152nd anniversary of Confederation: All out to give Canada a modern constitution and definition of rights

July 1 marks the 152nd anniversary of Confederation. On this date in 1867, the British North America Act, 1867 united four separate colonies of the British Empire in North America into the Dominion of Canada. The Indigenous nations and peoples were made subject to the racist colonial Indian Act and subjected to genocide on a grand scale while the Métis people were also treated on a racist basis and the Métis Nation was ignored.

Kushner as a colonial administrator: Let’s talk about the “Israeli model”

Endless futile attempts to negate Palestinians’ right to be | RAMZY BAROUD

In a TV interview on June 2, on the news docu-series Axios on the HBO channel, Jared Kushner opened up regarding many issues, in which his “Deal of the Century” was a prime focus.

The major revelation made by Kushner, President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, was least surprising. Kushner believes that Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves.

The Economic Plan: Try to buy the Palestinian people

Palestine Center Brief No. 329 (June 26, 2019)

By Mohamed Mohamed

On Saturday, June 22, the administration of President Donald Trump disclosed details of a proposed economic plan titled, “Peace to Prosperity – The Economic Plan: A New Vision for the Palestinian People.” This plan is the focus of the Bahrain conference on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Unsurprisingly, this so-called “new vision” did not come from the Palestinian people.

Heroic resistance in Honduras: Ten years after the 2009 coup d’état

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, May 27, 2019

By MARGARET VILLAMIZAR

June 28 will mark ten years since the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was kidnapped and forcibly removed from office and from Honduras in a U.S.-orchestrated military coup d’état. Zelaya has said the main impetus for the coup was his government signing on to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) in 2008 — something the U.S. could not tolerate.

This Day. On the Victory Parade

June 24, 1945 – Historical Parade of Victory on Red Square in Moscow

In Red Square after the Victory Parade, 200 tall soldiers of the 3rd Regiment of the special battalion of the division named after F.E. Dzerzhinsky under the fraction of eighty drums stepped forward with two hundred banners of the defeated enemy. Each of the fighters has one fascist banner. Their sheets almost dragged along the wet pavement of the square. At the foot of the Mausoleum were two wooden platform. Having reached them, the fighters made a turn to the right and with a force threw at them the pride of the Third Reich. With a thud, the flagstaffs fell. Fascist panels covered the platform. Tribunes burst into applause. The fraction of the drums continued. In front of the Mausoleum there grew a mountain of enemy banners that were being brought to shame. The overthrow of the German flags was deliberately carried out with gloves in order to emphasize the aversion to the defeated enemy.

Over the years, this act, full of deep meaning, imprinted in photographs, posters, paintings, immortalized in books and films, has not faded.

Aggressive trade agenda of the US shakes existing arrangements

The lead article of TML Weekly of June 15 by K C Adams, published on the website of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), focuses on the inter-imperialist collusion and contention of competing sections of the global financial oligarchy. In Canada, this is reflected in the conflicts surrounding the Canada US Mexico Trade Agreement (CUSMA). This collusion and contention posits the very grave danger of an inter-imperialist world war involving the militaries of the big powers.

Warship watch: Canada’s naval role in US-led aggression against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

The role of Canada’s military in enforcing unjust and deadly sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) is of great concern. These activities come at a time the peoples of the world are opposing foreign intervention in all its forms and are calling for peaceful, diplomatic means to resolve issues within and between countries. The high-handed U.S.-led sanctions against the DPRK undermine the achievement of conditions conducive to inter-Korean relations and peace negotiations between the U.S. and DPRK, and are blocking them from going further.

