NDP marches with USA on Venezuela
By Yves Engler · February 13, 2018
Has it become NDP policy to support US-backed coups in Latin America?
The Canadian social democratic party’s foreign critic Hélène Laverdière has certainly remained silent regarding US leaders musing about a military coup or invasion of Venezuela and has openly supported asphyxiating the left-wing government through other means.
At the start of the month US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for the military to oust President Nicolás Maduro. “In the history of Venezuela and South American countries, it is often times that the military is the agent of change when things are so bad and the leadership can no longer serve the people,” Tillerson said in a speech, which included a quip about Maduro being sent to Cuba.
I found no criticism of Tillerson’s speech by Laverdière. The 15-year Foreign Affairs diplomat also stayed mum when Donald Trump threatened to invade Venezuela in the summer. “We have many options for Venezuela including a possible military option if necessary,” the US President said.
Laverdière has also failed to challenge Canadian sanctions on Venezuela, which followed a similar move by the US. In a move that probably violated the UN and OAS charters, in September the elected president, vice president and 38 other Venezuelan officials had their assets in Canada frozen and Canadians were barred from having financial relations with these individuals. Two months later 19 Venezuelan officials were sanctioned under the just adopted Magnitsky Act, which Laverdière and the NDP backed.
Nor did I find any criticism of Canada’s role in the so-called Lima Group of anti-Venezuelan foreign ministers. Laverdière remained silent when foreign minister Chrystia Freeland organized a meeting of the Lima Group in Toronto four months ago.
She also ignored Canada’s role in directly financing an often-unsavoury Venezuelan opposition. A specialist in social media and political transition, outgoing Canadian ambassador Ben Rowswell told the Ottawa Citizen in August: “We established quite a significant internet presence inside Venezuela, so that we could then engage tens of thousands of Venezuelan citizens in a conversation on human rights. We became one of the most vocal embassies in speaking out on human rights issues and encouraging Venezuelans to speak out.”
The NDP foreign critic also stayed mum when the federal government expelled Venezuelan diplomats’ from Canada in December.
Instead, Laverdière has repeatedly found cause to criticize Venezuela and call on Ottawa to do more to undermine Maduro’s government. She publicized and spoke to the weirdly themed “Demonstration for human and democratic rights in Venezuela in solidarity with Ukraine and Syria” and called Venezuela’s vice-president “a drug lord” from whom “the American government has seized billions of dollars of his assets for drug trafficking.”
Amidst opposition protests in the summer, Laverdière told CBC, “we would like to see the [Canadian] government be more active in … calling for the release of political prisoners, the holding of elections and respecting the National Assembly.”
Laverdière’s statement ignored the death and destruction caused by opposition protesters and the opposition’s effort to hamstring the government after it won control of the National Assembly in 2015.
At a foreign affairs committee meeting in June Laverdière responded to an anti-Venezuela screed by saying “I share many of his concerns.” Amongst a series of outrageous claims against the leftist government, Peter Kent told the committee: “As so many dictators have done over the centuries, Chávez blamed Venezuela’s small but dynamic Jewish community for stealing the wealth of the country. His henchmen endorsed the Holocaust.”
In June 2016 Laverdière put out a press release bemoaning “the erosion of democracy” and the need for Ottawa to “defend democracy in Venezuela”. In it Laverdière said, “the OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro has invoked the Inter-American Democratic Charter regarding Venezuela, and Canada, as a member of the OAS, should support his efforts.” But, the former Uruguayan Foreign Minister’s actions as head of the OAS were highly controversial. They even prompted Almagro’s past boss, former Uruguayan president José Mujica, to condemn his bias against the Venezuelan government.
Amidst three months of violent right wing protests at the start of 2014, then NDP Americas critic Laverdière presented a position to the House of Commons titled “Human Rights in Venezuela” and sponsored a House of Commons resolution (slightly re-worded and reintroduced two days later by then foreign critic Paul Dewar) asking, ” the Government of Canada to urge Venezuelan authorities to proactively de-escalate the conflict, protect the human rights and democratic freedoms of Venezuelan citizens, release all those detained during the protests, immediately cease all government interference with peaceful protesters, and ensure that those people who perpetrated the violence be brought to justice and bear the full weight of the law.”
After the opposition once again cried foul when they lost the 2013 presidential election, Laverdière accused the Stephen Harper government of being soft on Venezuela (only elections the right wing wins are fair, in the eyes of large swaths of the opposition and Laverdière). “Canada’s silence is striking,” she told Ipolitics. “They had views on President Chávez, but now they don’t seem to actually care what’s happening in the country.”
In what may be the first ever resolution to an NDP convention calling for the removal of a party critic, the NDP Socialist Caucus has submitted a motion to next weekend’s convention titled “Hands Off Venezuela, Remove Hélène Laverdière as NDP Foreign Affairs Critic.” It notes: “Be It Resolved that the NDP actively oppose foreign interference in Venezuela, defend Venezuela’s right to self-determination, reject alignment with U.S. policy in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and beyond, and request the immediate removal of MP Hélène Laverdière as NDP Foreign Affairs Critic.”
NDP members who oppose imperialism need to challenge Laverdière’s support for Washington and Ottawa’s efforts to topple Venezuela’s elected government.
At Canada’s New Democratic Party Convention, Palestine Is Set to Be Major Flashpoint
By Yves Engler | Palestine Chronicle | February 9, 2018
At next week’s New Democratic Party convention in Ottawa Palestinian rights are set to be a major flashpoint.
The NDP Socialist Caucus has submitted a resolution calling on the party to “actively campaign in support of the demand of Palestinian unions, civil society and unions across Canada and around the world which call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the Israeli state until it dismantles the apartheid wall, allows refugees to return home, ends its demolition of Palestinian homes and olive groves, lifts the siege of Gaza, ends its occupation of Palestinian lands, and terminates its apartheid practices.”
A more moderate “Palestine Resolution: renewing the NDP’s commitment to peace and justice” has been endorsed by two dozen riding associations. The motion mostly restates official Canadian policy, except that it calls for “banning settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the occupation.”
Already the Canadian Jewish News, Electronic Intifada, National Post, Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, Toronto Star, Le Devoir, Mondoweiss, Canada Talks Israel Palestine and Rabble have published stories regarding the resolutions. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has called on the party leader to “push back against marginal elements within the party” promoting Palestinian rights while the more explicitly antidemocratic Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal has “Urged NDP to Disallow Anti-Israel Resolution at Upcoming Convention”.
Unfortunately, corporate-media-focused party operatives may heed the CIJA/Wiesenthal call. Party insiders will no doubt do everything in their power to avoid discussing the Socialist Caucus BDS resolution and will probably seek to block the Palestine Resolution from being debated publicly on the convention floor. If their backroom procedural shenanigans fail to stop the resolutions from a public airing expect a great deal of concern about associating with the international BDS movement.
For NDPers scared of BDS here is an alternative resolution that places no demands on Israel:
1. The NDP will refrain from excluding electoral candidates who speak up for Palestinian rights.
(During the 2015 federal election the NDP responded to Conservative party pressure by ousting as many as eight individuals from running or contesting nominations to be candidates because they defended Palestinian rights on social media.)
2. NDP MPs will refrain from participating in any Israel parliamentary group until the party is represented on a Nigerian, Algerian or Spanish parliamentary group.
(Vancouver Island MPs Randall Garrison and Murray Rankin are currently members of the Canada Israel Inter-parliamentary Group.)
3. The NDP foreign critic will refuse requests to participate in all expense paid trips to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual conference.
(Hélène Laverdière spoke at the 2016 AIPAC conference in Washington DC.)
4. NDP MPs will participate in all expense paid lobbying trips to Israel at no greater rate than Paraguay, which is of similar size and distance from Ottawa.
(A 2014 calculation found that 20 NDP MPs had been to Israel with a Zionist lobby organization and 13 months ago recently elected party leader Jagmeet Singh went on an organized trip to the country.)
