http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/iraq-canadian-special-forces-suspended-1.4376244
Early in my teaching days, back when I thought history books told the truth, I used to teach that Canada became a commonweath nation in 1930, and so had the right (and duty) to decide for itself whether it would go to war. In fact, we made quite a show of it, delaying our declaration in 1939 to demonstrate our independence. But our recent behaviour has been questionable.
Chretien sent troops secretly to Afghanistan BEFORE consulting parliament. And nobody said a word. We've had troops training Iraqis - and that's legal (if questionable) because the Iraqi government approved it. However, we also assigned troops as trainers to the rebels in Syria.
And that was illegal.
If you send troops without the consent of the government of the nation they are going to, that is war. You can do it. But you need to declare war. We didn't. (The excuse of the government has been that they weren't engaged in fighting. But that doesn't matter. You cannot legally send troops into a foreign country without its consent. That's an act of war. And we didn't declare war.
Worse, Canadian aircraft bombed Syrian targets without the Canadian people or their parliament having any say in it. Still worse, we bombed Libya, again without the consent of parliament or the Canadian people.
We are now threatening action against Venezuela. Has Venezuela threatened Canada? No. But it is disliked by major U.S. and Canadian oil bosses. So it is quite possible that Canada will commit troops. Will it declare war? I doubt it. In any case, we have no legal right to declare war on Venezuela. It is, in no way a threat to Canada. And, despite American delusions on this subject, we have no right to change a government because the U.S. oil kings (and ours) don't like it.
Most wars are decided not by nations but by the giants of the oil industry. They decide who will be killed and who will do the killing. That's what all the fighting the Middle East is about. That's what the fuss over Venezuela is about. We have joined in the killing of millions so the oil industry can build profits (without paying taxes.)
I remember visiting Canadian war graves in Europe. I saw the graves of Bertie, a sixteen year old who died screaming for his mother. And there were Clifford and Jack who had dropped by our house when I was six or seven to say goodbye.
I don't know why they risked their lives. But I don't think it was to boost the profits of oil companies. Today, that is all we fight for. And, far from exercising our right to decide when we shall go to war, the U.S. tells us what to do.
Nov. 11 walks a very fine line. It honours, as it should, those Canadians who served. But too often, it also glorifies war. And our new media help that process by telling us stories of how other people are evil. And those evil people are usually the ones who had the misfortune of being born in land that has oil that western oil companies are plundering.
In reality, the biggest killers of the last 500 years have been western Christians.
So, by all means, remember those who served. But play down the glory. And be a hell of a lot more careful when we next decide to go to war.
______________________________________________________________
http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/israel-slippery-slope-1.4368018
Yes. The holocaust of Jews, Romas and others by Hitler was one of the most dreadful events in history. (And we should remember we had a hand in it because we refused to help the Jews when we could have saved many of them.)
But what was done to the Jews scarcely justifies what Israelis are doing to Palestinians. And our news media lie to us by not telling us about this.
_____________________________________________________________
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/iraq-canadian-special-forces-suspended-1.4376244
We're pulling our special forces out of Iraq? Good to hear it. Next, it would be nice to hear why they are there in the first place.
Iraq was run by a dictator who was brutal. He was supported and armed by - wait for it - the U.S. It was the U.S. who equipped him to fight a dreadful war for it against Iran. The U.S. wanted that because the people of Iran had been foolish enough to overthrew a brutal dictator the U.S. had imposed on them. The U.S. wanted control of Iran's oil. Gee. Who would have guessed?
Their Iraqi puppet lost the war. Worse, he began acting independently of the oil interests. So George Bush decided to invade. Saddam Hussein was captured and tried - not by a real court, and not by an international one. He was tried by a military court so they could quickly hang him.
So why did Canada send any troops at all? Because the oil companies wanted Canada to send them. Canadians were there to help mop-up a blood bath created to make oil companies richer.
___________________________________________________________
And here's the truth our news media never told us about the Syrian War. The reality is that, like him or not, Assad is the legitimate president of Syria. The 'rebels' who rose against him are a small minority who were financed by the U.S. (again from tax dollars - to help out billionaires who don't pay taxes.)
