U.N. ambassador Bob Rae was on CBC radio just now responding to the U.N. report that names Canadian government for fuelling the Saudi war on Yemen. His apologetics were something to behold.
He trotted out an old Liberal line that I thought had gone into disuse - that the weaponized military vehicles Canadian is selling to the Saudis are just “jeeps.” “It’s not what you'd call a weapon,” he said.
That’s some kind of jeep...
He said “the conflict in Yemen is terrible and we're trying to do everything we can to contribute to bringing it to an end.”
Continuing to allow Cdn companies to export military vehicles, rifles, surveillance tech, aircraft & provide pilot training is...a great way to do that.
Rae also dismissed the U.N. Human Rights Council Expert report by slagging it as just the “conclusion of a panel of professors”. Good to know the new ambassador holds the institutions of the UN in such high esteem.
The UN report is itself a very late and overdue acknowledgement of Canadian complicity in the Saudi destruction of Yemen that researchers like @anthonyfenton had long documented and which Canada’s mainstream media ignored. I did an investigation in 2018. nationalobserver.com/2018/11/30/new…
Demonstrations online and in 7 cities across Canada tomorrow calling for an end to weapons shipments to Saudi Arabia and to convert the manufacturing of arms to green jobs
As Canada’s political, corporate, and media elite have unanimously mobilized support for Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza, we at @thebreachmedia have tried to expose their efforts as best we can.
Here’s 10 of our pieces from the last three months. 🧵
We did a historical overview of the Canadian government’s longstanding support for Israel.
Far from being an even-handed honest broker in the Middle East, it has been a one-sided backer of Israeli aggression as a junior partner to the United States.
We exposed how the Israeli Consulate in Toronto worked with a Liberal “dirty-tricks man” to try to cook Canadian public opinion about Israel’s war on Gaza.
A group of Liberal insiders then plotted to use the poll to shape the Liberal government's thinking breachmedia.ca/israeli-consul…
Back in 2010, when the Conservatives were in government and the Liberal Party in opposition, an independent research firm conducted a major study of CBC’s content—the only empirical survey done in recent decades.
This is the Liberals' classic offer: if discontent is rising, they’ll neutralize it like a political shock-absorber.
They may pose as anti-establishment, but they're safeguarding one group's interests.
#2 Simulate transformative change
Taking a knee, marching for the climate, apologizing for past injustices: the maneuver here—which Trudeau excels in—is adopting the language & symbolism of social movements without materially challenging the status quo.
A year ago, an offer was made to top party brass that one of AOC’s advisors give NDP MPs a briefing on the Green New Deal.
It’s the heart of her agenda, weaving together working class interests, climate action & racial justice. It's what makes her her.
What was their response?
They said no.
"MPs are already prone to forget they need to focus on bread and butter issues," was the brass's response.
Huh?
The Green New Deal...IS the bread and butter issue of our time, an epic program to radically improve peoples lives while staving off climate breakdown.
I’ve noticed a genre in media coverage of Justin Trudeau's environmental politics, basically fan fiction shrewdly nurtured by Liberals, that disguises his steadfast support for oil barons and excuses woefully inadequate measures.
It’s The Story of the Thwarted Hero.
A thread..
The story: Trudeau is a climate warrior whose ambitions always founder on hard, unavoidable realities.
Its aim: lower expectations, marginalize visions like Green New Deal, and manufacture consent for a corporate environmental agenda, which is what Liberals are actually about.
This week: Trudeau is “itching to deliver” a bold climate plan but is supposedly stymied by the pandemic – except, hello, a major green reconstruction could simultaneously address crises of public health, joblessness, racial inequality, and climate breakdown!
It’s good to dunk on Ivison but what's being missed is he’s merely a goofy right-wing exponent of the Canadian establishment's outlook: anxious to crush our rising expectations for governments post-pandemic to actually do more for our well-being..[THREAD]
Here’s the Liberal gov's budget officer spelling out the elite fear that post-pandemic, it may be politically hard to rollback new economic assistance – what he calls “entitlements," an old establishment codeword for “the rabble expecting and getting more than they deserve.”
In their own effort to batter the expectations of Canadians and prime us for a post-pandemic attack on public services, the Conservative party and its network of right-wing think tanks and pundits are not exactly... subtle.