5. NDP officials will abstain from attending events put on by explicitly racist organizations.
(In 2016 Hélène Laverdière participated in an event in Jerusalem organized by the openly racist Jewish National Fund while NDP MP Pat Martin spoke at a JNF event in Ottawa to “recognize and thank the people that have helped to make JNF Canada what it is today.” Owner of 13 per cent of Israel’s land – which was mostly taken from Palestinians forced from their homes by Zionist forces in 1947-48 – the JNF openly discriminates against the 20% of Israelis who are not Jewish. Its website notes that “a survey commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.”)
My alternative resolution makes no demands of Israel so it’s hard to link it to the BDS bogeyman. Best of all, the party has the power to immediately implement this small gesture of support for the long-suffering Palestinians.
I will be speaking about “What’s Wrong with NDP Foreign Policy?” on the sidelines of the convention.
– Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and a number of other books.
North Korea War Plan: Chrystia Freeland is more dangerous than Tony Blair
By Cameron Pike | OffGuardian | January 28, 2018
The day before the Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Security and Stability in Vancouver on January 16, 2018, a forum was held at the University of British Columbia’s Institute of Asian Research entitled “Getting North Korea Right: Canadian Options and Roles”. This was a publicly held event with the “expert” “talking heads” of think-tanks. The moderator was an Asian International Relations expert, Dr. Paul Evans, who is now the head of the Institute of Asian Research.
The five speakers were Eric Walsh: Canadian Ambassador to the Republic of South Korea, Scott Snyder: Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy, and New York Council of Foreign Relations, Kyung-Ae Park: Korea Foundation Chair, School of Public Policy and Global Affairs Director, and Canada-DPRK Knowledge Partnership Program, Brian Job: Professor of Political Science, UBC, Brian Gold: Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta. All panel participants were to attend the following days’ Foreign Ministers’ Meeting on North Korea.
The events’ speakers discussed Canada’s role in mediating the “International Community’s” response to North Korea through sanctions, non-proliferation and diplomacy. The stated goal of the pre-meeting was to have public discourse on the crisis in North Korea, a day in advance of the major international diplomatic event being held in Vancouver. The actual purpose of the pre-meeting was to soft sell the major military role that Canada plans to play in open sea interdiction to a Canadian audience on tightening sanctions on North Korea. This soft sell was necessary to back the hard sell for military action being made by Chrystia Freeland to 20 foreign ministers the following day.
Canadians mostly consider themselves non-militaristic, but as intelligence and military officials know around the world, the Canadian Navy are experts at interdictions at sea and are more preferred in interdiction than the U.S. Navy. Canada has had much experience perfecting these capabilities in interdictions off the coast of Africa, as well and in the Persian Gulf during the two Gulf Wars.
Further, what most Canadians and perhaps the general population in the West do not know, is that Canada is an important partner in the NATO/NORAD and UN command and intelligence structures and does most of the top military coordination in exercises and operations between the nations of NATO currently exercising on the border with Russia, and especially in the Ukraine. Most officers in the Canadian military are trained in a comprehensive way that allows them to operate in an integrated manner with US, UK, NATO, and U.N. forces around the globe. Throughout all U.S. global military actions, whether in the Gulf and Afghan wars, or currently all over the world, Canada’s military and military intelligence, considered the best in the world, has worked hand in hand with the U.S. military in special operations and counter intelligence.
Of the five speakers, the presentation by Scott A. Snyder of the NY Council on Foreign Relations was the most revealing of the actual intentions of the following days’ conference organizers. Snyder used the concept of a rheostat to describe the situation. He said, China was holding the rheostat over North Korea, that the U.S. was holding the rheostat over China, and that the “International Community” was holding the rheostat over the U.S. The significance of this is the acknowledgement that pressure on the U.S. is coming from the “collective” global community of extra-governmental, international, and non-national institutions and structures, including NGO’s, civil society, and the international financial community. Canada, as the host nation for this Foreign Minister’s meeting, is leading the “International Community”, which means that Canada is one of the leading countries holding the rheostat over the U.S.
It should be noted that the New York Council on Foreign Relations, where Snyder is a senior fellow, is an outgrowth of the British Liberal Imperialist Fabian Society. Its core thinkers over the last century, especially since WWII, created the unipolar doctrine of the “International Community” which Snyder references. This “International Community” does not include, at its core, Asia, Africa, Latin America, Russia, now Turkey, and possibly France, and India; that is most of the world. In other words, the “International Community” that Scott Snyder references is not international; nor are the Colour Revolutions, the illegal invasions, and the sanctions that are being carried out in the name of the “International Community” International.
These actions are hybrid warfare designed to pressure or break apart countries from within, who may have the potential of working within the new “multipolar” world framework being promoted by Russia and China. This “multipolar” framework is based on the New Paradigm, which is being introduced to the world economically by China via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI.)
Snyder, in his presentation, said he expected pressure to be placed on North Korea and suggested it be done as a “nut cracker” with the intention to split North Korea internally, especially its elite, in order to open the door for civil society groups (NGO’s, churches etc.) to come in under the guise of humanitarian assistance, and foment internal dissent, hand in hand with the brutal blockade and interdiction being organized by Chrystia Freeland at the Korean Security Conference the following day. Snyder also further elaborated on the need for “maximizing the thresholds of pressure” to bring North Korea to diplomacy, as a “calibrated scalpel, not a blunt instrument like a hammer.”
At the pre-conference meeting, Brian Gold responded to a question about China and Russia not being invited to the Vancouver Summit. He stated that “China and Russia are irrelevant” to the situation, at which Dr. Paul Evans suggested that he should get a job with the Canadian government. [Editor’s Note: The claim that China and Russia had not been invited is itself an obfuscation: both countries condemned the conference as harmful and officially refused the invitation to attend a post-conference meeting on the evening of January 16, as reported by RT here.]
Brian Job said this is a “convening opportunity” for Canada, and that it involves “delicate interdiction.” That is, Canada will proceed “delicately” as a perceived neutral power backed up by the “International Community” to interdict and board ships with cargo for North Korea. Would Canada do so to Chinese or Russian vessels? Would Canada’s involvement in interdiction be perceived as “neutral” interdiction? Canada’s Privy Council and shadowy neo-cons like Chrystia Freeland certainly hope so. But that is not the reality from China and Russia’s perspective, nor was this accepted by the audience attending the pre-meeting.
UBC Professor, Kyung-Ae Park, from South Korea, said that the U.S./North Korea relationship is none of China’s business. Park is head of a South/North Korean educational exchange program operating out of Canada. She had been scheduled to be part of a “civil society” activation meeting with Chrystia Freeland in downtown Vancouver after the pre-conference meeting. How do “civil society” activists penetrate a country like North Korea? Precisely through the well-practiced method of Colour Revolutions, enacted already several times over by the “International Community”. Snyder referenced Egypt, Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, former Yugoslavia as just a few examples.
Many other Colour Revolutions, all of which have been funded by George Soros’ Open Society and Tides Foundations, have been tried and failed. A recent example of this is in Iran. George Soros, a very close friend of Chrystia Freeland, is a Hungarian Jew who worked for the Nazi’s during WWII helping to confiscate his own people’s property. In an interview on 60 Minutes in 1998, Soros openly admits that this was the best time of his life. Chrystia Freeland was commissioned to write George Soros’ biography before running for public office under the Liberal Party. Freeland is also known in Canadian government circles as being the Minister of Everything.
It should be noted that many on the panel spoke of creating the “coalition of the willing” to deal with North Korea. This is the exact same operational language that was used to manipulate the people of the Western world under Bush to agree to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Are we really supposed to fall for this again?
Following the speakers’ presentations, questions were allowed from the audience. The first three questions were technical questions with no substance and were under the general spell of professional decorum. A Director for the Society for the New Humanist Paradigm (SNHP), which represents the New Paradigm in Canada, asked the fourth question.
In that question, the Moon-Putin plan was described for the audience. This plan is the exact opposite of what the panel discussion described was being planned for the next days’ talks at the Foreign Minister’s meeting. The Moon-Putin plan was announced last September at the Vladivostok Eastern Economic Forum. This is a plan agreed to by Russia and South Korea. It is a plan to bring South and North Korea together through physical infrastructure and trade mechanisms, involving the neighbouring countries of Russia and China.
