globalresearch (Progressive Radio Network)

 One of the most devastating conflicts in history the First World War drew in all the major powers at the time. Eight and a half million soldiers and Six and a half million civilians are estimated to have perished in the war that was supposed to end war. [1][2]

Set off by a diplomatic crisis, triggered by the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June of 1914, The Great War as it was known at the time lasted four bloody years. On November 11, 1918, Germany became the last of the Central Powers to capitulate and sign an armistice with the victorious Allied Powers, signalling the end of the war.

To this day, the 11th hour of the eleventh month is set aside to reflect and honour those military men and women who paid the ultimate cost to secure a more peaceful and just world. The occasion is referred to as Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth.

The spirit of Remembrance Day has shifted in recent years, especially in Canada.

Following the centenary of the start of World War I, the Canadian Prime Minister credited the war as a critical ingredient in establishing the country as an independent nation. [3]Harper stokes national pride over Allied victories in Ypres, Vimy and Passchendaele rather than lament a tragic loss of life over a mostly pointless war. [4]

Cautionary warnings about the terrible toll of war with slogans like “Never Again” and “Lest We Forget” seem to have been eclipsed by imperatives to paint the sacrifices of military men and women serving the State (for whatever reason) as heroic and necessary.

Today, Remembrance Day may as well be called “Thank a Soldier for your Freedoms Day.”

Without disrespecting those who have died serving in past conflicts, it is worth reflecting during Remembrance Week on exactly why World War I and other twentieth century conflicts were waged in the first place. Were these wars truly for democracy, peace and democracy? Or were there more cynical motives being pursued by Canada and the other major powers?

To this end, this week’s Global Research News Hour interviews two prominent authors and dissident thinkers on the century old conflict known as World War I and Canada’s role in this and other military forays.

Yves Engler is an activist and author of numerous books on Canadian foreign policy includingThe Black Book on Canadian Foreign Policy,  Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and his latest The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s Foreign Policy.

Dr. Jacques Pauwels, Canadian historian and author of the 2000 book The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War . He has a French language book on World War 1 available now. An English version will be available in 2015.

This week's Global Research News Hour examines two of the biggest threats to human existence on planet Earth: the elimination of human habitat due to Climate Change and the dangers of an increasingly likely World War 3 scenario evolving out of the tensions growing between US/NATO and Russia/China.  The first interview guest is Guy Mcpherson, Emeritus Professor of Natural Resources and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Arizona, and author of the blog Nature Bats Last (guymcpherson.com) He has put together a workshop on Abrupt Climate change on the site onlyloveremains.org The second guest is Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, a Sociologist and a Research associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization, and an award-winning author. His book The Globalization of NATO is available for purchase at the Global Research Website. Nazemroaya lays out the geopolitical dynamics pushing the US/NATO in the direction of a nuclear confrontation with RUSSIA and China.

On this week's Global Research News Hour, we mark Earth Day with two interviews related to the urgent call to defend the planet from environmental damage. First, we hear from Michael J Murphy, director/producer of the films "What in the World are the Spraying" and "Why in the World are they Spraying". He discusses the clear and present threats associated with Geo-Engineering including so-called 'chemtrails' and speculates on who benefits and who does not from efforts to control the weather. Carrie Saxifrage is a sustainability reporter for the Vancouver Observer and the author of the book "The Big Swim: Coming Ashore in a World Adrift". She discusses how popular action can more easily be mobilized by changing the narrative and the way we approach the dilemma of climate collapse and other environmental hazards.

Veteran’s Tales

As noted in last week’s program, the myth of the soldier as guarantor of freedom and security for our fellow citizens has become wide-spread and reinforced in the imaginations of citizens, particularly in America, and lately in Canada.

We therefore see the “Support the Troops” monicker adorning bumpers and webpage banners.

Veterans’ Day and Remembrance Day ceremonies increasingly are, in the opinion of this author, becoming celebrations of the sacrifice of ‘heroic’ men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country. These sentiments overwhelm any sense of regret about the tragedy of their loss and the resolve to put an end to such military conflicts so future generations of soldiers (and civilians) need not suffer the same gruesome fate.

Even on Canada Day 2014, Prime Minister Stephen Harper in his public remarks, chose not to mention scientific, medical, artistic or other such achievements, nor the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, nor the debut of national projects such as publicly funded health care.

Instead he chose to focus almost exclusively on the accomplishments of our military personnel abroad, and the prowess of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Evidently, PM Harper seeks to transform Canada’s image away from the land of friendly ‘hosers’ to that of a Modern Day Sparta.

Not surprisingly then, this unthinking devotion to all things military has affected policy. It is fueling more US wars of aggression in the Middle East and prompting Canada’s enthusiastic support.

This week’s Global Research News Hour takes a close look at the toll war takes on the fighting men and women and particularly on the broader society. Critically, it examines the roots of the pro-war mentality that has gripped the imaginations of the people, and of the men in particular. This show also probes possible remedies that might potentially de-program members of the pro-war cult.

Both of the show’s two guests are veterans of the US Armed Forces, and have served in missions abroad. They are now staunch critics of US military adventurism.

Stan Goff began his military service in January, 1970 as an infantryman with the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Vietnam. His service took him to seven more conflict areas after Vietnam, including Guatemala, Grenada, El Salvador, Peru, Colombia, Somalia, and Haiti. He retired as a Master Sergeant from the US Army in 1996. He has taught military science at the US Military Academy at West Point. Over the last decade he has published a number of articles and three books, including Sex and War, and Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century. He currently authors the blog Chasin’ Jesus. His latest book, Borderline – Reflections on War, Sex, and Church from Wipf and Stock (Cascade Books) is expected to be released in February of 2015.

 Joshua Key who hails out of Guthrie, Oklahoma was trained as a US combat engineer was dispatched to Iraq in April of 2003. He claims to have witnessed numerous instances of abuse of the Iraqi civilian population by US forces, which went unaddressed by commanding officers. He fled the war for reasons of conscience at the end of 2003, and with his then wife and children in tow, made his way across the border to Canada in early 2005. He has sought and been denied refugee status in that country. Remarried to a Canadian, he along with other Iraq War Resisters and deserters are ‘living in limbo’ waiting for deportation orders back to the US where they face the prospect of dishonorable discharge and lengthy prison sentences for the crime of desertion. Joshua Key is the author, along with Lawrence (Book of Negroes) Hill of The Deserter’s Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Sold

The Global Research News Hour starts the new year off with a retrospective on  important international stories of 2013 ignored by the mainstream media.

As noted elsewhere on this site, 2013 has been marked by spreading environmental  degradation, economic uncertainty, and increased military tensions.

Refusing to Fight: Canadians Supporting US War Deserters

Canada: A Refuge from Militarism?

January 2014 marks the ten year anniversary since Jeremy Hinzman, US soldier with the 82nd Airborne Division, having deserted his battalion, crossed the border into Canada and sought refuge from a war he could not legally or morally participate in.

In so doing, he became the first modern day US War Resister to seek asylum in Canada.

Others followed.

Brandon Hughey, David Sanders, Joshua Key, Kim Rivera, and ultimately more than two dozen others followed suit. All publicly declared their conscientious opposition to the US war agenda, particularly the conflict in Iraq.

This is not including the more than one hundred who may have crossed over unacknowledged.

Given the unpopularity of the Iraq War, especially in Canada, one would think there would be significant support for these military personnel who sacrificed their careers, their families and their reputations for an unknown future in a foreign country.

However, the experience of today’s war resisters indicates otherwise.

The current Conservative government in Canada seems anything but accommodating of US military deserters, regardless of the questionable legality of the conflicts they were ordered to participate in.

This installment of the Global Research News Hour focuses on the movement spreading throughout Canada and the world known as IDLE NO MORE. Guests include sociologist, writer and Indigenous activist Robert Animiiki Horton, and Professor of Globalization Studies Anthony Hall. They discuss the challenges facing the movement, advice for non-Indigenous supporters, and some of the historical and legal backdrop to this resurging resistance.

“We have had enough. Our young people have had enough. Our women have had enough … we have nothing left to lose… These are demands, not requests … the Idle No More movement has the people, it has the people and the numbers that can bring the Canadian economy to its knees. It can stop Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s resource development plan.” -Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Derek Nepinak Idle No More Re-visited This past weekend, the long-awaited meeting between the Prime Minister and First Nations Chiefs took place in Ottawa. Not all of the First Nations leaders were in attendence. The meeting took place the same week a devastating audit of the Attawapiskat First Nation was conveniently leaked. This audit served to distract the mainstream media and much of the public away from the core issues animating the Idle No More movement while smearing one of the movement’s most identifiable, and sympathetic figures. While Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Shawn Atleo recuperates from an illness, Idle No More protests have continued unabated, including on Wednesday January 16th’s National Day of Action which included rail and road blockades in Ontario, Manitoba and New brunswick. John Schertow is a Mohawk and Indigenous activist who has through his alternative news site‘intercontinentalcry.org‘ tracked and monitored hundreds of Indigenous Peoples’ struggles around the world. In this feature length interview, Mr. Schertow addresses the role of the Assembly of First Nations in Canada in relation to INM, what was accomplished during last Friday’s meeting with the Prime Minister, and what the movement can and should learn from other struggles if it is to prevail. Haiti’s Challenges On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 MW earthquake with an epicentre 25 km west of Haiti’s capital Port-Au-Prince caused extensive damage to Port-Au Prince, Jacmel, and other settlements in the region. Hundreds of thousands were killed and over a million made homeless. THe world’s attention was riveted to the region. Concerned citizens in Western Europe, the US and Canada opened up their wallets and donated generously to NGOs, and institutions such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, believing they would be assisting the most needy and destitute Haitians. Three years, a cholera epidemic and 6 billion dollars in foreign aid later, Haiti still struggles to recover from that massive natural disaster. What are the essential impediments to the social and material reconstruction of this island nation? Jean St-Vil, an Ottawa based writer, artist and activist has been to Haiti a few times since the quake. In part two of the program he comments on the forces undermining progress for Haiti, which he believes can be traced to the UN, and the international community at large, including Canada.

This installment of the Global Research News Hour features Author and academic Jared Ball on Obama's record in power and how it violates rather than realizes Martin Luther King's dream. We also hear Michel Chossudovsky analyse the situation in Mali and how it speaks of a campaign by the US to recolonize former French colonies.

Israel-Palestine and the Path to PeaceConversations with Jeff Halper and Yves Engler. Global Research News Hour Episode 92

Investigative Journalist and former LAPD officer Mike Ruppert explains the significance of the Chris Dorner story in the framework of the power of the US Police State. Richard Gage and Peter Drew discuss an upcoming Court case in the UK that could signal a breakthrough for the 9/11 Truth movement. Former Georgia Congress Woman and Presidential candidate Cynthia McKMinney talks about her background in the context of Big Money corruption and control of the US political framework, Part one of two.

On Friday February 27, a prominent Russian political figure, Boris Nemtsov, was murdered. Some effort has been made to try to connect this tragedy with the Russian government. This latest event takes place in the context of significant military casualties by Ukrainian forces in the Donbass, increasing dispatches of Canadian and US troops to the region, and an intensifying demonizayion campaign of Russian President Putin. To help contextualize these events, the global Research News Hour is joined by two editors of the website newcoldwar.org, a site which attempts to expose the truht about the Ukraine situation.

Outlawing Natural Health, The Fracking Bubble, The Life and Death of Hugo Chavez Imagine a middle-aged couple starting a simple business. They provide herbs or vitamins or some other innocuous product to the public. Let’s suppose they also promote the health benefits of taking this product. Under current laws, the couple could find themselves the target of a sting operation in which an armed RCMP SWAT team might swoop down on their residence, bust their door down, stick guns in the occupants’ faces and force them to sit on a couch for eleven hours while the agents search for contraband. According to constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati, not only could this happen, it has happened! In Canada! The offensive legislation in question relates to an Act that governs so-called Natural Health Products. Dietary supplements, vitamins, herbs, foods and any other such natural item have proven to be far less dangerous than most over the counter prescription medications. These are now being targeted by Health Canada as a potential health hazard. Galati is mounting a legal challenge against Health Canada. He tells the Global Research News Hour why the legislation on the books is insidious and unconstitutional and needs to be changed. The Fracking Bubble According to Deborah Rodgers of Energy Policy Forum, the current boom in shale oil and gas is not only unsustainable and environmentally contentious, it is built on unreliable estimates and projections. In this interview she explains the critical difference between reserve estimates and resource estimates, and why Wall Street is deriving profits from what appears to be a bubble akin to the Sub Prime Mortgage bubble which burst in 2008. The Death of Chavez Millions around the world are mourning the death of Bolivarian leader Hugo Chavez who died of cancer on Tuesday March 5 at the age of 58. Chavez defied US imperial aims including a coup attempt in 2002. He has since been a thorn in the side of both the Bush and the Obama administrations. As the Venezuelan people grieve and admirers around the world pay homage, the Global Research News Hour brings in frequent guest and Chavez admirer Stephen Lendman to examine Chavez’s impact on international geo-politics. We also discuss the possibility that the Venezuelan President may have been the victim of a US assassination attempt!

