Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Drops The "H-Bomb"

I'm not talking about that other H-bomb, the one that the US government dropped on innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No, I'm talking about Adolph Hitler, yes, that H-Bomb. Every time our leaders want to justify a war against another people they whip out the Hitler's name. He is our Great Satan, the face of incomprehensible evil. There is nothing to be understood about Hitler, he was made of pure brimstone and, therefore, whenever he is reincarnated - which happens fairly often - he must be wiped out utterly and completely.

It's rather convenient and closes the door off from any sort of critical thinking at a moment when critical thinking should be at an absolute premium - prior to war. So, it has been used to label Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Robert Mugabe and that favourite of mine "Islamofascism", which tars an entire religious tradition with being Hitler. This time, of course, it is the incomparably stupid and opportunist Canadian foreign minister, John Baird, who whipped it out after his fanboy tour of Israel.

“Obviously when the influential leader of Iran said [Friday] that he wanted to remove a cancer from the Middle East and remove Israel from the map, obviously you can understand why the Jewish people, why Israel would take him seriously,” he said. “Hitler wrote Mein Kampf more than a decade before he became Chancellor of Germany and they take these issues pretty seriously here. But it’s not just an Israeli question. The fear in the Arab world, in the entire region, the Gulf, and the entire Middle East is palpable on this issue. And it’s increasingly a significant security threat for the West: for Canada, the United States and our allies in Europe.”

And there you have it. Israel equals the Jews, Iran wants to eliminate Israel therefore Iran wants to eliminate the Jews. Adolph Hitler wanted to eliminate the Jews. Iran is like Nazi Germany and its leadership is like Hitler. Bombs Away!

Except that it's rather more complex than our Tory friend, apparently, can fathom. First off there is no necessary identity between Jewishness and Zionism or Israel as John Baird - a tireless promoter of Israel - demonstrates. But, on the other side, Jews have been some of the most vocal opponents of Israel and its policies, from Norman Finklestein to Noam Chomsky to Shlomo Sand. Zionism and the founding of Israel was one amongst several political responses to anti-Semitism in Europe prior to World War Two.

Secondly, Baird demonstrates his inability to understand context. The Middle East is not Europe or North America, where Jews were historically terribly oppressed, particularly in Eastern Europe where pogroms were too often a matter of course - not to mention the ultimate pogrom, the terror of the Holocaust. That is not the history of the historic Jewish communities of the Middle East. The antipathy towards Israel is rooted rather in the fact that Israel is a settler-state, whose existence is founded upon the displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population and whose continued existence is premised upon its service to the American empire as a Sparta - an armed camp - to control uncooperative Arab regimes... like that in Iran.

Thirdly, Iran poses no threat to Europe or North America, unless we're talking about imperial interests in the Middle East. Iran's leadership are no radical democrats or serious anti-imperialists. They rule their country like our rulers rule theirs: in the interests of a ruling class who own and control all the levers of political and economic power. Iran has democratic elections - just like us. And it suppresses rights that are inconvenient, just like us. It's true that Iran is rather more repressive than, say, Canada. But it is a matter of degrees as the participants in the Occupy Oakland protests found out, or the G20 protestors in Toronto. But, in any case, even if Iran is qualitatively more repressive than North American governments it would be simple hypocrisy to suggest that we have any problems with dictatorships - after all, Stephen Harper has been touring China - a much more repressive regime - sucking up to any Communist Party bigwig that he could in order to sell our natural resources to them. Then there are "our allies" in the Middle East, like the Saudi dictatorship and the former dictator of Yemen. We have not a single problem with dictatorships.

And the idea that there is "palpable fear" in Israel is just so much bunk. How many countries has Iran attacked or invaded since the Iranian revolution in 1979? Zero. How many has Israel? Well, they bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 in a rather deja vu claim about it being intended for military purposes.

Iraq and France claimed that the Iraqi reactor was intended for peaceful scientific research.[8] Agreements between France and Iraq excluded military use. The American private intelligence agency STRATFOR wrote in 2007 that the reactor "was believed to be on the verge of producing plutonium for a weapons program". In a 2003 speech, Richard Wilson, a professor of physics at Harvard University who visually inspected the partially damaged reactor in December 1982, said that "to collect enough plutonium [for a nuclear weapon] using Osirak would've taken decades, not years". In 2005, Wilson further commented in The Atlantic: the Osirak reactor that was bombed by Israel in June of 1981 was explicitly designed by the French engineer Yves Girard to be unsuitable for making bombs. That was obvious to me on my 1982 visit.

