John Baird: "We believe Iran constitutes the greatest threat to peace and security in the world."

By Gerry Caplan, rabble.ca, Jan. 30, 2012

It’s unlikely that Stephen Harper, John Baird, Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich have ever heard of Tamir Pardo, Meir Dagan, Amos Yadlin, Gabi Ashkenazi or Yuval Diskin. But it would probably make no difference if they had. After all, Benjamin Netanyahu certainly knows them well and ignores them completely.

So the reckless escalation of aggression against Iran, both physical and rhetorical, continues apace. Presumably the end game is both regime change in Tehran and an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions — admirable, if unrealistic, objectives. Far more plausible is an uncontrollable conflict that will spread throughout the Middle East and from there to, well, no one knows. But it is not wrong to fear the worst, as many knowledgeable observers do.

But those who know least, like the American lunatic fringe (a.k.a. the Republican Party) and the Harper government, are either wilfully ignorant of or indifferent to the logical consequences of their positions.

The Iranians blame the U.S. and Israel for the latest murder of one of the country’s top nuclear scientists, among several other recent acts of sabotage. The U.S. flatly denies the charge, for what it’s worth, while the Israelis barely bother doing so. In fact many Israelis, including those at the top, want to go much further. They want to destroy utterly the entire Iranian nuclear potential and seem bizarrely indifferent to the threat to Israel of Iranian retaliation.

Iran is the convenient next common enemy that conservatives always seem to need. Having run out of communism, terrorism, Islamism, Saddam and Bin Laden, they’ve now fastened on Iran. In the endlessly repeated sound bite of Canada’s foreign affairs minister, John Baird, “We believe Iran constitutes the greatest threat to peace and security in the world.” It’s a spin line, not a serious analysis.

The implications of Mr. Baird’s assertion are spelled out across the border by the Republican presidential candidates. We can be confident that whoever wins the nomination will spend the rest of the campaign pushing the president toward a direct preemptive attack on Iran which he knows is madness.

Which is why Canada has a remarkable opportunity to introduce sanity into this debate and help President Obama find some sensible allies. But sanity and sense, tragically, are not part of the Harper government’s Mideast vocabulary.

As Stephen Harper recently told Peter Mansbridge, “In my judgment, these are people who have a particular, you know, a fanatically religious worldview, and their statements imply to me no hesitation about using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes. And … I think that’s what makes this regime in Iran particularly dangerous.”

Every aspect of Mr. Harper’s position is flawed.

The proposition that Iran is “particularly dangerous,” the greatest threat to world peace and security, flies in the face of reality. To claim Iran is more dangerous than Pakistan requires a complete suspension of thought. To insist that Iran must not get nuclear weapons, which it does not have, while volatile and aggressive Pakistan can keep theirs, beggars understanding.

The proposition that the world does not have to demand de-nuclearization by Russia, China, North Korea — North Korea, for heaven’s sakes! — India, Israel, Britain, France and the U.S., but demands it from Iran, is beyond comprehension. Imagine your reaction if you were an Iranian, even an anti-government Iranian.

The proposition that Iran’s leaders would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons flies in the face of 33 years of evidence since their revolution. Reprehensible as they are, they have never attacked another country.

The proposition that Iran is more dangerous than Israel, which has repeatedly invaded its neighbours and sends saboteurs and death squads around the world to get its enemies, simply ignores reality.

The proposition that Iran is more dangerous than the U.S., which has spent the entire last decade in aggressive wars against Muslim nations, where pressure to add Iran to this list is growing, where a Democratic president sends drones against anyone he deems unsuitable for living and is now openly provoking China with a new aggressive Asia Pacific posture — to ignore this record demands wilful blindness.

Mr. Baird is now off to Israel. Our neophyte Foreign Minister, with all the wisdom offered by spin notes and sound bites — otherwise known as the Harper foreign policy — is about to be swallowed whole by Mr. Netanyahu. Just think of the tales he’ll share privately with Mr. Baird, proving irrevocably that Iran must be bombed this very day, if not sooner.

