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Monday May 19, 2014
Monday May 19, 2014
The crisis unraveling in Ukraine is proving to be among the most intense geo-political ruptures on the international stage in many years.
Anti-Russian rhetoric rivaling that of the chilliest moments of the Cold War has been spouted by Western leaders and media pundits.
One such pundit is Lloyd Axworthy. Axworthy has served as President and vice-Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg for about a decade. Dr. Axworthy served in the 1990s as a Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister. He has written numerous books and articles and is a sought after commentator on international affairs. In 2004 he authored the book Navigating a New World by Knopf Canada Publishing.
Following a “fact-finding” Mission to Ukraine this spring, Mr. Axworthy and his Vice President Bill Balan had a chance to survey the situation in Kiev and get a sense of the factors affecting Ukraine’s democratic exercise. http://globalbrief.ca/lloydaxworthy/2014/04/21/ukraine-a-non-violent-resistance/
It should be noted that the mission to Ukraine was sponsored by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. The NDI is one of the key recipients of funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, identified as a CIA front-group which destabilizes governments and popular movements. According to author Willam Blum, the NED had a hand in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, undermined leftist insurgencies in the Phillipines, and in the early 1990s funded the Miami-based anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation. [2]
Michel Chossudovsky explains in detail the destabilization efforts of the NED in Ukraine in the articleIMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine .
This week’s installment of the Global Research News Hour features the comments of Dr. Axworthy and his university colleague Bill Balan with regard to their first-hand observations of the Ukraine situation. They were clearly articulating the view that it was the Russian President Vladimir Putin that was the key destabilizing force in the region. Their comments were recorded at a public talk given April 22 at the Free Press Cafe in Winnipeg, Canada.
Later in the programme, Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO returns to the Global Research News Hour to respond to Axworthy’s comments, to comment on the upcoming May 25 presidential election and exactly who it is that is interfering with Ukrainian democracy, and to update listeners on the alarming developments on the ground in Eastern and Southern Ukraine in the wake of the Odessa
Monday May 12, 2014
Monday May 12, 2014
Egyptian Death Sentences: Human Rights Travesty or Price of Freedom?
In recent weeks, the governing authority in Egypt has escalated their crackdown on supporters of deposed president Mohammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
In March, news agencies widely reported that after a two day trial, 529 people, many of whom were tried in absentia, were sentenced to death over an attack on a police station in which a police officer was killed. [2]
In late April, 683 alleged supporters of the Brotherhood, including spiritual leader Mohammed Badie were sentenced to death over their supposed role in the August 14 incident. [3]
Likewise, the Egyptian courts have banned the April 6 movement, considered a pro-democracy group which played a role in instigating and organizing the Arab Spring movement which overthrew President Mubarak in 2011. [4] Numerous journalists have been jailed as well under the rationale that they are “spreading false news” and “part of a terrorist organisation.”[5]
This week’s Global Research News Hour examines two perspectives on the repressive measures being taken by the Egyptian military government against the Muslim Brotherhood, the April 6 movement, and other critics of the current authorities.
Film Maker John Greyson was one of two Canadians who got caught up in last summer’s mass arrests. After fifty days of detention without charge, he and his companion Tarek Loubani were released. [6] Greyson spoke to the Global Research News Hour about his harrowing ordeal, the conditions he and other prisoners faced, and about the need to intervene on behalf of other innocents being wrongfully held.
A geo-political analyst and frequent Global Research contributor who goes by the name Tony Cartalucci has a different perspective. He believes the repressive actions being taken by the military government and the courts need to be seen in the context of an ongoing foreign orchestrated insurgency not dissimilar to those that led Libya and Syria to disaster. Cartalucci engaged the Global Research News Hour in an email interview which is reprinted below in its entirety.
The email dialogue was voiced, for radio purposes, by Global Research guest host Jon Wilson and regular host Michael Welch.
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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .
The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.
Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:
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Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.
Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario – Thursdays at 1pm ET
Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.
CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario. Tune in Wednesdays from 12am to 1am.
Notes:
1) Amnesty International, March 24, 2014, “Egypt: More than 500 sentenced to death in ‘grotesque’ ruling”;http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/egypt-more-500-sentenced-death-grotesque-ruling-2014-03-24
2) Al Jazeera, March 25, 2014, “Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to death”;http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/03/muslim-brotherhood-members-sentenced-death-201432481112672803.html
3) Democracy Now, April 30, “Egypt is a Police State: Senior Muslim Brotherhood Member Condemns New Mass Death Sentence for 683”; http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/30/egypt_is_a_police_state_senior
4) ibid
5) Al Jazeera, March 25, 2014, “Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to death”;http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/03/muslim-brotherhood-members-sentenced-death-201432481112672803.html
6) CAROL BERGER, Oct. 10 2013 , Globe and Mail, “Egypt clears Canadians Greyson, Loubani to leave”;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/greyson-loubani-free-to-leave-egypt-reports-say/article14796228/
Monday May 05, 2014
Monday May 05, 2014
On April 13, 2014, Michael Ruppert had just completed his final broadcast of his weekly radio show The Lifeboat Hour, which he has helmed since September 12, 2010. He went to an outdoor meditation spot on the property at which he had been residing. When he was found, he had apparently shot himself in the head with a Glock 30 .45 caliber pistol. He was 63.
Mike Ruppert had become one of the most outspoken and compelling voices in the realm of independent journalism and analysis. He brought to the table a stupendous command of economic, historical and political issues.
Ruppert represented a convergence of valuable traits which included an academic’s restless intellect, a cop’s eye for detail, a heart-felt passion for justice, and the street-level experience of a whistleblower who broke ranks with the people he trusted in the name of an all too uncommon ethical code that he lived by.
He was able to bring to the table the critical arguments challenging official government narratives about the global economy, the 9/11 attacks, the fratricidal death of Pat Tillman, CIA drug dealing in Black communities throughout the US, peak oil as a causative factor underlying US foreign policy, and many, many other stories.
This week, the Global Research News Hour pays tribute to Mr. Ruppert on the occasion of his recent tragic death.
The podcast contains audio from past speeches and a previously recorded conversation with him, as well as post-mortem conversations with five individuals who knew and worked with Mike Ruppert over the years.
Carolyn Baker is a long-time acquaintance of Mike Ruppert’s. She was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for 11 years and a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years. She authored several books related to the concept of societal collapse. She contributed to Ruppert’s on-line newsletter From The Wilderness, and co-hosted his final radio broadcast before he died.
Kellia Ramares-Watson is an Oakland-based independent journalist and broadcaster. She was Bonnie Faulkner’s co-host on the very first broadcast of Guns and Butter for radio station KPFA back on October 12, 2001. This debut episode featured none other than Mike Ruppert with his initial impressions of the 9/11 attacks and the US role in failing to prevent the attacks. The transcript of that interview is available on the Global Research website.
Wesley Miller was Mike Ruppert’s attorney, executor and personal friend. He replaced Ruppert as CEO and President of COLLAPSENET, the on-line community portal for individuals and communities seeking to transition away from a dependence on fossil fuels and industrial civilization.
Barrie Zwicker is a long-time independent journalist and media critic. He became one of the first people in the world to publicly critique the official story of 9/11 on a national television broadcast. Barrie was largely for getting RUppert’s analysis of 9/11 aired on Canadian television and paid tribute to him in his 2006 book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11.
Guy McPherson is Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He has appeared on Ruppert’s radio show a number of times pioneering his research pointing to the prospects for the Near Term Extinction of the human species due to climate change.
Ruppert’s work has appeared often over the years on the Global Research website. A link to some of those stories can be found here.