War by other means: The violence of North Korean human rights

By CHRISTINE HONG

1. Victors’ Justice?

In February 2014, upon completing a several-month investigation into “human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [DPRK, or North Korea]” – an investigation initiated in the sixtieth anniversary year of the 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement that halted combat but did not end the war – the three-member Commission of Inquiry (COI) established by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) concluded that North Korea had committed crimes against humanity. Such “unspeakable atrocities,” in the framing account of Commission chair Michael Kirby, “reveal a totalitarian State [without] parallel in the contemporary world.”[1] Analogies to the “dark abyss” of North Korea, the Australian jurist maintained, could be found only in the brutality of the Third Reich, South African apartheid, and the Khmer Rouge regime.[2] Reproduced in news reports around the world, Kirby’s markedly ahistorical examples may have succeeded in inflaming global public opinion yet they failed to contextualize the issue of North Korean human rights in a way that might generate peaceful structural resolution. Indeed, insofar as the 372-page COI report singularly identified the North Korea government as the problem – both as “a remaining and shameful scourge that afflicts the world today,” in Kirby’s jingoistic phrase, and as the primary obstacle to peace in Korea – the Commission gave new life to the vision of regime change that has animated post-9/11 North Korean human rights campaigns. By recommending that North Korea and its high officials be brought up before the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), it continued the hostilities of the unresolved Korean War “by means purporting to be judicial.”[3] The urgent question of a long-deferred peace relative to the Korean peninsula, which the Commission incoherently addressed, bedeviled its conclusions, rendering its findings partial, its recommendations in some instances uneasily one-sided, and its premise of impartiality suspect.[4] Moreover, that the COI proceedings and report aligned the United Nations with the United States, South Korea, Japan, and Great Britain while singling out North Korea and, to a far lesser degree, China, for blame performed an unsettling restaging of the Korean War on the agonistic terrain of human rights, suggesting an encrypted “victor’s justice” with regard to an unending war that up to now has had no clear winners.[5]

Bridge of Spies: Will the real James B. Donovan stand up?

Tom Hanks is today’s Everyman good guy movie star – an honest, trustworthy and stand-up white man just like Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, Gregory Peck and, yes, even John Wayne. In the recent film Bridge of Spies, one of those “inspired by true events” obfuscations, Hanks plays a certain James B. Donovan. In the movie, Donovan is an insurance lawyer lured into defending Soviet spy Rudolf Abel back in the good old days of the Cold War in order to prove that this is the land of justice and due process. Bridge of Spies, directed by Steven Spielberg, appears to be headed into Oscar territory.

This day. Remember the Rosenbergs, murdered by the US ruling circles 63 years ago

Crimes of the Cold War | DOUGAL MACDONALD

On June 19, 1953, U.S. citizens Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed at Sing Sing Prison in New York on the false charge of conspiring to pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The U.S. and Soviet Union were nominally allies against Nazi Germany at the time so the Rosenbergs were actually sentenced to death for passing secrets to a U.S. ally, which makes no sense. But the U.S. was a Soviet ally in name only. It is now well-known that the U.S. ruling circles, which had conspired with Nazi Germany during the war, had decided to openly betray the anti-fascist alliance before the war ended and to rebuild Germany as an anti-communist bulwark against the Soviet Union.

Trump’s Deal of the Century: Resurrecting the PLO Is Palestine’s best response

Protest in Gaza City, March 6, 2019, against Trump’s “Deal of the Century.”

By RAMZY BAROUD

Palestinian groups, Fatah, Hamas and others should not confine themselves to merely rejecting the Trump Administration’s so-called ‘Deal of the Century.’ Instead, they should use their resistance to the new American-Israeli plot as an opportunity to unify their ranks.

Plenty of fish in Gaza sea, but not for Palestinians

Palestinian fisherman Jihad al-Soltan (R) pulls his fishing net on a beach, Gaza, Aug. 21, 2017 | Reuters/Mohammed Salem

Entsar Abu Jahal, Al-Monitor.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (June 14) — In a dangerous development June 12, Israel announced a full naval closure on the Gaza Strip until further notice, denying Palestinian fishermen access to the sea. Israel said it took the measure in response to the continued firing of incendiary balloons at Israeli settlements by protesters in the ongoing “right of return” marches.

Event. For Peace, Security and Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula

Public Forum in Toronto on June 15

For Peace, Security and Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula

Toronto
Saturday, June 15 – 2:00-6:00 pm
TNG Community Centre, 349 Ontario Street
Organized by: Korea Truth Commission (Canadian Chapter) and Korean Federation in Canada
For more information call 416-768-1107 or email: corfedca@yahoo.ca

Keynote Speaker: Professor Kiyul Chung, 21st Century Institute, Washington, DC; Distinguished Visiting Professor, Kim Il Sung University, Pyongyang, DPRK

Behold Operation Bagration, D-Day of the Eastern Front

By JOHN WIGHT*

Map of Operation Bagration, showing the massive westward thrust of the Red Army.

