Sun never sets on Canadian military
By Yves Engler · December 6, 2019
Most Canadians would be surprised to learn that the sun never sets on the military their taxes pay for.
This country is not formally at war yet more than 2,100 Canadian troops are sprinkled across the globe. According to the Armed Forces, these soldiers are involved in 28 international missions.
There are 850 Canadian troops in Iraq and its environs. Two hundred highly skilled special forces have provided training and combat support to Kurdish forces often accused of ethnic cleansing areas of Iraq they captured. A tactical helicopter detachment, intelligence officers and a combat hospital, as well as 200 Canadians at a base in Kuwait, support the special forces in Iraq.
Alongside the special forces mission, Canada commands the NATO mission in Iraq. Canadian Brigadier General Jennifer Carrigan commands nearly 600 NATO troops, including 250 Canadians.
A comparable number of troops are stationed on Russia’s borders. About 600 Canadians are part of a Canadian-led NATO mission in Latvia while 200 troops are part of a training effort in the Ukraine. Seventy-five Canadian Air Force personnel are currently in Romania.
Some of the smaller operations are also highly political. Through Operation Proteus a dozen troops contribute to the Office of the United States Security Coordinator, which is supporting a security apparatus to protect the Palestinian Authority from popular disgust over its compliance in the face of ongoing Israeli settlement building.
Through Operation Foundation 15 troops are contributing to a US counter-terrorism effort in the Middle East, North Africa and Southwest Asia. As part of Operation Foundation General A. R. DAY, for instance, Directs the Combined Aerospace Operations Center at the US military’s Al Udeid base in Qatar.
The 2,100 number offered up by the military doesn’t count the hundreds, maybe a thousand, naval personnel patrolling hot spots across the globe. Recently one or two Canadian naval vessels — with about 200 personnel each — has patrolled in East Asia. The ships are helping the US-led campaign to isolate North Korea and enforce UN sanctions. These Canadian vessels have also been involved in belligerent “freedom of navigation” exercises through international waters that Beijing claims in the South China Sea, Strait of Taiwan and East China Sea.
A Canadian vessel is also patrolling in the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea. Recently Canadian vessels have also entered the Black Sea, which borders Russia. And Canadian vessels regularly deploy to the Caribbean.
Nor does the 2,100 number count the colonels supported by sergeants and sometimes a second officer who are defence attachés based in 30 diplomatic posts around the world (with cross-accreditation to neighbouring countries). Another 150 Canadian military personnel are stationed at the North American Aerospace Defense Command headquarters in Colorado and a smaller number at NORAD’s hub near Tampa Bay, Florida. These bases assist US airstrikes in a number of places.
Dozens of Canadian soldiers are also stationed at NATO headquarters in Brussels. They assist that organization in its international deployments.
There may be other deployments not listed here. Dozens of Canadian soldiers are on exchange programs with the US and other militaries and some of them may be part of deployments abroad. Additionally, Canadian Special forces can be deployed without public announcement, which has taken place on numerous occasions.
The scope of the military’s international footprint is hard to square with the idea of a force defending Canada. That’s why military types promote the importance of “forward defence”. The government’s 2017 “Strong, Secure, Engaged: Canada’s Defence Policy” claims Canada has to “actively address threats abroad for stability at home” and that “defending Canada and Canadian interests … requires active engagement abroad.”
That logic, of course, can be used to justify participating in endless US-led military endeavors. That is the real reason the sun never sets on the Canadian military.
A Second Whistle Blown on the OPCW’s Doctored Report
By Jeremy Salt | American Herald Tribune | December 3, 2019
Another whistleblower leak has exposed the fraudulent nature of the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) report on the alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian city of Douma, close to Damascus, on April 7 last year.
The first leak came from the Fact-Finding Mission’s engineering sub-group. After investigating the two sites where industrial gas cylinders were found in Douma and taking into account the possibility that the cylinders had been dropped from the air it concluded that there was a “higher probability” that both cylinders were placed at both sites by hand. This finding was entirely suppressed in the final report.
The engineering sub-group prepared its draft report “for internal review” between February 1-27, 2018. By March 1 the OPCW final report had been approved, published and released, indicating that the engineers’ findings had not been properly evaluated, if evaluated at all. In its final report the OPCW, referring to the findings of independent experts in mechanical engineering, ballistics and metallurgy, claimed that the structural damage had been caused at one location by an “impacting object” (i.e. the cylinder) and that at the second location the cylinder had passed through the ceiling, fallen to the floor and somehow bounced back up on to the bed where it was found.
None of this was even suggested by the engineers. Instead, the OPCW issued a falsified report intended to keep alive the accusation that the cylinders had been dropped by the Syrian Air Force.
Now there is a second leak, this time an internal email sent by a member of the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on June 22, 2018, to Robert Fairweather, the British career diplomat who was at the time Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, and copied to his deputy, Aamir Shouket. The writer claims to have been the only FFM member to have read the redacted report before its release. He says it misrepresents the facts: “Some crucial facts that have remained in the redacted version have morphed into something quite different from what was originally drafted.”
The email says the final version statement that the team “has sufficent evidence to determine that chlorine or another reactive chlorine-containing chemical was likely released from the cylinders is highly misleading and not supported by the facts.” The writer states that the only evidence is that some samples collected at locations 2 and 4 (where the gas cylinders were found) had been in contact with one or more chemicals that contain a reactive chlorine atom.
“Such chemicals,” he continues, “could include molecular chlorine, phosgene, cyanogen chloride, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen chloride or sodium hypochlorite (the major element in household chlorine-based bleach.” Purposely singling out chlorine as one of the possibilities was disingenuous and demonstrated “partiality” that negatively affected the final report’s credibility.
The writer says the final report’s reference to “high levels of various chlorinated organic derivatives detected in environmental samples” overstates the draft report’s findings. “In most cases” these derivatives were present only in part per billion range, as low as 1-2 ppb, which is essentially trace qualitiea.” In such microscopic quantities, detected inside apartment buildings, it would seem, although the writer only hints at the likelihood, that the chlorine trace elements could have come from household bleach stored in the kitchen or bathroom.
The writer notes that the original draft discussed in detail the inconsistency between the victims’ symptoms after the alleged attack as reported by witnesses and seen on video recordings. This section of the draft, including the epidemiology, was removed from the final version in its entirety. As it was inextricably linked to the chemical agent as identified, the impact on the final report was “seriously negative.” The writer says the draft report was “modified” at the behest of the office of Director-General, a post held at the time by a Turkish diplomat, Ahmet Uzumcu.
