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International community rejects Canada’s bid for a seat on Security Council

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By Yves Engler | June 17, 2020

The international community’s rejection of Canada’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council isn’t a surprise. In the below introduction to my recently published House of Mirrors: Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy I detail how Liberal foreign policy has largely mimicked Stephen Harper’s who lost a bid for the Security Council in 2010.

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Justin Trudeau presents himself as “progressive” on foreign affairs. The Liberals claim to have brought Canada “back” after the disastrous Stephen Harper government. But, this book will demonstrate the opposite.

While promising to “make a real and valuable contribution to a more peaceful and prosperous world”, Trudeau has largely continued the Conservatives pro-corporate/empire international policies. The Liberals have followed the previous government’s posture on a wide range of issues from Russia to Palestine, Venezuela to the military.

In 2017 the Liberals released a defence policy that called for 605 more special forces, which have carried out numerous violent covert missions abroad. During the 2015 election campaign defence minister Jason Kenney said if re-elected the Conservatives would add 665 members to the Canadian Armed Forces Special Operations Command. The government’s defence policy also included a plan to acquire armed drones, for which the Conservatives had expressed support. Additionally, the Liberals re-stated the previous government’s commitment to spend over one hundred billion dollars on new fighter jets and naval ships.

The Harper regime repeatedly attacked Venezuela’s elected government and the Liberals ramped up that campaign. The Trudeau government launched an unprecedented, multipronged, effort to overthrow Nicolás Maduro’s government. As part of this campaign, they aligned with the most reactionary political forces in the region, targeting Cuba and recognizing a Honduran president who stole an election he shouldn’t have participated in. Juan Orlando Hernández’ presidency was the outgrowth of a military coup the Conservatives tacitly endorsed in 2009.

In Haiti the Liberals propped up the chosen successor of neo-Duvalerist President Michel Martelly who Harper helped install. Despite a sustained popular uprising against Jovenel Moïse, the Liberals backed the repressive, corrupt and illegitimate president.

The Trudeau government continues to justify Israeli violence against Palestinians and supports Israel’s illegal occupation. Isolating Canada from world opinion, they voted against dozens of UN resolutions upholding Palestinian rights backed by most of the world.

Initiated by the Conservatives, the Liberals signed off on a $14 billion Light Armoured Vehicle sale to Saudi Arabia. The Liberals followed Harper’s path of cozying up to other repressive Middle East monarchies, which waged war in Yemen. They also contributed to extending the brutal war in Syria and broke their promise to restart diplomatic relations with Iran, which the Conservatives severed.

The Liberals renewed Canada’s military “training” mission in the Ukraine, which emboldened far-right militarists responsible for hundreds of deaths in the east of that country. In fact, Trudeau significantly bolstered Canada’s military presence on Russia’s doorstep. Simultaneously, the Trudeau government expanded Harper’s sanctions against Russia.

On China the Liberals were torn between corporate Canada and militarist/pro-US forces. They steadily moved away from the corporate sphere and towards the militarist/US Empire standpoint. (During their time in office the Conservatives moved in the opposite direction.) Ottawa seemed to fear that peace might break out on the Korean Peninsula.

Trudeau backed Africa’s most bloodstained politician Paul Kagame.

Unlike his predecessor, Trudeau didn’t sabotage international climate negotiations. But the Liberals flouted their climate commitments and subsidized infrastructure to expand heavy emitting fossil fuels.

Ignoring global inequities, the Liberals promoted the interests of corporations and wealth holders in various international forums. They backed corporate interests through trade accords, Export Development Canada and the Trade Commissioner Service. Their support for SNC Lavalin also reflected corporate influence over foreign policy.

In a stark betrayal of their progressive rhetoric, the Trudeau regime failed to follow through on their promise to rein in Canada’s controversial international mining sector. Instead they mimicked the Conservatives’ strategy of establishing a largely toothless ombudsperson while openly backing brutal mining companies.

To sell their pro-corporate/empire policies the Liberals embraced a series of progressive slogans. As they violated international law and spurned efforts to overcome pressing global issues, the Liberals crowed about the “international rules-based order”. Their “feminist foreign policy” rhetoric rested uneasily with their militarism, support for mining companies and ties to misogynistic monarchies.

Notwithstanding the rhetoric, the sober reality is that Trudeau has largely continued Harper’s foreign policy. The “Ugly Canadian” continued to march across the planet, but with a prettier face at the helm.

My 2012 book The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy detailed the first six and a half years of Harper’s rule. This book looks at the first four years of Trudeau’s reign. I will discuss the many ways Canadian foreign policy under Conservative and Liberal governments remained the same. Support for empire and a pro-corporate neoliberal economic order is the common theme that links the actions of conservative and self-described “progressive” prime ministers.

 

Please sign this petition calling for a fundamental reassessment of Canadian foreign policy.

June 17, 2020 Posted by | Book Review | , | Leave a comment

Russia: UN chief report blaming Iran for attacks on Saudi oil facilities not based on convincing evidence

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova
Press TV | June 17, 2020

The Russian Foreign Ministry says the UN chief’s report on Iran’s involvement in the last year attacks on Saudi oil facilities is biased and not substantiated by facts.