Operation Bagration was the D-Day of the Eastern Front. In scope, size, scale and impact, it was a remarkable feat of arms unmatched in WWII.[1]

75th anniversary of D-Day: Attempts to sow divisions dishonour all those who fought together to defeat fascism

By NICK LIN

Allied casualties are helped ashore on the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day.

June 6 marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944, when Britain and the U.S. opened a second front against Nazi Germany with a massive amphibious assault on the beaches of Normandy in occupied France. The Soviet Union, fighting with incredible resilience and sacrifice to the east, had long-awaited this development promised by its allies. It made its own contribution to D-Day with the coordinated Operation Bagration on the eastern front.

From the band of those who love and create

As international condemnation of the latest U.S. sanctions continues to grow, three cruise lines operating to Cuba began to withdraw and apologize to their guests for changes in itineraries, with some 800,000 passengers affected | BERTHA MOJENA MILIAN

Monthly picket at U.S. embassy in Ottawa April 17, 2019, demands end to the criminal blockade of Cuba.

As international condemnation of the unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States on Cuba June 5 continues to grow, the measures have already had an impact. Three of the four U.S. cruise lines operating on the island, began to withdraw and apologize to their guests for changes in itineraries. The largest cruise ship operator in the world, Carnival, well known for its customary stops in Cuban ports, informed clients that it was forced to cancel visits to Havana and apologized for “the unexpected change.”

D-Day: The road to Berlin

 

British commandos land at Gold Beach on D-Day.

By STAN WINER*

WITH THE INVASION of Normandy on D-Day on June 6, 1944 the terms of warfare in occupied France ceased to be ostensibly those of Hitler and became clearly those of the Allied Expeditionary Force. The cross-channel build-up provided it with at least twice the number of men, four times the number of tanks, and six times the number of aircraft available to the enemy.

No to Trump! No to the state visit! We speak in our own name!

Mass opposition to Trump’s visit in July 2018

Workers’ Weekly

On June 4, as opposition builds on a mass scale to US President Donald Trump’s state visit, a national protest is taking place, assembling at 11.00am in Trafalgar Square. Coaches are converging from all parts of the country. Numerous other protests to the state visit from June 3-5 are also planned, including when Trump, the Queen, Theresa May and leaders of other governments, particularly France, Canada and Australia, attend a mobilisation of the Armed Forces of the UK on June 5. So afraid are the Portsmouth and state authorities of what might happen there that they have, with more than a touch of irony, built a wall to keep the people away from those who do not represent them. Trump is also to travel to France on June 6 for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Landings.

Normandy landing and the re-writing of history

By François Lazure*

In an article published on the 70th anniversary of D-Day, military historian Benoît Lemay, of the Royal Military College of Kingston, Ontario pointed out, “There are many misconceptions about the Normandy landing. It is believed to have enabled the Allies to win the Second World War. A more nuanced view is required. In fact, in June 1944, Germany had already lost. The landing only served to accelerate the end of the war. It was the Russians on the Eastern Front who did most of the work. For propaganda reasons, during the Cold War years that followed, the West would try to minimize the Soviet effort. It would be conveyed that it was the Allies who did most of the work.”[1]

75th Anniversary of D-Day: Deepest respects to all who contributed to the defeat of the Nazis in World War II

D-Day landing in Normandy, June 6, 1944.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the World War II allied landing on the coast of Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. On this anniversary, Canadians pay deepest respects to all the men and women who contributed to the defeat of the Nazis in Europe. Nearly 150,000 Allied troops landed or parachuted into the invasion area on D-Day, including 14,000 Canadians at Juno Beach. The Royal Canadian Navy contributed 110 ships and 10,000 sailors and the Royal Canadian Air Force contributed 15 fighter and fighter-bomber squadrons to the assault. Total Allied casualties that day reached more than 10,000, including 1,074 Canadians, of whom 359 were killed.

When Israeli and German troops fought side by side in Bavaria’s trenches

And Gideon Levy, Haaretz correspondent, was there to witness it and ask uncomfortable questions about the past

Israeli soldiers take part in a NATO exercise in Germany, April 2019 | IDF Spokesperson

NUREMBERG, Germany (May 3) – N. dons the black wool balaclava he always wears during operational activity. Only his dark eyes are visible. Diego’s jaws are also bound by a black muzzle. N. is an Israeli soldier who lives in Mitzpeh Adi in the Jezreel Valley and serves in Oketz, the Israel Defense Forces’ canine special forces unit. Diego is his dog – a Belgian dog that was trained in Germany. N. barks out his orders in German. “Sitz!” he commands, and Diego sits down submissively next to his master.