The OPCW has made no attempt to deny the substance of these claims. After the engineers’ report made its way to Wikileaks its priority was to hunt down the leaker. Following the leaking of the recent email, the Director-General, Fernando Arias, simply defended the final report as it stood.
These two exposures are triply devastating for the OPCW. Its Douma report is completely discredited but all its findings on the use of chemical weapons in Syria must now be regarded as suspect even by those who did not regard them as suspect in the first place. The same shadow hangs over all UN agencies that have relied on the OPCW for evidence, especially the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, an arm of the OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights).
This body is closely linked to the OPCW and while both mostly hide the sources of their information it is evident that where chemical weapons allegations have been made, the commission of inquiry has drawn on the OPCW.
As of January 2018, the commission reported on 34 “documented incidents” of chemical weapons use by various parties in Syria. It held the Syrian government responsible for 23 of them and, remarkably, did not hold the armed groups responsible even for one, despite the weight of evidence showing their preparation and use of such weapons over a long period of time.
The commission has made repeated accusations of chlorine barrel bombs being dropped by government forces. On the worst of the alleged chemical weapons attacks, on August 21, 2013, in the eastern Ghouta district just outside Damascus, it refers to sarin being used in a “well-planned indiscriminate attack targetting residential areas [and] causing mass casualties. The perpetrators likely had access to the Syrian military chemical weapons stockpile and expertise and equipment to manipulate large amounts of chemical weapons.”
This is such a travesty of the best evidence that no report by this body can be regarded as impartial, objective and neutral. No chemical weapons or nerve agents were moved from Syrian stocks, according to the findings of renowned journalist Seymour Hersh. The best evidence, including a report by Hersh (‘The Red Line and the Rat Line,’ London Review of Books, April 17, 2014), suggests a staged attack by terrorist groups, including Jaysh al Islam and Ahrar al Sham, who at the time were being routed in a government offensive. The military would have had no reason to use chemical weapons: furthermore, the ‘attack’ was launched just as UN chemical weapons inspectors were arriving in the Syrian capital and it is not even remotely credible that the Syrian government would have authorized a chemical weapons attack at such a time.
Even the CIA warned Barack Obama that the Syrian government may not have been/probably was not responsible for the attack and that he was being lured into launching an air attack in Syria now that his self-declared ‘red line’ had been crossed. At the last moment, Obama backed off.
It remains possible that the victims of this ‘attack’ were killed for propaganda purposes. Certainly, no cruelty involving the takfiri groups, the most brutal people on the face of the planet, can be ruled out. Having used the occasion to blame the Syrian government, the media quickly moved on. The identities of the dead, many of them children, who they were, where they might have been buried – if in fact they had been killed and not just used as props – were immediately tossed into the memory hole. Eastern Ghouta remains one of the darkest unexplained episodes in the war on Syria.
The UN’s Syria commission of inquiry’s modus operandi is much the same as the OPCW’s. Witnesses are not identified; there is no indication of how their claims were substantiated; the countries outside Syria where many have been interviewed are not identified, although Turkey is clearly one; and where samples have had to be tested, the chain of custody is not transparent.
It is worth stepping back a little bit to consider early responses to the OPCW report on Douma. The Syrian government raised a number of questions, all of them fobbed off by the OPCW. Russia entered the picture by arranging a press conference for alleged victims of the ‘attack’ at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague. They included an 11-year-old boy, Hassan Diab, who said he did not know why he was suddenly hosed down in the hospital clinic, as shown in the White Helmets propaganda video.
All the witnesses dismissed claims of a chemical weapons attack. Seventeen countries (Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, the United Kingdom and the US) then put out a joint statement (April 26, 2018) expressing their full support for the OPCW report and dismissing the “so-called” information session at the Hague as a Russian propaganda exercise. Their statement claimed the authenticity of the information in the OPCW report was “unassailable.”
Russia followed up with a series of questions directed at the OPCW’s technical secretariat. It noted that the OPCW report did not mention that samples taken from Douma were “split” in the OPCW’s central laboratory in the Netherlands and not in the Syrian Arab republic. Fractions of samples were handed to Syria only after six months of insistent pressure (OPCW response: its terms of reference provided for Syria to be provided with samples “to the extent possible” but do not specify when or where samples should be ‘split’).
Russia also referred to the collection of 129 samples and their transfer to OPCW-designated laboratories. 31 were selected for the first round of analysis and an additional batch of 13 sent later. Of the 129 samples 39 were obtained from individuals living outside territory controlled by the Syrian army. Of 44 samples analyzed 33 were environmental and 11 biomedical: of the 44, 11 (four environmental and seven biomedical) were obtained from alleged witnesses.
As remarked by the Russian Federation, the OPCW report does not explain the circumstances in which these samples were obtained. Neither is there any information on the individuals from whom they were taken; neither is there any evidence demonstrating compliance with the chain of custody (OPCW response: there was respect for the chain of custody, without this being explained; the “standard methodology” in collecting samples was applied, without details being given. It stressed the need for privacy and the protection of witness identities).
Russia observed that the samples were analyzed in two unnamed OPCW laboratories and on the evidence of techniques and results, it raised the question of whether the same laboratories had been used to investigate earlier ‘incidents’ involving the alleged use of chlorine. Of the 13 laboratories that had technical agreements with the OPCW, why were samples analyzed at only two, apparently the same two as used before? Russia also observed that of the 33 environmental samples tested for chlorinated products, there was a match (bornyl chloride) in only one case.
Samples taken from location 4, where a gas cylinder was allegedly dropped from the air, showed the presence of the explosive trinitrotoluene, leading to the conclusion that the hole in the roof was made by an explosion and not by a cylinder falling through it (OPCW response: the Fact-Finding Mission did not select the labs and information about them is confidential. As there had been intense warfare for weeks around location four, the presence of explosive material in a broad range of samples was to be expected but this did not – in the OPCW view – lead to the conclusion that an explosion caused the hole in the roof).
Russia pointed out that the FFM interviewed 39 people but did not interview the actual witnesses of the ‘incident’ inside the Douma hospital who appeared and were easily identifiable in the staged videos (OPCW response: the secretariat neither confirms nor denies whether it interviewed any of the witnesses presented by Russia at the OPCW headquarters “as any statement to that effect would be contrary to the witness protection principles applied by the secretariat”).
