April 18, 2019
With the support of Ontario’s right-wing Premier, Doug Ford, a staunchly pro-Israel member of Ontario’s legislature is pushing a private member’s bill designed to silence critics of Israel.
The proposed law, Bill 84, is a frontal assault on the rights to free speech, free assembly and free association.
It cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny. Continue Reading ›
On February 3, 2019, Canadian Ministers Chrystia Freeland and Marie-Claude Bibeau published this statement in which they claimed that Venezuelan forces had burned ‘humanitarian aid’:
Today, a New York Times expose confirmed that this claim is false.
Will Freeland and Bibeau now issue a retraction and apology?
[For the record, Max Blumenthal revealed this claim to be false well before the New York Times did so.]
On February 23, “Hands Off Venezuela” rallies were held in cities around the world.
For The Real News Network, I attended one such rally in Ottawa, Canada.
At the Ottawa rally, protesters marched from Justin Trudeau’s office to the United States embassy demanding that Western leaders keep their “greedy hands” off of Venezuela’s resources.
My report on the Ottawa protest can be watched and heard here:
My thanks to my daughter Lena, who shot the video for this report.
Following his recent appearance on the far-right Rebel Media, during which he vilified Justin Trudeau’s government for showing a modicum of compassion to Palestinian refugees, Hillel Neuer of UN Watch has launched a mendacious attack on me and Professor Michael Lynk.
Professor Lynk is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). He has meticulously documented Israel’s severe human rights abuses in the OPT, and has therefore drawn the ire of the relentlessly pro-Israel UN Watch.
Apparently, Neuer’s prodigious ego remains bruised after this past summer’s convocation at McGill University. For reasons that no one in the Palestinian solidarity movement can fathom, McGill University decided earlier this year to confer an honorary doctorate on this shameless apologist for Israeli apartheid. In protest, I and two other Palestinian solidarity activists, Yves Engler and Paul Tetrault, disrupted Neuer’s acceptance speech during McGill’s convocation:
Now, Neuer and UN Watch, the pro-Israel propaganda organ that Neuer leads, are calling for Professor Lynk to denounce me after Professor Lynk and I shared a stage at a recent Symposium on Israel/Palestinein Winnipeg.
For The Real News, I speak to Canadian journalist and doctoral student, Anthony Fenton, about the reality of Saudi – Canada relations.
Despite all the bluster being directed by the Saudi autocracy at the Trudeau government, Canada’s government remains, and has long been, an enthusiastic supporter of Saudi Arabia’s monstrous war on Yemen.
My conversation with Anthony can be seen and heard here:
For The Real News, I speak to Alison Kirsch of the Rainforest Action Network about a new report which shows that financing for extreme fossil fuels like the tar sands increased in 2017.
As Alison explains, the principal villains are Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and JP Morgan.
My interview of Alison can be seen here:
The world is now at the mercy of a coalition of three of the most dangerous autocrats on the planet: Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s new absolute ruler Mohammad bin Salman, a name that will become increasingly familiar as the months go by. These three “leaders” are now collaborating in an incredibly reckless plan to permanently reshape the Middle East.
The final outcome will unfold no matter what Canada does. But unless the government of Justin Trudeau gets a grip on reality, Canada will be drawn into this potential catastrophe by virtue of foreign policy positions it has already taken. Geopolitics is getting incredibly complex and there is little evidence that the Liberal government has a clue how to navigate through the dangers. The problem is that despite all the hype about “being back”, Canada’s foreign policy under Trudeau and minister of foreign affairs Chrystia Freeland is still…
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