Not only are the rebels a tiny minority; many of the them were connected to ISIS. And, in fact, the U.S. supplied ISIS (the terrorists, we were told) with lavish supplies of weapons to invade Syria. That whole war with its half a million dead has been set up to benefit oil barons.
http://theantimedia.org/qatar-truth-syrian-war/
Incidentally, ALL wars are terrorism on BOTH sides. The Christian west has been waging terrorist wars aimed at civilian killing and torture for over a century. Extreme Muslims have caught on to it only lately.
A nice gesture for this Nov. 11 would be for our news media to tell us the truth about who we are fighting wars for and why.
Let's skip the tunes of glory. And beware of overenthusiastic patriots.
On Nov. 11, remember those who served. And give a thought of remembrance to those who get rich out of wars. Almost all wars have been wars to steal on at least one side - and often on both.
______________________________________________________________
Fighting wars takes piles of money. It also takes thousands of trucks. It takes billions of rounds of ammunition. It takes money for the troops. It takes huge supplies of oil. ISIS and other terrorist organization fight big wars. And that means lots of money and supplies.
So where is ISIS getting all this? Does it have huge factories building trucks? Monster munitions factories? Huge, international banks with tons of money?
No.
It has us - and other friends. Much of the money and equipment comes from - yes - the U.S. - and from allies like Turkey and Britain and Saudi Arabia (all on our side.) Funny how our news media never mention that.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/logistics-101-where-does-isis-get-its-guns/5454726
The U.S. was financing and supplying outfits like Taliban back in the 1970s when it was fighting Russia. And, in general, WE are big supporters of Muslim terrorists.
The game is simple. Western ig business, especially oil, creates wars like the one in Syria. It supplies the terrorists because we don't want to do the fighting. Then it says we have to fight those Muslim terrorists because they're evil.
But you won't find much about that in our news media. (you won't find anything about it in the irving press.) We create wars. We turn loose barbarism. Then we accuse the other side of being evil.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/syrian-army-captured-stunning-number-of-isis-weapons-and-military-equipment-in-mayadin-overview-photos-videos/5614254
https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-military-aid-to-al-qaeda-routine-shipments-of-weapons-to-syrian-freedom-fighters/5548960
Once the terrorists accomplish what big oil wants - or once they don't - then we are told they're evil and we have to kill them.
___________________________________________________________
The derailment of an oil train in Lac Megantic killed 47 people. No big deal. The only people facing trial are a few small fries. The government isn't really touching anybody else.
Our levels of political and business immorality are pretty astonishing.
http://rabble.ca/news/2017/10/lac-m%C3%A9gantic-rail-disaster-accountability-foreclosed-justice-denied
______________________________________________________________
The greed of the very wealthy has always hurt all of us. There was a short period after World War 2 when government did make some effort to share the wealth of this country. But the greedy have long since taken charge - and it's going to get worse.
Sears is a prime example of greed run wild. The senior execs who ran the company into the ground got goodbye kisses of five million and more each. But thousands of workers were just dumped. And pensioners lost their pensions.
We've been here before. We seen this greed before, and we've seen the suffering it causes. Give most of the very wealthy an inch, and they'll leave us in the gutter. They did it in 1929. And it's shaping up again.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/10/entering-era-big-government-means-more-taxes
_____________________________________________________________
Oh, yeah. a footnote to the day's news. There's a new scheme to build a pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick, this time through Maine. Well, that will be just in time to celebrate our record year for carbon dioxide poisoning in our atmosphere.
It will kill the wealthy, too, of course. But the wealthy have never been intelligent enough to realize that. It's an old pattern throughout history. - a wealthy class that goes from generation to generation, convinced of its superiority to commoners and of its right to govern. But, generation after generation, it gets progressively more bird-brained until the whole system comes crashing down.
______________________________________________________________
As I looked at the following story, if occured to me I had never seen this side of North Korea in our press. What we have seen is a tiny North Korea that intends to destroy the U.S. Yes, it does. And the poor U.S. has only 7,000 nuclear missiles to defend itself. And we have seen a North Korea that the U.S. wants to plunge into ever deeper poverty with trade sanctions.
