{"id":42939,"date":"2019-01-18T10:09:12","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T15:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42939"},"modified":"2019-01-18T10:09:12","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T15:09:12","slug":"the-death-penalty-for-canadas-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42939","title":{"rendered":"The Death Penalty for Canada\u2019s Foreign Policy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Death Penalty for Canada\u2019s Foreign Policy?<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has joined with the chorus of Western countries supporting Canada\u2019s protestations against the \u201carbitrary,\u201d and \u201cpolitically motivated\u201d death sentence imposed by a Chinese court on Canadian drug smuggler Robert Schellenberg.<\/p>\n

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland praised Pompeo\u2019s \u201crecognition of the principle that we are speaking about.\u201d She argues that the application of the death sentence to a Canadian national in this case is \u201cinhumane\u201d, and represents a, \u201cway of behaving which is a threat to all countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s ambassador to the U.S.,\u00a0David MacNaughton, echoed Freeland\u2019s cry of victory for having won US support. \u201cI hope they continue to back Canada in this particular dispute,\u201d MacNaughton said.<\/p>\n

Yet, isn\u2019t it strange that Canada would call on support from the United States in its appeal for clemency in the Shellenberg case? The United States has executed 48 persons in the past 2 years, and drug offences are a capital crime under federal law, and in the states of Florida and Missouri. In fact, President Trump has recently called for more use of the death penalty to punish drug trafficking:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy department of Justice will be seeking much tougher penalties for the big pushers, and that penalty is going to be the death penalty.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No wonder the Chinese government has so easily dismissed Canadian objections as\u201cstaging the play of a thief crying\u00a0\u201cstop the thief!\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadian self-righteousness in the current dispute with China is also troublesome given its starting point with a notoriously corrupt extradition process, according to which Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was arrested at the request of the U.S.<\/p>\n

The CBC reported in May 2018 that legal challenges face the specialized division of the Canadian Department of Justice responsible for extradition\u00a0\u2013 known as the International Assistance Group (IAG).<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Death Penalty for Canada\u2019s Foreign Policy? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has joined with the chorus of Western countries supporting Canada\u2019s protestations against the \u201carbitrary,\u201d and \u201cpolitically motivated\u201d death sentence imposed by a Chinese court on Canadian drug smuggler Robert Schellenberg. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland praised Pompeo\u2019s \u201crecognition of the principle that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[103,3544,130,20561,5493,24030,326,15128,24029,827],"class_list":["post-42939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-canada","tag-cbc","tag-china","tag-chrystia-freeland","tag-counterpunch","tag-david-macnaughton","tag-foreign-policy","tag-mike-pompeo","tag-paul-bentley","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42940,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42939\/revisions\/42940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}