Unlike their minister and his boss, Canadian Foreign Affairs officials know how dangerous all this is. They know that nothing is better calculated to rally the Iranian people behind their oppressive government than terrorist attacks from outside. They know that Iran will inevitably retaliate, with Israel an obvious target. They know that unceasing threats and sabotage undermine any possibility of eventual negotiations, which is now happening in Afghanistan. They know it will only accelerate Iranian determination to proceed with its nuclear system.

This column began with a list of unfamiliar people. You can be sure they’re not unfamiliar to Mr. Baird’s public servants. They’re among Israel’s intelligence and military establishment who publicly reject Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran is an “existential threat” to Israel — the real meaning of calling it the most dangerous country in the world.

This is an extraordinary development: public dissent from the director of the Mossad (Tamir Pardo), the retired director (Meir Dagan), the former head of the Israeli military Intelligence Directorate (Amos Yadlin), the former chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (Gabi Ashkenazi), and the former head of Shin Bet (Yuval Diskin). Anyone who reads Israeli newspapers knows about it. Former Mossad director Meir Dagan openly calls an attack on Iran “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.” Is John Baird meeting with him this weekend to learn why? Don’t bet on it.

Like the Republican candidates, Stephen Harper and John Baird are hell-bent on a policy that will achieve the exact opposite of its intentions. And like the neo-cons before Iraq, they will pillory anyone who tells them the truth. Remember Taliban Jack?

This article was first published in the Globe and Mail.

Decem­ber 9, 2011: Angered by the UN-caused cholera epidemic that has claimed thousands, Haitians rallied at the UN Sta­bi­liza­tion Mis­sion in Haiti (MINUSTAH) Base at St. Marc. Photo: from a video produced by Nick Strat­ton, Bureau des Avo­cats Inter­na­tionaux. Watch it at http://ijdh.org/archives/24340.

By Paul S. Graham

Two years after an earthquake killed 158,000, the majority of Haitians continue to battle against hunger, disease, homelessness and political repression. Half a million people remain in refugee camps and many thousands who have found other accommodations are living in buildings that have been designated as unsafe and requiring demolition or major repairs.

Clean water is unavailable to almost half the population and sanitation, in the form or latrines, is available to only 34%. It is a formula for disease, and the 2010 cholera outbreak, traced to the criminally negligent sewage disposal practices of UN troops, sick­ened nearly 500,000 peo­ple and killed more than 6,500 oth­ers.

With all of the aid money that has been pouring into Haiti, it would not be unreasonable to expect living conditions to be much better than they are. Journalist Kim Ives, a writer and editor of Haiti Liberté, who spoke on this topic last Thursday at the University of Manitoba, provided this summary:

• $2.4 billion in bilateral relief aid (emergency aid) delivered to date
• $4.5 billion was pledged for bilateral recovery in 2010, 2011 (plus $1 billion for debt relief). As of Dec, 2011, $2.4 billion of that was delivered.
• Donors have dispersed an additional $560 million in recovery assistance.
• An additional $3.1 billion for relief and recovery from NGOs and other private donors. (The largest share of that came from the Red Cross, which raised $1.4 billion; of that, only 50% has been spent. I wonder where the rest went?)
• Cholera treatment funding of $172 million has been promised; $130 million has been disbursed.

Clearly something is wrong. Kim Ives summarized the obstacles to effective aid and reconstruction as follows:

• A weak and under-funded national government,  as a result of two centuries of foreign intervention and plunder
• A large presence of international aid organizations and UN agencies,  accountable, first and foremost, to their donors and home governments
• A right-wing presidency brought to power through an exclusionary and fraudulent electoral process
• A foreign police and military force (MINUSTAH) dating from the 2004 coup d’etat and whose purpose is to preserve the status quo

If you want to know more, watch my video report.