Actually, it would be quite easy for arrange a peace between the U.S. and North Korea. North Korea is not looking for a war. A U.S. pledge to cut back on its constant military provocation of North Korea, and to relieve its trade sanctions (and mind its own business) would probably do the job.
But the U.S. doesn't want that. No. American big business wants to control the world, including China. And North Korea is the key to China.
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/photo-report-the-north-korea-neither-trump-nor-western-media-wants-the-world-to-see/
And, okay, it's true that kim Jung has a silly hairdo. Not at all like the elegance and grace one sees in Donald Trump.
_________________________________________________________________
The U.S. has never recognized that, until the Castro revolt, Cuba was a place of horror - a source of desperate poverty as American companies relied on a dictatorship of thugs to terrify Cubans into accepting starvation wages. American corporations were free to plunder, rape, murder and were, thanks to U.S. military power, masters of a slave state - as they were are still are in much of Latin America. We get little to no sense in our news media of what horrors American (and some Canadian) corporations inflict on those countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48102.htm
________________________________________________________________
As you read the following, don't kid yourself that it's much better in Canada. And childhood poverty often means poverty forever. It's destructive of education. It's destructive of adult behaviour. It's destructive of self-esteem.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48108.htm
____________________________________________________________
American capitalists have not learned (and will not learn) that it is none of their business who any foreign nation chooses to be governed by. It routinely invades other countries to force them to serve the interests of American business. Like every vicious, degrading and murderous empire in history, the U.S. empire believes it has a right to tell others how to run their own countries. In the American view, this is often seen as an American right - and only an American right. It has connections with the common view that Americans are God's chosen people.
For Syria, however, it is obvious to the whole world that Assad, like him or not, is the one with far the most popular support.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48109.htm
_________________________________________________________________
It's been depressing to write this one today.
A century ago, our rates of poverty were high. The wealthy owned our governments. Wars were fought, nations were destroyed, millions were killed, millions more were enslaved are pressed into cheap labour to satisfy the greed of an old world. The leader then was Britain, with all the benefits of conquest going to a ruling class of aristocratic twits and a rising class of wealthy capitalists whose daughters the aristocratic twits married to maintain their airs. (Winston Churchill's parents were prime examples of the breed. His father marred a very wealthy American woman to sustain his expensive palace. Then the two set off into spectacular sex lives away from each. And neither paid the slightest attention to their son.)
World War Two was fought, we assured our serving people, to put an end to that. But now, with remembrance day near, we are back in a very similar hole. U.S. capitalists have been telling American governments what to do (to make the wealthy even wealthier.)
Our capitalists of today are as greedy, as immoral, as cruel as any of our aristocratic rulers.
Since World War Two, with its promise to end wars, we have fought constant wars, all of them wars of pure greed. That's what the middle east wars are about. Greed and nothing else. (So we kill Muslims, men, women and children, and refugee tens of millions of them, - and then say they're the ones who are evil.)
We have made little of the progress we should have made in education for all, health care for all, basic living standards. And we have made no progress at all in the horrors we inflict on other countries.
After centuries of experience of their intellectual and moral corruption, New Brunswick continues to vote for Liberals or Conservatives, as Canada does. And Canada continues to run like a dog, sniffing at the rear ends of its Republican and Democrat masters.
We have, indeed, given big business more anti-democratic powers than it has ever had before. And where will that take us?
Either to a world nuclear war or one hell of an economic crash - probably both.
And our Christian churches? They are the rear-end kissers they have been throughout history. Americans, and many others in the western world, are trained by the churches as much as any agency to hate people who are different. As a result, most American Christians have no sense of their own evil, though they are well-schooled in seeing evil of other religions. And this is exactly what Christian Britain was like in the days of its empire. Christianity, historically, has been used to justify the brutal treatment of most of the world.
Worse, we kill ourselves with fossil fuels and chemically soaked forests and fields - all at the wish of the wealthy bastards who have destroyed whatever democracy we had built.
The difference, as we come to this crunch, is that there will not be a second chance this time.