The Legacy of Hugo Chavez and The Korean Powder Keg “I swear before my people that upon this moribund constitution I will drive forth the necessary democratic transformations so that the new republic will have a Magna Carta befitting these new times.” -President Hugo Chavez, from his February 2, 1999 inauguration speech. [1] Hugo Chavez (28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) One of the most beloved and inspirational leftist figures on the world stage passed away on March 5. During his four terms and fourteen years as president of Venezuela, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías distinguished himself as a Latin American leader in the tradition of Simon Bolivar. After nationalizing oil fields run by US based oil giants ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp, Chavez was able to utilize the proceeds to subsidize primary health clinics and food markets in poor neighbourhoods. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, poverty in the country dropped from 48.6 percent in 2002 to 29.5 percent in 2011. [2] Amendments to the Venezuelan constitution included 116 articles focusing on the protection of human rights, including protections of women and indigenous peoples, and the right of the public to education, health care and food. [3] Chavez’s personal popularity with the Venezuelan people helped him frustrate a coup attempt in April 2002 and then a management lock-out of the oil industry several months later. In addition, he formulated critical ties with the President of Cuba, Fidel Castro, as well as with the socialist governments of Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. More than that, Chavez proved himself to be a consistent thorn in the side of US hegemony in the region. The US has a long history of supporting Latin American governments that rule in the interest of US-backed oil, agri-business and other industrial enterprises. Governing in the interests of the people is not usually good for business. With Chavez’s recent passing, the Global Research News Hour contacted Michel Chossudovsky to help assess his legacy. Professor Chossudovsky conducted research in Venezuela during the early part of his career. In this interview he comments on the changes brought about in Venezuela since those days, the advice he conveyed to the government at the time and how he met personally with President Chavez. Chossudovsky also comments on speculation around Chavez as having been targeted for assassination under the Obama administration. North Korea The Western media has reported frequently in recent weeks on the behaviour of the North Korean government and has portrayed leader Kim Jung-un as being ‘bellicose’ and aggressive’. The impoverished country has in recent months launched a satellite into orbit and conducted a third nuclear test. They have even threatened in recent days to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the US. Greg Elich is a long time observer of Korean geo-politics. In this interview with the Global Research News Hour, Elich puts North Korea’s recent actions within a historical context and addresses recent US-South Korean military drills as well as the so-called Asia-Pivot as integral to understanding the larger picture. References 1 JONES, BART (2007). Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution. Hanover, New Hampshire: Steerforth Press. ISBN 978-1-58642-135-9. 2 Charlie Devereux & Raymond Colitt. March 7, 2013. Venezuelans’ Quality of Life Improved in UN Index Under Chavez. Bloomberg. 3 “Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela”. Embassy of Venezuela in the US. 2000.

This week's Global Research News Hour analyses the results of the recent Israeli elections and evaluates resistance tools such as Boycott, Divestment, Sanction (BDS) especially in the face of opposition from political figures like Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. Interview guest James Petras explains how Netanyahu managed to secure the support of a plurality of Israeli voters, and what that portends for the future of Israeli relations in the region and worldwide.Bruce Katz of Palestinian and Jewish Unity is up next with a review of efforts to implement BDS in Canada and the obstacles solidarity activists face.JEff Halper talks about the abuses of Palestinians he has witnessed, about the potential for BDS and about why media can't get the message right.

Egyptian Death Sentences: Human Rights Travesty or Price of Freedom?

In recent weeks, the governing authority in Egypt has escalated their crackdown on supporters of deposed president Mohammad Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In March, news agencies widely reported that after a two day trial, 529 people, many of whom were tried in absentia, were sentenced to death over an attack on a police station in which a police officer was killed. [2]

In late April, 683 alleged supporters of the Brotherhood, including spiritual leader Mohammed Badie were sentenced to death over their supposed role in the August 14 incident. [3]

Likewise, the Egyptian courts have banned the April 6 movement, considered a pro-democracy group which played a role in instigating and organizing the Arab Spring movement which overthrew President Mubarak in 2011. [4] Numerous journalists have been jailed as well under the rationale that they are “spreading false news” and “part of a terrorist organisation.”[5]

This week’s Global Research News Hour examines two perspectives on the repressive measures being taken by the Egyptian military government against the Muslim Brotherhood, the April 6 movement, and other critics of the current authorities.

Film Maker John Greyson was one of two Canadians who got caught up in last summer’s mass arrests. After fifty days of detention without charge, he and his companion Tarek Loubani were released. [6] Greyson spoke to the Global Research News Hour about his harrowing ordeal, the conditions he and other prisoners faced, and about the need to intervene on behalf of other innocents being wrongfully held.

A geo-political analyst and frequent Global Research contributor who goes by the name Tony Cartalucci has a different perspective. He believes the repressive actions being taken by the military government and the courts need to be seen in the context of an ongoing foreign orchestrated insurgency not dissimilar to those that led Libya and Syria to disaster. Cartalucci engaged the Global Research News Hour in an email interview which is reprinted below in its entirety.

The email dialogue was voiced, for radio purposes, by Global Research guest host Jon Wilson and regular host Michael Welch.

 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The show can be heard on the Progressive Radio Network at prn.fm. Listen in every Monday at 3pm ET.

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Boston College Radio WZBC 90.3FM NEWTONS  during the Truth and Justice Radio Programming slot -Sundays at 7am ET.

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario – Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border. It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia Canada. – Tune in every Saturday at 6am.

CFRU 93.3FM in Guelph, Ontario. Tune in Wednesdays from 12am to 1am.

 

Notes:

1) Amnesty International, March 24, 2014, “Egypt: More than 500 sentenced to death in ‘grotesque’ ruling”;http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/egypt-more-500-sentenced-death-grotesque-ruling-2014-03-24 2) Al Jazeera, March 25, 2014, “Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to death”;http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/03/muslim-brotherhood-members-sentenced-death-201432481112672803.html 3) Democracy Now, April 30, “Egypt is a Police State: Senior Muslim Brotherhood Member Condemns New Mass Death Sentence for 683”; http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/30/egypt_is_a_police_state_senior 4) ibid 5) Al Jazeera, March 25, 2014, “Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to death”;http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/03/muslim-brotherhood-members-sentenced-death-201432481112672803.html 6) CAROL BERGER,  Oct. 10 2013 , Globe and Mail, “Egypt clears Canadians Greyson, Loubani to leave”;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/greyson-loubani-free-to-leave-egypt-reports-say/article14796228/

Changing the Way Money Works: The Steady State Economy and Sharing LawDescription: With the current economic framework centered around greed, the result has been environmental desolation and social interactions that set human beings against each other.The mandate for everlasting economic growth has pushed the Earth to its natural limits.This week's Global Research News Hour focuses on the need to change economics as usual. Is it possible?Our guests include James Magnus-Johnston, the Canadian Director of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, and Janelle Orsi, co-founder and executive director of The Sustainable Economies Law Center in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Terrorists R Us: The Boston Mass Casualty Attack, Lockdown and High Profile Manhunt “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”  – Benjamin Franklin, 1759 The mass casualty causing attack during the Boston Marathon, together with the high profile arrest of two men in Canada charged with plotting a terrorist attack on a commuter train have captivated the attention of regular citizens. Fears have been ramped up to the point where Americans are tolerating if not welcoming martial law and erosions of civil liberties in the name of protection from the terrorist hordes. Witness the high-profile man-hunt for bombing suspect Dzhokar Tsarnaev. On April 19, the entire city of Boston was on lockdown. Residents told to lock themselves indoors while schools and businesses were closed while the entire transit system was shut down and SWAT teams took control of the streets. The home of one of the most famous and iconic popular resistance actions in history, the Boston Tea Party, unquestioningly complied with authorities this time around – all in the name of capturing one wounded man. Speaking of authorities, rigorous scrutiny of the authorities themselves may be in order. Speaking to the Global Research News Hour in December, Andy Lee Roth, the Associate Director of Project Censored spoke of the fourth story in PC’s list of most censored stories of 2011-2012… “…The FBI has a network of nearly 15,000 spies, moles and informants …whose job it is to infiltrate various communities within the United States, ostensibly to uncover terrorist plots …in many cases, those 15,000 spies, moles and informants are actually encouraging and then assisting the people in those communities in committing the very crimes that people are then busted for. So It’s a kind of set-up operation and it appears to be motivated by a desire on the FBI’s part to show that they are playing an effective role in the battle against terrorism on the home front.” He further pointed out… “This only works as a kind of PR strategy if the corporate media cooperate and basically take the government officials who speak on behalf of the program as the sole sources on the program’s efficacy. What’s not covered in the corporate media but what can be documented in independent media coverage is that most of these cases when they go to court the judge throws them out for lack of merit.” Without this context, the citizenry’s grasp of reality is imperiled. The common man and woman is left ripe for manipulation by powerful interests with another agenda entirely. This, the twenty-fourth installment of the Global Research News Hour, sees independent broadcaster Stephen Lendman try to provide some of this context as the War On Terrorism gets its biggest PR boost in years and as tensions with Syria, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela are on the rise. Stephen Lendman is the host of the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network, author of BANKER OCCUPATION: Waging Financial War on Humanity and a frequent contributor to globalresearch.ca.

On the occasion of the anniversary of the Odessa Massacre, this week's Global Research News Hour returns to the Ukraine crisis with two vital interviews. Author, blogger and radio journalist Stephen Lendman recently edited a collection of essays on the Ukraine Crisis. He talks about his essay on the Odessa Massacre and about the broader concerns around surrounding a pwderkeg which he thinks could expand into a world war.  Roger Annis, trade unionist, writer and editor of the website newcoldwar.org also returns to the program after visiting the Donbass region and compares his observations with what has been said in the Mainstream commercial media abut who is responsible for violating the Ceasefire accord and what the prosects for peace may be.

Aftermath of the Boston Bombings: The FBI, Canada and the Politics of Terror “In terrorism stings, it’s really only the FBI that’s making it possible for people who otherwise couldn’t acquire weapons, who couldn’t build a bomb to move forward in an act of terrorism like we’re seeing in these sting operations. So, it’s really the FBI that’s making the crime possible in a way that they aren’t with traditional drug stings even though it’s very much the same type of tactic that they’re using today.” -Trevor Aaronson “At different points of time in history non-Anglo and Francophone Canadians and including Francophones during the independence movement in Quebec were terrorists… everybody’s been interned. Every group has been interned or labeled treasonous when it was convenient to do so.” - Rocco Galati Speculation and skepticism percolates through the World Wide Web with regard to the official narrative of the Boston Bombings. On the day of the attacks, the FBI was placed in charge of the official investigation. [1] To date, critical questions about the FBI’s role in these and other terrorist plots have yet to be addressed. As documented on Global Research, the FBI has been caught deliberately lying about their actions and activities. [2] Thoroughly documented, the FBI has been pivotal in the manufacture of several terrorist plots in the US. [3] Trevor Aaronson’s pioneering work on the subject of FBI involvement in infiltrating and entrapping terrorist suspects made the cover of Mother Jones magazine in 2011 and became listed as one of the top 25 most censored stories of 2011-2012 by the media democracy organization Project Censored. This history is critical background in any sober analysis of the incident. In Canada, the Conservative government invoked the Boston attacks to rush through legislation resurrecting previously sunsetted anti-terrorism provisions of preventative arrest and secret investigative hearings. By an amazing coincidence,  the same week the Canadian Parliament was debating the new anti-terrorism bill, the RCMP announced the arrest of two individuals implicated in a plot to attack a Via Rail passenger train. [4] The RCMP said little about the evidence of their guilt though they helpfully volunteered the perpetrator’s links with Al Qaeda in Iran. Considering the enmity being expressed toward Iran by the US and Canada among other Western Countries, this tidbit interestingly parallels the innuendo of Iraq’s alleged links to terrorism in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq War. In an effort to deconstruct the propaganda around the War on Terrorism’s biggest PR boost in years, the Global Research News Hour delves into the Boston Bombings and its aftermath. In this week’s show, Trevor Aaronson, author of “The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism” examines the agency’s role of deliberately creating the plots they then disrupt. Aaronson’s analysis speaks to the FBI’s focus on marginalized individuals at the expense of real dangers. Then, Canadian Constitutional Lawyer Rocco Galati trashes the recently passed Combating Terrorism Act as a completely unnecessary threat to civil liberties with consequences that go beyond Islamic extremism. Finally, Global Research’s Julie Lévesque provides a much needed overview of the Boston Bombings legend and the critical questions the mainstream media should be asking but is not.

