From 1994 until 2009, I traveled regularly to Peru and for seven of those years essentially lived in its capital city, Lima. In his entertaining book Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend, Patrick Symmes provides a description of Lima circa 1996 and dubbed it “Scorch”. It certainly matched my 1994 experience. During 25 years of anarchy, those Peruvians who could, shipped their kids and cash overseas and allowed their homes to become covered in graffiti. The municipal governments stopped maintaining parks and there was an explosion in the rat community in every empty lot in the city. Tourism was almost nonexistent, and it was difficult to walk in central Lima due to the flea market nature of the wares laid out on the sidewalks and being hocked by the millions of impoverished citizens. Most were refugees from terrorist violence in the mountains who now lived in shanty towns without water or electricity and with reed walled homes. During my time in Lima, the terrorists were defeated, the children and cash returned, the houses were painted to remove the graffiti, the parks were planted with grass and flowers, and the reed huts became fully serviced brick and concrete homes. The city blossomed. By 2009 Peru moved so many people out of the ranks of extreme poverty that it was no longer a primary target for foreign aid. I witnessed a remarkable transformation of a country, its culture and its economy.I visited Lima again in January 2022 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic slippage was noticeable. Graffiti was once more on houses; street poverty was much more prevalent, and storefronts were shuttered. I was told that extreme poverty was once again on the rise.This week, our Prime Minister is proudly carrying the Canadian flag at the United Nations. World leaders are meeting to review progress towards the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. I have no doubt that there will be high fives and congratulations all around. Our boy wonder has this to say about his visit,“At this year’s United Nations General Assembly and at the Summit of the Future, Canada will have a leading role in making the world fairer and more prosperous. I look forward to working with other leaders to accelerate progress on our shared priorities and build a better future for everyone.”I wonder if “making the world fairer and more prosperous” means, among other things, committing to never again shutting down the world’s economy and throwing millions back into grinding poverty by declaring a global pandemic due to an influenza outbreak? I wonder if any of the breakout sessions will compare the numbers and age of those who died of COVID-19 (99 per 100,000) to the numbers and ages of those who were “excess mortalities” and likely died of the mandatory shots (~350 per 100,000?)I am not a particular fan of the United Nations, its sustainability goals or the globalist nature of the institution. But it was globalism that led to the dramatic decrease in Peruvian poverty and the sustainability goals were a useful way to measure that drop. I hope the UN as an institution has the moral integrity to consider its role in adding unnecessarily to the world’s extreme poverty and to millions of unnecessary deaths. I have no idea what ideologies and worldviews drove the COVID-19 mania. All my darkest thoughts can be safely considered conspiracy theories. But those who were behind it have no right to congratulate themselves while ignoring the pain they have caused. I don’t have any expectation that they or our prime minister, with his cute socks, will ever admit how much they increased the sum total of human misery. What hypocrites.
From 1994 until 2009, I traveled regularly to Peru and for seven of those years essentially lived in its capital city, Lima. In his entertaining book Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend, Patrick Symmes provides a description of Lima circa 1996 and dubbed it “Scorch”. It certainly matched my 1994 experience. During 25 years of anarchy, those Peruvians who could, shipped their kids and cash overseas and allowed their homes to become covered in graffiti. The municipal governments stopped maintaining parks and there was an explosion in the rat community in every empty lot in the city. Tourism was almost nonexistent, and it was difficult to walk in central Lima due to the flea market nature of the wares laid out on the sidewalks and being hocked by the millions of impoverished citizens. Most were refugees from terrorist violence in the mountains who now lived in shanty towns without water or electricity and with reed walled homes. During my time in Lima, the terrorists were defeated, the children and cash returned, the houses were painted to remove the graffiti, the parks were planted with grass and flowers, and the reed huts became fully serviced brick and concrete homes. The city blossomed. By 2009 Peru moved so many people out of the ranks of extreme poverty that it was no longer a primary target for foreign aid. I witnessed a remarkable transformation of a country, its culture and its economy.I visited Lima again in January 2022 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic slippage was noticeable. Graffiti was once more on houses; street poverty was much more prevalent, and storefronts were shuttered. I was told that extreme poverty was once again on the rise.This week, our Prime Minister is proudly carrying the Canadian flag at the United Nations. World leaders are meeting to review progress towards the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. I have no doubt that there will be high fives and congratulations all around. Our boy wonder has this to say about his visit,“At this year’s United Nations General Assembly and at the Summit of the Future, Canada will have a leading role in making the world fairer and more prosperous. I look forward to working with other leaders to accelerate progress on our shared priorities and build a better future for everyone.”I wonder if “making the world fairer and more prosperous” means, among other things, committing to never again shutting down the world’s economy and throwing millions back into grinding poverty by declaring a global pandemic due to an influenza outbreak? I wonder if any of the breakout sessions will compare the numbers and age of those who died of COVID-19 (99 per 100,000) to the numbers and ages of those who were “excess mortalities” and likely died of the mandatory shots (~350 per 100,000?)I am not a particular fan of the United Nations, its sustainability goals or the globalist nature of the institution. But it was globalism that led to the dramatic decrease in Peruvian poverty and the sustainability goals were a useful way to measure that drop. I hope the UN as an institution has the moral integrity to consider its role in adding unnecessarily to the world’s extreme poverty and to millions of unnecessary deaths. I have no idea what ideologies and worldviews drove the COVID-19 mania. All my darkest thoughts can be safely considered conspiracy theories. But those who were behind it have no right to congratulate themselves while ignoring the pain they have caused. I don’t have any expectation that they or our prime minister, with his cute socks, will ever admit how much they increased the sum total of human misery. What hypocrites.