In addition to the Iraq bombing, Israel invaded Lebanon (for the second time) in 1982 and again in 2006. They invaded Gaza in 2008-2009, leading to widespread human rights abuses and destruction - which the Palestinians have been prevented from repairing by the Israeli blockade. Of course, if we went back farther we'd see that since Israel's founding (and since the majority of Jews at the founding were Europeans, one could easily argue that this was the first invasion) it has invaded Syria in 1951, Egypt in 1956, and in 1967 Israel attacked Syria, Egypt and Jordan. It is also likely that Israel is involved in the present covert (and illegal) operations against Iranian nuclear scientists and infrastructure. It's also worth noting that this, the most belligerent country in the region, is the only one that has nuclear weapons.

So, John Baird's H-bomb is meant as nothing more than mere handwaving to distract us from the truth of the situation in the region. It's job is to put the question of Iran outside of rational discourse. To even question the bellicose rhetoric is an admission that you WANT TO KILL THE JEWS! The idea is so stupid as to be utterly laughable, were it not so terribly dangerous and were it not for the fact that they are playing with the lives of tens of thousands of people. But then, who would expect anything less from people who would use the memory of the Holocaust for such cynical ends.

Baird compares Iran’s threats to Hitler's racist book - The Globe and Mail:

'via Blog this'

Russian Spies, American Spies. We All Got Spies - Why the Hoopla?

I've mostly been not reading about the Russian spy scandal. I just don't care that much. But I browsed this article in the Globe & Mail this evening to catch up on what's going on. Apparently a bunch of people were spying for Russia and they were arrested in the US with some of them charged and convicted. But now some of those people are going to be sent back to Russia in exchange for some people in Russia who were caught spying, were charged and sent to jail. Huh?

Wait a minute. If our side is spying - I'm assuming CSIS is doing more than telling tales about our foreign agent MPs, they're actually doing some spying of their own - and their side is spying, then everyone is spying and why is it a crime? I mean, I can see why governments and corporations don't want spies stealing the secret to how they get the Caramilk inside the Caramilk bar (I know how by the way and will sell it to the highest bidder) but why the jail term? Isn't that, you know, hypocritical? And why the big stink about it?

"Holy shit there were people spying on our country just like we were doing to them!"

Part of the hoopla, I suspect, has to do with the fact that there is increased imperial friction going on in the world these days. No, Imperial Friction is not the name of the well-known penguin's mating activity. What I mean is that while the USA is still the world's pre-eminent power, with an enormous military capacity, it is no longer unassailable and other pretenders and regional powers are beginning to challenge the Americans.

Afghanistan, for instance, is not just about those Kazakh gas deposits and possible lithium supplies inside Afghanistan itself. It is about containing China on its western borders and pushing up against Russia on its southern borders. And Russia and China are pushing back, though in different ways. The clash in Georgia is another reflection of this friction. At one level it does look utterly silly, this tit-for-tat spy swap with lots of huffing and puffing and hand-wringing by the American and Canadian media about Russia doing the same thing here that we're doing over there. But on another level it is quite frightening because we can see in miniature how such conflicts can escalate and become much more dangerous. This is primarily expressed through proxy fights - Russia crushes Georgia, America's Newest caucasian sweetheart; America sells weapons and performs joint military maneuvers with Taiwan, infuriating China. But sometimes secondary conflicts can spiral out of control. Imperialism plays a very high stakes game of chicken and people's lives, including our own, are the ante.

Afghanistan Airstrike Kills 93. Enjoy The Air Show!

I was walking with my wife and daughter through Dufferin Grove Park earlier when, with an enormous boom, a fighter jet banked hard above us, then shot off down to the lake. Everybody looked up to see the plane and a woman walking her bike near us said: "In most countries we'd be running to hide from that plane."

When I got home and checked the news the truth of what she'd say struck home. Certainly there's some people in Kunduz, Afghanistan who are wishing that their relatives had run more quickly today because NATO dropped bombs killed 90+ people.

The story is that the Taliban hijacked a NATO jet fuel tanker, which then got stuck in the mud near a village. Villagers, all dirt poor, rushed out to siphon off some fuel from the truck. That's when NATO, called in by the German contingent in northern Afghanistan, dropped its payload.