Early in my teaching days, back when I thought history books told the truth, I used to teach that Canada became a commonweath nation in 1930, and so had the right (and duty) to decide for itself whether it would go to war. In fact, we made quite a show of it, delaying our declaration in 1939 to demonstrate our independence. But our recent behaviour has been questionable.
Chretien sent troops secretly to Afghanistan BEFORE consulting parliament. And nobody said a word. We've had troops training Iraqis - and that's legal (if questionable) because the Iraqi government approved it. However, we also assigned troops as trainers to the rebels in Syria.
And that was illegal.
If you send troops without the consent of the government of the nation they are going to, that is war. You can do it. But you need to declare war. We didn't. (The excuse of the government has been that they weren't engaged in fighting. But that doesn't matter. You cannot legally send troops into a foreign country without its consent. That's an act of war. And we didn't declare war.
Worse, Canadian aircraft bombed Syrian targets without the Canadian people or their parliament having any say in it. Still worse, we bombed Libya, again without the consent of parliament or the Canadian people.
We are now threatening action against Venezuela. Has Venezuela threatened Canada? No. But it is disliked by major U.S. and Canadian oil bosses. So it is quite possible that Canada will commit troops. Will it declare war? I doubt it. In any case, we have no legal right to declare war on Venezuela. It is, in no way a threat to Canada. And, despite American delusions on this subject, we have no right to change a government because the U.S. oil kings (and ours) don't like it.
Most wars are decided not by nations but by the giants of the oil industry. They decide who will be killed and who will do the killing. That's what all the fighting the Middle East is about. That's what the fuss over Venezuela is about. We have joined in the killing of millions so the oil industry can build profits (without paying taxes.)
I remember visiting Canadian war graves in Europe. I saw the graves of Bertie, a sixteen year old who died screaming for his mother. And there were Clifford and Jack who had dropped by our house when I was six or seven to say goodbye.
I don't know why they risked their lives. But I don't think it was to boost the profits of oil companies. Today, that is all we fight for. And, far from exercising our right to decide when we shall go to war, the U.S. tells us what to do.
Nov. 11 walks a very fine line. It honours, as it should, those Canadians who served. But too often, it also glorifies war. And our new media help that process by telling us stories of how other people are evil. And those evil people are usually the ones who had the misfortune of being born in land that has oil that western oil companies are plundering.
In reality, the biggest killers of the last 500 years have been western Christians.
So, by all means, remember those who served. But play down the glory. And be a hell of a lot more careful when we next decide to go to war.
______________________________________________________________
http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/israel-slippery-slope-1.4368018
Yes. The holocaust of Jews, Romas and others by Hitler was one of the most dreadful events in history. (And we should remember we had a hand in it because we refused to help the Jews when we could have saved many of them.)
But what was done to the Jews scarcely justifies what Israelis are doing to Palestinians. And our news media lie to us by not telling us about this.
_____________________________________________________________
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/iraq-canadian-special-forces-suspended-1.4376244
We're pulling our special forces out of Iraq? Good to hear it. Next, it would be nice to hear why they are there in the first place.
Iraq was run by a dictator who was brutal. He was supported and armed by - wait for it - the U.S. It was the U.S. who equipped him to fight a dreadful war for it against Iran. The U.S. wanted that because the people of Iran had been foolish enough to overthrew a brutal dictator the U.S. had imposed on them. The U.S. wanted control of Iran's oil. Gee. Who would have guessed?
Their Iraqi puppet lost the war. Worse, he began acting independently of the oil interests. So George Bush decided to invade. Saddam Hussein was captured and tried - not by a real court, and not by an international one. He was tried by a military court so they could quickly hang him.
So why did Canada send any troops at all? Because the oil companies wanted Canada to send them. Canadians were there to help mop-up a blood bath created to make oil companies richer.
___________________________________________________________
And here's the truth our news media never told us about the Syrian War. The reality is that, like him or not, Assad is the legitimate president of Syria. The 'rebels' who rose against him are a small minority who were financed by the U.S. (again from tax dollars - to help out billionaires who don't pay taxes.)