Bridges of cooperation linking South Korea to Russia via North Korea: gas, railroads, ports, electricity, a northern sea route, shipbuilding, jobs, agriculture, and fisheries. Siberian oil and gas pipelines would be extended to Korea, both North and South, as well as to Japan. Both Koreas would be linked up with the vast rail networks of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, including high-speed rail, and the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to Gavan McCormack, “North Korea would accept the security guarantee of the five (Japan included), refrain from any further nuclear or missile testing, shelve (‘freeze’) its existing programs and gain its longed for ‘normalization’ in the form of incorporation in regional groupings, the lifting of sanctions and normalized relations with its neighbour states, without surrender.”
The panel of speakers were also reminded that North Korea has been sanctioned since 1948 and has been suffering ever since at the behest of an illegal UN resolution, 195, and that the Belt and Road and the Moon-Putin plan were for building up their physical economy. As the SNHP director pointed out, in this context, sanctions were the exact opposite. He also pointed out that the January 16 meeting in Vancouver, along with Canada’s new Hard Power Foreign Policy initiatives (announced last year with record military spending for Canada) under Chrystia Freeland, was unprecedented in the history of Canada’s traditional peacekeeping role, and there is no confidence that Canada will play a positive role in this situation, or that Canada is a neutral Middle Power any longer given this shift.
Further, that Canadians deserve to have a national dialogue considering the consequences of such actions. He then went on to address Brian Gold directly, stating that Russia and China, considering the positive resolutions (Sunshine Policy, Olympics, etc.) made with South and North Korea over the last few weeks, were relevant and their absence from these meetings is a mistake. Finally, the SNHP representative asked, “When will Canada wake up to the fact that Freeland is a neo-con war-mongerer?” and “… if the Moon-Putin plan has already been discussed and such positive results are on the horizon, why the Foreign Ministers meeting in Vancouver was taking place at all?”
While the audience clapped, the panel was stunned. Four speakers responded to the intervention with a feeble attempt to change the subject. Most of the questions from the audience that followed the intervention were not questions but denunciations of the war policy that Canada was supporting. After each denunciation there was applause. In response to this, the panel started to back pedal and went limp. Even Brian Gold had to back pedal on Russia and China being irrelevant, and, as he was commenting, had to admit that he was making a case for why Russia and China should have been invited to the Foreign Minister’s meeting even as he was trying to defend his original statement. Subsequently, Brian Gold wrote an article printed in The Hill Times on January 22, 2018.
This article, highlighting Canada’s role as a ‘Middle Power’, serves to deflect attention from the neo-conservative and far-right views of the government of Canada under Chrystia Freeland, especially towards both Russia and China. Contrary to Gold’s article, it is in fact Chrystia Freeland, a frequent contributor to the NY CFR’s policy publication Foreign Affairs, the promoters of the ‘unipolar’ world doctrine, that did not want China and Russia present at the Foreign Minister’s meeting. President Trump has been at war with the likes of the CFR and the neo-liberal/neo-conservative mainstream media outlets that promote their unipolar worldview since before he took office and has consistently promised the American people better relations with Russia and a closer working relationship with China. In recent bold statements, however, Secretary Mattis outlines clearly that Russia and China are the main economic threat to the unipolar world in the National Defense Strategy 2018 policy paper.
Another SNHP Director who attended raised the issue of the THAAD missiles, and asked the panelists how they would not have been seen by North and South Korea as a threat? Snyder responded that the THAAD missiles were for defense and a non-issue, but he did acknowledge that South Korea was against the installation from the beginning. What Snyder should have acknowledged was that massive opposition by South Koreans of the THAAD missile deployment had forced the ouster of President Park Geun-hye in 2017.
What is important to note was the dearth of support from the audience for what the panelists were trying to soft peddal. The reaction by the audience, both in private to the SNHP Directors and following open denunciations to the panel, clearly shows that Canadians are not accepting the pablum they are being fed any more.
Cameron Pike studied Communications and Philosophy at the University of Winnipeg, and has worked in a variety of corporate fields in management before becoming Director at the Society for the New Humanist Paradigm, a Not-For-Profit, in Vancouver, Canada.
This Does Not Represent the Views of the University
By Maximilian Forte | Zero Anthropology | January 20, 2018
I know that I am not the first person to ask this, but when did universities start having “views”? When some professors indulge their rights to free speech or put academic freedom into practice, they can sometimes express views that some members of the public find controversial, distasteful, or reprehensible. In such cases, one frequently reads their university administrations publishing memos to the effect that, “Professor X’s views on Subject Y do not represent the views of the university”. What does that mean? Has “the university” studied the subject to the same degree as the professor, thus allowing it to conclude its views are the correct ones? Was the professor supposed to be instructed on the correct views to represent, since the job of professor apparently means not having an independent mind? Does it mean that Professor X does not represent the views of all professors and students at the university? How could anyone ever assume that one professor spoke for all others? Does it instead mean that the professor does not represent the views of those in the administration? The support staff? If so, who cares? And where exactly did the university administration publish its “party line”? When I was twice hired for tenure-track positions, the one thing I recall no Dean ever telling me was: “Here is a list of the views of the university. Only if you uphold these views can you consider working here. Should you ever express any differing views, you may be subjected to disciplinary action”. Nonetheless, the attitude of some university administrations in North America is that they have a right to publicly castigate faculty for not toeing the line. It is as if “the university” has been reduced to working as a mere cell of a ruling political party.
One could ask similar questions as above, only in reverse. What entitles administrators to speak for the university as a whole? How do they know that Professor X’s statements really do not reflect the views of the university? Did they ever consult faculty and students? Where is all the survey data that reveal the views of faculty on any subject? How is “the university” defined? Is it just the board of governors? Whose views does the university represent? Since I work in a public university—Canada only has public universities, with maybe one or two little exceptions—can we then assume that the “views of the university” neatly align with the broad majority of the public that we presumably are meant to serve? Is it the job of professors to simply reflect the views of others? Since when did it fall to professors to “represent” their universities—and will they get paid extra for doing PR work?
Three transformations have happened more or less simultaneously, and relatively recently, which may explain these bizarre communiqués from university administrators. One has to do with the politicization of university directorates, especially as even public universities have turned to support from private donors, most of whom have big axes to grind. Private donors are keen to buy support, and silence. Few are the donors who give generously just because they are thrilled by learning—that would be too countercultural in the North American context in which we lionize our meat packers and vilify intellectuals. From this first point, where private donors act as lobbyists for special interests, almost all else follows. To assure donors that universities are being run in a “smart” fashion, administrators have multiplied administrative positions and stacked them with persons from the private sector, who draft “strategic plans” and design what are essentially corporate business models. In other words, politicization stems from privatization and corporatization—this is the neoliberal transformation of the public university. To be clear, this transformation has its origins neither in university administrations nor the private sector, both of which lack the political power and authority necessary to effect such a transformation. Instead, governments are the ones that actively took the decision to cut back on funding for public universities, which is their responsibility, even as taxation levels either remained the same or continued to rise. They chose to redirect public funding away from universities, just as they did with education as a whole, as well as healthcare, social welfare, and so on. Governments pressed universities to raise funds from private sources, just as they pressed them to expand their governance by including more individuals from the private sector.
The second change has to do with universities seeking to raise their public profile, to gain visibility, and advance in the rankings through enhanced public recognition. To gain recognition, university websites have shed their traditional dull and dour functionality, and have become replicas of CNN. Even the university shields have been tossed, in favour of some terrible, and terribly expensive, brand logos produced by private consultants and graphic designers. Universities now also have “media relations” units, with expert staff that spend their days in Twitter and Facebook, and writing up newsy articles about what select faculty members and students are achieving (more on the political functions of “media relations” units, below). These same media units then do the rounds of the departments, advising faculty on how best to interact with journalists. To the laughter of everyone in my Department, one team showed us a video that advised us to dumb down our research so that “even your grandmother could understand it”. I still have no idea why they focused on grandmothers, not grandfathers, and why they assume that all grandmothers are ignorant rubes—perhaps theirs are? In addition, the media units encourage us to list ourselves as experts, for any journalists perusing the university website, by listing the presumably edgy and sexy topics we have mastered with our unrivalled expertise. Not enough, they then invite professors to do professional photo shoots in which they pose playfully for the camera, with a single short sentence in huge print next to them which somehow encapsulates their decades of research: “Do humans really like food?”
