Happy Mother's Day, Liebe Mutti!

Got in the car this morning for the two+ hour drive to visit my dear mother. The older she gets, the more important it becomes in my mind not to miss it. The old gal is 91, still lives independently in her own place, and just bought herself a new car. I stopped at the Korean's for a fifty-dollar hanging basket on the way out of town. I'm sure they'll be on for half that tomorrow! So I get down there, and Mom has just got home from church. She attends an outfit that is overtly protestant and vaguely related to the Quaker-Hutterite tradition, and as such, are the antithesis of the anti-Christian "Christian Zionist" faction exemplified by US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. She tells me today's lesson came from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk. That Old Testament reference is usually a red flag. That's where Bibi goes to justify genocide; Jehova has commanded us to slay the Amaleks and that sort of thing. But no, the prophet Habakkuk was off on another tangent altogether. He was warning the Chosen People that if they didn't mend their ways the Lord would cover them in filth, "for the violence done to Lebanon shall cover thee." That was predicted almost 3,000 years ago. Anyway, I thank God I'm still able to enjoy my dear mother, and am doubly grateful she's a partisan for a Christianity of Peace instead of the brand promoted by Huckabee and Pompeo. Happy Mother's Day, Liebe Mutti!

Rage and redemption

When Bert Tallman came home from residential school as a young man of 15 or 16, he was filled with rage, and lusting for revenge. That’s perfectly understandable. Rage is a powerful thing. It becomes all-consuming. You gotta get your revenge or die trying. You try to beat those feelings back with booze and drugs, and things get worse. In the CBC interview, Bert talks about a wise auntie who helped guide him through this fraught time. You want revenge. You can go to jail. You can die. How does this help you? While Bert didn’t come right out and say auntie studied the Bible, the story inferred that her influence took him to a place where he finds peace and strength in studying the Bible. The reason this triggers cognitive dissonance in so many, is because the Bible has been befouled by false prophets for so long that we forget there’s a lot of really good stuff in there. When you see public figures like Mike Pompeo and Mike Huckabee claiming to be “devout Christians,” and then look at their works, well, I don’t think the guy who delivered the Sermon on the Mount would approve of those gentlemen. We’ve come to associate Christianity with colonialism and the slave trade, while forgetting that Bible-centred faith communities were instrumental in ending both. Every other civil rights leader in mid-20th century America was a minister in the Christian church! Kids in residential schools suffered abuse at the hands of emissaries of one Christian church or another. Choir boys in Catholic countries around the world have been abused by Christian priests. None of that is endorsed in the Bible. That’s why Bert and millions of others continue to find peace and strength in the teachings of the Bible.

Who are the "Christian Fascists?"

I like Chris Hedges' work, generally speaking. I find his world-view agreeable. But there's been a few times when he goes on rants about how Christian fascists are on the cusp of seizing power, when I think he's getting a little ahead of himself.

Then again, maybe not.

Check out this profile of Mike Pompeo from the Washington Post. That's from when he was being vetted for the Sec of State job. The future Secretary of State told his interrogators flat out he believes "Jesus Christ our saviour is the only solution for our world."

They approved him for the job.

I'm reminded of this by the sudden rise of fundamentalist Christian Adrian Zenz into the ranks of elite China experts in Western media. This is a born-again Christian who told the Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago that God had sent him on a mission to fight communism.

How ironic that 150 years ago the born-againers were working hand-in-glove with the Imperial powers to force Christianity and opium on China at the same time. They called it the "China Inland Mission." Look it up. It's not a happy story.

Today the same bunch of Christian fanatics want to save the Chinese people from communism. The drug they'd like to get them hooked on is Western-style "freedom and human rights."

You know, like those folks in tents all over America enjoy!

Anyway, if Chris's Christian fascists are real, it's kinda scary that their narrative is becoming the mainstream narrative.

The reason Christian Soldiers march boldly into war is because they have convinced themselves God is on their side...

We in a heap 'o doo-doo!

Jesus spinning in His grave

Here's Mike Pompeo commenting on his ethically challenged tenure as CIA boss at Texas A&M University back in April.

Here he is six months later, giving a speech in Nashville called Being a Christian Leader.

This guy should be an embarrassment to Christians everywhere. It's called "Christianity" for a reason; those who claim the label are ostensibly followers of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. From what I recall of my Sunday School lessons, Jesus preached all sorts of hippy-dippy stuff about loving your enemies etc.

