Editorial Column

How honourable it must be today to be able to walk like an Egyptian! The people of Egypt just gave the world a lesson in how to make a government listen! Not just any government, but a torturous tyrant that had the backing of the US military industrial complex who's bosses are the international bankers and their corporate fascist brothers. This should show us all what can happen when a people can gather together in great numbers and peacefully shut down a whole country.

Recently in Maclean’s magazine, Andrew Coyne and Paul Wells discussed the narrative created by the Conservative Party for their vision of Canada, as compared with the narrative that had been offered by the Liberal Party.While the Liberal narrative put an emphasis on such aspects as the Charter of Rights, the national flag, the CBC, medicare, peacekeeping and the United Nations, the Conservative narrative emphasizes the Canadian military, support for families and the economy, the RCMP, Tim Horton’s coffee, hockey and Arctic sovereignty.

In 2011, Canada’s facing the possibility of another federal election if the Conservative government’s budget is defeated. Unfortunately, this occurs at a time when Canadian election turnouts are plummeting, and very few of our national politicians are trusted by the public.A mere 59% of Canadians voted in the last federal election, and in my home province of Alberta, a mere 41% of people came out to vote. More and more Canadians seem to be fed up with politics altogether, turning off and tuning out when they see the increasing levels of venom both sides of the political spectrum throw at one another.

There can be little to no accountability to citizens by provincial or federal politicians unless we, the people, awaken from the BIG Lie that has been perpetrated by the media, the corporations and the oligarcy of political parties. The BIG Lie is that the institutional design of our parliamentary system is a democracy. The truth is that what we have is NOT a democracy.

God knows there is a plethora of problems in Nova Scotia and Canada about which I should be commenting, and will, in time. But with all of my American friends and relatives about to send their politicos the message that they are PISSED OFF and ain’t gonna take it anymore, I felt compelled to at least acknowledge their struggle to regain control of their government(s) … which is long overdue, in both the U.S. and Canada

NATO dovetailed nicely into this plan as it would stealthily be mutated from a defense alliance to an instrument of American imperialism.

NATO HQ in Brussels is today a very unhappy place. There is a strong understanding among the various national militaries that an attack by Israel on a NATO member flagged ship in international waters is an event to which NATO is obliged - legally obliged, as a matter of treaty - to react.... nobody wants or expects military action against Israel. But there is an uneasy recognition that in theory that ought to be on the table, and that NATO is obliged to do something robust to defend Turkey....
You might [also] be surprised by just how high in Nato scepticism runs at the line that in some way occupying Afghanistan helps protect the west, as opposed to stoking dangerous Islamic anger worldwide...
Therefore what is troubling the hearts and souls of non-Americans in NATO HQ is this fundamental question. Is NATO genuinely a mutual defence organisation, or is it just an instrument to carry out US foreign policy? - --- Craig Murray, human rights activist, writer, former British Ambassador, and an Honourary Research Fellow at the University of Lancaster School of Law.  bloghttp://www.craigmurray.org.uk
 

Labatt Canada has just announced that it will close its Lakeport Brewery in Hamilton, Ontario. This is more tough news for the steel city as only weeks ago, Siemens has announced it will move its operations to North Carolina, putting almost 600 people out of work.

 Younger Canadians will not remember David Lewis as the leader of the New Democratic Party from 1971 to 1975, but he made a critical contribution to the political lexicon of our country when he coined the term “corporate welfare bums” and ran a federal election campaign on that theme. It is a term that was very pertinent then and has even greater pertinence today, as today these same bums have become even more pervasive and dangerously parasitic.

By Thom Hartmann

Globalization is killing Europe, just as it's already wiped out much of the American middle class.

Spain and Greece are facing immediate crises that many other European nations see on the near horizon: aging boomer workers are retiring with healthy benefit packages, but the younger workers who are paying for those benefits aren't making anything close to the income (or, therefore, paying the taxes) that their parents did.

The Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics will be the largest security operation in Canadian history. It will include more than 15,000 Canadian Forces, private security personnel, along with the RCMP and other police agencies. The U.S. will also provide security and support for the Games. With the Olympics fast approaching, the fear of terrorism is back in the public’s psyche