Globalization Watch: Stop the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) “Through this agreement, the Obama Administration is seeking to boost U.S. economic growth and support the creation and retention of high-quality American jobs by increasing exports in a region that includes some of the world’s most robust economies and that represents more than 40 percent of global trade.”[1] Statement from the Office of the United States Trade Representative “I think we need to look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership as the neo-liberal arm of the US pivot at Asia. So we have all these countries in South East Asia that basically have more incentive to do business with China….Many policy papers state the importance of South-East Asia in …counterbalancing the influence of China in the region. So that is what I perceive the TPP to be.”  Nile Bowie Lost in the wake of headlines about controversies surrounding Canadian Senators’ housing and living expenses and allegations of a Toronto big city Mayor ailing from an apparent crack addiction, is the important negotiations on a major trade and investment deal taking place in Lima, Peru this past week. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) had its origins in the 2005 Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement or the P4 which involved the countries of Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore, and was aimed at liberalizing trade in those countries. [2] This deal was expanded in 2008 to include the US in negotiations and by 2009, the TPP began its first round of talks. [3], [4]. There are currently twelve negotiating partners in this comprehensive pact. In addition to the P4, and the US there are Australia, Peru, Vietnam, and Malaysia, with Mexico and Canada having joined the negotiations last October and Japan jumping on board in March. [5], [6] TPP is the latest in a string of numerous free trade agreements that proponents say will generate increased economic activity between and within countries thereby leading to greater prosperity for citizens. [7] Critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and its numerous successors argue however that these agreements really are not about trade. They are mechanisms by which corporations with international reach can overcome barriers, regulations, and other restrictions on their profit-making activities. [8] Three critics from three separate countries explain their concerns in this week’s instalment of the Global Research News Hour. Stuart Trew, Trade Campaigner for the Ottawa-based Council of Canadians provides his group’s analysis not only of the TPP, but also the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and the Canada-China Foreign Investment Protection Agreement (FIPA). Kristen Beifus of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition dissects the impacts of free trade on Americans and the concerns specific to the TPP. Kuala Lampur-based Nile Bowie provides his analysis of TPP in terms of its impacts on Malaysia where elections have recently been held. His commentaries on TPP appear on the globalresearch website. References 1. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/fact-sheets/2011/november/united-states-trans-pacific-partnership 2. “Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement” 2005 http://www.mfat.govt.nz/downloads/trade-agreement/transpacific/main-agreement.pdf 3. Daniels, Chris (10 February 2008). “First step to wider free trade”. New Zealand Herald. 4. US TRADE Representative TPP Round Updates; http://www.ustr.gov/tpp 5. “Mexico: Unexplored opportunities”. TPP Talk. New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade. 10 October 2012. http://www.mfat.govt.nz/Trade-and-Economic-Relations/2-Trade-Relationships-and-Agreements/Trans-Pacific/1-TPP-Talk/0-TPP-talk-10-Oct-2012.php 6. Canada Formally Joins Trans-Pacific Partnership” (Press release). Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. 9 October 2012; http://www.international.gc.ca/media_commerce/comm/news-communiques/2012/10/09a.aspx?view=d 7) Dr. Claudio Loser, May 6, 2013; Where Trade Is Free, Powerful Economic Growth Is The Norm; Forbes.com. http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/05/06/where-trade-is-free-powerful-economic-growth-is-the-norm/ 8) Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, March 27, 2013, Truthout; http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/15353-transpacific-partnership-will-undermine-democracy-empower-transnational-corporations

Martin Luther King, Barack Obama and the Civil Rights Movement. The Legacy of Vincent Harding

On Monday May 19, 2014, a veteran of the Southern Freedom Movement, known to most as the Civil Rights Movement, passed away from an aneurysm while on a speaking tour in Philadelphia. He was 82.

Harding was born and grew up in New York City. He obtained a B.A. in History from City College of New York in 1952, a M.S. in journalism from Columbia University in 1953, and advanced degrees in History from the University of Chicago in 1956 and in 1965. Dr. Harding served as senior academic consultant for the PBS television series Eyes On The Prize.

He taught at numerous institutions throughout the United States and eventually served as Emeritus Professor of Religion and Social Transformation at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado.

In 1960, he and his wife Rosemarie Freeney Harding moved to Atlanta, Georgia where they started up Mennonite House, an interracial volunteer service centre and gathering place for the Southern Freedom Movement. In the turbulent years that followed Harding would be involved in anti-segregation campaigns as a counsellor and participant.

It was during this time when he came to meet and work with Dr. Martin Lutrher King. The two would become close associates. It was Dr. Harding who is credited with drafting one of King’s most famous and arguably most relevant speeches. “A Time to Break Silence” was a no-holds barred condemnation of the Vietnam War. King delivered this speech at Riverside Church in New York City, exactly one year to the day before King was assassinated.

In addition to authoring numerous articles and books including Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero, Vincent Harding was a significant behind the scenes player, pacifist, and social justice advocate during an important period in American history.

This week’s Global Research News Hour pays tribute to Dr. Harding’s life and legacy by airing a speech he gave at the University of Winnipeg on April 2, 2009. The talk was entitled Martin Luther King and Barack Obama’s Other Ancestors. It was a tour of some of the less talked about influences on the American Civil Rights Movement and addressed the question of whether America’s first black president truly was the fulfillment of Martin Luther King’s dream.

June 2013 marks the tenth anniversary of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada's final leadership Convention in which Peter Mackay secured the leadership with the help of rival David Orchard. Mackay broke Orchard's critical condition for support, namely that he would not merge the party with the Canadian Alliance, a right of centre US Republican-style party led by Stephen Harper. This episode looks back at that convention, the Orchard campaign, and some of the activities that played out during that leadership bid with implications for the current government in Ottawa.

Canada Politics: Deception and Betrayal in the Conservative Party This week’s programme looks back ten years to the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race of 2003 which turned out to be the party’s last before it merged with the rival Canadian Alliance, led by leader Stephen Harper. The current Conservative Party has been racked with accusations of scandal and corruption. At least three Canadian Senators, hand-picked by the Prime Minister, are having their housing and living expenses reviewed, two Conservative Members of Parliament are being taken to task for improper accounting of their election expenses, and a court case recently determined that “there was an orchestrated effort to suppress votes during the 2011 election campaign by a person with access to the CIMS database” which is “maintained and controlled by the CPC (Conservative Party of Canada)”. [2][3][4] And notoriously, one of the Prime Minister’s staffers cut Senator Mike Duffy a personal cheque for $90,000 to make up for the funds the Senator owed. [5] This is astonishing behaviour for a political party which rose to power in 2006 promising accountability and integrity in office. [6] But David Orchard and his supporters questioned the ethics of the party a long time ago. Orchard contested the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party back in 2003. Orchard relied on the support of grass-roots people, myself among them, who were opposed to government policies on free trade, environmental neglect, and Canadian support for imperial wars abroad. [7] It was through Orchard’s support that Peter Mackay became leader of the party. Mackay then betrayed the condition of Orchard’s support by orchestrating a merger with the right-wing US-Republican style Canadian Alliance Party, which was then led by Stephen Harper. [8] This betrayal, in addition to some of the other shenanigans which played out in the months during the leadership campaign and leading up to the vote to merge the parties in December provides a critical context for assessing this party’s commitment to ethics, responsible conduct and fair play. Orchard, and many other traditional Progressive Conservatives, saw the Canadian Alliance as out of sync with the traditional trajectory of the PC Party, the Party which established Canada as a nation in 1867. The PCs historically championed Canadian sovereignty. The Canadian Alliance advocated closer political and economic ties with the United States. The Canadian Alliance boasted a much larger membership than the Progressive Conservative Party in 2003. Through no great surprise therefore, the leader of the Canadian Alliance, Stephen Harper, easily secured the leadership of the merged Conservative Party, which went on to power in 2006. [9] Orchard’s political advisor, campaign manager and long-time associate Marjaleena Repo speaks to the Global Research News Hour about the campaign, the issues, the subsequent legal battles and where she believes the Campaign for Canada needs to focus its energies.

Canada in Afghanistan: We Stand on Guard for Empire In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, there was relatively little opposition to a military intervention in Afghanistan. The motivation for the war initially was retaliation for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre. Operation Enduring Freedom, as it was called, was sold to the public as necessary to rout out the Al Qaeda terrorist networks active in Afghanistan which were fostered by the Taliban government. Aided and abetted by the Northern Alliance, essentially a faction of warlords and opium gangsters with no particular commitment to democracy and human rights, NATO successfully overthrew the Taliban government and installed a new government in Kabul. The motivation for the dispatch of foreign troops to this region was soon sold to the public as an “errand of mercy,” an effort to liberate women and institute democracy and safeguard freedom. Rarely, if ever, did mainstream media or Canada’s political representatives ever question the aim of the mission. The spectrum of the debate about Canada’s contribution to the war and occupation was restricted to questions about whether or not a military intervention was the best way to bring about change in the land-locked Central Asian country. Jack Layton of the NDP, for example, speaking in debate in April of 2007 on the resolution to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan framed his argument in terms of the mission being “a George Bush style combat mission” which was failing to secure peace and security for the people of Afghanistan. He said, “It is unbalanced and overwhelmingly focused on aggressive counter-insurgency. The humanitarian situation is simply not improving and the effort cannot be won militarily.”[1] A recent anthology of essays put out by the University of Toronto Press endeavours to challenge the dominant meme around the Afghanistan war and occupation. AS the title suggests, Empire’s Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan, edited by Jerome Klassen and Greg Albo, portrays the war as principally one of imperial conquest. Utilizing recent research derived from media, government, and NGO reports, along with interviews from within the country, the book takes a critical look at the war effort with a particular emphasis on Canada’s role and how motives around capitalizing on Afghanistan’s resource wealth and the so-called “Silk Road Starategy” may better explain Canada’s involvement. In this week’s programme, Researcher Michael Skinner of York University, author of the essay The Empire of Capital and the Latest Inning of the Great Game outlines his analysis of the imperial aims of the occupation. Invoking the writings of former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, he eloquently explains the geo-strategic significance of the war effort. Importantly, he explores how Canada’s corporate sector, particularly the infamous mining sector, stands to profit from this heavily propagandized Western intervention. Retired University of Winnipeg Geography Professor John Ryan was one of the few Western academics to visit and report on his experiences in Afghanistan in a unique period in the late 1970s. AT this time, the short-lived Taraki government put in place social reforms that boosted rights for women and prospects for farmers. Ryan believes it was the involvement of the CIA that ultimately led to the collapse of Afghan social standards which is now being invoked as the leading reason for Canada’s continued involvement in the country. Ryan speaks to us in the second half hour. Finishing off the programme, social justice and peace campaigner Derrick O’keefe, talks about the main obstacles for the peace movement in Canada, and how he thinks those obstacles can be overcome. He too contributed an essay to Empire’s Ally, entitled,  Bringing Ottawa’s Warmakers to Heel: The Anti-War Movement in Canada.

REPEAT - Greece: From Austerity to Prosperity? Conversations with Ellen Brown and Binoy KampmarkIn this installment of the Global Research News Hour, we examine the dynamics of the Greek economy and why the Greek people voted the anti-austerity Syriza Party to power. Ellen Brown of the Public Banking Institute explains the role of Goldman Sachs in setting up Greece for a fall, and how the Mediterranean country could survive the end of the bail-outs. In the second half hour, scholar, RMIT University lecturer and Counterpunch contributing editor Binoy Kampmark talks about the background of Syriza, the political culture on the ground, and what the future may hold for a financially emancipated Greece as well as other European countries.

Canada's Bitumen Cliff; Haiti - Nine Years After the Coup with contributors: Cynthia McKinney, Brendan Hayley, Roger Annis, Michael Welch

Dissecting Operation Inherent Resolve: Conversations with Lawrence Wilkerson and Mahdi Nazemroaya This Repeat broadcast of the Global Research News Hour (October 17, 2014) Global Research News Hour centres on the current military mobilization against the entity known as ISIL/ISIS. Can boots on the ground be avoided? Is there an ulterior motive to the bombing campaign related to regional control? What does ISIL/ISIS's successful campaign for control of the Kurdish village of Kobani say about the sincerity of this latest War on Terrorism? This hour attempts to address these and other questions.

More from the Toronto 9/11 Hearings: This week’s installment of the Global Research New Hour marks the fourth of a five part series highlighting research into the World Trade Center attacks and the need for a renewed investigation.

The crisis in Ukraine was discussed in depth during a special public forum held the evening of June 18 at the Ukrainian Labour Temple in Downtown Winnipeg. Speakers Professor Ray Silvius, economist Alan Freeman, and Professor Radhika Desai provide a fact-based look at the forces at work, the evolving situation in Ukraine and what Canada’s role should be in mitigating the tesions.

The company Monsanto is a multinational Chemical and Agricultural Biotechnology company based in Creve Coeur, Missouri.

It is most famous (or infamous) for its production of genetically engineered seeds as well as its production of the weed killer Roundup.