The third major change has to do with how university administrations understand academic freedom, and separately, freedom of speech. One might say they understand these concepts very poorly, or not at all, but I think that misses the above points. The desire by administrators to chill speech, to counter the embarrassingly contrary statements made by publicly outspoken professors, has to do with assuaging private donors as the public university is realigned with the political interests of the so-called top 1%. The immense irony of this is that it is university administrations themselves that actively pushed faculty into the public limelight in the first place, under the strategic rubrics of “knowledge mobilization” and “community outreach”. My university has posted banners around campus that urge us to “mix it up,” “get your hands dirty,” and “embrace the city, embrace the world”—vapid commercialist fluff. Even Hollywood took notice. Bleak Ben Stiller bleakly walked past some of these same bleak posters in his recent bleak film, “Brad’s Status,” which apparently was partly shot on the campus of Concordia University (not that the university is listed in the credits of the film—in fact, the movie credits claim the film was shot either in Hawaii or Boston, Montreal itself is not even mentioned):
Having urged us to “get out there,” university administrators then later express regret when they feel compelled to counter a given professor’s statements with press releases affirming that “this does not represent the views of the university”. This is an “own goal” on the part of university administrators. They have worked assiduously to make the university into a media organization, to turn professors into celebrity advocacy-journalists, and to make the institution responsive to market audiences to such an extent that the autonomy of the university becomes untenable.
Firings of tenured professors by university administrations, over a difference of opinion, are still relatively rare in Canada, when compared with the US or the UK. In fact, it is not an easy option: tenured professors have not only the protection of their tenure, but of their union, and a legally binding contract negotiated with the union on behalf of faculty which ensures academic freedom and due process. Faculty unions in turn belong to a national umbrella organization, CAUT, which boasts a multi-million dollar academic freedom fund and gets actively involved in supporting faculty. Canadian universities are also deeply fearful of lawsuits which could easily demolish their already frail budgets, most of which are running deficits already. Poor financial management and the backlash of legal damage often results in the top administrators being toppled. Rather than go the messy route which, heaven forbid, could also give rise to “bad press”—good lord, not “bad press,” that’s the other court which administrations fear—administrators have had to develop quieter, more insidious and subtle forms of suppression. The way to send “the right message” to the outside world, to properly convey the unspoken “views of the university,” is to publicly promote and praise certain select professors, the ones whose views and whose work best align with those of private individual and corporate donors, or with the ruling party, or the military. To take a recent example: as Donald Trump neared electoral victory, articles were published on the university website, in its magazine and elsewhere, that featured the expert analysis of select faculty—strangely enough, all of whom were clearly pro-Hillary Clinton, anti-Trump, a number of them American expatriates, and who evinced a certain Liberal Party affinity. Unlike in a real university, there was no debate among this small cluster of people bewailing the dawn of the “post-truth” world.
The paradox is that neoliberal university administrators have adopted a policy of containment, at the same time as they seek to publicly advertise themselves. Not wanting “the wrong views” to get notice, they engage in restricting speech by selecting that speech which suits their purposes. Speech is thus not just restricted, it is regulated, by promoting only those persons whose views are safe and deemed worthy of recognition. Speech is thus effectively restricted to those academics that the administrators judge to be “qualified” to speak, thereby limiting not only what is said, but who can say it. Media relations departments have the primary responsibility of inventing online rituals around speech, practicing containment through promotion. In some cases such departments actively tutor budding young “public intellectuals” through seminars and by shadowing them online, always ready for the opportune time for that strategic “retweet”. As weak, vain, and ineffective as these policies are, they serve as a useful reminder of how liberal authoritarianism works. In this case, liberal authoritarianism produces fictional representations of “the views of the university,” by thinning out the work actually done by faculty, spreading out the words of a few to represent the words of all.
Another method of indirect silencing is for the university to “celebrate” the media “accomplishments” of select faculty only, by listing stories of faculty who have appeared in the media… only in select media, depending on the “prestige” of the outlet. This is a way to ensure that professors whose views are worthy of being courted by the corporate, neoliberal imperialist media are the only ones featured. In other words, a professor mentioned in a story on CNN is deemed to be worthy of note; a professor who appears on RT, is ignored, as if the event never happened. Selective pride is a way of signalling selective shame. It has the effect of rendering silent the actual media accomplishments of faculty, in order to produce a false picture of where faculty stand, thus assuring the egos of financial donors and politicians. The policy is implemented with the naïve hope that misaligned professors will quietly yearn for that elusive little place on the university website, a place that amounts to nothing more than a few ephemeral pixels seen by few and forgotten by all.
On a range of other issues, near and dear to regime changers, liberal imperialists, and the pro-Israel lobby, one sees the pattern being reproduced, as I can affirm after close scrutiny that has endured for over a decade. If the topics are Iran, Libya, Syria, refugees, wars, nationalism, and so on, one sees the selectivity being actively enforced, even if it means publishing, praising and promoting the same two or three professors time after time. Rather than a university of hundreds of professors, added to tens of thousands students, we become a university of three individuals. Rarely, probably never, do we see university articles dealing with the working class, with poverty and inequality, critical of neoliberalism, globalization and imperialism. Thus the university presents its “views,” of such a one-sided nature and so bereft of any healthy dissent and disagreement as one would find on no university campus that ever took itself seriously.
Viewed from afar, there might even be something comical about a university administration busying itself with inventing a secret university, one that covertly lurks beneath the chosen public representation of the university. That is the point of creating “signature areas” that determine “strategic hiring”: lifting hiring decisions from the hands of Departments, now it is university executives who impose the parameters on what constitutes a desirable candidate, and decide which areas need to be filled. Slowly they thus invent for themselves the university they desire, as opposed to the real one that actually exists. Finally, they will have something they can sell with confidence. One has to almost feel sympathy for the administrators, who feel the keen pressure of public politics and special interest lobbies, into whose arms they have been driven by governments that renege on their obligation to support public universities.
The “views” of the university are a mercantile fiction, a falsehood designed to mislead the public and to caress donors and politicians, the kinds of individuals who are apparently empty and infantile enough to believe that the winning arguments are those that are advanced in the absence of criticism. What if we taught our students that the best way to learn is to ignore whatever they do not like to hear? That is indeed what is being pushed, ironically under the signs of “tolerance” and “inclusion,” the usual neoliberal claptrap. Thus we witness the university turned into a mere echo chamber for the comfortable, a safe space for moneyed elites to flatter themselves, creating a virtual world of unrivalled ideological purity, contrived harmony, and eternal hegemony.
Finally, messages from university administrators along the lines of “this does not represent the views of the university,” might serve an additional function, but I am just speculating. This might be a polite way of telling rabid members of the public to lay off. We heard you, yes it’s all quite disconcerting, and here is our little statement, now move along. Had universities with their bloated administrations and overt political leanings not wished to enhance their public profiles and represent themselves as quasi-media outlets, they would spare themselves such unnecessary exercises. In the end, pronouncements about “the views of the university” end up multiplying the damage to the university, both as a self-inflicted wounds within the university, and as a sign of intellectual cowardice in the face of bullies. A university administration that engages in such conduct has failed its first and most basic function: to administer university resources in order to facilitate teaching and learning.
Washington and Allies Go Orwellian on Korea Peace Talks
By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 19.01.2018
Just as North and South Korea achieve important peaceful exchanges, Washington and its NATO allies appear to be moving with determination to sabotage the initiative for averting war on the East Asian peninsula.
Further, the reckless, gratuitous provocations beg the conclusion that the United States is indeed trying to start a war.