Resources

Canada Haiti Action Network
Winnipeg Haiti Solidarity Group
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
Haiti Liberté

Professional sports and militarism: Tyler Shipley

By Riaz Sayani-Mulji and Ryan Sparrow, rabble.ca, January 5, 2012

On this week’s episode of Progressive Voices, we speak with musician, freelance journalist, and political activist Tyler Shipley on the militarization of the NHL and other sports leagues in North America. The ramifications for Canadian culture and foreign policy are also discussed, followed by The Consumer Good’s song “Hockey Night in Afghanada.”

To listen, click here . . .

Caplan was the keynote speaker at a dinner held in Winnipeg December 10, 2011 to mark the 50th anniversary of CUSO and the 63rd anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations on Dec. 10, 1948.

The title of his talk was advertised as “When good people do bad things.” The theme that emerged would be more appropriately described as “solidarity, not charity.”

This event was sponsored by the University of Winnipeg Global College, CUPE Manitoba, the Manitoba Council for International Co-operation and CUSO-VSO. It was held at the Union Centre in downtown Winnipeg.

“It is difficult to say just how happy I am to have received this decision at last. It’s like I’m dreaming: I have finally gotten back the freedom that was stolen from me,” said Mr. Abdelrazik, visibly moved by the recent events, to journalists and supporters at a press conference on Thursday morning. “I want to thank everyone, across Canada and around the world, who have supported me. It was a very long struggle, years, and together we have won, from Halifax to Vancouver. Thank you to everyone,” he added.

“We are so relieved that Abousfian has finally won this victory. Mr. Abdelrazik was added to the 1267 List in 2006 while he was in forced exile in Sudan and he has been fighting to be delisted ever since,” said Émilie Breton, member of Project Fly Home, a group that has supported Mr. Abdelrazik for more than three years and has opposed the 1267 sanctions regime. It is a new beginning for this man who has been through many trials.”

“It’s not surprising that many legal experts have referred to the 1267 regime as Kafka-esque. This kind of list should not exist. This sanctions regime is based on guilt by association and profiling and indefinitely imposes severe sanctions on individuals,” said Brian Aboud, another member of Project Fly Home.

Mr. Abdelrazik first applied to be delisted in 2007, after which he was cleared by the Canadian spy agency, CSIS, as well as the RCMP. However, his request was refused and no reasons were given for the refusal; just as he has never had access to the information used against him. Under pressure of mounting criticism of the 1267 regime, the UN named an ombudsperson mandated to examine delisting request. Mr. Abdelrazik submitted a new request to be delisted to this Ombudsperson in January 2011.

“Yesterday’s decision is the product of years of struggle by Mr. Abdelrazik and his supporters. However, this struggle is not over. Abousfian is trying to hold Canadian government officials accountable for their role in his imprisonment and torture in Sudan and for whatever role they played in placing him on the 1267 List in 2006. He is still in the process of rebuilding his life and his reputation.” added Mr. Aboud.

A constitutional challenge against the Canadian legislation which implements the 1267 regime in Canada is still underway, with the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the BC Civil Liberties Association as co-applicants.

As Mr. Abdelrazik stated today, he is still in process of re-establishing a “normal life”, which he hopes to enjoy with his children here in Montreal. Having himself lived the direct consequences of this regime, he called for solidarity with those who are continuing to experience the unjust effects of such regimes, which violates their fundamental rights, their right to earn a living, the right to freedom and to justice.

By Murray Dobbin, December 5, 2011

You will no doubt recall the controversy surrounding the efforts of Quebec billionaire Pierre Peladeau to get a prized licence for his Sun News TV network. If he had succeeded, the cable companies would have been obliged to carry his extremist right wing news channel, dubbed by many as “Fox News North.” In the end, the CRTC stood up to the bullying of this aggressive supporter of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and everything Republican. They received a license – but cable companies can take it or leave it in regarding offering it to customers.

There was a huge campaign against Peladeau’s TV move by those concerned about the airways being polluted by the kind of one-sided, dishonest coverage that passed for news on Fox. Still, a lot of commentators dismissed the worries as far-fetched and alarmist.

But, while Sun TV is not, thankfully, being piped into every Canadian living room, the prediction that it would mimic Fox News is undeniable. The most recent example is the networks nasty, over-the-top attack on Steven Staples, the man who runs the Rideau Institute and its anti-war project, Ceasefire.ca.