The company, which began as a small chemical start-up company in 1901, has grown to become an immensely powerful corporation with Net Sales for the 2012 fiscal year of over $13.5 billion and operations in 68 countries across six continents. [2] [3] [4]

According to a recent study by Food and Water Watch, 93% of the US soybean market, and 80% of the US corn market contain genetics patented by the agribusiness giant. [5]

Monsanto owns over 1,676 patents on seeds plants and other agricultural applications. [6]

Since 1996, the amount of acreage supporting Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) crops has exploded from 3 million to 282.3 million worldwide. In the US alone, 151.4 million acres of land support Monsanto’s GE products, accounting for 40% of overall acreage devoted to agricultural production across the board. [7]

Monsanto’s success is not solely, if at all, attributable to its ability to create a superior product. Monsanto has been very aggressive in its lobbying and public relations efforts. According to figures from the Center for Responsive Politics, Monsanto has donated over $4,607,790 to US political campaigns since 1990, and has spent over $61,852,724 since 1998 lobbying elected representatives. [8]

More insidious perhaps, is the revolving door which sees Monsanto board members having worked for the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture, not to mention positions in public universities, industry and trade groups. (See diagrams below.)

On today's program: Congo, Project Censored, and Doomsday 2012.

“Still, we continue to face a terrorist threat. We cannot erase every trace of evil from the world, and small groups of killers have the capacity to do great harm. That was the case before 9/11, and that remains true today. That’s why we must remain vigilant as threats emerge. At this moment, the greatest threats come from the Middle East and North Africa, where radical groups exploit grievances for their own gain. And one of those groups is ISIL — which calls itself the “Islamic State.”

-US President Barrack Obama from his September 10 speech to the nation. [1]

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Thirteen years after September 11, 2001,  the 9/11 Truth movement has become a major phenomenon.

There are now over 2,250 professional architects and engineers who have acknowledged flaws in the official explanation of what caused the World Trade Center Towers to collapse.

A poll from last year found that nearly 50% of Americans exposed to footage of the collapsing World Trade Center Towers suspect they were brought down by controlled demolition.

Two years ago, the documentary “9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out ” aired on PBS and ranked among the top three most watched programs on the station, and the most shared on the internet.[2]

On September 8, 2013, the popular Russia Today broadcast, The Truth Seeker, aired a thirteen minute newscast critical of the official explanation of 9/11. The broadcast was starting to go viral on You Tube before Youtube statistics suspiciously flat-lined.[3]

The 9/11 Truth movement is becoming increasingly visible as RETHINK 911 anniversary events in New York City and around the world are becoming increasingly impossible to ignore.

Meanwhile, US President Barrack Obama on the eve of the anniversary announces his plans to launch military assaults in Iraq and Syria in order to destroy the terrorist menace with virtually no significant resistance.

The 9/11 Consensus Panel put out a press release in recent days announcing new points of concensus relating to the 9/11 airliner black boxes found at the World Trade Center site, standard protocols that were not followed in the instance of a hijacking, and incriminating statements from former New York City Mayor Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The Truth movement may be growing, but there seems to be no noticeable changes in the political landscape as a result.

On the week marking the thirteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we get thirteenth anniversary retrospectives on 9/11 from two people very much at the forefront of the efforts to challenge the official account of the tragedy. They address the efforts to investigate 9/11 using recently revealed but rarely seen on-line documents, the obstacles to 9/11 Truth making a breakthrough in the political arena, the role of groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL as US strategic assets, and concerns forming around a new State directed investigation.

Elizabeth Woodworth is a retired health Sciences Librarian and researcher. She is coordinator and co-founder of the 9/11 Concensus Panel.

Michel Chossudovsky is the Director and Founder of the Centre for Research On Globalization, an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and author of “America’s War On Terrorism.” He was one of the first people in the world to publicly question the 9/11 narrative, specifically the claim that it was necessary to wage a “War on Terrorism” in order to contain and control Al Qaeda.

A complete digest of 9/11 related articles is available on the Global Research site.

THE 9/11 READER. The September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks

This website, among others have articulated the major problems with the official explanation of 9/11 since the day after they happened.

These attacks have directly led to an agenda of increased military spending, surveillance, at least two wars of aggression (Afghanistan and Iraq) and a period of curtailed civil liberties in the name of protection from radical Islamic terrorists.

Amply documented, there are major problems with this narrative. The following humourous video encapsulates many of these anomalies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuC_4mGTs98

 (Video courtesy of James Corbett)

A more detailed analysis is available through Global Research’s 9/11 Reader.

There has been a clear resistance to abandoning this core narrative. Take, for example, the refusal of Canadian Member of Parliament Paul Dewar to table a petition  in the House of Commons calling for a Canadian parliamentary review of the omissions and inconsistencies in the 9/11 Commission report and of available forensic evidence. Mr. Dewar says he doesn’t agree with the petition. That is not considered an acceptable rationale for not tabling a petition to Parliament. More background can be found on this webpage:

http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/732-the-canadian-911-justice-petition-initiative-continuing-the-pursuit-of-a-real-investigation.html

There is more to this kind of resistance than a lack of facts. Laurie Manwell is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Guelph and has published articles on psychological resistance to embracing alternative explanations of 9/11 and other so-called State Crimes Against Democracy. Her article, In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11 appeared in the February 2010 edition of American Behavioural Scientist. Her thesis was the basis of her outstanding presentation at the Toronto Hearings on 9/11. An excerpt of this presentation airs in the first half hour of this week’s Global Research News Hour, courtesy of Press For Truth.

Architect and high profile 9/11 speaker Richard Gage, AIA joins us in the second half hour. He talks with guest interviewer Jon Wilson about his tour across Canada, and his view about the prospects of 9/11 making a powerful political breakthrough in this country.

The Shut-Down continued throughout the first two weeks of October, as Congress and the White House struggled to come up with the necessary legislative formula before October 17 when, we are told,  a “debt default” would result should no deal be reached.

A major sticking point was the refusal of the House of Representatives, controlled by the Republican Party, to approve of government funding up until the middle of December, unless President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare, was delayed a year and then gutted of a key provision, namely the tax on medical devices.

The gridlock was finally broken when President Obama “stared down” the Republicans in the House leaving ObamaCare mostly intact. Appropriatations Bill HR 2775 was approved, bringing an end to the government shut down, maintaining government funding until January 15, and lifting the already stratospheric $16.699 trillion debt ceiling until February 7.

But as some observers, such as broadcast journalist and author Stephen Lendman points out, default or no, ordinary Americans have had to bear the burden of the real fiscal crisis which has been masked by this legislative game of chicken. Lendman also levels a critique of ObamaCare that you won’t hear from House Republicans, and he explains how the crisis engulfing the city of Detroit mirrors America’s future. Stephen Lendman presents his perspective in the first half hour of the Global Research News Hour.

In the second half hour, a York University Professor of Political Science, David McNally, helps expand the discussion by elaborating on the roots of the US fiscal crisis in neo-liberal reforms. He argues that the stand-off and the 2008 economic slump that preceded it, are rooted in the development of policies that have benefited the most privileged, including the banks, at the expense of the working class, who are now being made to pay for the excesses of the ultra-wealthy. McNally also probes the mistakes of the Occupy Movement as he sees it, and articulates how an effective push back may be realized.

David McNally provides his analysis in the final half hour.

Ten Years after former Secretary of State Colin Powell made the case for war against Iraq in front of the UN Security Council, we examine the evidence of war crimes perpetrated by both the George W Bush administration and the Barrack Obama Administration. And we also hear from Iraq War veteran and US army deserter Joshua Key about finding sanctuary in Conservative Canada.

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War, the Global Research News Hour interviews Richard Sanders of the Coalition Opposed to the Arms Trade (COAT) about the myth of Canada’s non-involvement in Iraq. There is a follow-up interview with former UN Humanitarian Coordinator Hans Von Sponeck about the deterioration of the social conditions in Iraq from before the 1991 Gulf War to the present and the potential for redress against these and future war crimes.

On this, the holiday edition of the Global Research News Hour, we present a talk by Chris Hedges.

A Speech by Guy Mcpherson. The Global Research News Hour Episode 70

This week’s Global Research News Hour features a speech given by scientist and ‘doomer’ author Guy Mcpherson.

While much of the public may have doubts about whether or not anthropogenic climate change is a reality, it is a FACT that over 97% of peer-reviewed scientific research published over the last two decades confirm the viewpoint that the planet is indeed warming due to human activities.

As noted in a previous interview, Dr. Mcpherson, Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona, has spent countless hours pouring over the scientific literature, and connected numerous dots. Dr. Mcpherson is in full agreement with the scientific concensus around anthropogenic (human-generated) climate change. Further, he concludes that global warming has passed a “tipping point” and that habitat loss associated with the warming of the planet will condemn the human species to extinction within 20 years.

Unlike other prominent scientists and activists, Mcpherson concludes that there is really nothing the human species can do to prevent or mitigate this catastrophe.

Dr. McPherson has given many lectures to public audiences across Canada and the United States and has now done multiple media interviews. His February 6 speech in Winnipeg laid out the evidence in detail. Winnipeg audience members had a chance to direct questions to the American speaker afterward. The talk was introduced by his host, Gerry Kopelow of the Dharma Centre of Winnipeg.

Guy McPherson is the author of Going Dark. His blog, Nature Bats Last, can be found atwww.guymcpherson.com.

On April 13, 2014, Michael Ruppert had just completed his final broadcast of his weekly radio show The Lifeboat Hour, which he has helmed since September 12, 2010. He went to an outdoor meditation spot on the property at which he had been residing. When he was found, he had apparently shot himself in the head with a Glock 30 .45 caliber pistol.  He was 63.

Mike Ruppert had become one of the most outspoken and compelling voices in the realm of independent journalism and analysis. He brought to the table a stupendous command of economic, historical and political issues.

Ruppert represented a convergence of valuable traits which included an academic’s restless intellect, a cop’s eye for detail, a heart-felt passion for justice, and the street-level experience of a whistleblower who broke ranks with the people he trusted in the name of an all too uncommon ethical code that he lived by.

He was able to bring to the table the critical arguments challenging official government narratives about the global economy, the 9/11 attacks, the fratricidal death of Pat Tillman, CIA drug dealing in Black communities throughout the US, peak oil as a causative factor underlying US foreign policy, and many, many other stories.

This week, the Global Research News Hour pays tribute to Mr. Ruppert on the occasion of his recent tragic death.

The podcast contains audio from past speeches and a previously recorded conversation with him, as well as post-mortem conversations with five individuals who knew and worked with Mike Ruppert over the years.

Carolyn Baker is a long-time acquaintance of Mike Ruppert’s. She was an adjunct professor of history and psychology for 11 years and a psychotherapist in private practice for 17 years. She authored several books related to the concept of societal collapse. She contributed to Ruppert’s on-line newsletter From The Wilderness, and co-hosted his final radio broadcast before he died.

Kellia Ramares-Watson is an Oakland-based independent journalist and broadcaster. She was Bonnie Faulkner’s co-host on the very first broadcast of Guns and Butter for radio station KPFA back on October 12, 2001. This debut episode featured none other than Mike Ruppert with his initial impressions of the 9/11 attacks and the US role in failing to prevent the attacks. The transcript of that interview is available on the Global Research website.

Wesley Miller was Mike Ruppert’s attorney, executor and personal friend. He replaced Ruppert as CEO and President of COLLAPSENET, the on-line community portal for individuals and communities seeking to transition away from a dependence on fossil fuels and industrial civilization.

Barrie Zwicker is a long-time independent journalist and media critic. He became one of the first people in the world to publicly critique the official story of 9/11 on a national television broadcast. Barrie was largely for getting RUppert’s analysis of 9/11 aired on Canadian television and paid tribute to him in his 2006 book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11.

Guy McPherson is Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. He has appeared on Ruppert’s radio show a number of times pioneering his research pointing to the prospects for the Near Term Extinction of the human species due to climate change.

Ruppert’s work has appeared often over the years on the Global Research website. A link to some of those stories can be found here.

The first interview is with Linda Pentz Gunter, international specialist for the environmental advocacy group ‘Beyond Nuclear.’ In this conversation, Gunter addresses the question of whether nuclear is being seriously explored as an alternative to the climate-ravaging fossil fuel industry. She also outlines aspects of the Fukushima cover-up, and why international bodies and media are failing to hold nuclear and government agencies to account.

In the final half hour, Portland-based Mimi German, Earth activist and founder of Radcast.org, speaks more about the cover-up, the nuclear situation in the U.S. and the consequences for society and all life on earth.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the UN’s military occupation of Haiti. This Global Research News Hour was first published March 6, 2013.

Coup D’Etat in Haiti

It was nine years ago, on February 29, 2004 that the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed from his Presidential Palace by US forces, assisted by Canada and France. In his place an unelected government was installed by the international community.

Thousands of UN ‘peace-keepers’ were assigned to Haiti to protect and enforce the authority of this new government. Many representatives of the Haitian government were jailed. The government of Gerard Latortue,installed at the behest of international forces, cracked down hard on the poverty-stricken population, particularly in the slums of Cité Soleil and Bel Air in Port-au-Prince. Thousands of deaths were estimated to have resulted. [1]

It is critical to understand this background and the subsequent erosion of domestic institutions and government agencies if one is to understand the current human security issues threatening this small Caribbean island country.

It is especially important for Canadians to acquaint themselves with this history. Canadians generally have a positive opinion of their country and role in the world. They are inclined to believe Canada’s role in Haiti has been generally beneficent. Such inaccurate perceptions are aided and abetted by compliant politicians, governing and in opposition, and by a silent media.