Meanwhile, unprecedented accusations this week by US President Donald Trump that Russia is supporting North Korea to evade United Nations sanctions also point to the danger that any conflict could spiral out of control to engulf world nuclear powers.
Moscow rejected the unsubstantiated claims leveled by Trump, saying that Russia is abiding by UN trade restrictions over North Korea, and that the American president’s allegations were “entirely unfounded”.
Trump’s verbal broadside suggests that Washington is trying to undermine the nascent talks between the two Koreas, talks which Russia and China have both applauded as a long-overdue diplomatic effort to resolve the Korean conflict.
Separately, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov deplored a summit held in Vancouver, Canada, earlier this week in which the US and 19 other nations – most of them NATO members – called for sharper sanctions on North Korea that go beyond the remit of the United Nations. The conference, co-hosted by Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, issued a stridently bellicose statement, calling in effect for North Korea to surrender its nuclear weapons or face US-led military action.
Significantly, and pointedly, China and Russia were not invited to the Canadian summit.
Most of the attending states were part of the original US-led military force which fought against North Korea during the 1950-53 war. A war which killed as many as two million North Koreans.
Russia admonished that the conference was “harmful” to current peace talks between North and South Korea. China rebuked the Canadian event as being stuck in “Cold War thinking”.
The anachronism of countries like Britain, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands and Norway attending a conference on the Korean crisis while Asia-Pacific powers Russia and China being excluded was noted by Russia’s Sergei Lavrov. The anachronism is not only absurd, he said, it reprises a provocative “war summit” message.
Disturbingly, what the Vancouver gathering demonstrated was the willingness by the US and its allies to circumvent the United Nations Security Council and the previously established regional Six-Party forum involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the US.
At the Vancouver event, Tillerson laid out a belligerent agenda that was endorsed by the other attendees. The agenda included the precondition of North Korea giving up its nuclear program unilaterally; and it also flatly rejected the proposal made by Russia and China for a “freeze” in all military activities on the Korean Peninsula as a step to get comprehensive settlement talks going.
Tillerson made the following sinister ultimatum: “We have to recognize that that threat [of North Korea’s nuclear weapons] is growing. And if North Korea does not choose the path of engagement, discussion, negotiation, [that is, surrender] then they themselves will trigger an option [US military action].”
The US diplomat also warned that the American public must be “sober” about the possibility of war breaking out. Tillerson said the risk of such a war on the Korean Peninsula “continues to grow”. This was echoed by President Trump a day later in an interview with the Reuters news agency in which he also warned of possible war. It was the same interview in which Trump blamed Russia for aiding and abetting North Korea.
This sounds like US leaders are intensifying the conditioning of the American public to accept use of the military option, which they have been threatening for the past year in a pre-emptive attack on North Korea.
The Vancouver summit also called for proactive interdiction of international ships suspected of breaching UN sanctions on North Korea. That raises the danger of the US and its allies interfering with Russian and Chinese vessels – which would further escalate tensions.
These reprehensible developments are a reflection of the increasingly Orwellian worldview held by Washington and its partners, whereby “war is presented as peace” and “peace is perceived as war”.
Just this week, North and South Korea held a third round of peace negotiations in as many weeks. Even Western news media hailed “Olympic breakthrough” after the two adversaries agreed to participate in the opening ceremony of the forthcoming winter games next month as a unified nation under a neutral flag.
After two years of no inter-Korean talks and mounting war tensions on the peninsula, surely the quickening pace of peace overtures this month should be welcomed and encouraged. Russia, China and the UN have indeed endorsed the bilateral Korean exchange. Even President Trump said he welcomed it.
Nevertheless, as the Vancouver summit this week shows, the US and its NATO allies appear to be doing everything to torpedo the inter-Korean dialogue. Issuing ultimatums and warning of “military options” seems intended to blow up the delicate dynamic towards confidence and trust.
Two reports this week in the New York Times conveyed the contorted Orwellian mindset gripping Washington and its allies.
First, there was the report: “Military quietly prepares for a last resort: War with North Korea”. The NY Times actually reported extensive Pentagon plans for a preemptive air assault on North Korea involving a “deep attack” manned by 82nd Airborne paratroopers and special forces. The paper spun the provocative war plans as a “last resort”. In other words, war is sold here as peace.
Which raises the question of who is trying to wreck the Olympic Games being held in South Korea in February. For months, Western media have been warning that North Korea was intending to carry out some kind of sabotage. Now, it looks like the sabotage is actually coming from the US, albeit sanitized by the NY Times.
The second report in the NY Times had the telling headline: “Olympic détente upends US strategy on North Korea”.
So, let’s get our head around that display of dubious logic. A peaceful development of détente between two adversaries is somehow presented as a pernicious “upending of US strategy on North Korea”. In other words, peace is sold here as war.
Take for example this choice editorial comment from the NY Times in the second report: “This latest gesture of unity, the most dramatic in a decade, could add to fears in Washington that Pyongyang is making progress on a more far-reaching agenda.”
And what, one wonders, would that “far-reaching agenda” entail?
Again the NY Times elaborates: “White House officials warn that the ultimate goal of [North Korean leader] Mr Kim is to evict American troops from the Korean Peninsula and to reunify the two Koreas under a single flag… For the United States, the fear has been that North Korea’s gestures will drive a wedge between it and its ally, South Korea.”
Only in a perverse Orwellian worldview would an initiative to calm tensions and build peaceful relations be construed as something to “fear” and be opposed to.
Only in a perverse Orwellian worldview would peaceful dialogue provoke plans for pre-emptive war.
But that is precisely the kind of dystopian world that Washington and its lackeys inhabit.
‘When US sidelined, Koreas can work towards peace & stability, talks suggest’
RT | January 18, 2018
US policy is a distraction from the ongoing Korean talks, which Seoul hopes will eventually lead to the denuclearization of the entire peninsula, security analyst Charles Shoebridge told RT.
The third session of inter-Korean talks in a week signalled a significant breakthrough in the frosty ties between the two Koreas. And while the thaw in relations was welcomed by Seoul, the recent rapprochement was greeted with skepticism by 20 foreign ministers of the so-called “Vancouver Group,” which defended South Korea during the Korean War more than five decades ago.
“It is particularly ironic… That while this… Thawing of tensions is going on between North and South… It’s happening… In Vancouver, the former allies of South Korea are tightening the noose, increasing the rhetoric, raising the temperature,” Shoebridge told RT after the US-led group decided to consider unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang Tuesday.
The US is adamant that it will apply not only economic and diplomatic pressure, but also issue military threats to force N. Korea to disarm. On Wednesday, Seoul and Washington “reaffirmed its security commitment to the defense of South Korea using all categories of its military capabilities,” the Ministry of National Defense said. The allies also “agreed to continue the rotational deployment of US strategic assets to South Korea and nearby areas as long as North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats persist.”
The decision to keep up with military threats comes the same day as Donald Trump expressed doubt that the intra-Korean talks will lead to “anything meaningful.” The US president also warned that it is “very possible” that the standoff with North Korea might not be resolved peacefully. Charles Shoebridge criticized Washington’s foreign policy, pointing out that Seoul and Pyongyang can achieve much more if the US stops interfering in their “considerable diplomatic achievement.”
“These talks themselves started on the back of South Korea agreeing to persuade America to at least pause its military exercises,” Shoebridge told RT. “It appears to be the case when the interests and the foreign policy, and the actions of the United States are put to one side, local players are, to some degree at least, able to start finding local solutions, [and] make some progress towards securing their local interests, which are usually peace and stability.”
China and Russia – two major regional players who were not invited to participate in the Vancouver summit this week – criticized Washington’s pessimistic outlook of the Korean diplomatic process. Participants that gathered in Canada, while rejecting the Chinese-Russian ‘double freeze’ roadmap for easing Korean tensions, failed to provide any alternative, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
In July 2017, Moscow and Beijing proposed the initiative that would see the US and its allies halting all major military exercises in the region in exchange for Pyongyang suspending its nuclear and ballistic missile program. The ‘double freeze’ initiative, however, was once again rebuffed by Washington Tuesday during the Vancouver summit.