Monday Apr 28, 2014
Monday Apr 28, 2014
On this special holiday edition of the Global Research News Hour, we salute the 44th annual Earth Day with a speech given in Winnipeg recently by outspoken anti-globalization author, environmental activist, and eco-feminist Dr. Vandana Shiva.
Born in Dehradun India in the foothills of the Himalaya, Shiva got her training at the University of Western Ontario in Canada as a physicist. In 1982, she shifted her focus to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy and moved back to India. Dr. Shiva is the founder of Navdanya, a participatory research initiative dedicated to the preservation of native crop species, the rejuvenation of indigenous culture and knowledge, and to support and direction for environmental activism. She is the author of more than 20 books including Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development.
She is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades including the 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.
On March 29, 2014, Dr. Shiva spoke at the North Centennial Community Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada at the invitation of a local collective known as Power House Producers in association with the Women’s and Gender Studies Students Association, and the University of Winnipeg’s Womyn’s Centre. Her speech followed a so-called Feast of forgotten foods which highlighted a meal prepared by local activists with organic ingredients all provided by local farmers for an audience of about a hundred people. Preceding the talk was an announcement about a Bill moving through the Canadian House of Commons known as Bill C-18, the Agricultural Growth Act which critics argue undermines traditional farm practices by ensuring the intellectual property rights over new varieties of seeds to the plant breeders that generate them and force farmers to pay a royalty to them when crops from those seeds go to market.
Thursday Apr 03, 2014
Thursday Apr 03, 2014
This website, among others have articulated the major problems with the official explanation of 9/11 since the day after they happened.
These attacks have directly led to an agenda of increased military spending, surveillance, at least two wars of aggression (Afghanistan and Iraq) and a period of curtailed civil liberties in the name of protection from radical Islamic terrorists.
Amply documented, there are major problems with this narrative. The following humourous video encapsulates many of these anomalies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98
(Video courtesy of James Corbett)
A more detailed analysis is available through Global Research’s 9/11 Reader.
There has been a clear resistance to abandoning this core narrative. Take, for example, the refusal of Canadian Member of Parliament Paul Dewar to table a petition in the House of Commons calling for a Canadian parliamentary review of the omissions and inconsistencies in the 9/11 Commission report and of available forensic evidence. Mr. Dewar says he doesn’t agree with the petition. That is not considered an acceptable rationale for not tabling a petition to Parliament. More background can be found on this webpage:
There is more to this kind of resistance than a lack of facts. Laurie Manwell is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Guelph and has published articles on psychological resistance to embracing alternative explanations of 9/11 and other so-called State Crimes Against Democracy. Her article, In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11 appeared in the February 2010 edition of American Behavioural Scientist. Her thesis was the basis of her outstanding presentation at the Toronto Hearings on 9/11. An excerpt of this presentation airs in the first half hour of this week’s Global Research News Hour, courtesy of Press For Truth.
Architect and high profile 9/11 speaker Richard Gage, AIA joins us in the second half hour. He talks with guest interviewer Jon Wilson about his tour across Canada, and his view about the prospects of 9/11 making a powerful political breakthrough in this country.
Monday Feb 10, 2014
Monday Feb 10, 2014
As the world focuses its attention on the Olympic Games in Sochi and controversies around the Russian government’s apparent hostility toward gay and lesbian rights, a far-reaching drama is playing out in the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine.
The Eastern European country, independent since the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991, has been gripped by a series of protests that may very well determine its long-term political fate.
The Euromaidan was apparently named after the Independence Square in Kiev, Maidan Nezalezhnosti, where a major protest was held on the evening of November 21 of last year. The gathering of 1,000 to 2,000 people was staged in opposition to the abandonment by the Yanukovych government of an Association Agreement with the European Union.[2]
Further protests ensued until a particularly violent crackdown by Ukrainian police on November 30. [3] From that point forward, demonstrations intensified and grew larger in number.