This particular attack was prompted by a fund-raising letter sent out by ceasefire which made some very pointed and uncompromising criticisms of the arms industry lobby – namely, the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA). The CDA has gotten away with political murder for decades, casting itself as a kind of military think-tank, acting in the interests of the nation. But there is nothing neutral about this gang of arms peddlers and retired generals. Its sole purpose is to ramp up Canadian military spending and to promote the most aggressive Canadian military stance possible. When someone advises you to “follow the money” the CDA is one of the classic examples. The CDA has never seen a military procurement proposal they didn’t love – especially the proposed $30 billion purchase of F35 jet fighters (it doesn’t matter that they don’t work, have cracks in the fuselage and will be delivered years late, if ever).

What Staples said in his letter that really drove the Sun gang crazy was this: “A pro-war advocacy group made up of retired military generals, called the Conference of Defence Associations, used the bodies of soldiers killed and wounded in Afghanistan to lobby for more money.”

The CDA had appeared at a parliamentary committee hearing that was looking into ways “…to maintain social programs and deal with the country’s finances.” Into this serious discussion and debate entered the “old generals” (another phrase Fox North didn’t like) to lobby hard to keep military spending at the current astronomical levels (at $22 billion higher than at any time since WW2).

The war lobbyists shamelessly used the image of dead soldiers to back their case: “After the sacrifices made in Afghanistan and the casualties taken there because we weren’t ready, let us never again find ourselves having to rebuild essential military capabilities which we should have kept up all along.”

No mention of course, of the fact that it was their friends in the Defence Department who sent Canadian soldiers into deadly Kandahar ill-equipped and undertrained for the complex mission. But never mind the blatant opportunism and greed – Sun TV came to the rescue when Brian Lilley, one of its more aggressive program hosts, did a nine minute rant attacking Staples for his “despicable” fund-raising letter.

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Photo: Elizabeth Littlejohn, rabble.ca

By Elizabeth Littlejohn, rabble.ca, Nov. 17, 2011

I have seen the best and worst of humanity. I’ve seen countries that no longer exist. I have seen war, ethnic cleansing, and real revolution. I have seen the death and destruction that it brings. I have seen children left behind to live and deal with the costs of our transgressions. I see where this path before us leads. I want see change before any of that happens here. My daughter deserves better.

- Don Bryce, veteran, First Special Service Forces, eight years in combat

Lest we forget our veterans, I spent Remembrance Day interviewing Canadian soldiers at Occupy Toronto’s base camp on the grounds of St. James Church. Veterans are beginning to speak out internationally in support of the Occupy movement; on Nov. 2nd, at Occupy Oakland, troops formed a line of solidarity as part of a general strike to protest the police projectile that fractured the skull of 24-year-old Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen. In NYC, on Occupy Wall Street, the passionate speech of another Iraq veteran, Sergeant Shamar Thomas, asking why the police would shoot unarmed protesters, has been seen almost three million times on YouTube. Closer to home, I wanted to mark the anniversary of my rabble.ca article ‘In Remembrance of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms‘ by reporting on the state of democracy, and our right to peaceful assembly, since the Conservative majority.

At the gazebo in the centre of St. James Park, true to Occupy Movement’s core values of participatory democracy, I asked Toronto occupier and veteran Don Bryce to write what he felt was most important to say. This was the first time in decades that he has not been in seclusion on Remembrance Day — he has post traumatic stress disorder — but emboldened by the support of his colleagues, and his time in the demonstration encampment, he ventured out of his tent to speak with me. Attached to the First Special Service Forces, Don Bryce visited 21 countries in his tour of duty; in one day alone, he visited three.