“What we surely won’t argue with is, unfortunately, that the report can hardly be called balanced and calibrated,” the ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said during a press briefing on Wednesday.

She added Russia will present a “detailed analysis” of the UN report during the relevant discussion at the Security Council later on June 30.

“We can also speak about a lack of impartiality and the absence of strong facts to support the accusations leveled at Iran,” she noted, stressing “Nobody has ever presented any convincing evidence of Iran’s violations to the Security Council members.”

The Russian official said that the report was not valid, arguing the “self-appointed inspectors” had claimed based on their “personal observations” that what they saw was “roughly reminiscent of what Iran had once demonstrated at arms exhibitions.”

Last week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in a report to the Security Council that cruise missiles used in attacks on oil facilities and an airport in Saudi Arabia last year were of “Iranian origin.”

He also said the “items may have been transferred in a manner inconsistent” with UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorses the international nuclear deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – signed between Iran and major world powers in 2015. The allegations were roundly rejected by Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

The ministry said in a statement that the claims appear to have been made under political pressure from the US and Saudi regimes.

“Preparing reports with political motivation will not change the facts and it is clear to all that the current circumstances in the region have directly resulted from the wrong policies of the United States and the child-killing Saudi regime,” the statement said.

The ministry highly recommended that the UN Secretariat not play into the hands of the US in its “pre-planned scenario to annul the cancellation of Iran’s arms embargo.” It also warned the UN against contributing to such a dangerous trend by preparing illegal reports.

Separately, Iran’s UN Mission also responded to the report on Friday, saying, “Iran categorically rejects the observations contained in the report concerning the Iranian connection to the export of weapons or their components that are used in attacks on Saudi Arabia and the Iranian origin of alleged US seizures of armaments.”

US President Donald Trump withdrew Washington from the JCPOA in 2018 and reinstated Washington’s unilateral sanctions against Tehran. His administration has also been piling up pressure on the United Nations to extend and strengthen the embargo on Iran, which is set to expire in October under the nuclear deal.

Washington seeks to restore all Security Council sanctions lifted against Iran if the 15-member body fails to preserve the UN ban on selling conventional arms to Iran.

June 17, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ukraine receives Javelin anti-tank missiles & other US military aid worth $60mn – embassy

RT | June 17, 2020

Kiev has received military aid worth more than $60 million from Washington, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, the United States embassy said on Wednesday.

The first shipment of Javelin systems worth around $47 million was sent to Ukraine in April 2018, according to Reuters.

Military aid to Ukraine was at the center of a House of Representatives impeachment inquiry in December into US President Donald Trump, on charges of obstruction of Congress and of pressuring Ukraine to investigate the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Trump was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate in February.

Pentagon Comptroller Elaine McCusker, who was reported to have questioned the suspension of US military aid to Ukraine, a key element in the inquiry leading to Trump’s impeachment, resigned on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said.

June 17, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

British politicians and the MSM have sent a clear message to the white working class for decades: ‘You don’t matter’

By Guy Birchall | RT | June 17, 2020

“Far right”, “Nazis” and “racists” are epithets used by the liberal elite as an excuse to demonise patriotic Brits who offend their metropolitan sensibilities. This is class hatred, plain and simple.

Bigotry is alive and well in the UK. One form, in particular, is actively encouraged, lauded and laughed about. The victims of it are demonised in the press and for entertainment. These people don’t matter, their opinions don’t matter, their tastes are low-grade, the things they enjoy are looked upon with scorn, and whenever they kick off about all this, they’re vilified or ignored. They are, of course, the white working class.

The difference in the tone of coverage of last weekend’s protests compared with the ones the weekend before won’t have passed you by. When Black Lives Matter descended on Westminster to have a riot because a man had been killed 4,000 miles away, the media could not have been more sympathetic.

These weren’t just people who were wound up and bored after the Government had locked them all inside for a quarter of the year. They weren’t troublemakers – they were protesters. They weren’t “far-left thugs” – they were “anti-racism activists”. Their pulling down of statues, defacing national monuments or attempting to set fire to the Union Flag was just being done to “raise awareness” of “systemic racism” in Britain today.

The weekend of civil unrest was reported by the BBC to be “largely peaceful”, despite 27 police officers being injured in one day, some requiring serious hospital treatment. But, of course, they were a “diverse” group of ethnic minorities and middle-class Marxist poseurs fighting for a cause endorsed by every corporation going, from Ben & Jerry’s to the Premier League.

They were good people who’d been wound up. Even those who dared to criticise them did so only with the heavy caveat that they “understood their grievances”.

However, it was all very different for another group of people who got pissed off by what they saw, with war memorials being desecrated and monuments to national heroes being covered in graffiti. They were incensed by police inaction and what they felt was an assault on their national identity and history, so decided to go out and protect these monuments.

And what did the government and media call them? “Far right”, “racists” and “Nazis”, because, obviously, Hitler supporters would want to defend a statue of Winston Churchill. For a demonstration that was a tenth of the size at best as the one the previous weekend, the area was flooded with police.