The protests seemed to take a much more violent turn by mid-January after the Ukrainian Parliament pushed through a sweeping 100 page anti-protest law. [4] The law essentially banned the installation of tents, stages or amplifiers in public places, all critical components of the Euromaidan up to that point.
Two and a half months later, the law has been repealed, Yanukovych’s Cabinet has been dissolved, and detained protesters granted amnesty on condition of an end to the occupations of government buildings. [5] Nevertheless, the protests continue and demands to end “government corruption” and the resignation of the Russian President remain unrelenting.
Complicating the situation is the role of militant fascist groups which appear to be influencing the protest movement, and are reminiscent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts from an earlier era.
Foreign governments appear to be influencing the situation as well. Russian President Vladmir Putin’s offer of substantial reductions in the cost of Russian natural gas and their willingness to purchase $15 billion in Ukrainian Government Eurobonds could be read as a bribe to keep Ukraine under Russian influence. [6]
Meanwhile, Western governments, including those of the US and Canada, are clearly expressing support for government opposition demonstrators. Following harsh crackdowns before and during the G20 protests in 2010, it is hard to imagine the Canadian government behaving much differently if faced by similar demonstrations which have included the occupation of government buildings and the use of molotov cocktails being hurled at police.
This week’s Global Research News Hour probes some of the less talked about aspects of the Euromaidan with three analysts.
University of Winnipeg Associate Professor of History Andriy Zayarnyuk is a Ukrainian national and is a specialist in the field of the Social and Cultural History of 19th and 20th Century Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine and the Soviet Union. He is also the author of the recently released book, Framing the Ukrainian Peasantry in Habsburg Galicia, 1846-1914. He helps provide an overview of the political and cultural background of the current struggle.
Eric Draitser is a New York-based geo-political analyst with StopImperialism.org. He discusses the right-wing fascist groups involved with the Euromaidan protests and threats they may pose over and above the opposition movement itself.
Finally, Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO returns to provide a thorough examination of the geo-political and geo-strategic context in which the popular uprising is taking place.
Monday Feb 03, 2014
Monday Feb 03, 2014
Free Trade agreements being adopted by Canada are undermining the ability of governments to protect the public good.
That is the conclusion of the civil society farm, labour, indigenous, student, cultural, environmental and other organizations that have come together under the banner of the Trade Justice Network.
With January marking the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the TJN recently organized the “Intercontinental Day of Action Against the TPP and Corporate Globalization,” a call to resist the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and similar trade deals.
These progressive organizations believe that the free trade agenda, embodied by NAFTA and its offspring, represent a “corporate power grab” that threaten “working families, small farmers, indigenous peoples, small business and the environment in all three countries and beyond.”
Traditional strategies for resisting these legislative instruments have famously included mass mobilizations, such as were seen in Seattle (1999) and the Quebec Summit of the Americas (2001), not to mention standard protests, petitions, and other efforts at lobbying politicians to change their minds.
Less seasoned activists may resort to throwing their weight behind the campaign of an opposition politician who pays lip service to resisting corporate trade deals, but offers little in the way of concrete action once in a position of power and influence.
Another less talked about approach however, is utilizing those legal instruments already available to the people, in the form of constitutional court challenges.
Enter Rocco Galati.
Galati has over the course of his legal career criticised actions by the State at the Summit of the Americas and the G20 in Toronto. He has represented terrorism-related and other cases that many other lawyers won’t touch.
He is currently engaged in a number of interesting battles challenging the government, including a challenge against the Finance Minister and the Bank of Canada, and a challenge to Health Canada’s restrictions on the sale of natural health products.
Galati argues that the afore-mentioned trade agreements, insofar as they are being implemented without the approval of the Canadian Parliament are unconstitutional. Galati had in fact attempted to challenge the Multi-lateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) on the grounds that it conferred on to trans-national corporations powers that over-ride constitutionally protected jurisdiction. Galati explains this view in the first half hour.