Russia also pointed out the contradictions in the report on the number of alleged dead. In one paragraph the FFM says it could not establish a precise figure for casualties which “some sources” said ranged between 70 and 500. Yet elsewhere “witnesses” give the number of dead as 43 (OPCW response: the specific figure of 43 was based on the evidence of “witnesses” who claimed to have seen bodies at different locations).
Russia also pointed out that no victims were found at locations 2 and 4, where the ventilation was good because of the holes in the roof/ceiling. Referring to location 2, it asked how could chlorine released in a small hole from a cylinder in a well-ventilated room on the fourth floor have had such a strong effect on people living on the first or second floors? (OPCW response: the FFM did not establish a correlation between the number of dead and the quantity of the toxic chemical. In order to establish such a correlation, factors unknown to the FFM – condition of the building, air circulation and so on – would have had to be taken into account. It does not explain why this was not attempted and how it could reach its conclusions without taking these “unknown factors” into account).
Finally, Russia raised the question of the height from which the cylinders could have been dropped. It referred to the lack of specific calculations in the OPCW report. The ‘experts’ who did the simulation did not indicate the drop height. The charts and diagrams indicated a drop height of 45-180 meters. However, Syrian Air Force helicopters do not fly at altitudes of less than 2000 meters when cruising over towns because they would come under small arms fire “at least” and would inevitably be shot down.
Furthermore, if the cylinders had been dropped from 2000 meters, both the roof and the cylinders would have been more seriously damaged (OPCW response: there were no statements or assumptions in the FFM report on the use of helicopters or the use of other aircraft “or the height of the flight. The FFM did not base its modeling on the height from which the cylinders could have been dropped. “In accordance with its mandate,” the FFM did not comment on the possible altitude of aircraft. The OPCW did not explain why these crucial factors were not taken into account).
In its conclusion, Russia said there was a “high probability” that the cylinders were placed manually at locations 2 and 4 and that the factual material in the OPCW report did not allow it to draw the conclusion that a toxic chemical had been used as a weapon. These conclusions have now been confirmed in the release of information deliberately suppressed by the OPCW secretariat.
As the leaked material proves, its report was doctored: by suppressing, ignoring or distorting the findings of its own investigators to make it appear that the Syrian government was responsible for the Douma ‘attack’ the OPCW can be justly accused of giving aid and comfort to terrorists and their White Helmet auxiliaries whom – the evidence overwhelmingly shows – set this staged ‘attack ’up.
Critical evidence ignored by the OPCW included the videoed discovery of an underground facility set up by Jaysh al Islam for the production of chemical weapons. All the OPCW said was that the FFM inspectors paid on-site visits to the warehouse and “facility” suspected of producing chemical weapons and found no evidence of their manufacture. There is no reference to the makeshift facility found underground and shown in several minutes of video evidence.
Since the release of the report, the three senior figures in the OPCW secretariat have moved/been moved on. The Director-General at the time, Hasan Uzumlu, a Turkish career diplomat, stepped out of the office in July 2018: Sir Robert Fairweather, a British career diplomat and Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, was appointed the UK’s special representative to Sudan and South Sudan on March 11, 2019: his deputy, Aamir Shouket, left the OPCW in August 2018, to return to Pakistan as Director-General of the Foreign Ministry’s Europe division. The governments which signed the statement that the evidence in the OPCW report was “unassailable” remain in place.
Jeremy Salt has taught at the University of Melbourne, Bosporus University (Istanbul) and Bilkent University (Ankara), specialising in the modern history of the Middle East. His most recent book is “The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.)
Remember traditional knowledge?
Climate Discussion Nexus | November 27, 2019
If not, don’t worry. Apparently Canadian authorities don’t either. Outgoing Environment Minister Catherine McKenna decided to reduce the number of polar bears the Inuit can hunt in Nunavik, in northern Quebec, despite their claim that from living on the land they knew there were lots. Now a judge has ruled that all that stuff about the wisdom of the ancestors was just virtue-signaling with forked tongue and that when it matters Eurocentric science elbows the ancestors aside. Which is ironic since even Eurocentric science actually says polar bears are flourishing, even if saying so out loud did get Susan Crockford fired.
The back story is that the Makivik Corporation, which represents the Inuit of Nunavik in legal matters, launched a suit in 2016 saying “By and large, Nunavik residents have observed an increase in the polar bear population, and a particularly notable increase since the 1980s.” Despite which Stephen Harper’s environment minister, Peter Kent, had written to the local wildlife board in 2012 asking them to establish the first-ever quota to limit hunting of the big white cute really scary grizzly bears. (Yes, polar bears are a subspecies of grizzlies.) The board, charged with melding western and traditional ways of thinking, ended up establishing a quota of 28 which the federal and Nunavut governments both rejected, annoying the board, which said the federal decision “clearly disregards the extensive body of Inuit traditional knowledge” relying instead “solely on the scientific population estimate.”
Catherine McKenna then cut the quota to 23, prompting Makavik to accuse her of setting “aside entirely the Inuit traditional knowledge” and failing “to even attempt the integration of the two systems of knowledge.” Not that anyone ever said what to do if they seemed to disagree.
The government of course oozed the usual rhetoric about their great respect for Inuit knowledge and claimed the quota was actually above the sustainable harvest rate of 4.5% if the numbers were as western science claimed. And a Federal Court just upheld the decision, though calling for “better communication”, while a spokesman for the minister said “Indigenous peoples are key partners in conserving and protecting nature, and we recognize their unique perspectives, knowledge, rights and responsibilities that can improve conservation outcomes”. But when they say there are so many bears it’s dangerous, well, our global warming computer model says there aren’t and since we’re in Ottawa we’re not worried if we’re wrong.
Anti-Russian sanctions based on fraudster’s tales? Spiegel finds Magnitsky narrative fed to West by Browder is riddled with lies
RT | November 24, 2019
British investor Bill Browder has made a name for himself in the West through blaming Moscow for the death of his auditor, Sergey Magnitsky. Der Spiegel has picked apart his story and uncovers it has major credibility problems.
For years Browder – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s self-proclaimed “enemy number one” and head of the Hermitage Capital Management fund – has been waging what can only be described as his personal anti-Russian campaign.
