada had voted at the UN to support Iran for a position on a human rights committee. The Iranian regime is known to throw women into jail, punish them with whippings, and rape them for not wearing a hijab in public or for singing. It conducts public hangings of dissidents and gays. Approximately 30,000 peaceful demonstrators were gunned down in the streets in Iran in early January as dissidents demanded secular reforms over rigid, Islamic fundamentalist rule. As reported by UNWatch on April 10, “On Wednesday, the UN’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council nominated the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN’s Committee for Program and Coordination, which meets next month to shape policy on women's rights, human rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention.” Canada was one of the many G20 countries who voted in support of Iran, “in the election of serial abusers of human rights to key UN bodies that oversee human rights.” Is this what Prime Minister Carney means by “Values”?Why would any Western democracies support Iran, when they are well aware of its state-sponsorship of terrorism? Indeed, in Canada, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of the Iranian regime and its clandestine IRGC Quds Force are both listed as terrorist entities by Public Safety Canada.Perhaps our new strategic partnership with China is at play. Perhaps this March 16 primer from the US-China Economic and Security Commission will give us a clue: “Last year the Commission identified the relationship between China and Iran as part of an informal 'Axis of Autocracy.' China helps Iran evade US sanctions and maintain its destabilizing activities in the Middle East. Iran supplies China with relatively low-cost oil and is a partner in China’s efforts to undermine the US-led global order, including through alternative multilateral organizations such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).”And, Iran wanted nuclear weapons to destroy Israel, the Little Satan, and “Death to the US,” the Great Satan. We now know they already had missiles with a range to reach Europe, too..Canadians are often geopolitically naïve. I was at a conference recently where many people were quite energy savvy, but when I asked questions about the influence or economic or oil-dominance threat of “BRICS” nations, many said they had never heard of it.BRICS originated as a formal economic cooperation bloc in about 2009, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and, in a later addition, South Africa. Dozens of other countries have joined or applied for entry. A quick look at the Wikipedia map of the BRICS will give you an idea of why the USA wants to build Fortress North America. Economic cooperation can be industrial or turned into a military alliance, and the economy can always be weaponized.In 2020, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Department of National Defence (DND) sponsored a workshop, the contents now unclassified, titled “Hostile Activities by State Actors: Hybrid Methods in the Grey Zone.” The report highlights China’s clear goal of global dominance and Russia’s preference for a multi-polar world. I felt in shock as I read it. I recognized many of the hybrid, grey zone methods described as now being part of present Canadian societal activity.Only passing mention is made of China’s 2015 publicly stated plan: “Made-in-China-2025” wherein China planned to displace all other global competitors in the area of hi-tech manufacturing, including “electric cars and other new energy vehicles, next-generation information technology (IT) and telecommunications, and advanced robotics and artificial intelligence.” Oh, and high-speed rail.Indeed, now it is 2026, and we see that once-industrialized competitor nations, the UK and those in Europe, particularly Germany, are deindustrialized. This is thanks to blindly adopted net zero policies. Net zero hands China the competitive edge in manufacturing..Meantime, China burns absurd amounts of coal; it produces and consumes almost as much as the rest of the world combined. Since the violent Iran-sponsored Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, Israel, once the hi-tech darling of the world, the “Start-up Nation” of innovation, has been vilified and viciously denigrated in the media and continually, physically attacked from seven sides for three years by Iran and its state-sponsored terror groups. Hard to destroy that hi-tech competitor, but Iran is still trying; helping out its friend China in its quest for world dominance?Along with the BRICS collaboration comes the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), or One Belt, One Road (OBOR), as it is also known. Many Western countries engaged with this project; many banks are financiers of third parties engaged in the project. It is an ambitious plan set out by China to build a global “Silk Road” — of course, part of that would be the Polar Silk Road. In 2023, Rob Huebert, associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary, wrote that "China is on a relentless mission to control Canada’s Arctic waters.” As reported in the CSIS/DND report, “Hostile Activities by State Actors,” Canada has long been a target of China’s United Front influence campaign.Canada is rich in the critical minerals that China needs to become the hi-tech manufacturer of the world. Guillaume Pitron discusses the geopolitics in his 2020 book “The Rare Metals War.” We’re in this war, but asleep.At the Liberal Party Convention this weekend, many Canadians were surprised to hear Mrs. Diana Fox-Carney claiming that people have been thanking her and her husband Prime Minister Mark Carney, on the streets, and she claimed that “Canada is being defined as the country that would lead and shape a New World Order.” Curiously, she, her children, and her husband, who publicly claims “We can’t depend on America,” all live in the land of The Great Satan.Fox Carney is a part of the Eurasia Group consulting firm, which is fascinated with what they believe will be an electro-tech future. Canada’s largest company, and one of the largest banks in the world, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), works with Eurasia. Their climate/decarbonization “Top Risks 2026” angle is that the future will be electro-tech, like that of China, hoping that Canada won’t be “pivoting back towards fossil fuel exports and infrastructure in search of economic growth and energy peace with Alberta and Saskatchewan.”Deceivers! China’s electro-tech “clean” climate tech was created from scads of coal, natural gas, and oil.However, the Electro-tech Empire seems to have been stymied. US-Israeli actions against Iran have effectively cut off both the supply of dual-use (civilian/military) shipments to Iran from China and vital cheap oil supplies from Iran to China. Advanced hi-tech military equipment from China is reported to have failed in both Venezuela and Iran, a blow to China’s hi-tech reputation. Planning ahead, China is said to have several months of oil reserves on stand-by. But for new supply, world prices must now be paid in US dollars — reportedly a $6 to $10 dollar per barrel differential over that from Iran. Even so, normal shipping volumes will not return for months..Can we ask the question if some Western nations have sided with Iran at the UN because they have an interest in cheap manufactured goods from China? France, for instance, enjoys the benefits of a railway from Wuhan, China to Lyon, France. Are Western pension funds or banks compromised by investments in firms associated with the Chinese Belt and Road, or its “Made-in-China-2025” enterprises, including electric vehicles and high-speed rail? Is Canada about to be swallowed up in a massive debt-for-resources trap with China, as the Prime Minister promises that we will see construction of “Build Big” projects at rates not seen in generations? Are China’s advances truly exceptional? Ken Cao critiques “Deep Seek AI” and says “No.” Does Canada’s strategic deal with China require us to toe the line on Iran at the UN or in our streets?Canada is championing two nations which violate human rights in brutal ways, while Liberal party loyalists claim that we are models of diversity and inclusion, “unity without uniformity,” and that we are opening doors all over the world, “but we are taking our values with us.”Both of the countries we are championing want to dominate the world with their theologies — one Islamic fundamentalist and the other one “…a Leninist Technocracy with Grand Opera Characteristics — practical until it collapses into the preposterous” as Dan Wang writes in “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.”A broken neck and a crippling New World Order are not what we want.

STIRLING: Canada voted to put Iran on a UN Human Rights Committee — why?

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