Editor:
According to the Northern View editorial staff, we should be overjoyed that “our” container port, a Dutch-owned facility, has recently been sold at enormous profit to DP Industries which is owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) royal family, presumably with money they graciously received from us by selling us oil at two-and-a-half times its value for the last 20 years.
The UAE, according to Wikipedia and other readily accessible websites, is a country that practices Sharia Law: it embraces the stoning of women to death for adultery, the lash for misdemeanors; torture and mysterious disappearance is common. With a tribal membership of just 1.9 million people considered citizens, all other persons living off the spoils (within the UAE about 9 million persons) are considered expatriates of some country or another and have no rights and can be made to disappear or tortured without cause at any time. Rule of Law is nonexistent.
The United Arab Emirates is a tribal autocracy where the wealth and conspicuous consumption of clan members is the envy of Royalty worldwide and it sits on the fourth largest oil reserves in the world.
To further show our appreciation for the shellacking Canadians took on Arab oil for the last two decades, the current government is ramping up the spending of billions of our tax dollars to escalate a war on behalf of powerful Arab families against destitute desert tribes, a war where no vital Canadian interests are threatened and one where we have next to no say.
Rather than trying to play power politics in the Middle East spending billions on wars that cannot be won and that have gone on for centuries, I believe the current government should invest in our country, as the Arabs have!
Additionally, it would be refreshing if the Northern View would present a balanced and informed picture of events that affect our area.
Peter Christensen, Prince Rupert