Of course NATO feels bad and will look into it. They might even pay compensation to the families. But, if they hadn't been there it wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Ah, but we're there to bring democracy and freedom from the evil Taliban. Trouble is, the democracy is so utterly corrupt that even supporters of the occupation are embarassed by videos of Karzai supporters stuffing ballot boxes, reports of other boxes showing up full to polling stations, intimidation of monitors, etc.

And the Kunduz governor is hardly a progressive, having been allied with ultra-conservative Wahabbi followers, prior to shifting allegiances to a Tajik warlord named Daud, who is himself allied with Karzai running mate, Mohammed Fahim. As human rights watch described him:

“He is one of the most notorious warlords in the country, with the blood of many Afghans on his hands from the civil war.” In fact, the brutality of his party Jamiat-e-Islami during the infighting amongst the mujahideen, following the Soviet withdrawal, drove many Afghans to support the Taliban. And the province has itself been a bastion of corruption and narcotic production.

"In February 2004, [provincial police chief] Motaleb Beg was captured by ISAF and Afghan police in Kabul with 300 kilos of heroin. Both Motaleb Beg and the heroin were handed over to the Kabul police with instructions how to handle the case. The following day the heroin had disappeared." (Beg was replaced as police chief by the present governor's brother, recently killed by an IED).
It is no wonder that with these characters in power, backed by western jets and bombs, the insurgency has spread north to the previously peaceful province of Kunduz. This is a big problem for NATO and the US because Kunduz is key to NATO's Central Asian supply lines. Previously, NATO had shipped equipment, fuel, etc. through Pakistan but insurgents in that country kept blowing stuff up. The alternative was to get an agreement from the Russians to move the same equipment, etc. through Russian airspace and then overland from Tajikstan and Uzbekistan. According to a senior US official: "The concern is if we don't stunt the [Taliban] growth, it could cause problems with our northern distribution network."

Things may already be too late, as Gul Agha, head of Baghlan-i-Jadid's criminal investigation department describes it: "Before, [insurgents] moved in very small groups. Now they are moving in groups of 30 to 40, and they have a leader of each group. They have a [shadow] governor, district leaders and recruiters."

Of course, the main people who are suffering as NATO increases air strikes in the north of the country, are civilians. Just as has been the case in the south, with bombings of weddings, funerals, and the like. The longer we stay over there, the more civilian dead there are and the more that we are hated.

This weekend, while you're watching those F-15's flying over the Toronto shoreline with your kids, just think about how a kid in Afghanistan feels when they see those same planes flying overhead. For them it's not a weekend diversion, it's the possibility of death at the hands of their supposed liberators.

More Reasons To Hate The Air Show

As if a million didn't come to mind every time the planes buzz your house and rattle your windows - or wake your sleeping child, as they have been doing with my baby daughter all day. Here's a few more:

1) These "neato" airplanes cause death and deformity. The little girl in the photo is one of many suffering from deformities in Fallujah, Iraq, as a result of the US assault on that city, which included airplanes (whee, aren't they pretty?!) dropping chemical weapons everywhere.

2) Each of the new F-35 Lightnings - the new fighter jet - costs $80 million dollars and the Pentagon is buying 2,500 of them. That's $200 billion. It costs $400 to provide food, clothes, education and medicine to ten children in Mexico for a month. In other words, they could provide these things for a full year for 42 million Mexican children (Mexico has a total population of 109 million). In Africa, a child can be fed for 10¢/day. In other words, global poverty could be eliminated.

3) Climate change. The US Military is a massive greenhouse gas hog, burning 462 million gallons of fuel in 2005. The US military is amongst the world's largest contributor to global climate change. Think about the effects if the US invested that $200 billion into renewable energy!

The Newest Spectator Sport

Sometimes it's tough living in the suburbs, trying to find something to do. Everything's so homogenized and alienating and you can only wander around the shopping malls so many times, right?

When I was a kid my grandparents used to take us to the airport to do some planespotting. I shit you not. We'd sit on the road at the end of the runway and watch planes take-off, taking turns with the binoculars, while they smoked cigarettes. It was a nice way to spend time with my grandparents and the memory has obviously stayed with me - even if it's kind of a weird past-time now when I think about it.

Well, if you're in Israel you don't have to watch anything so boring as some dumb old jumbo jets taking off, flying people to Disney World in Florida. No, you can set up your lawn chair and watch the Israeli Army and Air Force slaughter unarmed Palestinian civilians. "Forget snuff films, honey. We're taking the kids to Gaza to see it live!"