The Mayor of London told them their “hate wasn’t welcome” in the city. The BBC described the “more than 100 arrests, after violent clashes with the police” (though just six cops were injured, in comparison with the previous event’s 27). It was a stark contrast to the coverage of the “mostly peaceful protests” that had taken place the weekend before. These new protesters weren’t legitimately concerned about the actions of communist and anarchist agitators – they were just racists. That was the only possible reason they’d assembled.

And what evidence did the media provide for them being racist? It boiled down to ‘Well, just look at them.’ Shaven-headed, pasty-faced, tattooed men covering themselves in the Cross of St George. Every front-page headline on every paper might as well have read, “Look at them – aren’t they ghastly?”. People wilfully misconstrued images to say they were performing Sieg Heil salutes, when they were clearly raising their hands and chanting “England” in a fashion anyone who has ever seen a football match can clearly recognise.

The hero of the hour was a black protester who was photographed carrying an injured white counter protester away from the fray – an undoubtedly noble act on his behalf. But when the Daily Mail covered this, they described a “far-right statue defender” as having been rescued by a BLM activist.

It had no way of knowing this man’s politics. It didn’t even bother to find out his name before labelling him an extremist. And what about those “mostly peaceful” protesters he had to be rescued from? Were they about to lovingly kick his head in for thinking that Churchill was basically a good bloke? Did they shove him to the ground to educate him about the wonders of diversity?

The double standard is appalling. The photos taken before that counter protestor was hauled to safety in an admirable act of humanity show a baying masked mob of mostly black men around him. Can you imagine the outrage if a picture emerged with those dynamics reversed? There would be hell to pay.

The disparity is obvious yet again in the coverage accorded to the man pictured urinating near the memorial for policeman Keith Palmer, who was murdered by a terrorist outside Parliament in 2017. The photo was circulated by MPs and media outlets alike, all of them accusing a man who was clearly out of his head drunk as engaging in some sort of dirty protest against the memory of a fallen officer.

Within a day, he’d handed himself into police custody and was up before the magistrates on Monday. He told the court he’d been out in London the night before, where he’d necked at least 16 pints, not gone to bed, then decided to join fellow football supporters to “protect the statues” – but he didn’t know which statues. He said he was ashamed of himself and admitted guilt and, within 15 minutes, he was sentenced to 14 days in prison. The usual punishment for this offence is an £80 fine and results in no criminal record.

Remind me again how long the gang of thugs that tore down a statue, rolled it through the streets of Bristol and dumped it in the harbour got? I seem to recall that entire incident being filmed as well, but none of the perpetrators have even been arrested, let alone had the contrition and decency to hand themselves in to the authorities.

While we’re on the topic of Bristol’s “racist” statues, let’s consider the latest public art installation that has arrived in that city. Next to the plinth where the statue of Edward Colston once stood there’s now another sculpture.

This one depicts a morbidly obese skinhead wearing a string vest and standing in a wheelie bin. His enormous belly spills over its lip as he looks at a phone with “England for the English” as a background in one hand while holding a globe in the other. On the bin are the words “Spoiler alert: St George was Turkish”. Can you imagine the outcry if a statue exaggerating the stereotypes of any other group were to be put up? It would be smashed before lunchtime.

The statue is a material manifestation of the attitude the elite has towards this section of society, which is simply: “You don’t matter”. The Labour Party was formed to represent working-class people, but stood idly by as their jobs went abroad and their communities were completely transformed by immigration.

“You’re just racist,” they told them, or as Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, once famously got caught out admitting in 2010 while unknowingly still mic’ed up, “You’re just bigoted” – in other words, you don’t deserve to matter.

They ignored these people after they voted for Brexit in 2016, prompting them to plump for the Conservatives for the first time in decades in 2019. But the Tories won’t listen to them, either: they also regard these white people as toxic, and the party doesn’t want to be accused of being racist.

So, we end up with the appalling scenario of our police standing by as white girls across England were raped by gangs of predatory Muslim men. Because these white girls don’t matter.

The white working class’s love of cheap EasyJet flights to Spain and Greece have to go because they’re killing the planet – while we ignore China and India belching out millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. But we can end all that because they don’t matter.

Even football is being taken away from them, as the price of Premier League tickets go up and up and the grounds are ever more gentrified to appeal to the middle classes who derided the game for so long, but like it now that it’s fashionable and lucrative. The old lot would just fight anyway, so they don’t matter.

I don’t believe the vast majority of these people are far right – those who make that accusation don’t even know what that means. They just, rightly, feel ignored. There will be racists in their midst, but you can’t dismiss millions of people on the basis of a few extremists. Black Lives Matter and the Labour Party should both be dismissed, if that were the case.

They are, for the most part, patriots who feel abandoned by the country they love. They deserve to be heard. And they deserve to know that they do matter.

Guy Birchall, British journalist covering current affairs, politics and free speech issues. Recently published in The Sun and Spiked Online. Follow him on Twitter @guybirchall

June 17, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | | 2 Comments