Beijing also slammed the meeting, saying it was driven by a Cold War mentality. “When major parties to the Korean Peninsula issue are not present, such a meeting will not contribute to properly resolving the issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang pointed out Wednesday. “All parties should cherish the hard-won momentum of easing tension on the peninsula, support the efforts made by the DPRK and the ROK in improving ties, and double their commitment in alleviating the situation and promoting dialogues.”
On Wednesday, North Korea agreed to allow a joint women’s ice hockey team to participate at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics (February 9-25) and march together as one with their southern neighbor under a “unified Korea” flag at the opening ceremony.
The North also consented to send a 150-member delegation of athletes and cheerleaders to the Paralympic games in March. South Korean President Moon Jae-in once again expressed hope Wednesday that the inter-Korean talks will pave the way for broader dialogue between the United States and the North which could eventually lead to the resolution of the North Korean nuclear standoff.
Vancouver summit on N. Korea failed to provide alternative to Russian & Chinese proposals – Moscow
RT | January 17, 2018
The joint US-Canada summit is just a “heavy-handed attempt” to undermine the decisions of the UNSC, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said. It added that the meeting failed to provide an alternative to the Russian-Chinese initiative.
Participants at the Vancouver summit failed to provide any alternative to the existing Chinese-Russian roadmap for easing the Korean knot, the ministry said in statement. It noted that instead of coming up with any “constructive” results, the gathering demonstrated “absolute disrespect” for the authority of the UN Security Council (UNSC).
What’s more, the decision to consider imposing unilateral sanctions against North Korea that overstep the demands outlined by the UNSC resolutions are “absolutely unacceptable and counterproductive,” the statement added. The ministry said further that a situation, in which some countries adopt roles as interpreters of UNSC resolutions without any permission or mandate – thus undermining the role of the UN – is “absolutely inadmissible.”
Back in July 2017, Moscow and Beijing put forward a proposal known as the ‘double-freeze’ initiative that envisaged the US and its allies halting all major military exercises in the region in exchange for Pyongyang suspending its nuclear and ballistic missile program. The initiative was, however, turned down by Washington – which was reiterated on Tuesday during the Vancouver summit.
The same day, the Russian Foreign Ministry again drew attention to the fact that the initiative is aimed at “resolving the entire range of problems [around the Korean Peninsula] solely through the political and diplomatic means.”
The Vancouver meeting, on the contrary, did not contribute to the normalization of the situation on the peninsula and only exacerbated existing tensions, the ministry said. Notably, neither Russia nor China was invited to the gathering despite being major players in the region as well as immediate neighbors of North Korea.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that he was told Russia and China would only be “briefed” on the results of the meeting, calling such an attitude “unacceptable.” He also said that it would be a “great result already” if the meeting merely avoided leading to anything “counterproductive.”
Beijing also slammed the summit by saying that it had “not the slightest legality and representativeness.” It also accused the meeting participants of evoking Cold War ghosts. Pyongyang denounced the Vancouver summit as a “provocation” which is not helping the talks between North and South Korea.
In the meantime, US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard noted that it was the US regime change policy that prompted Pyongyang to develop its nuclear and missile arsenal in the first place. She turned to Twitter to call on Washington to put an end to such practices as well as to cast away “unrealistic preconditions” that the US government has been setting for decades to negotiate with North Korea.
Long-overdue release of Hassan Diab in France highlights failure of bogus “terror” charges
Photo: Friends of Hassan Diab
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – January 13, 2108
Lebanese-Canadian professor Hassan Diab was ordered released and all charges against him dropped by a French investigative judge on his case yesterday, 12 January 2018. Diab was extradited from Canada and held for three years in solitary confinement in France on the basis of bogus “terrorism” charges despite clear evidence of his innocence. While the struggle isn’t over, as the French state can appeal, this is an important victory for Hassan Diab and against the use of “terror” charges to terrorize oppressed communities.
Of course, French state persecution continues – from the use of anti-terror laws and the “state of emergency” to impose fear and repression on oppressed communities through police violence and surveillance to the charges against BDS activists for advocacy for Palestine to, atop the list, the over 33 years of imprisonment of Lebanese Communist struggler for Palestine, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes Hassan Diab, his wife Rania Tfaily, his dedicated French and Canadian legal team and all of the Justice for Hassan Diab campaigners who have struggled for years for his release from years of unjust imprisonment in French prison and extradition from Canada on the basis of bogus “terrorism” charges. Yesterday, he was ordered released after three years of solitary confinement and the charges against him dropped. He is working now to come back to Canada.
Of course, the struggle isn’t over. French officials can pursue another appeal to attempt to shore up their bogus terror case – and we’ve seen how the French state refuses even the rule of its own judiciary in the case of the struggler Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. Nevertheless, this is an important victory for Hassan Diab and against the use of “terror” prosecutions on the basis of secret evidence, evidence obtained through torture and politically-motivated intelligence agencies.
See more information:
http://iclmg.ca/civil-liberties-coalition-welcomes-the-rel…/
http://www.justiceforhassandiab.org/french-investigative-ju…
http://www.cbc.ca/…/o…/charges-dropped-hassan-diab-1.4484443
We are reprinting below the statement of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group on the case:
CIVIL LIBERTIES COALITION WELCOMES THE RELEASE OF CANADIAN HASSAN DIAB IN FRANCE
Jan. 12, 2018 – After a decade-long ordeal, French judges have dropped all allegations against Canadian Hassan Diab and ordered his immediate release.
“We are overjoyed for Hassan, his partner Rania, and their two children, that this ordeal is finally coming to a close,” said Tim McSorley, national coordinator with the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. “That Hassan Diab was extradited in the first place continues to raise serious questions about Canada’s judicial process. For now, though, we look forward to seeing Hassan safe and sound back in Canada.”
Hassan Diab was arrested by the RCMP for extradition to France in 2008, on allegations that he participated in the 1980 bombing of a synagogue in Paris that killed 4 bystanders. He was extradited to France in 2014. Since then he has spent more than three years in pre-trial detention, as investigative judges weighed whether to proceed to trial.
Since 2008, the ICLMG has joined Rania, Hassan’ lawyers, the Justice for Hassan Diab support committee and others in questioning the evidence presented against Hassan, and criticizing the Canadian extradition system that allowed him to be sent to France in the first place.
It is important to remember that at the time of the extradition hearings, Justice Maranger described the evidence against Hassan as “illogical”, “very problematic,” and “convoluted,” but that the low threshold for evidence under Canada’s extradition law left him no choice but to commit Dr. Diab to extradition. “It will be important to remain vigilant to ensure that no other Canadian faces the ordeal that Hassan has been through,” said McSorley.
The ICLMG congratulates Rania, Don Bayne and all of Hassan’s lawyers, and the support committee for their tireless work in ensuring that an innocent man was not forgotten and is finally being freed.
Who Is In The Right In The Canada-Venezuela Diplomatic Dispute?
By Yves Engler | Venezuelanalysis | December 29, 2017
Lying is so common in diplomacy that it can be hard to tell heads from tails in international disputes. In the recent tussle between Caracas and Ottawa, for instance, Venezuela says it is trying to protect itself from foreign “interference” while Canada claims it is promoting “democracy and human rights”. Given the ever-present possibility of a complete disregard for truth on both sides, which government might be more credible in this instance?
Let us consider the background.
Last week Venezuela declared Canada’s chargé d’affaires in Caracas persona non grata. In making the announcement the president of the National Constituent Assembly Delcy Rodriguez denounced Craib Kowalik’s “permanent and insistent, rude and vulgar interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela.”
Is Rodriguez’s explanation for expelling Kowalik convincing?
In recent months foreign minister Chrystia Freeland has repeatedly criticized Venezuela’s elected government and reiterated that Canada is part of the so-called Lima Group of foreign ministers opposed to President Nicolás Maduro.
Following Washington’s lead, Ottawa has also imposed sanctions on Venezuelan officials and supported opposition groups.