The passionate Kremlin critic relentlessly lobbied for sanctions against Russian officials everywhere from the US to Europe – all under the premise of seeking justice for his deceased employee, who died in Russia, while in pre-trial detention, where he’d been placed while accused of complicity in a major tax evasion scheme.
Browder, who was himself sentenced in absentia by a Russian court to nine years in prison for tax evasion, and was later found guilty of embezzlement as well, presented Magnitsky as a fearless whistleblower who exposed a grand corruption scheme within the Russian law enforcement system, and who was then mercilessly killed out of revenge.
The investor has succeeded in feeding this narrative to the Western governments and the mainstream media alike, prompting the US to adopt the Magnitsky Act in 2012, which allowed the US to sanction numerous Russian officials and businessmen over alleged human rights violations. Some American allies, including Canada and the UK, later followed suit and passed similar motions, which either allowed the sanctioning of Russian officials or called on their governments to do it.
Yet, the businessman, who has over the years donned the mantle of a human rights campaigner, does not plan to stop at that and is now lobbying for an EU-wide equivalent of the Magnitsky Act, which would allow the banning of Russian officials from the bloc’s countries and the freezing of their accounts.
On the tenth anniversary of the auditor’s death, the German weekly Der Spiegel has decided to take a closer look at Browder’s story about Magnitsky. And the paper found out that the narrative doesn’t quite flow as smoothly as Western politicians and the MSM would like it to.
No hero
The whistleblower image Browder has built for Magnitsky starts splitting at the seams from the very beginning, as Browder appears to be dishonest, even in minor details like his claim that Magnitsky was his lawyer, Der Spiegel’s Benjamin Bidder reveals in his investigative bombshell.
The problem is that he was not. The man was an auditor, who was hired by Browder’s company as a tax specialist and then worked in this capacity for years with the US-born British investor. Browder himself had to admit this fact when he was questioned in a US court while seeking to make the US impose sanctions on yet another group of Russian entrepreneurs.
Magnitsky’s role as a whistleblower also comes into question as the deceased auditor’s former lawyer confirmed to Der Spiegel’s Bidder that his client had, in fact, been summoned by Russian investigators to provide testimony in a tax evasion case that opened at least months before he came up with his corruption allegations.
Other documents obtained by Der Spiegel, including Magnitsky’s unpublished emails, also suggest that Magnitksy acted not of his own volition but on the instructions of Browder’s senior lawyer, at a time when the Russian authorities had already been investigating dubious letterbox companies Browder supposedly had used in his tax evasion scheme for years.
Finally, the records of Magnitsky’s interrogation, released by Browder’s own people on the internet and seen by Der Spiegel, show that he’d never explicitly accused Russian police officers Artyom Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov, whom Browder declared to be the masterminds behind the supposed corruption affair, and ultimately behind the auditor’s murder.
This fact was also implicitly confirmed by a UK court, which issued a ruling on a libel lawsuit filed by Karpov against Browder in 2012. Although the court ruled that Karpov simply had no prior reputation to defend in the UK and rejected his claim, it still called Browder a “storyteller,” arguing that he could not even come “close to substantiating his allegations with facts.” The British media, however, presented the verdict as a resounding victory for Browder.
No murder
The German weekly also found similar inconsistencies in the story of the auditor’s supposed murder, as told by Browder. In his claims, the businessman constantly refers to a report by the Moscow Public Monitoring Commissions (PMC) – an independent, non-governmental body consisting of rights advocates that conducted its own thorough investigation into Magnitsky’s death.
Browder maintains that Magnitsky was deliberately murdered. Yet, the commission’s report, which is still freely available on its website, contains no claim of this sort. The commission does decry the harsh jail conditions which the auditor was kept in, and accuses the Russian authorities of failing to fulfil its duty to protect his life. However, it says nothing of murder.
It is not just the text of this report that Browder has apparently distorted, though. In August, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued a ruling on Magnitsky’s case, ordering Russia to pay his widow and mother €34,000 ($38,000) in damages.
Browder was quick to hail this decision as “destroying the Russian government’s narrative” and proving that “the Russian government murdered Magnitsky.” However, it would seem Browder’s own narrative was dealt a blow instead.
The ECHR never even mentioned the word “murder” in its ruling. Instead it said that Russia basically failed “to protect Mr Magnitsky’s right to life” by providing inadequate medical care and failed “to ensure an effective investigation into the circumstances of his death.”
It even concluded that Magnitsky’s arrest “was not arbitrary, and that it was based on reasonable suspicion of his having committed a criminal offence” – though it did also say there was no “justification” for his lengthy pre-trial detention.
Buying into convenient narrative
In his investigative report, Der Spiegel’s Benjamin Bidder eventually concludes that, although Magnitsky might have fallen victim to some “gruesome injustice,” his image is still far from that painted by Browder in his efforts to pit Russia and the West against each other.
“A question arises whether there has ever been a perfidious political murder plot or the West simply was made to buy into the lie of a fraudster.”
The journalist says that Browder’s “justice for Magnitsky” campaign might have, in fact, been part of his own “personal revenge” on Russia, one that uses the auditor’s fate as fuel for an “argumentative perpetual motion” that helps the businessman himself stay afloat in the sea of Western politics.
Yet, there is another question that needs to be asked: Why did Western politicians and the media support Browder’s narrative so eagerly, without even fact-checking it first? The answer is simple.
According to Bidder, Browder is “so successful because his narrative seems to fit perfectly with the devastating image” that Russia has in the West, making it much more convenient for the media to just toe the line instead of questioning it.
Also on rt.com:
Tycoon who pushed Magnitsky Act warns EU minister that opposing Russia-bashing is ‘career ruining’
Tehran rejects Canada-drafted human rights resolution against Iran
Press TV – November 15, 2019
Tehran has rejected a United Nations human rights resolution against Iran as a “politically motivated” instance of hypocrisy and “abuse” of UN mechanisms by Western governments targeting independent states.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi made the comments on Thursday shortly after the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly passed a Canada-drafted resolution criticizing Iran’s human rights record earlier in the day.
Of a total number of 182 countries participating in the vote, 84 voted in favor of the resolution while 30 voted against it. Another 66 states abstained.
During the voting session, representatives from countries including Pakistan, Syria, Venezuela and Belarus expressed opposition to the motion.
China and Russia also rejected the resolution as “politicization” of human rights issues while North Korea and Cuba described the vote as an excuse for destabilizing and pressuring other governments.