Roger Annis has been a long-time activist with the Canada-Haiti Action group, an organization that has been at the forefront of raising awareness about Canada’s true role in Haiti. The Global Research Hour spoke to him while he was in Winnipeg to discuss the nine year old coup, Canada’s role in the coup and other ways the Canadian government and Canadian NGOs and development agencies have undermined Haitian democracy and human rights. Annis also draws parallels between Canada’s treatment of Haitians, and its treatment of its own Indigenous population.

Tar Sands Alberta: The Bitumen Cliff

While opposition to the so-called ‘tar sands’ in Northern Alberta in Canada is generally framed as an environment versus economics debate, a new study from the Polaris Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives seems to point to an argument that surprisingly reveals the (black) gold rush for bitumen in Western Canada actually putting the Canadian economy at a tremendous disadvantage. Carleton University Graduate student and report co-author Brendan Hayley speaks to the Global Research News Hour about Canada’s Bitumen Cliff.

America’s first African American President: An Obstacle to the Quest for Positive Change and Racial Equality

In this exclusive Black History Month interview for the Global Research News Hour, former Georgia Congresswoman and US Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney talks about how America’s first African American President has been an obstacle rather than an asset in the quest for positive change and racial equality, and about what needs to be done to make substantive rather than cosmetic changes in the US political life.

References

1 A. R. Kolbe & R. A. Hutson, ‘Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’, Lancet; I. Stotsky, Haiti Human Rights Investigation, University of Miami School of Law

The Jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), alternatively known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), has enjoyed spectacular successes overthrowing and controlling territory from northern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad in Iraq.

Previously referred to as Al Qaeda in the Islamic State of Iraq (AQI), the group got its name in April of 2013. For a group estimated to be composed of merely a few thousand militants, the organization has secured astonishing victories over much larger armed forces. [2]

The group’s first major military success was the conquest of Raqqa in Northern Syria in March of 2013. Since that victory, ISIS has successfully gained control of the Iraqi cities of Tal Afar, Tikrit, Suleiman Beg, and Fallujah. [3]

Perhaps their most impressive and shocking achievement to date, and the one that galvanized the attention of the world back to Iraq, was the conquest of Iraq’s second most populous city, Mosul. ISIS managed to not only secure this crucial trading post proximate to Syria, but they managed to get hold of weaponry and equipment abandoned when the Iraq security forces fled the city. [4]

How is it possible such a relatively small group of rebels could manage to outmaneuver a force presence of 30,000?

Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization has been tracking these developments. He contends that the rise of ISIS is not a miscalculation on the part of the US-NATO alliance, but is in fact a deliberate strategy to re-engineer the region to advance their imperial aims there. He explains his thesis in part one of the Global Research News Hour.

The recent elections in Syria have been described as “meaningless” and “a great big zero” by the US Secretary of State John Kerry. He argues given the state of conflict in the Middle Eastern country that “you can’t have an election where millions of your people don’t even have an ability to vote.” [5]

The final vote posted by the Speaker of the People’s Assembly announced that the incumbent President secured a land-slide victory of over 88% with a 73.42% voter turn-out. [6]

While a dictatorial power in a time of civil war might have the capacity to gerrymander election results to his satisfaction, is there any indication that this is in fact what happened?

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization and a published author. He served as an election observer during the recent Syrian elections and discloses in the second half hour of the Global Research News Hour why he believes the elections were above board, and what role these elections, particularly the perception of them being fraudulent, serves in the broader geo-political context.

The Global Research News Hour speaks to Sabah Al-Mukhtar, president of the london-based Arab Lawyers Association, and with Inder Comar, the legal representative of an Iraqi Woman suing the US government over the war crimes committed in Iraq. The two lawyers discuss the realistic prospects of former US President Bush and former UK Prome Minister actuall being brought to justice.

Most human beings by nature are anti-war.

All military conflicts involve death and destruction, to say nothing of unintended consequences.

This is why for generations, military planners have made use of war pretext incidents to galvanize war-averse populations behind aggressive military actions against other countries.

These rationales are at core psychological operations utilizing justifications for military action generally not reflecting the government’s REAL reasons for going to war.

As researcher and anti-war campaigner Richard Sanders chronicles in his magazine Press For Conversion, war pretext incidents were involved in the Mexican-American War (1846), the Spanish-American War (1898), both World Wars, the Vietnam War (1964), the Wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and NATO’s War Against Yugoslavia in 1999, among others.

Richard Sanders appears on this week’s Global Research News Hour to discuss this routine propaganda practice, and whether the August chemical attacks in a suburb of Damascus fit the pattern of standard war pre-text incidents.

In the final half hour of this week’s program, we hear two perspectives on one war pre-text in particular, that being the ‘Humanitarian Intervention.’

Lloyd Axworthy was the former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister who authorized Canada’s military intervention in Yugoslavia in 1999 for humanitarian reasons. He recently co-authored a commentary in the Globe and Mail promoting a humanitarian intervention in Syria along the lines of the ‘Kosovo Model.’ The Global Research News Hour allowed Dr. Axworthy, now the President of the University of Winnipeg, room to make his case.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, however, strenuously disagrees with Dr. Axworthy’s viewpoint, arguing that the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine frequently results in worsening a situation from a humanitarian perspective. Nazemroaya is a geo-political analyst specializing in Middle East and Central Asia politics. He is a Research Associate with the Centre for Research on Globalization, and the award-winning author of The Globalization of NATO and The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. Nazemroaya was in Libya in 2011, and witnessed NATO’s Humanitarian intervention there first hand.

 On the Global Research News Hour this week, we spend the hour discussing the looming collapse scenarios facing the United States with Russian-American engineer Dmitry Orlov.

Orlov’s perspective on collapse is informed by his extended trips to his former homeland before and during its collapse.

Orlov believes and states that the former Soviet Union was set up to be resilient in the face of collapse. This, he believes is not the case in the US or Canada.

In this interview, Orlov also comments on the current situation with low oil prices, peak oil and its impact on agriculture, Russian moves in alignment with China, overtures toward the EU, the politics of austerity, the Ukraine Civil War as Anglo-Imperialist Departure Strategy, and much more.

Dmitry Orlov has written two books, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Experience and American Prospects as well as the Five Stages of Collapse: Survivors’ Toolkit. Mr. Orlov is also the author of the blog cluborlov.com and is a much sought after geo-political analyst.

Webster’s dictionary defines the term ‘Trojan Horse’ as follows:

“…someone or something intended to defeat or subvert from within usually by deceptive means.”[3]

The term has been applied by critics to any number of so-called free trade deals that Canada, the United States and other countries around the world are embracing.

In Canada, the Harper government recently extolled the virtues of opening up new markets for Canadian goods, services and investment in the European Union and Asia as critical to the nation’s prosperity. Hence, determined efforts to secure free trade deals with these regions through the Canadian – European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) respectively are hailed by the government and pundits alike as centrepieces of the Harper government’s agenda going into 2014.

Interesting that the details of these agreements are largely hidden from public scrutiny.

The TPP in particular, as noted by Global Research author Kevin Zeese, has been drafted with an unprecedented degree of secrecy.

The campaign ‘FLUSHTHETPP.org‘ claims that the gift horse that is increased trade and investment, conceals a corporate assault on food safety, the environment, worker rights, access to health care, and basically every facet of our lives as free citizens.

A recent release of the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter from Wikileaks confirmed the fears of trade liberalization critics that the reach of patents, copyrights, and trade secrets will be extended at the expense of consumer rights and safeguards.[4]

To quote Wikileaks editor in Chief Julian Assange:

“If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”[5]

The TPP secured third place among Project Censored’s most censored stories of 2012-2013. The Sonoma State University media research program describes the TPP as “an enforceable transfer of sovereignty from nations and their people to foreign corporations.”

Dr. Margaret Flowers is a congressional fellow with Physicians for a National Health Program and a pediatrician based in Baltimore, Maryland. She has written extensively on the topic of the TPP, and has championed efforts to stop it in its tracks. Dr. Flowers joins the Global Research News Hour in the fist half of the programme to describe the onerous aspects of this deal, update us on the recent twelve nation talks in Singapore, America’s ‘Fast-Track’ legislation, and the realistic prospects of grassroots people to bring an end to this deal.

CETA, likewise is cloaked in secrecy. Critics like Stuart Trew of the Council of Canadians argue the deal extends drug patents and makes community economic development initiatives such as ‘buy local’ policies subject to legal challenges under new procurement rules. Trew will fill out the second half of the programme with a comprehensive look at what we know about the CETA, and how that deal can be stopped.

As the world focuses its attention on the Olympic Games in Sochi and controversies around the Russian government’s apparent hostility toward gay and lesbian rights, a far-reaching drama is playing out in the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine.

The Eastern European country, independent since the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991, has been gripped by a series of protests that may very well determine its long-term political fate.

The Euromaidan was apparently named after the Independence Square in Kiev, Maidan Nezalezhnosti, where a major protest was held on the evening of November 21 of last year. The gathering of 1,000 to 2,000 people was staged in opposition to the abandonment by the Yanukovych government of an Association Agreement with the European Union.[2]

Further protests ensued until a particularly violent crackdown by Ukrainian police on November 30. [3] From that point forward, demonstrations intensified and grew larger in number.

The protests seemed to take a much more violent turn by mid-January after the Ukrainian Parliament pushed through a sweeping 100 page anti-protest law. [4] The law essentially banned the installation of tents, stages or amplifiers in public places, all critical components of the Euromaidan up to that point.

Two and a half months later, the law has been repealed, Yanukovych’s Cabinet has been dissolved, and detained protesters granted amnesty on condition of an end to the occupations of government buildings. [5] Nevertheless, the protests continue and demands to end “government corruption” and the resignation of the Russian President remain unrelenting.

Complicating the situation is the role of militant fascist groups which appear to be influencing the protest movement, and are reminiscent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts from an earlier era.

Foreign governments appear to be influencing the situation as well. Russian President Vladmir Putin’s offer of substantial reductions in the cost of Russian natural gas and their willingness to purchase $15 billion in Ukrainian Government Eurobonds could be read as a bribe to keep Ukraine under Russian influence. [6]

Meanwhile, Western governments, including those of the US and Canada, are clearly expressing support for government opposition demonstrators. Following harsh crackdowns before and during the G20 protests in 2010, it is hard to imagine the Canadian government behaving much differently if faced by similar demonstrations which have included the occupation of government buildings and the use of molotov cocktails being hurled at police.

This week’s Global Research News Hour probes some of the less talked about aspects of the Euromaidan with three analysts.

University of Winnipeg Associate Professor of History Andriy Zayarnyuk is a Ukrainian national and is a specialist in the field of the Social and Cultural History of 19th and 20th Century Eastern Europe, including the Ukraine and the Soviet Union. He is also the author of the recently released book, Framing the Ukrainian Peasantry in Habsburg Galicia, 1846-1914. He helps provide an overview of the political and cultural background of the current struggle.

Eric Draitser is a New York-based geo-political analyst with StopImperialism.org. He discusses the right-wing fascist groups involved with the Euromaidan protests and threats they may pose over and above the opposition movement itself.

Finally, Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO returns to provide a thorough examination of the geo-political and geo-strategic context in which the popular uprising is taking place.

“Ever since the US has lost the war militarily, i.e., signed the Armistice Agreement in July 27, 1953, they’ve instead chosen a war propaganda strategy by mobilizing the whole global media (i.e., their globally-monopolized mainstream media) to demonize(isolate) the North till this very day…

This ongoing demonization as war propaganda against “North Korea” has therefore made the world very difficult, if not impossible, ever to learn about this extremely (i.e., probably the worst in that sense) demonized nation on earth. Thus, as a result, in most cases, the world in general does not know about the DPRK at all.” (Report from the DPRK Association for Human Rights Studies, published by 4th Media [1]

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) otherwise known as North Korea is arguably among the most demonized countries in the world.

The country has been portrayed as a nuclear threat, a human rights abuser, belligerent and an economic basket case.

During the onset of the so-called “War on Terrorism,” US President George W Bush referred to THe DPRK as part of the Axis of Evil.

Are the problems facing the Communist country principally a consequence of structural problems with the State itself? Or is it a consequence of sanctions and other measures being imposed  on the population?

The Global Research News Hour probes the myths and realities behind the North Korean menace with two analysts.

Kiyul Chung is a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing  and the Editor in Chief of 4th Media, an internet-based publication. He has been participating in the Korea’s self-determined and peaceful reunification movement for decades, and he has been to visit North Korea close to one hundred times.

Henri Feron is a Ph.D candidate in international law at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He holds an LL.B. in French and English law from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and King’s College London, as well as an LL.M. in Chinese law from Tsinghua University. On May 5 of this year, he authored an article called, “Doom and Gloom or Economic Boom? The Myth of the “North Korean Economic Collapse.” Feron points to the idea that the collapse narrative is based on faulty data, comprehensive sanctions from the West and the US in particular, and an incentive on the part of the US and its allies to portray this enemy country in the most negative light possible.