As I interviewed Don beside the gazebo, another veteran, Jim McMillan, arrived to hand out candy bars to the occupiers. Jim comes each night to speak with the occupiers; there are many who are supporting the encampment through food, legal advice, and yurts. Yes, yurts. There are three Mongolian yurts donated by a union, which hold a womens’ safe space, a library, and public meeting space, and for some tongue-in-cheek reason, a donation of 1,000 bars of Degree antiperspirant. Jim’s motto is “What we want for ourselves, we want for everyone” — he wants to support those excluded from the system to make his time in combat worthwhile. I learned about an earlier era in Canadian history from Jim Simpson, why he fought, and continues to fight for civil liberties, when he asked that I read the Regina Manifesto.

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As we honour today the men and women who have fought and died in uniform, it is important that our remembrance of them not be taken as an endorsement of war or a celebration of all things military. For many people, soldiers in uniform do not inspire feelings of pride but memories of horror, destruction, and death. Some of us are survivors of war or refugees. Others of us who were born here are Canadians because our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents fled the violence of wars in faraway lands.

Many of the people who served in war wearing a Canadian uniform did so because they believed in the cause for which they were fighting, and that they were fighting for a better world. Sometimes that was true. Sometimes it was not. It is an eternal feature of war that the people who die in them are rarely the people who start them, and they are seldom the people who profit from them. We should recognize the nobility of sacrifice on their part, but we should not let that cloud our moral judgement by readily assuming, without reason or question, that the cause for which they fought was always just.

In the eyes of the indigenous people from whom this land of Canada was taken by force, the military we like to celebrate is an occupying army; its triumphs are their defeats. It is important to remember in Canada that all our wars have been wars of choice, not of self-defence, and that a foreign army has not crossed our borders since the U.S. attacked in the War of 1812, and that even that war, from the point of view of indigenous peoples, was not a defensive war but a skirmish between two colonial powers fighting for control of lands that were not theirs to take in the first place.

Outside the continent too the Canadian military has not always been seen the way we like to see ourselves. Back at the turn of the last century, Canada sent 2,700 troops to support British forces in the Boer War against the descendents of Dutch settlers for control of South Africa (a land that belonged neither to Britain nor to the Dutch). Canadian troops participated in a scorched earth campaign that destroyed crops, poisoned wells, destroyed villages, and set up concentration camps in which 28,000 thousand people, mostly children, died of disease, starvation, and exposure.

During the First World War, in the face of massive opposition from its French-speaking citizens, Canada sent 600,000 soldiers to prop up the British Empire. Sixty-seven thousand Canadians lost their lives. In 1932 Canada sent gunboats and soldiers to help put down a Communist insurrection in El Salvador and support the unpopular military regime of Hendandez Martinez, which carried out one of the worst massacres in El Salvador history under the watchful eye of the Canadian military.

During the Second World War, Canadian soldiers fought valiantly to liberate Europe from Nazi rule, yet for the colonized peoples of Africa, European “liberation” simply meant that control of their lands reverted back to their original colonizers, a mere transfer of ownership from one despotic European power to another. In the post-war period, Canada redefined itself as a “peacekeeping” nation, a role that received enthusiastic backing from the United States during the Cold War, as it freed up its troops to pursue its decade-long war against Vietnam.

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By Canadian Boat to Gaza

November 5, 2011 – Freedom Waves to Gaza organizers have not yet had any direct communication with the delegates from the ships Tahrir and Saoirse. Organizers are demanding that Israel immediately free the remaining people they have kidnapped and are illegally detaining; that they be able to speak with their families; that they receive immediate medical attention for all injuries inflicted by the Israeli military and that they are not harmed further.

“We have heard indirectly from our governments’ ministries of foreign affairs (in Canada and Ireland), but that is simply not good enough. We want to speak with our people directly,” says Wendy Goldsmith, organizer with the Canadian Boat to Gaza. “Why will our governments not demand the delegates be able to speak to their families? We do not trust the Canadian government on this – as they have shown time and time again that they are complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and gross human rights abuses.”

The last direct contact that organizers had with any delegate on either boat is this text message, from Trevor Hogan (from aboard the Irish boat Saoirse) at 10:08 PM Nov 3, 2011 Palestinian time: “Kidnapped, being held against our will by Israeli Army in international waters. Boat nearly destroyed. Need government to press for immediate release.” Trevor then called girlfriend moments later and said, “Did you get the text? Send it out.” Then the phone line went dead.