Double standards
Speaking on Thursday, Mousavi said that among the states backing the resolution were “governments with a long record in the systematic violation of human rights.”
The spokesman added that countries whose interventions in foreign countries and “their allies’ dictatorships and occupation” have left “bitter memories for people across the world” are “in no position to make human rights recommendations for Iran.”
“One of the main backers of this resolution, the United States, is violating the most basic rights of more than 83 million Iranian citizens by engaging in economic terrorism, specifically targeting women, children, seniors and medical patients,” he said.
Mousavi highlighted that certain backers of the resolution, such as Israel and other “backward regimes” in the region, are guilty of killing the people of Palestine, Yemen and oppressing domestic dissidents.
The spokesman added that the Universal Periodic Review, a periodic review of the rights situation held on a rotational basis for all UN member states every three years, presented a suitable opportunity to evaluate the conduct of states far from any sort of discrimination.
“Iran, as a religious democracy, seeks to take steps in the betterment of human and citizen rights on a domestic, regional and international level within the framework of its constitutional and civil commitments and international undertakings,” he said.
Canada, under the heavy influence of Zionist interest groups, is known to regularly draft an anti-Iran resolution every year.
Tehran has in response highlighted that Ottawa itself has long been involved in a broad range of human rights abuses at home and elsewhere.
Canada has proceeded with its plans to supply Saudi Arabia with weapons in the past year despite human rights concerns regarding their use in the ongoing war on Yemen.
Canada has also been accused of a wide range of abuses targeting its aboriginal population.
The word they won’t use to describe Canada’s role in Haiti
Molotov cocktail thrown at Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince
By Yves Engler · November 9, 2019
Something you can’t name is very difficult to talk about. Canada’s role in Haiti is a perfect example. Even when the dominant media and mainstream politicians mention the remarkable ongoing revolt or protesters targeting Canada, they fall on their faces in explaining it.
Not one journalist or politician has spoken this truth, easily verified by all sorts of evidence: “Sixteen years ago Ottawa initiated an effort to overthrow Haiti’s elected government and has directly shaped the country’s politics since. Many Haitians are unhappy about the subversion of their sovereignty, undermining of their democracy and resulting impoverishment.”
Last Sunday protesters tried to burn the Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Voice of America reported, “some protesters successfully set fire to business establishments and attempted to burn down the Canadian Embassy.” A few days earlier protesters threw rocks at the Canadian Embassy and demonstrators have repeatedly speechified against Canadian “imperialism”. In response to the targeting of Canada’s diplomatic representation in the country, Haiti’s puppet government released a statement apologizing to Ottawa and the embassy was closed for a number of days.
Echoing the protesters immediate demand for Jovenel Moïse to go, an open letter was released last Tuesday calling on Justin Trudeau’s government to stop propping up the repressive and corrupt Haitian president. David Suzuki, Roger Waters, Amir Khadir, Maude Barlow, Linda McQuaig, Will Prosper, Tariq Ali, Yann Martel and more than 100 other writers, musicians, activists and professors signed a letter calling on “the Canadian government to stop backing a corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Haitian president.”
While a number of left media ran the letter, major news outlets failed to publish or report on it. Interestingly, reporters at La Presse, Radio Canada and Le Devoir all expressed interest in covering it but then failed to follow through. A Le Devoir editor’s reaction was particularly shameful since the leftish, highbrow, paper regularly publishes these types of letters. The editor I communicated with said she’d probably run it and when I called back three days later to ask where things were at, she said the format was difficult. When I mentioned its added relevance after protesters attempted to burn the Canadian embassy, which she was aware of, she recommitted to publishing it. Le Devoir did not publish the letter when it was submitted to them, although an article published in their paper two weeks later did mention it.
My impression from interacting with the media on the issue is that they knew the letter deserved attention, particularly the media in Québec that cover Haiti. But, there was discomfort because the letter focused on Canada’s negative role. (The letter is actually quite mild, not even mentioning the 2004 coup, militarization after the earthquake, etc.)
On Thursday Québec’s National Assembly unanimously endorsed a motion put forward by Liberal party foreign affairs critic, Paule Robitaille, declaring “our unreserved solidarity with the Haitian people and their desire to find a stable and secure society.” It urges “support for any peaceful and democratic exit from the crisis coming from Haitian civil society actors.”
In March Québec Solidaire’s international affairs critic Catherine Dorion released a slightly better statement “in solidarity with the Haitian people”. While the left party’s release was a positive step, it also ignored Canada’s diplomatic, financial and policing support to Moise (not to mention Canada’s role in the 2004 coup or Moise’s rise to power). Québec Solidaire deputies refused to sign the open letter calling on “the Canadian government to stop backing a corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Haitian president.”
Even when media mention protests against Canada, they can’t give a coherent explanation for why they would target the great White North. On Wednesday Radio Canada began a TV clip on the uprising in Haiti by mentioning the targeting of the Canadian embassy and with the image of a protester holding a sign saying: “Fuck USA. Merde la France. Fuck Canada.” The eight-minute interview with Haiti based Québec reporter Etienne Côté-Paluck went downhill from there. As Jean Saint-Vil responded angrily on Facebook, these three countries are not targeted “because of the ‘humanitarian aid’ that the ‘benevolent self-proclaimed friends of Haiti’ bring to the ‘young democracy in difficulty’. This is only racist, paternalistic and imperialist propaganda! They say ‘Fuck Canada’, ‘Shit France’, ‘Fuck USA”’ because they are not blind, dumb or idiots.”
A few days earlier Radio Canada’s Luc Chartrand also mentioned that Canada, France and the US were targeted by protesters when he recently traveled to Haiti. While mentioning those three countries together is an implicit reference to the 2004 coup triumvirate, the interview focused on how it was because they were major donors to Haiti. Yet seconds before Chartrand talked about protesters targeting the Canada-France-US “aid donors” he mentioned a multi-billion dollar Venezuelan aid program (accountability for corruption in the subsidized Venezuelan oil program is an important demand of protesters). So, if they are angry with “aid donors” why aren’t Haitians protesters targeting Venezuela?