In one project, the Canadian embassy distributed $125,212 through the Canadian Funding to Local Initiatives program, which “provided flexible, modest support for projects with high visibility and impact on human rights and the rule of law, including: enabling Venezuelan citizens to anonymously register and denounce corruption abuses by government officials and police through a mobile phone application in 2014-15.”
In August outgoing Canadian ambassador Ben Rowswell, a specialist in social media and political transition, told the Ottawa Citizen: “We established quite a significant internet presence inside Venezuela, so that we could then engage tens of thousands of Venezuelan citizens in a conversation on human rights. We became one of the most vocal embassies in speaking out on human rights issues and encouraging Venezuelans to speak out.”
(Can you imagine the hue and cry if a Venezuelan ambassador said something similar about Canada?)
Rowswell added that Canada would continue to support the domestic opposition after his departure from Caracas since “Freeland has Venezuela way at the top of her priority list.”
So, obviously it’s hard to argue with Rodriguez’ claim that Canada has been “interfering in the internal affairs of Venezuela.”
But, what to make of Freeland’s statement when Ottawa declared Venezuela’s top diplomat persona non grata in response, stating that “Canadians will not stand by as the government of Venezuela robs its people of their fundamental democratic and human rights”?
A series of decisions Freeland’s government has pursued over the past two weeks make it hard to take seriously Canada’s commitment to democracy and human rights:
- Canada signed a defence cooperation arrangement with the United Arab Emirates. According to Radio Canada International, the accord with the monarchy “will make it easier for the Canadian defence industry to access one of the world’s most lucrative arms markets and bolster military ties between the two countries.”
- Canada sided with the US, Israel and some tiny Pacific island states in opposing a UN resolution supporting Palestinian statehood backed by 176 nations.
- Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen promoted Canadian energy and mining interests during a meeting with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, who is seeking international legitimacy after winning a controversial election (re-run) boycotted by the opposition.
- The Liberals added Ukraine to Canada’s Automatic Firearms Country Control List, which allows Canadian companies to export weapons to that country with little restriction. President Petro Poroshenko, who has a 2% popular approval rating, needs to make gains in the Ukraine’s civil war to shore up his legitimacy.
Just before expelling Venezuela’s chargé d’affaires Ottawa officially endorsed an electoral farce in Honduras. Following Washington, Global Affairs tweeted that Canada “acknowledges confirmation of Juan Orlando Hernandez as President of #Honduras.” But, Hernandez defied the country’s constitution in seeking a second term and since the election fraud on November 26 his forces have killed more than 30 pro-democracy demonstrators.
Author of Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras, Tyler Shipley responded: “Wow, Canada sinks to new lows with this. The entire world knows that the Honduran dictatorship has stolen an election, even the Organization of American States (an organization which skews right) has demanded that new elections be held because of the level of sketchiness here. And — as it has for over eight years — Canada is at the forefront of protecting and legitimizing this regime built on fraud and violence. Even after all my years of research on this, I’m stunned that Freeland would go this far; I expected Canada to stay quiet until Juan Orlando Hernandez had fully consolidated his power. Instead Canada is doing the heavy lifting of that consolidation.”
During the past two weeks Canadian decision makers have repeatedly undermined or ignored democracy and human rights.
While Caracas’ rationale for expelling Canadian diplomats appears credible, the same cannot be said for Ottawa’s move. In the tit-for-tat between Canada and Venezuela Canadians would do better to trust Caracas.
Ottawa’s foreign policy swamp an unhealthy quagmire
By Yves Engler · December 21, 2017
Drain the swamp’ was a popular Donald Trump campaign slogan that referred to reducing the influence of Washington lobbyists. While the three words reflect an extreme lack of ecological consciousness — wetlands need to be protected and recreated, not destroyed — the image of politicians slogging their way through lobbyist infected, tangled, dense vegetation and deep oozing mud is a useful one.
Like the US capital, much of Ottawa was also built on mosquitoes’ favourite habitat and both cities today have an ongoing pest problem: blood sucking influence peddlers swarming the countries’ decision makers. That image helps explain why there is little deviation from Canada’s official foreign policy positions even amongst social democratic members of Parliament.
The recently re-established Canada-Palestine Parliamentary Friendship Group (CPPFG) offers a window into the dearth of opposition, notably from the NDP, to the foreign policy establishment. Chaired by Liberal MP Marwan Tabbara, CPPFG has nine MPs representing all the parties in the House of Commons except the Conservatives. But, CPPFG isn’t one of 17 official parliamentary associations or groups so it doesn’t receive public financial or administrative support, unlike the Canada-Israel Interparliamentary group.
In an equitable world the Palestinian parliamentary group — not the Israeli one — would be subsidized to offer MPs a counterpoint to Canada’s pro-Israel ideological climate. Supporters of Israel have established a slew of programs at high schools and universities, as well as media ‘flak’ organizations and advocacy groups, to promote that country’s viewpoint. Additionally, the dominant media favours the Israeli perspective and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs is among the most aggressive lobbyists on Parliament Hill so MPs are not lacking for access to this outlook.
The Israel vs. Palestine parliamentarian bodies offer a unique window into how international power relations are reflected in House of Commons associations. But, the parliamentary association system more broadly reflects inequities in global power and wealth.
Nearly half the 17 associations that share a $4.5 million public envelope are focused on Europe. There is a Canada-Europe Parliamentary Association and an associated Canadian Delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly as well as country-specific groups for France, Germany, Italy, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Alongside Canada’s European G7 allies, there are Japan and US parliamentary associations.
Though it is a competitor to the US-led geopolitical order, China’s economic might warrants a parliamentary group. There are also associations promoting the Francophone and Commonwealth, which are rooted in European colonialism (previously it was called the Empire Parliamentary Association).
The only two associations focused on the Global South are the Canadian Section of ParlAmericas Bilateral Associations, representing 35 countries in the Western hemisphere, and the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association, representing 53 countries on the continent. (As is usual with Africa-related bodies, that association’s mission statement includes ‘benevolent Canada’ paternalism. It says “Canadian parliamentarians also have the opportunity to witness the local impact of programs funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and to learn about Canada’s efforts in Africa from Canadian officials in the field.”)
There is no Cuba or Venezuela parliamentary association. Nor are there any focused on 1.3 billion Indians or 180 million Nigerians or a parliamentary association devoted to the counterhegemonic Non-Aligned Movement or ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America).
Another way the Ottawa swamp forms MPs’ international views is through events and parties put on by diplomats. In The Blaikie Report long time NDP defence and foreign critic Bill Blaikie describes “enjoying many fine evenings” at the home of the British High Commissioner. Wealthier countries are more likely to have representation in Ottawa and have greater capacity to organize events promoting their country’s international positions.
Sometimes connected to diplomatic postings in the capital, MPs regularly travel on international trips organized and paid for by third parties. While the Globe and Mail has recently devoted significant attention to China sponsored trips, Israel and Taiwan have long been the principal destinations. A 2014 calculation found that a quarter of all federal MPs had been to Israel with an Israeli nationalist organization.
Opposition MPs are absorbed into the foreign policy establishment in other ways. At the start of year B.C. NDP MP Wayne Stetski participated in a House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development mission to Ukraine, Latvia, Poland and Kazakhstan while last month Tom Mulcair went on a Committee mission to Beijing, Hong Kong, Hanoi and Jakarta. Last year NDP foreign critic Hélène Laverdière traveled to Israel with representatives of the other parties and in 2014 then NDP foreign critic Paul Dewar joined foreign minister John Baird and Liberal MP Marc Garneau on a visit to Iraq. Global Affairs Canada and diplomats in the field usually organize these visits.
The Canadian Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association are the final officially recognized parliamentary associations. A presentation at a NATO meeting convinced Bill Blaikie to support the organization’s bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999. “I myself”, Blaikie writes, “had been affected by the presentation at a 1998 NATO parliamentary meeting in Barcelona of an Albanian woman from Kosovo, who tearfully pleaded for an intervention to stop the anticipated wholesale slaughter of Kosovar Albanians.”
No official parliamentary association is devoted to de-militarization.