First, a conversation with Winnipeg based journalist Lesley Hughes. A journalist who ran for the Liberal Party of Canada as one of their star candidates in the 2008 election was turfed and smeared as an anti-semitic conspiracy theorist. This was after an old article of hers came to light seriously questioning the official story of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Later on, Richard Sanders of the Coalition Opposed to the Arms Trade shares his research about the extent to which Canadians unwillingly and unknowingly benefit from pension funds invested in the Israeli military and security appartus. We end the show with Stephen Lendman explaining the dangerous result of the last Israeli elections.

If observers in the West naively believed that severing South Sudan from its northern counterpart would resolve the human rights situation there, the events of the last several weeks will have decisively dashed those hopes.

The major fighting erupted on December 15 of last year when South Sudan Presisdent Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of launching a coup d’etat against him. Machar denied the charge.[2]

A faction of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA/M) had broken off and engaged in fighting against the main army under Kiir’s control.[3]

The fighting has begun to align itself with different tribal factions – the Dinka, which Kiir represents, and the Nuer, which Machar represents.[4]

As this program is being aired, peace talks between the two warring factions continue in Addis Ababa in neighbouring Ethiopia.

The toll on the people of South Sudan has been devastating. UN Human Rights monitor Ivan Simonovic has disclosed that there are human rights atrocities being committed by both sides in the conflict, which include mass and extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detention, sexual violence and the use of child soldiers.[5]

As of January 14, one month into the conflict, the UN Office for the Coordination of  Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 413,000 people have been internally displaced by the fighting with 74,000 having fled to neighbouring countries such as Uganda.[6]

The International Crisis Group estimated a death toll of close to 10,000. [7]

The Global Research News Hour takes a closer look at the conflict and its historical and geo-political under-pinnings with two Africa watchers.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist and broadcaster who has focused in recent years on war and resource extraction issues on the African Continent. A contributor to KPFA in Berkeley, California, she had a chance to interview Mobiar Garang de Mobiar, a negotiator for the opposition in the South Sudan peace talks in Addis Ababa. Garrison has also written for the San Francisco Bay View, the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Focus, Macworld, Macweek, the Op-Ed News, and Pambazuka News among other publications. She is also an occasional contributor to Global Research.

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a geo-political analyst and the award-winning author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press). He is Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization.

When US President Barack Obama addressed the nation on September 10, he emphasized the August 21 gassing of a civilian district in Damascus as a justification for the use of force in Syria. He indicated a military strike was needed “to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, to degrade his regime’s ability to use them, and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use.”

The planned military strike for which President Obama was seeking Congressional approval has been forestalled in the wake of a US-Russia agreement. The deal would see a UN Security Council resolution put forward that would require the Syrian government to give up its chemical weapons arsenal and have them destroyed under international control.

It seems unlikely that the August 21 chemical gas attack is the principal motivator behind the US President’s aggressive military posturing. As Michel Chossudovsky has documented on the Global Research website, five US Naval Destroyers, including one used during the US-NATO war with Libya had been ordered deployed off the Syrian coastline well in advance of the August 21 incident. Each of these vessels have the capacity of carrying up to 90 Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Moreover, the US has been inconsistent in respecting international norms with regard to the use of chemical weapons.

For example, the United States used napalm and Agent Orange quite extensively during the Vietnam War.

Furthermore, the US did not seem to feel obliged to launch strikes against Israel for that country’s reported use of White Phosphorous against Palestinian civilians during the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead offensive.

The US itself used the deadly chemical during the siege against Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah nine years ago.

According to foreign policy analyst Yves Engler, even Canada has a long and sordid history in developing and testing chemical weapons agents for use in Vietnam and Korea.

If the chemical weapons attack is not the true motivation for a military confrontation with Syria, then how likely is it that the recent Russia-US agreement will end the threat of a confrontation with Syria?

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, guests Rick Rozoff, Ellen Hodgson Brown, and Yves Engler brilliantly cut through government jargon and examine some of the geo-strategic objectives in play.

For much of the population, September 11 marks the anniversary of the infamous terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But for the people of Chile, much of Latin America, and democratic reformers at large, it marks another significant anniversary.

On the morning of September 11, 1973, all branches of the Chilean Armed Forces had conspired to wrest control of the country from democratically-elected leader Salvador Allende. Allende, having been tipped about the military’s activities, held his ground in his Presidential palace, La Moneda.

After Allende refused to negotiate or surrender, General Augusto Pinochet ordered a siege on the compound accompanied by military helicopter gunships and Air Force bombers. Salvador Allende died during the melee, apparently by his own hand, and a military junta took power headed by General Pinochet.

It is well documented that the US government, through the CIA, played a key role in the overthrow of the Allende government.

The new order in Chile saw massive economic reforms take effect. An alarming number of people were imprisoned and tortured under his rule. Over three thousand people are estimated to have been killed during Pinochet’s 17 year reign.

PInochet himself was eventually arrested in London in 1998, and faced with the unpleasant prospect of having to answer for his crimes.

The 40th anniversary of Chile’s 9/11 is an occasion to ask what have been the impacts of the coup, and the dictatorship that followed?

These questions are explored in depth by two people knowledgeable about the coup.

Michel Chossudovsky was a visiting Professor of Economics in Chile at the time of the coup. In this week’s radio show, Chossudovsky reflects on his memories of the coup, and looks at how it served as a dress-rehearsal for the use of macro-economic reform as a weapon for disarming governments worldwide.

Peter Kornbluh then recounts the US role in the affair. He is the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, recently updated to mark the 40th anniversary of the coup. Not only does he elaborate on the proof of the US connection with the coup, he explains his conviction that the arrest of Pinochet marks a major turning point in terms of holding past and present state criminals accountable.

Free Trade agreements being adopted by Canada are undermining the ability of governments to protect the public good.

That is the conclusion of the civil society farm, labour, indigenous, student, cultural, environmental and other organizations that have come together under the banner of the Trade Justice Network.

With January marking the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the TJN recently organized the “Intercontinental Day of Action Against the TPP and Corporate Globalization,” a call to resist the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) and similar trade deals.

These progressive organizations believe that the free trade agenda, embodied by NAFTA and its offspring, represent a “corporate power grab” that threaten “working families, small farmers, indigenous peoples, small business and the environment in all three countries and beyond.”

Traditional strategies for resisting these legislative instruments have famously included mass mobilizations, such as were seen in Seattle (1999) and the Quebec Summit of the Americas (2001), not to mention standard protests, petitions, and other efforts at lobbying politicians to change their minds.

Less seasoned activists may resort to throwing their weight behind the campaign of an opposition politician who pays lip service to resisting corporate trade deals, but offers little in the way of concrete action once in a position of power and influence.

Another less talked about approach however, is utilizing those legal instruments already available to the people, in the form of constitutional court challenges.

Enter Rocco Galati.

Galati has over the course of his legal career criticised actions by the State at the Summit of the Americas and the G20 in Toronto. He has represented terrorism-related and other cases that many other lawyers won’t touch.

He is currently engaged in a number of interesting battles challenging the government, including a challenge against the Finance Minister and the Bank of Canada, and a challenge to Health Canada’s restrictions on the sale of natural health products.

Galati argues that the afore-mentioned trade agreements, insofar as they are being implemented without the approval of the Canadian Parliament are unconstitutional. Galati had in fact attempted to challenge the Multi-lateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) on the grounds that it conferred on to trans-national corporations powers that over-ride constitutionally protected jurisdiction. Galati explains this view in the first half hour.

In the remainder of the program, Galati provides an update of the case he is championing against the Bank of Canada. Galati also resurrects some older cases he took on.

He talks about his defence of one of the Toronto 18 terrorism plotters, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany. He talks about his former client, Delmart Vreeland, the jailed Naval Intelligence officer who attempted to warn Canadian and American law enforcement authorities of the attacks of September 11, 2001. He talks about a death threat he received years ago that caused him to back off of the case ofAbdurahman Khadr.

He talks about what he calls the ’500 mile Liberal Syndrome.’

He also talks about fundamental flaws in the system that, as he sees it, prevent ordinary men and women elected to high office from acting in the interests of the public.

More from the Toronto 9/11 Hearings: This week’s installment of the Global Research New Hour marks the fourth of a five part series highlighting research into the World Trade Center attacks and the need for a renewed investigation.

Politics has been called a rigged game, with elites using money and organizational resources to pull the puppet strings of most candidates for high office. However, the entrance into the race for US president of candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump who both reject funding from Wall Street threatens to challenge that truism.

This week’s Global Research News Hour attempts to cut through the propaganda and jargon and assess what real options are out there for making substantive and humane political change.

William Blum is a long-time critic of US foreign policy. He has authored five books including his most recent, America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else. He also publishes the “Anti-Empire Report” on his site www dot williamblum dot org. In this interview, Blum outlines his reservations about Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the problematic media coverage of the campaign, and the astonishing view that Trump may actually be the less objectionable in certain respects than both Sanders and Clinton.

Mark Robinowitz is publisher of oilempire dot us, a political map to connect the dots.  He has been a writer, political activist, ecological campaigner and permaculture practitioner for over three decades.  He is also author of the forthcoming Peak Choice: cooperation or collapse, an uncensored guide to Earth, energy and money. In this interview, Robinowitz equates the choice between the Democrats and the Republicans to one between death by lethal injection and death by the electric chair. He outlines the mechanisms employed to stop any threat to the establishment from ever becoming elected president. He also explains how the energy and economic decline is becoming reflected in the politics of the Trump campaign.

On this special holiday edition of the Global Research News Hour, we salute the 44th annual Earth Day with a speech given in Winnipeg recently by outspoken anti-globalization author, environmental activist, and eco-feminist Dr. Vandana Shiva.

Born in Dehradun India in the foothills of the Himalaya, Shiva got her training at the University of Western Ontario in Canada as a physicist. In 1982, she shifted her focus to inter-disciplinary research in science, technology and environmental policy and moved back to India. Dr. Shiva is the founder of Navdanya, a participatory research initiative dedicated to the preservation of native crop species, the rejuvenation of indigenous culture and knowledge, and to support and direction for environmental activism. She is the author of more than 20 books including Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis; Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply; Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace; and Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development.

She is the recipient of numerous awards and accolades including the 1993 Right Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize) and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

On March 29, 2014, Dr. Shiva spoke at the North Centennial Community Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada at the invitation of a local collective known as Power House Producers in association with the Women’s and Gender Studies Students Association, and the University of Winnipeg’s Womyn’s Centre. Her speech followed a so-called Feast of forgotten foods which highlighted a meal prepared by local activists with organic ingredients all provided by local farmers for an audience of about a hundred people. Preceding the talk was an announcement about a Bill moving through the Canadian House of Commons known as Bill C-18, the Agricultural Growth Act which critics argue undermines traditional farm practices by ensuring the intellectual property rights over new varieties of seeds to the plant breeders that generate them and force farmers to pay a royalty to them when crops from those seeds go to market.

On this week's Global Research News Hour, on the occasion of the March 3, 2016 meeting of Canadian federal and provincial leaders in Vancouver on to work out an agreement on a national climate change plan, we explore the implications of proposed climate solutions for the future of Canada's nuclear industry, environment and energy security. We'll be joined by anti-nuclear activist Candyce Paul of the Committee for Future Generations, and by political economist, professor and author Gordon Laxer.

The US has begun bombing Iraq and Syria in the name of fighting the self-declared Islamic State. But is the real goal targeting the ISIL? 

Excerpt from October 8, 2014 US Department of State Daily Press Briefing:

Jennifer Psaki (US Department of State Spokesperson): Our objectives here are going after the threat of ISIL, the safe havens where ISIL has in Syria. There will be other towns and cities that we know will be threatened in Syria, but we have to focus on our strategic components here, which are command and control centers, which are oil refineries, which are other pieces where we’ve done our precision strikes over the past several weeks.

QUESTION: So saving people – saving innocent lives from this – from ISIL, which you’ve called barbaric and evil and everything else under the sun, is not as – is just not a priority?

Psaki: Absolutely not.

More than a decade after the US and its coalition allies promoted and pursued a military campaign in Iraq, a new campaign is being launched. This time, the rationale (excuse) is not weapons of mass destruction. The casus belli in this case is the need to control and contain the threat posed by a group dubbed the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, the profile of the militants has increased over the past several months in the wake of their conquest of strategic territory within a broad swath of Iraq and Syria. Most notably, the group’s reputation for barbarism has been underscored by a number ofhigh profile beheadings, in recent months.

While this broadcast was aired, the Kurdish city of Kobani on the Turkish-Syria border is at risk of falling before the repressive ISIL insurgents.

While the need to respond to the threat posed by the Islamic State is understandable, at least two questions need to be addressed as Western leaders agitate for military aggression in the region.

1) Is the US bombing campaign currently underway effectively eroding the Islamic State militants’ ability to threaten civilians in the region and abroad?

2) Given the US is no stranger to evoking phony pre-texts for war, is the need “to eliminate the terrorist group ISIL and the threat they pose to Iraq, the region and the wider international community,” the true reason for Operation Inherent Resolve, as it’s now being called?