Chartrand knows better. Solidarité Québec-Haiti founder Marie Dimanche and I met him before he left for Haiti and I sent Chartrand two critical pieces of information chosen specifically because they couldn’t be dismissed as coming from a radical and are irreconcilable with the ‘benevolent Canada’ silliness pushed by the dominant media. I emailed him a March 15, 2003, L’actualité story by prominent Québec journalist Michel Vastel titled “Haïti mise en tutelle par l’ONU ? Il faut renverser Aristide. Et ce n’est pas l’opposition haïtienne qui le réclame, mais une coalition de pays rassemblée à l’initiative du Canada!” (Haiti under UN trusteeship? We must overthrow Aristide. And it is not the Haitian opposition calling for it, but a coalition of countries gathered at the initiative of Canada!)
Vastel’s article was about a meeting to discuss Haiti’s future that Jean Chretien’s government hosted on January 31 and February 1 2003. No Haitian representative was invited to the meeting where high level U.S., Canadian and French officials discussed overthrowing elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, putting the country under international trusteeship and resurrecting Haiti’s dreaded military. Thirteen months after the Ottawa Initiative meeting, US, French and Canadian troops pushed Aristide out and a quasi-UN trusteeship had begun. The Haitian police were subsequently militarized.
The second piece of information I sent Chartrand was the Canadian Press’ revelation (confirmation) that after the deadly 2010 earthquake, Canadian officials continued their inhumane and antidemocratic course. According to internal government documents the Canadian Press examined a year after the disaster, officials in Ottawa feared a post-earthquake power vacuum could lead to a “popular uprising.” One briefing note marked “secret” explained: “Political fragility has increased the risks of a popular uprising, and has fed the rumour that ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently in exile in South Africa, wants to organize a return to power.” The documents also explained the importance of strengthening the Haitian authorities’ ability “to contain the risks of a popular uprising.”
To police Haiti’s traumatized and suffering population 2,050 Canadian troops were deployed alongside 12,000 U.S. soldiers and 1,500 UN troops (8,000 UN soldiers were already there). Even though there was no war, for a period there were more foreign troops in Haiti per square kilometer than in Afghanistan or Iraq (and about as many per capita). Though Ottawa rapidly deployed 2,050 troops officials ignored calls to dispatch this country’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) Teams, which are trained to “locate trapped persons in collapsed structures.”
Of course, these two pieces of information run completely counter to the dominant narrative about Canada’s role in Haiti. In fact, they flip it on its head. But, these two pieces of information — combined with hundreds of stories published by left-wing Canadian and Haitian media — help explain why some might want to burn the Canadian Embassy.
Haiti is the site of the most sustained popular uprising among the many that are currently sweeping the globe. Haitians are revolting against the IMF, racism, imperialism and extreme economic inequality. It’s also a fight against Canadian foreign policy.
The latter battle is the most important one for Canadians. Solidarity activists should highlight Haitians’ rejection of 16 years of Canadian disregard for their democratic rights. And they should not be afraid to use the words that describes this best: Canadian imperialism.
Trick or heat
Climate Discussion Nexus | November 6, 2019
The National Post reports on a carpenter named Daniel Alagalak who spends Hallowe’en cruising around with a shotgun, not to scare people or because he’s one of those maniacs popular in urban legend. Rather, he’s keeping polar bears from eating the kids in his community of Arviat, Nunavut where, the Post reports without criticism, comment or substantiation, “climate change has led to a steady increase in polar bears migrating through town”. What? You mean the same climate change that up until 5 minutes ago was supposedly driving them to extinction?
It was just last week that we learned about University of Victoria polar bear expert Susan Crockford losing her position for pointing out that polar bear numbers are rising and they show no vulnerability to climate change, despite years of activist claims otherwise. Suddenly climate change is no longer to blame for them disappearing, instead they’re becoming so numerous they’re a menace to the locals, and that’s climate change too.
You can blame anything on climate change and not get challenged. If there really were razor blades in Hallowe’en apples you could blame it. By the same token you can’t attribute anything good to climate change (like, say, more abundant harvests) and escape contumely. But what does this statement about polar bears even mean? The story makes no effort to explain.
Polar bears are good in environmental propaganda and through the very thick window of a protected tour vehicle. Otherwise they’re a bit grim, making grizzlies look like housecats. But is warming causing there to be more of them? Is it making them hungry so they’re raiding the garbage dump? Is it driving them south, or north, or west by northwest?
Until recently it was meant to be driving them extinct. Which according to our dictionary means there’d be fewer. Later it was… well… what? The story says the bears are “a big issue in Arviat this time of year, Halloween or not…. They’re waiting for the sea ice to form on the bay so they can migrate out for the winter.” But what has the straggling remnant tens of thousands of surviving polar bears waiting for ice to form in autumn as it always does got to do with warming? Is the ice forming later?
Apparently not. Arviat turns out to be on the west coast of Hudson Bay, quite near… nothing whatsoever. Well, Egg Island is perhaps 125 km away but it has no people in it, which gives you some idea. But the nearest community featured to this point in our Climate Emergency Tour series is Churchill, MB, roughly 250 km due south. (If you ask Google Maps it says you can’t get there from here.) And in Churchill the impact of the climate crisis on average temperature and days below zero has been zero. Mind you in Cambridge Bay, also in Nunavut though so much further north that it makes Arviat look like Scarborough, the change since 1930 has been… uh… none at all either. And it turns out that weatherstats.ca has data from Arviat going back to 1974, with a gap from 1976 to 1983 (just click on the “10x – Most” button), and it shows that average maximum, mean and minimum temperature haven’t budged. Twenty years ago the high was 29 and the low -40, and this year were 28.2 and -43.5. And this attracts bears how?
Since the story offered no explanation of the link between climate change and polar bears thriving in the Arctic it can’t exactly be said to be wrong. But it didn’t get anything right either, except the quick genuflexion at the altar of warming. You can’t go wrong with one of those.
Leaked document reveals Sidewalk Labs’ Toronto plans
Private taxation, private roads, charter schools, corporate cops and judges, and punishment for people who choose privacy.
BoingBoing | October 30, 2019
Tomorrow, Toronto’s City Council will hold a key vote on Sidewalk Labs’s plan to privatize much of the city’s lakeshore in the name of creating a “smart city” owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Today, the Globe and Mail published a summary of Sidewalk Labs’s leaked “yellow book,” a 2016 document that lays out Sidewalk Labs’s vision for Toronto and future projects in Detroit, Denver, and Alameda.
The plan lays out a corporate-owned city similar to Lake Buena Vista, the privately owned municipality established by the Walt Disney Company on a massive tract of central Florida land that contains the Walt Disney World resort.