Not only are the rebels a tiny minority; many of the them were connected to ISIS. And, in fact, the U.S. supplied ISIS (the terrorists, we were told) with lavish supplies of weapons to invade Syria. That whole war with its half a million dead has been set up to benefit oil barons.
http://theantimedia.org/qatar-truth-syrian-war/
Incidentally, ALL wars are terrorism on BOTH sides. The Christian west has been waging terrorist wars aimed at civilian killing and torture for over a century. Extreme Muslims have caught on to it only lately.
A nice gesture for this Nov. 11 would be for our news media to tell us the truth about who we are fighting wars for and why.
Let's skip the tunes of glory. And beware of overenthusiastic patriots.
On Nov. 11, remember those who served. And give a thought of remembrance to those who get rich out of wars. Almost all wars have been wars to steal on at least one side - and often on both.
______________________________________________________________
Fighting wars takes piles of money. It also takes thousands of trucks. It takes billions of rounds of ammunition. It takes money for the troops. It takes huge supplies of oil. ISIS and other terrorist organization fight big wars. And that means lots of money and supplies.
So where is ISIS getting all this? Does it have huge factories building trucks? Monster munitions factories? Huge, international banks with tons of money?
No.
It has us - and other friends. Much of the money and equipment comes from - yes - the U.S. - and from allies like Turkey and Britain and Saudi Arabia (all on our side.) Funny how our news media never mention that.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/logistics-101-where-does-isis-get-its-guns/5454726
The U.S. was financing and supplying outfits like Taliban back in the 1970s when it was fighting Russia. And, in general, WE are big supporters of Muslim terrorists.
The game is simple. Western ig business, especially oil, creates wars like the one in Syria. It supplies the terrorists because we don't want to do the fighting. Then it says we have to fight those Muslim terrorists because they're evil.
But you won't find much about that in our news media. (you won't find anything about it in the irving press.) We create wars. We turn loose barbarism. Then we accuse the other side of being evil.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/syrian-army-captured-stunning-number-of-isis-weapons-and-military-equipment-in-mayadin-overview-photos-videos/5614254
https://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-military-aid-to-al-qaeda-routine-shipments-of-weapons-to-syrian-freedom-fighters/5548960
Once the terrorists accomplish what big oil wants - or once they don't - then we are told they're evil and we have to kill them.
___________________________________________________________
The derailment of an oil train in Lac Megantic killed 47 people. No big deal. The only people facing trial are a few small fries. The government isn't really touching anybody else.
Our levels of political and business immorality are pretty astonishing.
http://rabble.ca/news/2017/10/lac-m%C3%A9gantic-rail-disaster-accountability-foreclosed-justice-denied
______________________________________________________________
The greed of the very wealthy has always hurt all of us. There was a short period after World War 2 when government did make some effort to share the wealth of this country. But the greedy have long since taken charge - and it's going to get worse.
Sears is a prime example of greed run wild. The senior execs who ran the company into the ground got goodbye kisses of five million and more each. But thousands of workers were just dumped. And pensioners lost their pensions.
We've been here before. We seen this greed before, and we've seen the suffering it causes. Give most of the very wealthy an inch, and they'll leave us in the gutter. They did it in 1929. And it's shaping up again.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/10/entering-era-big-government-means-more-taxes
_____________________________________________________________
Oh, yeah. a footnote to the day's news. There's a new scheme to build a pipeline from Alberta to New Brunswick, this time through Maine. Well, that will be just in time to celebrate our record year for carbon dioxide poisoning in our atmosphere.
It will kill the wealthy, too, of course. But the wealthy have never been intelligent enough to realize that. It's an old pattern throughout history. - a wealthy class that goes from generation to generation, convinced of its superiority to commoners and of its right to govern. But, generation after generation, it gets progressively more bird-brained until the whole system comes crashing down.
______________________________________________________________
As I looked at the following story, if occured to me I had never seen this side of North Korea in our press. What we have seen is a tiny North Korea that intends to destroy the U.S. Yes, it does. And the poor U.S. has only 7,000 nuclear missiles to defend itself. And we have seen a North Korea that the U.S. wants to plunge into ever deeper poverty with trade sanctions.
