Editor's Notes - 01 June 2014
Editor's Notes
The strange world of Canadian politics
For more than half-a-century in Canada it has been apparent that you can't judge a political party by it's name. For example, in what became decades you had in Ontario the Progressive Conservative Party, 1949 to 1961 under Leslie Frost, John Robarts, 1961 to 1971, ending with Bill Davis, 1971 to 1985, governing like Liberals.
Today you have Liberal Kathleen Wynne in an election campaign with a platform that should belong to the New Democrats. There is New Democrat Andrea Horwath running to the right of the Liberals and having (not so private, as it turns out) meetings with corporate czars telling them that if she is elected she will rein-in government employees. Then you have Tory Tim Hudak with his Made-in-America plan not to rein-in government employees but to kill 100,000 public sector jobs with the bizarre claim based on false analysis that out of the ashes he will create one million jobs.
It's a political scenario gone mad.
I'll not be telling you how to vote. I'll just say that Hudak is promoting a Chicago-based neo-liberal policy that has proven a disaster wherever it has been applied in the world leaving, without exaggeration, destruction, death, and economic chaos. The New Democrats have to learn that when they abandon principle in their lust for power they must suffer the consequences.
A final note: New Democrats say they are applying the policy of Tony Blair's Labour Party. But Tony Blair is no one to emulate. He joined Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in war plans that killed hundreds of thousands, wrecked economies, leaving them in chaos, and he's now taking advantage of the misery sown, by becoming a multi-millionaire.
Western leaders blind to consequences of their actions
Putin said beware of 'returnees' but they wouldn't listen
With the mindset of checker players who can't see beyond their one move, the leaders of the West, are stumbling from one deadly step to another.
How smug they were a couple of years ago when they gave tacit support to their nationals who wanted to go to Syria and fight the Assad regime. They even sent in weapons to make things easier for their proxy troops.
One prominent voice called out a warning. This came from none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said in effect, beware because those who go will not be the same as those who come back. They will return with murder on their minds.
But Washington, London, Paris, and their kept media, have been busy exercising character assassination against Putin, so all too few paid any attention to him.
As many as 3,000 Europeans and 100 Americans are believed to have travelled to join the conflict in Syria. This travel is only increasing as groups utilize social media and online propaganda to recruit followers.
The May 24 shooting in the Belgium museum resulted in three deaths and one person injured. It bears resemblance to a shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, in 2012 by Mohamed Merah. Merah, a French citizen, had spent time with extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan before returning to France and perpetrating the attack.
Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, filmed a short video after the shootings in which he claimed responsibility for the May 24 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said Sunday in a press conference. The film also showed the weapons Nemmouche used in the assault, a handgun and an AK-47 assault rifle of the sort used in the attack, according to AFP.
In Brussels, Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said the suspect had tried to film the killings on May 24, but his camera failed. The video found after his arrest shows his weapons and clothes, and includes his voice claiming responsibility for the attack, and that he wanted to “kill Jews” and to “set fire to Brussels and fill it with blood.” Van Leeuw said.
“The new elements in this investigation draw attention once more to the problem of the ‘returnees’ — in other words the people going to Syria to participate in combat and return afterward to our country,” he said. “All European countries are confronted at this moment with this problem.”
A native of France, Nenmouche is believed to have been radicalized in prison and to have left for Syria only three weeks after his release in 2012. French and Belgian officials claim there is evidence that he fought with ISIS while he was there.
Those who engineer these wars of imperialist expansion in the Orwellian claim of expanding democracy, feel safe in their air conditioned offices, surrounded by sycophants while they play their war games, must hear the bells tolling. One day they'll wake up to the fact that the bells are tolling for them.
Meanwhile, take it easy but take it.
Looking forward.