Beyond the NATO Parliamentary Association, MPs are drawn into the military’s orbit in a variety of other ways. Military officials regularly brief MPs. Additionally, the slew of ‘arms length’ military organizations/think tanks I detail in A Propaganda System: How Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation speak at defence and international affairs committee meetings.
The Canadian Forces Parliamentary Program is, according to the Globe and Mail, a “valuable public-relations tool.” Set up by the Department of National Defence’s Director of External Communications and Public Relations in 2000, the Parliamentary Program embeds MPs in military training (Army in Action or Experience the Navy). According to the Canadian Parliamentary Review, the MPs “learn how the equipment works, they train with the troops, and they deploy with their units on operations. Parliamentarians are integrated into the unit by wearing the same uniform, living on bases, eating in messes, using CF facilities and equipment.” As part of the program, the military even flew MPs to the Persian Gulf to join a naval vessel on patrol.
Alongside the military, the arms industry lobbies MPs. Lockheed Martin’s name appeared 39 times in a “12-Month Lobbying Activity Search” of the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada. CAE, General Dynamics, Raytheon, BAE and Airbus Defence were also listed dozens of times in the lobbyist registry. The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries has four registered lobbyists in Ottawa. Many of CADSI’s 800 members are also part of the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, Council of Chief Executives, Canadian Chamber of Commerce or Aerospace Industries Association of Canada. These groups also promote militarism and a pro-US foreign policy to government officials, though rarely do they speak in favour of withdrawing from military alliances or bucking Washington on an international issue.
Other corporations with international interests also have a significant presence on Parliament Hill. In a high-profile example, registered lobbyists representing Barrick Gold, Vale Canada, IAMGOLD, Goldcorp, Mining Association of Canada and Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada launched a ferocious campaign in 2010 to derail An Act Respecting Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas Corporations in Developing Countries (Bill C300), which would have restricted some public support for firms found responsible for significant abuses abroad.
Canada’s international banking, engineering, oil, etc. firms also shape attitudes in Ottawa. SNC Lavalin, CIBC, Bombardier and other Canadian-based multinationals’ names appear repeatedly in a “12-Month Lobbying Activity Search”.
The corporate/military/Global Affairs nexus predominates on foreign policy because there is little in terms of a countervailing force in Ottawa. Non-Governmental Organizations are sometimes considered critics of Canadian foreign policy, but NGOs are not well placed to challenge the federal government. Reliance on government aid and charitable status hampers their political independence.
On many domestic issues organized labour represents a countervailing force to the corporate agenda or state policies. But, unions rarely lobby MPs on international affairs.
The influence peddlers in the Ottawa foreign policy swamp represent a narrow range of interests.
So how do Canadians who want this country to be a force for good in the world effect change? Step one is to understand the system, then challenge the foreign policy establishment’s grip in Ottawa.
Analyst Dismisses White House Claims Pyongyang Behind WannaCry
Sputnik – 20.12.2017
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday, White House Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert announced that North Korea is responsible for the May 2017 “WannaCry” global cyberattack that targeted Windows computers and was allegedly aided by leaked National Security Agency technology.
In the article titled, “It’s Official: North Korea Is Behind WannaCry,” Bossert points the finger at North Korea for being behind the cybercrime in which millions of users’ computer data was encrypted and then ransomed for bitcoins. The attack slowed down after a mistake in WannaCry’s code revealed a kill switch that prevented infected computers from spreading the virus.
“Cybersecurity isn’t easy, but simple principles still apply. Accountability is one, cooperation another,” Bossert wrote in his article. “They are the cornerstones of security and resilience in any society. In furtherance of both, and after careful investigation, the US today publicly attributes the massive ‘WannaCry’ cyber attack to North Korea.”
In a White House press briefing Tuesday morning, Bossert claimed that the US came to this conclusion after a “careful investigation.”
“We don’t do this lightly,” Bossert said during the briefing. “We do so with evidence and with partners,” adding that Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom all agree that North Korea is responsible.
“While victims received ransom demands, paying did not unlock their computers,” the homeland security adviser wrote. “It was cowardly, costly and careless. The attack was widespread and cost billions, and North Korea is directly responsible.”
On Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear, financial policy analyst Daniel Sankey asserted his belief that North Korea is not behind the cyberattack.
“I’m a little suspicious myself. The drums of war have been beaten against [North Korea] for some time now and it’s very convenient that now this severe cyberattack is being laid against the doors of North Korea,” Sankey told hosts John Kiriakou and Brian Becker.
“And of course, as usual, we can take the intelligence community’s word for it because they know better than us and they published it in the Wall Street Journal — so it must be North Korea,” he added sarcastically.
“I am a little skeptical because a big part of the virus was extorting various users to send bitcoin in exchange for access to their files again. In the end, they stole about $55,000 in bitcoin and that’s not enough money for North Korea to trouble itself with,” Sankey said.
“Also, what is North Korea going to do with bitcoin? They need commodities, they need cash, they need access to different markets. They don’t need bitcoin. How are they going to turn that into oil or coal or various other things they need? How are they going to convert that into a convertible currency? It’s really not feasible.”
Although Bossert said that the US did “not make the allegation lightly,” he didn’t provide any solid evidence and simply alluded to National Security Agency and Microsoft research. He also referred to the UK’s determination in October that North Korea was responsible for the attack.
In May, security firms discovered a link between the ransomware and southern China during an investigation of the code’s notes, which revealed that WannaCry’s creators were fluent in a form of Chinese very common in that region.
According to security firm Flashpoint, which conducted the analysis, “A typo in the note, “帮组” (bang zu) instead of “帮助” (bang zhu) meaning “help,” strongly indicates the note was written using a Chinese-language input system rather than being translated from a different version. More generally, the note makes use of proper grammar, punctuation, syntax, and character choice, indicating the writer was likely native or at least fluent.”
Although the linguistic analysis of the code did not reveal any Korean, the US has still confidently asserted that North Korea is responsible, and Sankey believes it’s because the underlying problem behind the attacks actually has nothing to do with the hackers but with intelligence communities, who may be actually be responsible for the crimes.
“I think that the real problem is that intelligence communities are becoming aware of vulnerabilities in these systems, and rather than working with the private sector to protect consumers and peoples’ data, they are just sitting on those vulnerabilities so that they can use them later to hack systems.”
In his editorial, Bossert concludes, “Mr. Trump has already pulled many levers of pressure to address North Korea’s unacceptable nuclear and missile developments, and we will continue to use out maximum pressure strategy to curb Pyongyang’s ability to mount attacks, cyber or otherwise.”
With the Trump administration’s increased use of aggressive language against North Korea’s continued nuclear weapon tests and with this new allegation that the country is responsible for WannaCry, it doesn’t appear that the relationship between the two is going to be getting better anytime soon.
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From the Archives
What is the Israeli Lobby in Australia Doing in Interfaith Dialogue?
By Ali Kazak | Dissident Voice | October 11, 2015
For years Israel and its lobby around the world have been trying to normalise their relations with Arabs and Muslims without solving the Palestine Question.
One of the methods they resorted to in the last few years is using human rights and community organizations such as interfaith dialogue and Multiculturalism to achieve this objective and to: isolate the Palestinians, marginalise the Palestine question, end Israel’s isolation, and prevent criticism of Israel, knowing that these organisations will be the first to stand against Israel’s violations, racial and religious discrimination.
The group responsible for this task in Australia is The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC); its Director of International & Community Affairs, Jeremy Jones is in charge of lobbying religious community organizations, specifically Muslims and Christians. Consequently he convened the Faith Communities for Reconciliation, founding participant in the Australian Partnership of Religious Organisations and the Australian National Dialogue of Christians, Muslims & Jews.
AIJAC is a private political propaganda group. It is recognised as the main Israeli lobby in Australia. It coordinates its activities and works intimately with the Israeli embassy in Canberra and different institutions in Israel. It is privately funded by some Jewish businessmen. It monitors closely Australian politicians, the media, ethnic and religious groups, (especially Arabs and Muslims), unions and academics on their stands towards Israel and the Palestine question. … continue
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