Posts Tagged ‘canada
OMNI-TV File: Stephen Zedong Harper; Canadian Raj; Hating America; India helps poor, but not its own!
Stephen Zedong Harper
Money has no religion or ideology, it is both right wing and left wing, a mentor of mine told me once – and now we have our Federal Tories – the right wing free enterprise capitalism-can-do-no-wrong zealots who are marketing a renowned Canadian whose Marxist beliefs today probably would have landed him permanently under the watchful eye of the Canadian security services – I am talking about a Canadian doctor named Norman Bethune, a native of Gravenhurst Ontario — a passionate Marxist who joined the Spanish civil war against the fascists of Spain and then joined Mao Zedong’s glorious struggle against the Japanese and other feudals in 1939 and eventually perished and was eulogized by the great Chinese leader himself – his statues adorn different parts of China, several medical schools are named after him and now that the Chinese are getting richer, thousands are turning up in Gravenhurst to pay homage to their history book hero – Under normal circumstances, the Tories would not give Comrade Bethune the time of day – but times they are a changing – we need Chinese trade and investment and we need Chinese tourists – so our capitalist heroes have shelled out two and a half million dollars to turn Norman Bethune’s home in Gravenhurst into a shrine for Chinese tourists reliving their history – in fact, it was inaugurated by none other than Treasury Board president Tony Clement this week – who made clear that the Tories were not celebrating his Marxism, but his universal public service spirit – whatever – bottom line, to use the words from a Stevie Miller song: take the money and run, Tony – think about it, I’m Zuhair Kashmeri.
Canada Goes Colonial
A few weeks ago I came across a news item that Canada was negotiating with several countries in the developing world to rent bases for its armed forces – and it signed an agreement with Jamaica for the first of these bases – our armed forces will be stationed there and at the other bases in Asia and Africa for rapid deployment – rapid deployment? – For what? – to invade countries and build our Canadian Raj of influence? – I can see our former prime minister Lester Pearson turning over in his grave – he won the Nobel peace prize for setting up the Blue Helmets, a UN peacekeeping force – twenty years ago one third of Canada’s soldiers served as peacekeepers – today this number is a paltry 33 – the rest are send to die in unnecessary wars – perhaps Ottawa is trying to create a false economy like in the US, where tens of thousands of jobs and much of the country’s wealth is linked to the defence complex – is it any wonder that America always has new enemies to battle and new countries to invade – is this where we want to go? do we want glitzy army recruitment centres as the US has in the middle of Times Square in New York city? cajoling the young poor to come learn the art of killing and help Canada garner the colonial image that it missed along the way to nationhood? – on the bright side, the large majority of Canadians today want to get back to peacekeeping rather than following the US or NATO into crazy and unethical wars like Afghanistan or Libya – think about it, I’m Zuhair Kashmeri.
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OMNI-TV File (November): Killing Occupy Movement, Multicultural Remembrance Day, Cluster Bombs & Banks, Torture in India
How Occupy Movement was killed by media and the state
It was sad to see the tents of the occupy movement being dismantled across Canada and the young people with a fresh vision being driven off to the fringe – our government leaders and our media ignoring their message and focusing instead on how these trouble makers were messing up public spaces – and they did have a message that unchecked capitalism and free enterprise was not the answer to a planet in crisis – that the American model was the cause of massive inequality, poverty, hunger, deprivation, war, famine and conflict – poor countries like India have been worshipping this model for two decades and today a hundred families control a quarter of the country’s GDP – 800 million Indians live on fifty cents a day – while corporations use the media to brainwash us that happiness is to turn into a zombie at a department store’s midnight sale – in America itself people are losing their jobs and homes while Barack Obama bails out Wall Street and bombs innocent people – Indian author Arundhati Roy said it best at an occupy speech in New York – we need an end to cross-ownership in businesses – weapons manufacturers cannot own TV stations; mining corporations cannot run newspapers; business houses cannot fund universities; drug companies cannot control public health, put a cap on how much wealth individuals can accumulate and the children of the rich cannot inherit all their family’s wealth – the young men and women were simply telling us an inconvenient truth that it is time to guarantee a home, food, healthcare, total education for all – instead of building them a shrine where we could ponder a different god, we drove them away – Think about it, I’m Zuhair Kashmeri.
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