The Nazi who became an Israeli assassin (II)

Otto Skorzeny, SS-Obersturmbannführer– a leading fascist and intelligence chief given impunity by NATO

Skorzeny, the “liberator” of Benito Mussolini, saluting at a mass Nazi rally in Berlin, Germany, 3 October 1943 | Irish Mirror

Commentary on The Nazi who became an Israeli assassin (I) by Tony Seed

The Zionist article “The Nazi who became an Israeli assassin (I)” is one more article gleefully justifying assassinations – a state policy of Israel euphemistically called “extrajudicial execution” and a crime against humanity – and celebrating the fabled Mossad. Notice the humanitarian considerations and moral angst around the decision to recruit the known Nazi war criminal Otto Skorzeny. What they do not mention is why Simon Wiesenthal listed him as a war criminal and refused Israel’s requests to delist him. Inflating the once-vaunted role of Israeli intelligence, the Haaretz article represents his activity in Egypt, which they deem admirable, as being exclusively on behalf of the Mossad and conceals the known CIA links of both the Mossad and Skorzeny. The author’s accusations that Egypt was “planning a new Holocaust” are completely unsubstantiated and typical Zionist slander against the Arabic peoples to rationalize a war crime.

Nevertheless, the author’s rendition does reveal an organized conspiracy at the highest level of the Israeli state; Skorzeny was brought to Israel and met the head of the Mossad, Isser Harel. The commission of assassinations is not denied but is particularly emphasized. The only thing that remains incomprehensible is the reasoning which does not recognise as criminal assassinations and the reasons not to declare the Mossad organisation criminal. Such articles blinker the war in the Middle East, emphasizing operations and tactics over grand strategy, occupation of Historic Palestine and politics, and the pragmatism of the Israeli Zionists over principles, morality and international law.

The Nazi who became an Israeli assassin (I)

Otto Skorzeny, one of the Mossad’s most valuable assets, was a former lieutenant colonel in Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS and one of Adolf Hitler’s favourites. In 2016 The Forward and Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman presented a peculiar Zionist rendition celebrating assassinations in Haaretz.

The Nazi who became an Israeli assassin (I) – a commentary by Tony Seed.

Skorzeny, the “liberator” of Benito Mussolini, saluting at a mass Nazi rally in Berlin, Germany, 3 October 1943 | Irish Mirror

(March 27, 2016) – On September 11, 1962, a German scientist vanished. The basic facts were simple: Heinz Krug had been at his office, and he never came home.

The only other salient detail known to police in Munich was that Krug commuted to Cairo frequently. He was one of dozens of Nazi rocket experts who had been hired by Egypt to develop advanced weapons for that country.

HaBoker, a now defunct Israeli newspaper, surprisingly claimed to have the explanation: The Egyptians kidnapped Krug to prevent him from doing business with Israel.

But that somewhat clumsy leak was an attempt by Israel to divert investigators from digging too deeply into the case — not that they ever would have found the 49-year-old scientist.

Ukraine aviation: Five years of shame

The SU-25 attack aircraft over the railway station in Donetsk on June 2, 2014 | Sputnik

By Rostislav Ishchenko

Five years have passed since that memorable day when on June 2, 2014 an attack jet of the Armed Forces of Ukraine struck a blow on the building of the Lugansk regional state administration. It wasn’t the first episode of the use of aviation in the civil war in Donbass. Military jets passed at low heights and broke the sound barrier over the residential quarters of the cities, intimidating the population.

2019 Ukraine presidential election: Results will sharpen internal contradictions

By DOUGAL MACDONALD with an update by TONY SEED

The 2019 Ukrainian presidential election was held on March 31 and April 21 using the two-round system. A surprising total of 39 candidates ran for president on the ballot. Since entry into the campaign costs a non-refundable $90,000, speculation was rampant that some candidates were nothing more than straw men put forward by various factions of the rich simply to drain votes away from their opponents.