In 1966 Senator Robert Kennedy visited South Africa at the invitation of the then National Union of South African Students (NUSAS.) When Senator Kennedy was criticized in the government- controlled media for daring to comment on South Africa's problems when he had only been in the country a short time, Alan Paton responded with a parable where he compared South Africa to "a room full of people with all the doors and windows closed, and all the people smoking and drinking and talking. And a stranger from outside opens the door and exclaims- Phew What a fug in here ! And they shout at him: How do you know ? You only just came in." (In: Peter Alexander. Alan Paton: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 343.) - quoted in http://www.rfksafilm.org/html/back.php
Of course, the apartheid regime in South Africa (and their lackey media supporters) was not the first government in the world to get prickly in response to criticism from *outsiders*, nor the only one. Hitler didn't like it either. George Bush hardly welcomed outside criticism and more recently one thinks immediately of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Gaddafi in Libya, and the governments of China, Cuba, North Korea, Egypt, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.
Sadly, the present Canadian Government in the persons of Immigration Minister Jason (the UN is out of line) Kenney and Health Minister Leona (He's an ill-informed and patronizing academic) Aglukkaq has shown itself to be just as prickly toward the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter who recently blasted Canada for tolerating inequality and lack of access to nutritious diets among its poor and First Nation citizens.
Olivier De Schutter, whose damning report is based on an 11-day visit to Canada, says the country's rate of food insecurity is "unacceptable" and called on the federal government to adopt a national right-to-food strategy.
"What I've seen in Canada is a system that presents barriers for the poor to access nutritious diets and that tolerates increased inequalities between rich and poor, and aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples," De Schutter told reporters in Ottawa Wednesday.
See CTV News:: http://m.ctv.ca/winnipeg/20120516/UN-Right-to-Food-monitor-De-Schutter-120516.html
The funny thing about truth is that it stands on its own through the shifting sands of time even though some powerful people think it can be decreed or established (or not) by majority vote. The judgement of history has never been kind to such as these.
I cannot help thinking that De Schutter is about as ill-informed about the subject of his speciality as was Bobby Kennedy or as the scientists whose jobs have been cut by a government finding its ideology at odds with the evidence from their research.
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