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Should the primary purpose of Canadian foreign policy be the promotion of corporate interests?

Canada’s business class certainly seems to think so. And with little political or ideological opposition to this naked self-interest, Harper’s Conservatives seem only too happy to put the full weight of government behind the promotion of private profits.

Recently, the Conservatives announced that “economic diplomacy” will be “the driving force behind the Government of Canada’s activities through its international diplomatic network.” According to their Global Markets Action Plan (GMAP), “All diplomatic assets of the Government of Canada will be marshalled on behalf of the private sector to increase …

You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you cannot face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says It.

–Malcolm X

I have been reading political commentary on Black Agenda Report (BAR) regularly of late. The site, which purveys a black leftist perspective, regularly excoriates President Obama, as well they should. BAR has become a trusted source in my quest to understand history and current events. This is the home of the real left, not the pseudo left that pervades the corporate airwaves masquerading as champions of equality. Here, no one is paying homage to Obama …

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. — Genesis 3:18

Hot tea hit the eyes of Palestinian Member of the Knesset Ahmad Tibi on December 19, 2013. The violent act was perpetrated by Tziyon Vaknin, a Jewish man who opposed the protest against the Bedouins ((Derived from an Arabic word for semi-arid desert, “Bedouin” is a term designating members of a large number of Arab tribes. Egypt features a 400,000 Bedouin population, mainly in the Sinai Peninsula; while Israel has 200,000 Bedouin citizens living in the Negev Desert and a smaller number in the Galilee. In …

Following the Vietnam War, US imperial intervention passed through several phases: In the immediate aftermath, the US government faced a humiliating military defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese liberation forces and was under pressure from an American public sick and tired of war.Imperial military interventions, domestic espionage against opponents and usual practice of fomenting coups d’état (regime change) declined.

Slowly, under President Gerald Ford and, especially President ‘Jimmy’ Carter, an imperial revival emerged in the form of clandestine support for armed surrogates in Southern Africa — …

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is relevant these days with many in Congress playing the role of Scrooge before he was visited by the Christmas spirits. Dickens was greatly concerned about the plight of children forced to work under dreadful conditions and about the lives of the poor in Britain under industrial capitalism in the 1840s.

Pope Francis recently echoed these ideas when he expressed concern about unfettered capitalism. The Pope also called on world leaders to address poverty and growing inequality. Specifically, he said:

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged …

(Full article …)

The Narrative Challenge

The war of narratives shaped itself as a “slam dunk” win for the Palestinian people and had the potential to change the lineup of forces in the struggle for a just solution to the Middle East crisis. After all, unlike the Zionists, the Palestinians are a singular people, speak a common language, have common customs, and lived a shared history. They inhabited the area for centuries, if not for millennia, and tilled and watered the land to which they had legal title. Western nations restructured the Middle East, denied the Palestinians a country, and placed them in a …

According to a recent, exhaustive study commissioned by the US Department of Energy and headed by a scientific team from the U.S. navy, by the summer of 2015, the Arctic Ocean could be bereft of ice, a phenomenon that will engender devastating consequences for the earth’s environment and every living creature on the planet.

Yet, recently, Chuck Hagel, US Defense Secretary, said (in defiance of common sense and even a modicum of sanity) that the US military will escalate its presence in the Arctic, due to the fact that “[the] potential for tapping what may be as much as a …

More than twelve years have passed since 9/11 happened. Although the 9/11 Commission produced a voluminous “9/11 Commission Report”, it did not provide answers to central questions concerning the circumstances of this horrendous crime. Critical observers have noted numerous glaring omissions, contradictions, anomalies and misrepresentations in this report. Even the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission admitted in a joint book they later published, that their report was deficient in many ways and that the Commission had been lied to by government agencies. One of the reactions to this deficient report was the emergence of a “truth movement”, which …

Along the second half of the 20th century many Jewish intellectuals, activists and artists positioned themselves at the forefront of Western advocacy of immigration and multiculturalism. Occasionally we were also expected to believe that immigration, tolerance, pluralism and multiculturalism are intrinsic to Jewish culture and thought.

But as the West became gradually aware of the scale of Israeli racism and intolerance towards migrant communities, more than just a few intellectuals were courageous enough to point at a clear discrepancy between the progressive ideas Jews claim to represent and what their Jewish State happens to be. There aren’t many countries …

These pilots are not on our land, but the ways the culls are being carried out is increasingly worrying and we are now concerned for the credibility and usefulness of the exercise.  This sense of shifting scientific sands is a real issue for us, particularly if faced with any future proposition for wider culling.

—  Patrick Begg, National Trust rural enterprise director

The beach-loads of sand that the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) and Natural England have shifted in pursuit of killing badgers over the last year or two (and in the case of the National Farmers Union (NFU), …

but they still believe the Sun revolves around the Earth . . . and, well, that US of Amerika is the best country since, well, Eden!

“Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward all research.”
-Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz]

“If you don’t know history, it is as if you were born yesterday.”
-Howard Zinn

The new hyper rich — the IT-AI-Robotics-Virtual-Info/Data/Surveillance Jammers with their Tweeter IPO orgasm and bit-coin realm of worthless junk trading …

On December 17, 2013, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Great Britain published an op-ed in the New York Times accusing the West of not having confronted Syria and Iran head-on. An ambassador is traditionally the mouthpiece of his government. But the used political rhetoric indicates that he even acts as a megaphone of the neocons, certain Zionist circles and their rubber stamps in the US Congress, which are very critical of Obama’s policy towards Syria and Iran. Finally, the US and its Western allies should know what the Saudi Arabian regime thinks about Obama and what it …

One of the most meaningful Christmas stories that I have ever heard came from my Vancouver, Canada friend, Reverend Kevin Annett. His story is titled “Nativity” and is printed further below.

Kevin spent a week at my home in Duluth, Minnesota a couple of years ago. The week was spent giving scheduled radio and film interviews, giving informal talks over meals, delivering a major speech to the Lake Superior Freethinkers, conducting forums at churches and answering questions following a Zinema 2 screening of his award-winning documentary, Unrepenant. It was a productive week, although local media chose not to cover any …

The intellectual dishonesty of Israel’s supporters is appalling. But in some odd way, it is also understandable. How else could they respond to the massively growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign?

When a non-violent campaign – empowered by thousands of committed civil society activists from South Africa to Sweden and most countries in between – leads a moral campaign to isolate and hold into account an Apartheid country like Israel, all that the supporters of the latter can do is spread lies and misinformation. There can be no other strategy, unless of course, Israel’s friends get their own moment of …

Brother Gilad Atzmon recently wrote a piece entitled “The Sycophantic Palestinian Solidarity Movement.” The article deals with famous musician Roger Waters and his criticism of the treatment of Palestinians by Israeli Jews and the subsequent fallout.

Among the supposed crimes of Waters was using the “J word” — as Atzmon refers to it. A special rule seems to be in play whereby Jews must not be referred to as Jews, and when referring to Jews (or or non-Jews) who support the state of Israel, the the term to be used is “Zionists.” I do not recall a similar distinctive rule …