In the remainder of the program, Galati provides an update of the case he is championing against the Bank of Canada. Galati also resurrects some older cases he took on.
He talks about his defence of one of the Toronto 18 terrorism plotters, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany. He talks about his former client, Delmart Vreeland, the jailed Naval Intelligence officer who attempted to warn Canadian and American law enforcement authorities of the attacks of September 11, 2001. He talks about a death threat he received years ago that caused him to back off of the case ofAbdurahman Khadr.
He talks about what he calls the ’500 mile Liberal Syndrome.’
He also talks about fundamental flaws in the system that, as he sees it, prevent ordinary men and women elected to high office from acting in the interests of the public.
Monday Jan 20, 2014
Monday Jan 20, 2014
If observers in the West naively believed that severing South Sudan from its northern counterpart would resolve the human rights situation there, the events of the last several weeks will have decisively dashed those hopes.
The major fighting erupted on December 15 of last year when South Sudan Presisdent Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of launching a coup d’etat against him. Machar denied the charge.[2]
A faction of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA/M) had broken off and engaged in fighting against the main army under Kiir’s control.[3]
The fighting has begun to align itself with different tribal factions – the Dinka, which Kiir represents, and the Nuer, which Machar represents.[4]
As this program is being aired, peace talks between the two warring factions continue in Addis Ababa in neighbouring Ethiopia.
The toll on the people of South Sudan has been devastating. UN Human Rights monitor Ivan Simonovic has disclosed that there are human rights atrocities being committed by both sides in the conflict, which include mass and extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detention, sexual violence and the use of child soldiers.[5]
As of January 14, one month into the conflict, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 413,000 people have been internally displaced by the fighting with 74,000 having fled to neighbouring countries such as Uganda.[6]
The International Crisis Group estimated a death toll of close to 10,000. [7]
The Global Research News Hour takes a closer look at the conflict and its historical and geo-political under-pinnings with two Africa watchers.
Ann Garrison is an independent journalist and broadcaster who has focused in recent years on war and resource extraction issues on the African Continent. A contributor to KPFA in Berkeley, California, she had a chance to interview Mobiar Garang de Mobiar, a negotiator for the opposition in the South Sudan peace talks in Addis Ababa. Garrison has also written for the San Francisco Bay View, the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Focus, Macworld, Macweek, the Op-Ed News, and Pambazuka News among other publications. She is also an occasional contributor to Global Research.
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a geo-political analyst and the award-winning author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press). He is Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Monday Jan 13, 2014
Monday Jan 13, 2014
Refusing to Fight: Canadians Supporting US War Deserters
Canada: A Refuge from Militarism?
January 2014 marks the ten year anniversary since Jeremy Hinzman, US soldier with the 82nd Airborne Division, having deserted his battalion, crossed the border into Canada and sought refuge from a war he could not legally or morally participate in.
In so doing, he became the first modern day US War Resister to seek asylum in Canada.
Others followed.
Brandon Hughey, David Sanders, Joshua Key, Kim Rivera, and ultimately more than two dozen others followed suit. All publicly declared their conscientious opposition to the US war agenda, particularly the conflict in Iraq.
This is not including the more than one hundred who may have crossed over unacknowledged.
Given the unpopularity of the Iraq War, especially in Canada, one would think there would be significant support for these military personnel who sacrificed their careers, their families and their reputations for an unknown future in a foreign country.
However, the experience of today’s war resisters indicates otherwise.
The current Conservative government in Canada seems anything but accommodating of US military deserters, regardless of the questionable legality of the conflicts they were ordered to participate in.
Tuesday Jan 07, 2014
Tuesday Jan 07, 2014
The Global Research News Hour starts the new year off with a retrospective on important international stories of 2013 ignored by the mainstream media.
As noted elsewhere on this site, 2013 has been marked by spreading environmental degradation, economic uncertainty, and increased military tensions.