The plan calls for the creation of privately owned and regulated roads, charter schools in place of publicly administered schools, the power to levy and spend property taxes without democratic oversight, a corporate criminal justice system where the cops and judges work for Sidewalk Labs, and totalizing, top-to-bottom, continuous surveillance.
Torontonians who decline to “share” information with Sidewalk Labs will not receive the same level of services as those who do.
Sidewalk Labs says that the document does not reflect its current ambitions.
Sidewalk Labs previously grossly understated the scope of its ambitions. When we revealed that the company had secretly secured the right to build across virtually the city’s entire waterfront, they lied to us before finally admitting it.
Those choosing to remain anonymous would not be able to access all of the area’s services: Automated taxi services would not be available to anonymous users, and some merchants might be unable to accept cash, the book warns.
The document also describes reputation tools that would lead to a “new currency for community co-operation,” effectively establishing a social credit system. Sidewalk could use these tools to “hold people or businesses accountable” while rewarding good behaviour, such as by rewarding a business’s good customer service with an easier or cheaper renewal process on its licence.
This “accountability system based on personal identity” could also be used to make financial decisions.
“A borrower’s stellar record of past consumer behaviour could make a lender, for instance, more likely to back a risky transaction, perhaps with the interest rates influenced by digital reputation ratings,” it says.
Sidewalk Labs document reveals company’s early plans for data collection, tax powers, criminal justice [Tom Cardoso and Josh O’Kane/Globe and Mail]
Has climate change jumped the shark?
Climate Discussion Nexus | October 23, 2019
You might not think so, with time running out for deniers (again) except perhaps as psychiatric patients. But there are signs of fatigue with it in the political system. In Australia, a senior Labour figure has caused turmoil in his party by suggesting they not run in the next election on the hugely ambitious plans that cost them the last one. And when CNN and the New York Times sponsored the 4th, 3-hour debate among contenders for the Democratic nomination, the moderators didn’t ask a single question about climate and the candidates didn’t make it an issue. You might think it’s because everyone agrees. But what if it’s because nobody has anything useful to suggest and most people secretly don’t care?
Voters claim to be anti-global-warming, of course. But as we learned including from the Yellow Vest upheaval in France, and Canadians’ views on carbon taxes, and any number of similar issues in other countries, citizens aren’t willing to pay any significant price to take action against greenhouse gases, suggesting they don’t really think there’s a problem.
Except when all-in politicians push the agenda too far. For instance deep blue California’s governor is now in big political trouble over high gas prices and unreliable power. And remember, high prices for less available energy is a feature not a bug of the climate alarmist movement, soothing talk of wind power notwithstanding.
The problem isn’t really the cost of alternative energy, because except by accident politicians are not willing to raise the price of energy to levels that would discourage its use. There was some kerfuffle over a study finding that green energy policies cost Britain £9 billion per year, or £340 per household. But while an increase in energy bills means hardship to the poor, Britain is rich, and most households may resent the extra cost but are not unable to pay it. The problem is how much more it’s going to cost to try to get renewables up from their current trivial share… or what happens when you just can’t. (Wind farms, like solar farms, have thus far been cherry-picking sites.) On which politicians have little to say that is not both stale and unconvincing.
The hardcore believe that if voters are not willing to pay high carbon taxes and otherwise do without the conveniences of modern life, they are short-sighted idiots and democracy itself must give way in this climate emergency. Meanwhile most voters are happy just to virtue-signal, if only to avoid fights with their grade-schoolers trained to correct their pronunciation of Thunberg (it’s Toon-BUIY not THUN-berg). But they simply aren’t convinced that it’s the end of the winter and the world as we know it because out their window things are going pretty much as they always have. And since politicians are repeating implausible mantras about what’s supposedly happening and how to fix it painlessly, a lot of them just tune it out and go about their business.
Passionate opposition to climate change coupled with timid or nonexistent proposals to fight it must inevitably become a stale punchline.
University Feels No Need to Explain: Crockford Story Part 2
The University of Victoria receives hundreds of millions of tax dollars, yet refused to answer a single question about the firing of Susan Crockford.
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | October 21, 2019
I recently wrote about Susan Crockford, a world-renowned Canadian zoologist. After serving 15 years as an unpaid Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria (UVic), her adjunct status has now been revoked. First she was banned from participating in UVic’s Speakers Bureau. Then she was excommunicated from UVic altogether.
In an era in which others bite their tongues and keep their heads down, Crockford courageously disputes the claim that polar bears are at risk from climate change. She has now paid a heavy price.
It’s time to remind ourselves that UVic is a public institution funded by tax dollars. According to its most recent budget document, it spends more than half a billion a year. 52% of its general operating revenue comes directly from provincial and federal government grants. An additional 37% of its revenue comes from student fees – which themselves rely heavily on government grants.
The UVic budget document says a great deal about government funding, but not once does it use the word taxpayer. This institution appears to have forgotten that it owes its very existence to ordinary Canadians. Money is taken away from ordinary people, in the form of taxes, and handed over to UVic to spend.
Publicly funded entities have a special obligation to be transparent. Under British Columbia law, for example, they must publish the salaries of everyone earning above $75,000 a year (see UVic’s annual Financial Information Act report, posted online here).
Crockford was purged even though she didn’t cost UVic one red cent. Compare that to the $188,510 in salary plus $14,583 in expenses Ann Stahl earned last year. While serving as chair of the Anthropology Department, Stahl stopped Crockford from giving free lectures via UVic’s Speakers Bureau.
Compare Crockford’s pricetag to the $145,532 plus $17,272 in expenses April Nowell earned last year. Nowell was chair of the Anthropology Department when it excommunicated Crockford altogether.
We can also compare Crockford’s unpaid position to the $85,851 salary of Paul Marck, the UVic spokesperson I dealt with. He advised me that UVic department heads earning the salaries mentioned above aren’t allowed to speak to journalists working on stories for national newspapers. Everything has to go through Media Relations and Public Affairs, he said, inviting me to e-mail him written questions. That was on September 13th.
I submitted questions the same day. Two dozen of them. Do you know how many Marck answered? Zero. Zip.