This week’s Global Research News Hour centres on the US coalition’s current military mobilization against the entity known as ISIL/ISIS, the likely objectives and propsects for success with two geo-political analysts.

Lawrence Wilkerson is a Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at The College of William and Mary in Virginia. He formerly served as Chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Global Research News Hour contributor Jon Wilson interviewed the US Army Veteran following a speech he gave at the University of Winnipeg on ISIS and the Middle East. Wilkerson attempts to explain the US strategy, his contention of it being fueled by a Sunni-Shia split within Iraq, and his prescription for the prospects for success.

 Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is an award-winning author, geopolitical analyst, sociologist, and frequent contributor to Global Research. His view is that the operation against the so-called Islamic State is largely a smokescreen and puts forward his thesis that a larger regional power grab is the ultimate goal for the US. 

Nazemroaya will be holding workshops at the World Peace Forum Society’s 7th Annual Teach-In, Oct. 25, 2014, at the Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings, Vancouver. For more details, please visit www.peaceforumteachin.org. 

 Julie Lévesque is an independent Journalist and Associate Editor at Global Research focussing on the complex dynamics of this new offensive.

For further details, see the following GR articles recommended by Julie Lévesque 

“Greater Israel”: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East

Preparing the Chessboard for the “Clash of Civilizations”: Divide, Conquer and Rule the “New Middle East”

“We’re going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran..”

ISIS to the Rescue: America’s Terrorists Threaten War with Russia Amid NATO’s Failures in Ukraine

Former French Foreign Minister: The War against Syria was Planned Two years before “The Arab Spring”

SYRIA: CIA-MI6 Intel Ops and Sabotage

 NATO and Turkey Support Armed Rebels in Syria. Campaign to Recruit Muslim “Freedom Fighters”

Syria: ISIS Rebels, Assisted by Israel, Jordan and the U.S., Detain UN Peacekeepers in Israeli-Occupied Golan Heights | Global Research

Corrections: Israel Shahak is the translator of “The Zionist Plan for the Middle East” and not the author;  Ariel Sharon in 1982 was Israel’s Defence Minister. He became Prime Minister in 2001.

The year 2014 was notable not only for the political crises that often dominated the headlines, but very often for the way in which these events were distorted by the mainstream media.

Events overtaking Ukraine were a particular case in point. While the Western Press blames Russian President Vladmir Putin for the instability and tragic loss of life in the Eastern Donbass region, it consistently ignores the role of the West in backing the forces that overthrew the democratically elected government, and even employed Neo-Nazi operatives in the coup and subsequent anti-coup resistance.

Likewise, inadequate coverage of a new bogeyman in the form of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, has allowed political leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Harper to galvanize a confused and frightened public behind a neo-conservative program of military warfare and further erosions of our civil liberties.

Mainstream media generally works to foster agendas that serve elite purposes, and media plays a crucial role in providing the information and analysis that can help the public to determine responsible policies.

The Global Research News Hour and the Global Research website has tried to bring necessary critical perspectives during these historic times.

This week, on our first new radio broadcast of 2015, we provide a digest of some of the many stories we have covered over the previous year.

Includes contributions by Richard Sanders, Robin Philpot, Jon Rappoport, Yves Engler, Peter Dale Scott, James Petras, Henri Feron, Jacques Pauwels, Barrie Zwicker, Guy McPherson, Michel Chossudovsky, and Roger Annis.

Coup D’Etat in Haiti It was nine years ago, on February 29, 2004 that the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed from his Presidential Palace by US forces, assisted by Canada and France. In his place an unelected government was installed by the international community. Thousands of UN ‘peace-keepers’ were assigned to Haiti to protect and enforce the authority of this new government. Many representatives of the Haitian government were jailed. The government of Gerard Latortue,installed at the behest of international forces, cracked down hard on the poverty-stricken population, particularly in the slums of Cité Soleil and Bel Air in Port-au-Prince. Thousands of deaths were estimated to have resulted. [1] It is critical to understand this background and the subsequent erosion of domestic institutions and government agencies if one is to understand the current human security issues threatening this small Caribbean island country. It is especially important for Canadians to acquaint themselves with this history. Canadians generally have a positive opinion of their country and role in the world. They are inclined to believe Canada’s role in Haiti has been generally beneficent. Such inaccurate perceptions are aided and abetted by compliant politicians, governing and in opposition, and by a silent media. Roger Annis has been a long-time activist with the Canada-Haiti Action group, an organization that has been at the forefront of raising awareness about Canada’s true role in Haiti. The Global Research Hour spoke to him while he was in Winnipeg to discuss the nine year old coup, Canada’s role in the coup and other ways the Canadian government and Canadian NGOs and development agencies have undermined Haitian democracy and human rights. Annis also draws parallels between Canada’s treatment of Haitians, and its treatment of its own Indigenous population. Tar Sands Alberta: The Bitumen Cliff While opposition to the so-called ‘tar sands’ in Northern Alberta in Canada is generally framed as an environment versus economics debate, a new study from the Polaris Institute and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives seems to point to an argument that surprisingly reveals the (black) gold rush for bitumen in Western Canada actually putting the Canadian economy at a tremendous disadvantage. Carleton University Graduate student and report co-author Brendan Hayley speaks to the Global Research News Hour about Canada’s Bitumen Cliff. America’s first African American President: An Obstacle to the Quest for Positive Change and Racial Equality In this exclusive Black History Month interview for the Global Research News Hour, former Georgia Congresswoman and US Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney talks about how America’s first African American President has been an obstacle rather than an asset in the quest for positive change and racial equality, and about what needs to be done to make substantive rather than cosmetic changes in the US political life.

The United States and its coalition allies have perpetrated serious violations of international law including the breaching of the UN Charter and multiple violations of the Geneva Conventions, the US Army Field manual, and the Hague Conventions. [1]

Over 600,000 civilians are estimated to have died as a direct consequence of US President George W. Bush’s war against Iraq and its mythical ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ [2] Depleted Uranium munitions has caused birth defects on a massive scale, and will plague this ancient civilization for millennia to come.

Amply documented, torture was employed by US troops under the authorization of US Officials like Vice President Richard Cheney, who comes to Canada in late October.

This installment of the Global Research News Hour features a look at US and allied war crimes and more particularly, the need for accountability for those crimes.

Denis Halliday is the former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq ( September 1, 1997 until 1998.) He resigned from a 34 year career at the United nations in protest to what he saw as the ‘genocidal’ economic sanctions carried out against the Iraqi people through the UN Security Council. Halliday is intensely critical of the UN for aiding and abetting the US and UK in their criminal aggression of 2003 and beyond. He is also critical of the World Health Organization for likewise assisting the imperial Western Giants by suppressing its own report on the effects of the use by US forces of Depleted Uranium on the Iraqi civilian population. He outlines in this interview what he thinks the UN could have done, and still can do, to restore some credibility. Denis Halliday has been an occasional contributor to Global Research. This is his first interview for the Global Research News Hour.

Some soldiers such as Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejía and Joshua Key did their duty under international law and refused to return to service in the Iraq War.

Professor Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and an internationally recognized expert in his field. In 2007, Boyle publicly denounced what he called the “ongoing criminal activities perpetrated by the Bush Jr. administration and its nefarious foreign accomplices in allied governments such as in Britain, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Georgia, etc.” Boyle is the author of Protesting Power: War, Resistance, and Law. He will explain the legal obligations of countries like the US and Canada to respect the right of soldiers to refuse to participate in this war.

While the Canadian government is turning away Iraq War resisters, they are welcoming credibly accused Iraq war criminals into the country. Mere weeks before Vice- President Cheney is to give a speech in Toronto, we will hear from Gail Davidson of Lawyers Against The War about the legal obligation of the Canadian government to deny the former Vice President admittance into Canada or place him under arrest upon entry.

Be sure to check out the Global Research Iraq War Reader for more in depth coverage of US/NATO War Crimes in Iraq.

Clear and Present Danger 

We’ve heard about Anthropogenic (human-generated) Climate Change, and less frequently the threat of a nuclear war between rival super powers as the biggest threats facing humanity and life on this planet.

There are however less talked about dangers which are just as pressing and demanding of attention. Seldom are these perils confronted in any serious way.

The first of these, that will be explored in this week’s Global Research News Hour radio programme, is the threat posed by nuclear radiation from the nuclear industry.

The Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear facility, which became crippled by an earthquake and tsunami almost four years ago, is estimated to have released over 25 million billion becquerels of Cesium-137 radiation into the ocean in just the four months following the disaster. [1] According to a major study, in the 14 weeks following the Fukushima meltdowns, radio-active fall-out that descended on North America resulted in 14,000 excess US deaths. [2]

There are dozens of other nuclear plants in the US and around the world that could likewise melt down as infrastructure breaks down. Nuclear radiation in the air, water, and food supply represent a clear and present threat to all life on this planet.

Another critical concern is the amount of toxic material being deliberately being inserted into the atmosphere, apparently with the aim of affecting climate.

courtesy: Geoengineeringwatch.org

 

Commonly referred to as ‘chemtrails,’ the release of reflective microscopic particles by aircraft in order to affect the amount of sunlight reaching the earth is having an impact not only on weather, but on human, plant and animal health.

These and other weather modification techniques have been not only contemplated, but in effect for decades, as is well documented. (see document above.)

Yet, discussion of these artificial climate control mechanisms is virtually absent from all mainstream around climate change. In fact, like counternarratives around the 9/11 attacks, ongoing geo-engineering programs through ‘chemtrailing’, solar radiation management, HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program ) and other mechanisms is commonly referred to as a ‘conspiracy theory’ in public discourse.

This week’s Global Research News Hour introduces these planetary perils with two outspoken, passionate and knowledgeable guests.

Mimi German is a self-described Earth Activist, with the grassroots group No Nukes Northwest, and is founder of Radcast.org which monitors radiation readings world-wide. She speaks to the nuclear question in the first half hour.

Dane Wigington has an extensive background in the field of solar energy, a licensed contractor and a former employee of Bechtel. The founder of the information site geoengineeringwatch.org, Wigington is convinced that geo-engineering is the number one threat facing humanity at present, and expands on his research in the second half hour.

Useful Resources for this week’s programme:

https://nonukesnw.wordpress.com/

FukushimaResponse.org

http://radcast.org

 Geoengineeringwatch.org

 In the wake of the recently announced release on bail of Omar Khadr, the Global Research News Hour returns to the case of the young man jailed in the notorious prison camp for nearly a decade. In the first half hour, Khadr's lawyer Dennis Edney expertly debunks many of the talking points being put forward by critics like the Conservative government and Ezra Levant about Khadr's status as a "Confessed terrorist" and outlines the numerous ways in which the Canadian government violated Khadr's Charter rights. In the second half hour, Michel Chossudovsky expands on the Khadr tragedy by pointing to a Seymour Hersh article exposing the protection of Al Qaeda militants in theatre and the known incarceration of civilians at Guantanamo. Chossudovsky explains how the facility serves a propaganda function that enables the so-called "War on Terrorism."

As Freedom Flotilla III is departing from an undisclosed location in the Mediterranean Sea to Gaza, this week's Global Research News Hour focuses on activists abroad coming to the assistance of that region's destitute population. We'll speak to Richard Day, a Queen's University Professor and colleague of one of the Freedom Flotilla participants about the parallels between the plight of Palestinians in Israeli occupied territories and the plight of Indigenous peoples in Colonized Canada. We'll hear a pre-recorded commentary from Professor Lovelace. We'll hear from activist and Canadian Boat to Gaza Steering Committee member David Heap about the Flotilla itself, and we'll hear from Dr. Benjamin Thomson, a physician who has worked in Gaza and is behind an exciting initiative to power Gaza hospitals with Solar panels.

“I don’t think that situation is going to be resolved anytime soon. The French went in, nearly two years ago.

They were claiming that their operation would only be for a few months and in fact now it’s approaching two years.

So, I don’t think that they really have a good grasp on what is going on inside the country…

I think the actual wealth of that nation is significant in terms of the overall West Africa region.”  -Abayomi Azikiwe

This week returns listeners to the West African nation of Mali.

In early 2012, the Tuareg people led a revolt against the Malian government with the intent of seizing control of the Northeastern region known as the Azawad. [1] In March 2012, the Malian President,  Amadou Toumani Touré, was ousted in a military coup, reportedly due to his poor handling of the situation. [2]

The following month, The Tuareg dominated National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA)  in alliance with the extremist Islamist group Ansar Dine, succeeded in wresting Azawad from Malian government control and declared it an independent State. [3]

 Over the summer months however, the MNLA lost control of much of Azawad to the Islamist groups. [4][5] Following appeals for help from the Malian government, France sent forces down to secure the territory. They have maintained a force presence ever since.

 While Mali may have fallen off the mainstream media radar over the past two years, talks between the Tuareg rebels and the US-backed Malian government have been ongoing. The most recent round of talks in Algiers ended without a peace deal, stemming manly from the failure of the Malian government to comply with demands from the Tuareg groups for more autonomy in Azawad.