Actually, it would be quite easy for arrange a peace between the U.S. and North Korea. North Korea is not looking for a war. A U.S. pledge to cut back on its constant military provocation of North Korea, and to relieve its trade sanctions (and mind its own business) would probably do the job.
But the U.S. doesn't want that. No. American big business wants to control the world, including China. And North Korea is the key to China.
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/photo-report-the-north-korea-neither-trump-nor-western-media-wants-the-world-to-see/
And, okay, it's true that kim Jung has a silly hairdo. Not at all like the elegance and grace one sees in Donald Trump.
_________________________________________________________________
The U.S. has never recognized that, until the Castro revolt, Cuba was a place of horror - a source of desperate poverty as American companies relied on a dictatorship of thugs to terrify Cubans into accepting starvation wages. American corporations were free to plunder, rape, murder and were, thanks to U.S. military power, masters of a slave state - as they were are still are in much of Latin America. We get little to no sense in our news media of what horrors American (and some Canadian) corporations inflict on those countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48102.htm
________________________________________________________________
As you read the following, don't kid yourself that it's much better in Canada. And childhood poverty often means poverty forever. It's destructive of education. It's destructive of adult behaviour. It's destructive of self-esteem.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48108.htm
____________________________________________________________
American capitalists have not learned (and will not learn) that it is none of their business who any foreign nation chooses to be governed by. It routinely invades other countries to force them to serve the interests of American business. Like every vicious, degrading and murderous empire in history, the U.S. empire believes it has a right to tell others how to run their own countries. In the American view, this is often seen as an American right - and only an American right. It has connections with the common view that Americans are God's chosen people.
For Syria, however, it is obvious to the whole world that Assad, like him or not, is the one with far the most popular support.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48109.htm
_________________________________________________________________
It's been depressing to write this one today.
A century ago, our rates of poverty were high. The wealthy owned our governments. Wars were fought, nations were destroyed, millions were killed, millions more were enslaved are pressed into cheap labour to satisfy the greed of an old world. The leader then was Britain, with all the benefits of conquest going to a ruling class of aristocratic twits and a rising class of wealthy capitalists whose daughters the aristocratic twits married to maintain their airs. (Winston Churchill's parents were prime examples of the breed. His father marred a very wealthy American woman to sustain his expensive palace. Then the two set off into spectacular sex lives away from each. And neither paid the slightest attention to their son.)
World War Two was fought, we assured our serving people, to put an end to that. But now, with remembrance day near, we are back in a very similar hole. U.S. capitalists have been telling American governments what to do (to make the wealthy even wealthier.)
Our capitalists of today are as greedy, as immoral, as cruel as any of our aristocratic rulers.
Since World War Two, with its promise to end wars, we have fought constant wars, all of them wars of pure greed. That's what the middle east wars are about. Greed and nothing else. (So we kill Muslims, men, women and children, and refugee tens of millions of them, - and then say they're the ones who are evil.)
We have made little of the progress we should have made in education for all, health care for all, basic living standards. And we have made no progress at all in the horrors we inflict on other countries.
After centuries of experience of their intellectual and moral corruption, New Brunswick continues to vote for Liberals or Conservatives, as Canada does. And Canada continues to run like a dog, sniffing at the rear ends of its Republican and Democrat masters.
We have, indeed, given big business more anti-democratic powers than it has ever had before. And where will that take us?
Either to a world nuclear war or one hell of an economic crash - probably both.
And our Christian churches? They are the rear-end kissers they have been throughout history. Americans, and many others in the western world, are trained by the churches as much as any agency to hate people who are different. As a result, most American Christians have no sense of their own evil, though they are well-schooled in seeing evil of other religions. And this is exactly what Christian Britain was like in the days of its empire. Christianity, historically, has been used to justify the brutal treatment of most of the world.
Worse, we kill ourselves with fossil fuels and chemically soaked forests and fields - all at the wish of the wealthy bastards who have destroyed whatever democracy we had built.
The difference, as we come to this crunch, is that there will not be a second chance this time.