I began by asking him to confirm that Crockford had been an adjunct professor for 15 years. He refused to say. After a ridiculous delay of 18 days, a man who’s paid $85,000 annually replied to my long list of questions with a single paragraph. Here’s his October 1st response, in its entirety:
Hello Donna;
Yes, you are correct that Dr. Susan Crockford held an appointment as a non-remunerated, adjunct assistant professor with the University of Victoria’s Department of Anthropology. Under the constraints of provincial privacy legislation, the university is unable to provide personal information relating to the status or renewal of adjunct appointments. For clarification, those who hold adjunct positions are neither faculty members nor employees of the university. As to your remaining questions, the university does not disclose identifying or personal information about our faculty members, staff or students including information about internal processes. We respect the privacy rights of all members of our campus community.
Sincerely,
Paul
My first group of questions merely attempted to verify dates and basic information. Double-checking facts with both sides of a story is important, but UVic made that impossible. If my understanding of events was inaccurate, this was UVic’s opportunity to let me know. Instead, it chose to stonewall, refusing to say if the Speakers Bureau had ever given Crockford negative feedback, or if anyone in the Anthropology Department had advised her she was at risk of losing her adjunct status.
My next six questions were emphatically not about identifiable individuals. I asked how many people had been on the committee that revoked Crockford’s adjunct status. How many had voted for her versus against her. How many were zoologists? How many adjuncts had the Anthropology Department severed ties with over the past decade? How many adjuncts had UVic as a whole severed ties with? I also asked about safeguards that would prevent adjuncts from being punished for politically incorrect views.
Answering those questions would have violated the privacy of absolutely no one. It’s hilarious that, when I then asked how many UVic professors had matched Crockford’s achievement by being recently published in a prestigious scientific journal, UVic declined even to answer that. University PR people spend their days boasting about this sort of thing. They normally send journalists press releases begging for celebratory coverage.
My final group of questions concerned Crockford’s banishment from the Speakers Bureau. The first one asked why Stahl had refused to endorse – and had therefore silenced – Crockford. This clearly involved identifiable individuals, but the eight questions that followed did not. Here are four of them, typo and all. I’ve inserted the italics here:
ii. Since 2017, how many other UVic adjunct professors (within and beyond the Anthropology Department) are no longer participating in the Speakers Bureau due to a similar refusal on the part of their department chair?
iii. Since 2017, what percentage of UVic graduate students participating in the Speaker’s Bureau have been similarly required to secure written endorsement from their department chair?
iv. How many of these graduate studetns have been refused? [sic]
ix. What mechanisms exist to vet the content of Speakers Bureau presentations, particularly regarding controversial topics such as climate justice, renewable energy, Israeli-Palestinian relations, restorative justice, and so forth?
That last issue is of particular importance. Either there’s a system to vet presentations or there isn’t. I was seeking basic information, trying hard to understand what’s normal, sincerely trying to sort out what had transpired. UVic felt absolutely no need to explain, to reassure Canadian taxpayers that it had behaved honourably and fairly.
Let me repeat. The University of Victoria was given ample opportunity – 18 bleeping days. Like an untouchable and unaccountable monarch, it chose not to answer a single question.
If urgent climate action is needed, then let’s #BanPrivateJets
By Mark Jeftovik | Guerrilla Capitalism | October 4, 2019
As the din of climate hysteria grows ever louder, the eco-pious and super-rich call for urgent and drastic action on climate change. Justin Trudeau, still licking his wounds from being outed for his multiple episodes of blackface and brownface, took more heat today as he’s criss-crossing the country ahead of the forthcoming federal election with not one, but two private jets.
As these calls for immediate climate action are accelerating, in fact we’ve seen numerous trial balloons floated from a complicit mainsteam media (or as Canada’a reigning Liberals call it “Approved Media”).
These trial balloons / admonitions include:
- Eating less meat, or no meat, or perhaps eat maggots or eat people, to reduce carbon output.
- Driving less, fewer cars on the road, ban on gas powered vehicles, to reduce carbon output.
- Have less children, or no children, to reduce carbon output.
And of course:
- Fly less. Let’s have fewer planes in the air, to reduce carbon output.
These guidelines are understandably hard sells for Joe Public, as many common people like to eat meat, or need a car to get to-and-from work, and children, as demanding as they can be, eventually grow up and can mow our lawns and do chores around the house.
So if we’re serious about drastic climate action, right now, before the world ends, we need to do something that has maximum bang for the buck, while disrupting as few lives as possible. This way, the rabble masses will see that our leaders and elites are serious and they have the will to take whatever action necessary to make this happen.
#BanPrivateJets
The top 50 countries in the world in terms of private jet ownership have a total fleet of nearly 18,000 jets. According to Statista, private jet ownership is soaring in most developed countries (as wealth inequality accelerates thanks to central bank interventions and 10 years of Cantillon Effects).
According to The Independent, the most popular private jet is the Cessna Citation XLS, which I believe climate alarmist Leonardo Di Caprio may be boarding in the picture below, having been shunted to the runway via a private helicopter…
A Cessna Citation XLS burns approximately 6,030kg of CO2 per three hour flight.
It’s back-of-the-napkin, but let’s say a typical jet does 4 legs per week, at 3 hour legs. We get:
17,947 jets X 6,030 kg CO2/flight X 4 flights/week X 52 weeks = 22,509,845,280 kilograms of Co2.
Over 22 billion kilos of C02. Per year.
Of course, that estimate of 4 legs per week could be low. Elon Musk has a private jet that logged 150,000 miles in 2018. Enough to circle the globe 6 times.
But if we banned private jets, with immediate effect, no exceptions, very few working class and middle class people would be affected. In fact even upper class, lower-tier wealthy would be relatively unscathed. It would only affect the tiny sliver at the top of the wealth pyramid, the same ones who seem most vociferously adamant on drastic climate action now and who could best afford to make alternate arrangements for attending climate summits or other important events. The annual Davos summit could be held via Skype, for example.
Taking the important step now will set the tone for the coming, rapid and drastic restructuring of every aspect of our lives, and it will be an easier pill to swallow when the elitists driving this change are leading the charge by example. Be the change you wish to see! #BanPrivateJets
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The United States and Human Trafficking
By Vladimir Danilov – New Eastern Outlook – 11.10.2020
In the beginning of October, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order about imposing sanctions on countries that, in Washington’s opinion, “do not put forth sufficient efforts to combat human trafficking”. The list of countries put together by Washington specifically includes Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Cuba, and the DPRK. In addition, US representatives in the IMF and multilateral banks have been ordered to vote against certain projects in which funds will be provided to Russia, China, Cuba, the DPRK, Iran, Syria, and several other countries. … continue
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