With these developments, along with the recent announcement of more IMF loan guarantees to the Malian government,this week’s Global Research News Hour takes a closer look at the dynamics shaping the West African country with three guests.

Abayomi Azikiwe is Editor of Pan-African NewsWire. He has written extensively on the topic of Western, particularly US, involvement in the African continent, and the principally foreign interests being served by the US troop presence there. Azikiwe looks at Mali in a geo-strategic context.

 John Schertow is the Winnipeg-based Editor and founder of Intercontinental Cry, an on-line magazine dedicated to reporting and chronicling Indigenous resistance struggles around the world. Schertow describes here some of the history of the Tuareg people and their claims to sovereignty in the African country.

 Finally, Bamako-based film maker Moctar Menta talks about the film project aimed at making the wider world realize the origin of much of the world they buy, namely, Artisenal gold mines extracted by children as young as 6! A detailed report of the situation is available here.

 People wishing to contribute to Intercontinental Cry during their fund-raising campaign should visit this site.

 People wishing more background on child-mining in Mali should visit www.minorminers.org.

In the month of February, fifteen former students of the for- profit Corinthian Colleges System declared they would no longer be paying off their sizable federal student loans. They see the Corinthian system as corrupt, making false promises and part of a predatory leding racket. This action sets the stage for a conversation about the Student debt crisis and the nature of money.Ellen Brown author, former civil litigation attorney and founder of the Public Banking Institute comes on in the first half hour. She explains how student debt is not only crippling the debt holders with unfair debt repyment obligations, it is used by money managers as a commodity not unlike the Subprime mortgages that infamously led to the financial meltdown of 2008. In the second half hour we hear a September 2011 speech given by San Francisco Bay Area-basedIndependent journalist and podcast producer Kellia Ramares-Watson. She goes further than Ellen BRown in suggesting that the money system not only has to be reformed but disbanded altogether. She suggests in the speech that students should default on their debts as a political action.

The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa is being declared the deadliest on record, and certainly the first of its kind in the region.

A recent report from the World Health Organization, a UN agency, found that there had been 2630 confirmed deaths directly attributable to the latest strain with 5,357 cases having been diagnosed. The disease is widespread and transmitting intensely throughout Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with additional cases emerging in Nigeria and Senegal.

The Global Research News Hour takes a closer look at the background of this developing situation with two observers with dissident takes on this new Clear and Present danger.

Aggressive measures are being taken.

US President Barrack Obama stated on Tuesday September 16 that his administration would be committing 3000 military personnel to help contain the spread of the epidemic in the region.

The World Bank is committing $200 million in assistance to the three hardest hit African countries.

And the micro-biologist who first identified the Ebola virus in 1976 is urging UK Prime Minister Cameron to take “quasi-military” measures to address the threat.

Authorities are preparing to fast-track the use 10,000 doses of an experimental, as yet untested Ebola vaccine for use in West Africa.

As of this writing, the President of the besieged State of Sierra Leone has ordered the residents of Freetown, its capital city, off the streets and into their homes, arguing  ”extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.”

The Global Research News Hour takes a closer look at the background of this developing situation with two observers with dissident takes on this new Clear and Present danger.

Jon Rappoport is the author of the blog NoMoreFakeNews.com. He has 30 years of experience as an investigative reporter and has authored three books including  The Matrix Revealed and  Exit from the Matrix. He believes the World Health Organization, the Centres for Disease Control and other bodies are exaggerating the role of the Ebola virus in the death counts.  and speculates on how this new plague may be helping to advance a more cynical agenda.

Dr. Leonard Horowitz is a Harvard-trained investigator and public health educator. He has authored more than ten books including the 1996 best-seller Emerging Viruses: Aids & Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional. Dr. Horowitz has argued for years that both Ebola and AIDS were bio-engineered in a laboratory. In this GR News Hour interview, he shares evidence of how the new outbreak constitutes commercial and scientific fraud, he talks about how his information is being suppressed by YouTube, Wikipedia and, of course, the corporate press, and he outlines what he believes is the real agenda behind this new War On Germs.

This installment of the Global Research News Hour features coverage of the ongoing efforts by the Canadian government to put in place anti-terrorism legislation which undermines Canadian freedoms at the expense of privacy and other Rights we take for granted.First we hear from the Director of the acclaimed film `The Secret Trial 5, a film about 5 people detained cumulatively for 30 years without conviction in the name of National Security. We hear a speech from Canadian Green Party leader about Bill C51. and we conclude the show with Naomi Wolf, author of the book `THe End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young patriot.`Wolf`s book documents how authoritarian powers have consistently applied ten measures when shutting down democracies around the world.

Continuing with coverage of Ukraine on the anniversary of the May 2, 2014 Odessa massacre, we hear an interview with Anatoly Sharij, a high profile Ukrainian journalist forced to flee the country in 2012 and now based in Lithuania. He has found himself targetted for his success in posting critical videos of the Ukrainian government line, and exposing the lies put out by the Ukrainian media. In this exclusive interview, conducted with the assistance of Winnipeg-based Russian-Canadian Konstantin Goulich, we hear about the extent to which true journalism in Ukraine has been suppressed and replaced by pure propaganda, the reasons why skepticism, even of some critical voices of the Kiev regime is needed, and echoes of a past repressive period in history of the region.

This interview is followed by a clip from a recent presentation by Robert Parry of Consortium News about the unprecedented Media Group Think that is afflicting coverage of the Ukraine situation. Credits: Interviews by Michael Welch Translation services, research assistance, and outreach provided by Konstantin Goulich Audio of Talk by Robert Parry obtained under Fair USe rules from footage of the public event US-RUSSIA Forum based in Washington DC from March 26, 2015. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8IL4SvBVxk)

On this Holiday edition of the Global Research News Hour, we hear speeches from a public event in support of American Iraq War Deserter Joshua Key. The event was held at the University of Winnipeg on March 29, 2015. Michelle Robidoux of the War Resisters Support Campaign updated the audience on the actions taken against Americans in Canada who sought sanctuary from the Iraq War. She is followed by Joshua Key' s legal representative. Then Joshua tells the story of how he went to Iraq, what he saw and why he ultimately deserted, and then his efforts to live in peace in Canada.

This episode of the Global Research News Hour takes a closer look at the  October 22 Ottawa Shootings with guests Richard Sanders of the Coalition Opposed to the Arms Trade and Barrie Zwicker, author, journalist and media critic.

Sanders explains that there are parallels between the way the Harper government is capitalizing on the Ottawa shootings to advance a militarization of domestic and foreign policy, and the way the Borden government of 1914 used the first World War to undermine the rights of Eastern European immigrants and other ‘undesirables’ seen as a threat to the capitalist order of the day.

Barrie Zwicker goes one step further and makes the case that the shooting by lone gunman Michael Zehab-Bibeau may have been a false flag. That is, aided and abetted by elements of the State and Security apparatus. Among the issues he touches on in this discussion are the “lone nut” sceneario, common to many false flag situations, indications of fore-knowledge and a cover-up on the part of US media, and the prospects of US covert involvement in the event.

This interview is largely based around his recent article for Truth and Shadows, now posted on the Global Research website.

 “Followers of climate science will recall COP15 as the climate-change meetings thrown under the bus by the Obama administration. A summary of that long-forgotten briefing begins with this statement:

‘THE LONG-TERM SEA LEVEL THAT CORRESPONDS TO CURRENT CO2 CONCENTRATION IS ABOUT 23 METERS ABOVE TODAY’S LEVELS, AND THE TEMPERATURES WILL BE 6 DEGREES C OR MORE HIGHER. THESE ESTIMATES ARE BASED ON REAL LONG TERM CLIMATE RECORDS, NOT ON MODELS.’

“In other words, Obama and others in his administration knew near-term extinction of humans was already guaranteed.” -Guy McPherson, from the 2013 book Going Dark

On the occasion of the UN Climate Conference in Lima, Peru, this week’s Global Research News Hour examines the latest research into the causes of Earth’s current Climate predicament.

 Guy McPherson is emeritus Professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of Arizona, He is the author of about a dozen books including Going Dark and his most recent, Extinction Dialogs: How to Live with Death in Mind.’ co-authored by Carolyn Baker. Guy is the author of the Nature Bats Last blog at www.guymcpherson.com. 

Professor McPherson believes that there is virtually nothing humans can do to reverse the damage done by modern industrial civilization and that humans will likely become extinct as a result of runaway Climate change by the middle of the twenty-first century.

Professor McPherson explains his thesis of Near Term Human Extinction, the need to come to terms with the grief that goes along with that realization, the problems with geo-engineering as a remedy, and the problematic behaviour of both political leaders and mainstream environmental organizations in the face of the Climate Predicament.

For decades, groups based in Miami, Florida have launched literally hundreds of terrorist attacks against the Cuban people and Cuban Nationals. These include bombings, assassinations, and particularly boatloads of weapons sent to Cuba to be used against its citizens. It is estimated that at least 3,478 people have died, and 2,009 have been injured as a direct result of these acts of terrorism. [3]

The Cuban government, quite reasonably, sought to thwart such attacks. Five Cuban Intelligence officers: Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González were dispatched to infiltrate and monitor these Miami-based groups to protect their countrymen. They did succeed in uncovering some of these plots.

On September 12, 1998, these men were arrested and indicted on a charge of Espionage Conspiracy. [4] They were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences including 17 months in solitary confinement!

Supporters of the Five argue that the trial which indicted the men was fundamentally unfair, that they have been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and that the prosecution was politically motivated.

Two of the Five,  Fernando Gonzalez, and René Gonzalez have been freed, but the other three remain locked up. One of the men, Gerardo Hernandez, faces TWO life sentences plus a fifteen year sentence on top of that.

In this episode of the Global Research News Hour, special guest interviewer Lesley Hughes interviews Gloria La Riva, an organizer with the National Committee to Free the Five (quoted above) and the first of the five to be freed, René González.

President Obama, YES YOU CAN free the Cuban Five!

People wishing to get involved in current and ongoing solidarity efforts to free the Cuban Five, or who merely wish for more background are encouraged to visit the following sites:

www.freethefive.org

www.theCubanFive.org

There are also two important books on the subject:

 Letters of Love and Hope: The Story of the Cuban Five with an Introduction by Alice Walker [5]

What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five by Stephen Kimber [6]

The crisis unraveling in Ukraine is proving to be among the most intense geo-political ruptures on the international stage in many years.

Anti-Russian rhetoric rivaling that of the chilliest moments of the Cold War has been spouted by Western leaders and media pundits.

One such pundit is Lloyd Axworthy. Axworthy has served as President and vice-Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg for about a decade. Dr. Axworthy served in the 1990s as a Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister. He has written numerous books and articles and is a sought after commentator on international affairs. In 2004 he authored the book Navigating a New World by Knopf Canada Publishing.

Following a “fact-finding” Mission to Ukraine this spring, Mr. Axworthy and his Vice President Bill Balan had a chance to survey the situation in Kiev and get a sense of the factors affecting Ukraine’s democratic exercise. http://globalbrief.ca/lloydaxworthy/2014/04/21/ukraine-a-non-violent-resistance/

It should be noted that the mission to Ukraine was sponsored by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. The NDI is one of the key recipients of funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, identified as a CIA front-group which destabilizes governments and popular movements. According to author Willam Blum, the NED had a hand in the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s, undermined leftist insurgencies in the Phillipines, and in the early 1990s funded the Miami-based anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation. [2]

Michel Chossudovsky explains in detail the destabilization efforts of the NED in Ukraine in the articleIMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine .

This week’s installment of the Global Research News Hour features the comments of Dr. Axworthy and his university colleague Bill Balan with regard to their first-hand observations of the Ukraine situation. They were clearly articulating the view that it was the Russian President Vladimir Putin that was the key destabilizing force in the region. Their comments were recorded at a public talk given April 22 at the Free Press Cafe in Winnipeg, Canada.

Later in the programme, Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO returns to the Global Research News Hour to respond to Axworthy’s comments, to comment on the upcoming May 25 presidential election and exactly who it is that is interfering with Ukrainian democracy, and to update listeners on the alarming developments on the ground in Eastern and Southern Ukraine in the wake of the Odessa 

This week's feature guest is Author, blogger and radio journalist Stephen Lendman. He discusses American Presidential politics, his lack of faith in the system, the US-backed agendas in Cuba, Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Iran and Ukraine, and his fears of another major war being triggered in coming months.

With a major humanitarian crisis hitting the population of Yemen in the wake of the Saudi Arabia-led bombing campaign, the Global Research News Hour takes alook at the damage that has been done to civilians in the country, the roots of the conflict, the involvement of outside powers and the prospects for peace at the June 14 UN peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland. Hisham Al-Omeisy is a Yemen information and political analyst based in Sana'a. He has through social media been relaying what he has been seeing and experiencing during the siege.  Ali Saeed is the General Secretary with the Solidarity Committee for Ethiopian Political Prisoners. He speaks briefly about the polight of refugees and migrants in particular during the conflict. Abayomi Azikiwe is a geopolicital analyst and the editor of Pan-African Newswire. He provides the historical and geo-political context to the unfolding catastrophe.