(that the mass media won’t tell you about) 1. The Middle East holds 60% of the world’s remaining energy reserves: therefore, the entire region is critical to control – for anyone with an empire fetish, that is. And if you’re serious about controlling the Middle Eastern oil reserves, then you
Continue readingTag: Imperialism
Politics, Re-Spun: MexAmeriCanada? We Are Not Thinking Creatively Enough
MexAmeriCanada doesn’t have to be our future. I think I’m guilty of being a bit slow and uncreative. The bogeyman of deep integration, North American Union, the United States-ification of Canada, the United States OF Canada, and Canada becoming states #51-60 plus three more protectorates is just too simplistic. We
Continue readingLeDaro: Who is the bigger imperialist power: U. S or Russia
According Vladimir Putin it is America. “Veteran Kremlin-watcher Fyodor Lukyanov last month commented that letting Snowden into Russia would be like “turning a small headache into a major migraine.’’As Lukyanov puts it: ‘’If Putin cares about nothing else, he cares about how the Third World thinks about Russia. And the
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: MexAmeriCanada, Version 2013
Welcome to the United States of MexAmeriCanada. Represent! I was just thinking a few days ago how I haven’t used the MexAmeriCanada tag for a while. Did I cause this to happen, in some cosmic kind of way? In the old days it was Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Why We Must #HonourTheApology to Residential School Survivors [#INM]
I don’t know why we still have to do this kind of thing, but here goes. The federal government “apologized” to survivors of residential schools 5 years ago. It is clearly quite empty, considering how much neglect, abuse, victimization and racism has spewed forth from Stephen Harper’s government since then.
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: At The Squamish Nation Powwow This Weekend!
Enrich your understanding at the Squamish Nation Powwow this weekend. In the quest for a better Canada, one that is more democratic, inclusive, consultative and less rejecting of science and climate change realities, it is important to reach out. Sovereignty Summer is part of that movement, coming out of Idle
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Canada Day +1, Our Quiet Genocide
A banner drop during last night’s Canada Day celebration in Toronto’s Mel Lastman Square. (Photo: IdleNoMore.ca) Canadians are so nice. We have such a happy, positive self-concept. This makes it quite hard to address the quiet genocide of first peoples that our nation has conducted for centuries. What is genocide?
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Why Don’t People Respect Canada Anymore? Reason #766, Egypt
A huge crowd of protesters stretched along an avenue near the presidential palace in Cairo on Sunday evening If you ever wondered why Canada is losing international respect, here’s a shining example, #766 in fact. The “Harper Government” [sic] is fully addicted to neoliberal economic 1%-ism. Egypt, as we’ve seen
Continue readingdrive-by planet: Syria and the use of ‘humanitarian interventionism’ to drive the real agenda
Since the Syrian conflict broke out some on the left have bought into calls for humanitarian intervention, even if it does mean tacit support for American-backed interference in yet another Middle Eastern country. Neo-liberal governments and their militaries increasingly employ the language of humanitarianism to elicit support as they pursue
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Top Priorities of the 21st Century
If I were asked what I felt were the top priorities facing human beings today, in the 21st century, I would have to say there are four that top the list, in my mind. 1. Halt the global corporate coup. Defeat the corporate war on democracy, which is now escalating
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: The Most Racist Thing I Have Ever Seen Published
Educate First Nations to be modern citizens Don Olsen, The Daily News Published: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 via Educate First Nations to be modern citizens. This is the most racist thing I have ever seen published. The Nanaimo Daily News published a document either as an editorial or a letter
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Rising rhetoric of a new “yellow peril”
The 1921 “Ethnic Outreach” Campaign(Courtesy Past Tense Vancouver) The complaints are familiar – “Asian immigrants are taking our jobs,” “Asian immigrants are buying our property and keeping us out.” Instead of being complaints found in the Richmond Review’s letters-to-the-editor section, however, these are the complaints that were found in a
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Progress and Poverty: a response to Krul, Post and Hamerquist from Noel Ignatiev
i often disagree with Noel Ignatiev – and the following essay is certainly no exception in that regard – however his reasoning is often provocative, which though a bit maddening is also not a bad thing. As such, it should not be assumed that the views in the following guest
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Inconvenient Truths for White Men
Men, especially white men, sleep too easily at night while women earn 70 per cent of what we do. Secretly, I think we’d prefer to not have to talk about this much. Sure, March 8 and December 6 are days we set aside for reflecting on this, but, most likely,
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: GroupThink ReSpun: The Death of Hugo Chavez
Hugo Chavez died of cancer on March 5, 2013. He represented an ideological pushback against neoliberal globalization. He pursued a progressive hemispheric trade agenda. He raised oil royalties dramatically to improve the social capacity of people in and around Venezuela. He revolutionized and democratized Venezuela’s constitution. He attracted the ire
Continue readingPaul S. Graham: Behind the invasion of Mali
Roger Annis at the Feb. 24, 2013 annual meeting of Peace Alliance Winnipeg. Photo: Paul S. Graham Is the military intervention in Mali by France, with the assistance of the United States, Canada and others an example of a humanitarian intervention launched to protect a fragile democracy from the incursion
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Americans Now Primed for WWIII
(Gallup: Staggering 99 Percent of Americans See Iran’s Nuclear Program as ‘Threat’ Americans See Civilian Program as a Bigger Threat Than North Korea’s Actual Nukes by Jason Ditz, February 20, 2013) ”A grim new poll from Gallup shows an overwhelming majority of Americans, indeed 99 percent of them, believe
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Comments on a Divided World, from Don Hamerquist
In the text that follows, Don Hamerquist addresses the current salience of imperialism, territory, and revolutionary organizing in the First World. This essay is prompted by the review of Zak Cope’s Divided World Divided Class by Matthijs Krul, which was reposted to Sketchy Thoughts a few weeks ago. Don explains
Continue readingSketchy Thoughts: Divided World Divided Class Reviewed and Discussed by Matthijs Krul and others
Divided World Divided Class: Global Political Economy and the Stratification of Labour Under Capitalism is a book published by Kersplebedeb (and available from leftwingbooks.net) back in September of last year.Divided World Divided Class charts the history of the ‘labour aristocracy’ in the capitalist world system, from its roots in colonialism to its
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: What If We Treated Harper Like We Treated Haiti’s Aristide?
Supporters of former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide chant and display signs outside the courthouse in Port au Prince on Wednesday, Jan. 9. When they learned that the prosecutor, Lucmane Delille, had gone to Aristide’s home to question him, a river of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people marched
Continue reading