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Harper again serves as Bush's mouthpiece in
Canada
By Jim Miles
ccun.org, August 24, 2008
While eastern Canada suffers unseasonable rains, the west enjoys its
average warm/hot summer. In the Middle East however, the heat
is rising in the geo-political field.
I noticed an article in the local paper (The Province, Friday,
August 15, p. A41) concerning Prime Minister Harper and his claim
that Russia is returning to a Soviet-era mentality. That may
well be true, but it is only because the Americans adopted their own
unilateral, interventionist, first-strike, supreme military "full
spectrum dominance" ethos that has proven so disastrous around the
world, but specifically in military terms in the Middle East.
Harper joins Bush and Rice in their full-on wilful ignorance of the
facts that the U.S. has invaded more countries in the past half
century than any other, that the U.S. unilaterally invaded and
occupied Iraq, that the U.S. created the situation in Afghanistan -
going way back to the CIA preceding the Russians in 1979 - including
the creation of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to help fight the Russians
(interesting case of "unintended consequences", all wars have them),
that Georgia attacked Russia first, vainly believing that Israel
(who trained and supplied the Georgian military) and the U.S. (who
also trained and supplied the Georgian military) would step in to
help them.
Of course Russia has to return to "cold war mentality" - it has been
the intent of the U.S. all along to isolate and destroy Russia, to
lay claim to all the oil and natural gas resources as well as the
transportation routes (thus Georgia and Afghanistan) to 'friendly'
seaports and countries. That Putin outsmarted the Americans is
quite clear if one reads enough about the current geopolitical
climate in Central Asia. Russia is not perfect, but it has
recovered substantially from the Washington consensus induced rape
of resources that nearly destroyed the country economically and
socially.
At the same time the American state is declining rapidly in
its morality and in its democracy (as well as economically, another
partial side-effect of American wars). Bush holds fuller
executive power than any other president and the American congress
is no longer functioning as a democratic control on the
executive; and neither one of the new candidates for the presidency
have indicated that their will be significant changes - McCain is
Bush renewed and Obama is a change, but only in skin colour as all
his advisors are old white guys.
For Harper to say that he is deeply troubled "that Russia
somehow has a say or control over countries outside of its borders"
is absolute garbage.
Look at how the Americans act, always intervening in "countries
outside their borders" either through military action, CIA
intervention, or through supposed NGOs such as the federally funded
National Endowment for Democracy. And then Harper needs to
look closer to home, at how Canadian resources under NAFTA have been
sold downstream to the Americans (consider the clauses on natural
gas and U.S. rights to it even if Canada has to give up some of its
needs), and then consider Canadian troops in Afghanistan helping the
Americans with their overall plans to secure those resource
supplies.
Of course it is all rationalized as being free market (which do not
exist, never have, never will) and helping democracy (in a country
based very much on tribal conditions and with the will to defeat any
occupiers (as all foreign troops are viewed) or to die in the
process, especially once civilians start dying as "collateral
damage".
Mr. Harper, it is time to simply be quiet and contemplate your own
ignorances or wilful follies, whichever they be.
Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular
contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The
Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally
through other alternative websites and news publications.
jmiles50@telus.net
www.jim.secretcove.ca/index.Publications.html
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