Palestinian Israeli Majd Kayal, delegate aboard the captured Canada Boat to Gaza and recently released from Givon Prison, confirms the IDF’s “peaceful” take-over of the Tahrir was anything but peaceful. An IDF video clearly shows the Israeli military firing a water cannon at the Tahrir on rough seas, endangering the lives of those aboard. Delegates offering non-violent resistance to the takeover of the civilian ship in international waters were threatened and then beaten by soldiers. One delegate, 45-year-old David Heap, professor at the University of Western Ontario, was particularly badly beaten. Israeli prison authorities are continuing to prevent Heap’s family from contacting him by phone.

“As a Palestinian, I was not surprised at how the IDF treated us,” said Kayal, after his release, noting this kind of abuse is a daily reality for the 1.5 million people of Gaza, who are indefinitely detained in an open-air prison. “However, for the Canadians and other Westerners onboard, it was a complete shock.”

As of now, family members are still being prevented from having telephone contact with their loved ones. Lawyers were able to visit briefly with some of the delegates being held at Givon Prison in Israel. But for family members, it is the not knowing that is the hardest. Said the wife of one of the delegates, “We just don’t understand why Israeli officials are acting as they are. My husband’s youngest is putting a brave face on it, but I know that he is very upset and worried about how his father is doing.”

“I am sorry to hear about those that were roughed up which of course is always the way when it comes to the Israeli sentiment towards any human being,” said Kathleen Newton, mother of Jihan Hafiz, a Democracy Now journalist still being illegally held by Israel after her abduction from the Tahrir. “I stand proud to be the mother of a daughter that wanted to stand up and make a difference in this otherwise very unfair world.”

Family members who have been able to speak with Canadian Consular staff have been told that several delegates showed varying degrees of visible bruising when Canadian Officials visited them. Nevertheless, Consular staff said they felt that everyone was “O.K.”

Canadians are urged to contact Foreign Affairs Emergency Hot line in Ottawa at 1-800-387-3124 .

The UN Human Rights Council Inquiry Report of September 2010 concluded that the blockade is illegal and Israeli policies in Gaza are a form of collective punishment. There is no legal justification for stopping or in any way impeding the passage of the totally peaceful Freedom Waves boats from the international solidarity movement with Palestinian people.

This situation is developing. For updates, stay tuned to: Twitter (@CanadaBoatGaza and #freedomwaves), Facebook.com/CanadaBoatGaza, tahrir.ca, ustogaza.org, freegazaoz.org, and irishshiptogaza.org.

Master Corporal Byron Greff from the 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, based in Edmonton, Alberta, is shown this undated handout photo. Photo: Canadian Press

by the Canadian Peace Alliance, Oct. 31, 2011

The attack on a NATO convoy which resulted in the death of Canadian Master Corporal Byron Greff highlights, once again, that the Harper government is lying to Canadians about the nature of the new “training mission”. It is in reality still a part of the overall foreign military occupation and combat mission, and thousands of Afghan civilians have paid with their lives because of combat operations this year.

In fact, according to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, there has been a further 28 per cent increase in civilian casualties in 2011. The 920 Canadian troops still stationed in Kabul are part of these combat operations on a daily basis, joining in firefights with Afghan troops such as the September 13 battle at the US Embassy and NATO headquarters.

Harper, in an attempt to placate a war weary population in Canada was understating the possibility of attacks on the Canadian forces staying in Kabul and elsewhere in the country. There are regular attacks against NATO forces in these alleged safe zones and this will continue to be the reality until all foreign troops are removed from the country. And the resistance to NATO has the support of increasing numbers of the Afghan people. A recently released poll conducted by the International Council on Security and Development found that 87 per cent of southern Afghans and 76 per cent of those in the north oppose NATO’s actions in the country.

As long as our troops are there – regardless of what title you give the mission – Afghan civilians and Canadian soldiers will remain in danger and the killing will increase.