Two thousand years later, war-mongers like Pompeo claim to be furthering the interests of the Prince of Peace? I don't think so!


Then again, it's not my place to judge...

Canadian military announces "Operation Absence"

Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan announced yesterday that our peacekeeping mission to Mali, Operation Presence, will continue indefinitely.

The mission, begun a year ago, saw 250 CF personnel and Canada's entire fleet of eight helicopters in the African country to deliver peace, development, and prosperity.

CF spokesperson Colonel Wanda Dunkelwasser elaborated on Sajjan's announcement in a media backgrounder; "Our analysts have determined that over the past year, our contribution to bringing peace, development, and prosperity to Mali has been precisely zilch. Nada. Bupkis. We subsequently further determined that we could find considerable efficiencies in our peacekeeping mission by withdrawing our personnel and our helicopters. Going forward, our peacekeeping mission will be known as Operation Absence."

On the same day that Minister Sajjan was updating the public on our peacekeeping mission, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland shocked the UN by revealing that "Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, 'incels,' nativists, and radical anti-globalists" threaten the stability of the civilized world.

Alas, she was not referring to those smelly, basement-dwelling, maladapted, twenty-somethings playing kill-em-all video games eighteen hours a day. In her leadership role with the Lima Group, working to free Venezuelan women and girls and resources from the grip of their elected dictator, Ms. Freeland has gained invaluable insights into the psyches of white supremacists like her good friends, Mikes Pence and Pompeo.

When Freeland talks Neo-Nazis, we'd do well to pay attention.

After Venezuela, we must bring democracy to Cuba, Nicaragua

Looks like Canada's state broadcaster is floating the idea that after the Abrams-Bolton-Pompeo "axis of virtue" succeeds in restoring democracy to Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua will be next. In fact, Evan Dyer's article aligns perfectly with public statements already made by Bolton, Pompeo, and anti-Castro superhawks like Marco Rubio.

The rhetoric of Foreign Minister Freeland also aligns perfectly with the US goal of regime change in all three countries. The so-called Lima Group is little more than a fig-leaf designed to provide a facade of widespread regional support for American machinations, and Canada's participation is intended to put a happy face on what is otherwise a cabal of extreme right-wing regimes.

Relying on the expertise of "historian and democracy activist" Michael Lima Cuadra is telling. I'm not sure what makes him a historian; there is no record I can find of scholarly articles, books, or teaching posts that would justify the label.

Cuadra's "democracy activism," however,  is on display at his twitter account @ngotranslations. He obviously remains nostalgic for the setback freedom suffered at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. That CIA initiative was one of the few regime change operations in Latin America since WWII that didn't achieve its objective.


Almost sixty years later, it's still business as usual.

Justin and Chrystia double down on Trump appeasement strategy

Having completely and utterly fumbled the China file, I see where our dynamic duo of diplomacy are busy trying to further ingratiate themselves with the Bolton-Trump-Pompeo combine by doing Uncle Sam's bidding with the so-called "Lima Group."

Canadian journalist Andrew Mitrovica does a nice job of exposing our hypocrisy in this story at Al Jazeera. There's a reason you're reading it at AJE and not in the Globe and Mail. Our "free press" are doing all they can to obscure the fact that what our PM and Foreign Minister are really up to is desperately trying to curry favour with the war-mongers in Washington.


Much has changed in the two years since Justin thought it would be clever to give Mafia Don a poke in the eye with that virtue-signalling tweet welcoming the world's downtrodden and oppressed. It's a complete embarrassment to watch Justin and his Foreign Minister go all-in for America's regime change plans in Venezuela.

This is not what our last PM Trudeau would have done.

The Globe and Mail as propaganda organ

The Globe and Mail brain trust deserve a smidgen of credit for their smidgenly attempt to inject a little balance into their coverage of the Huawei affair; a single opinion piece by Michael Byers in which he correctly concludes that this imbroglio was entirely avoidable, and is primarily the result of the staggering ineptitude of the Trudeau-Freeland team.

Reportorial balance dispensed with, we are elsewhere in today's paper treated to:

• a half page news story on A3 informing us that the US vows to fight for the Canadians detained in China in the wake of the Meng Wanzhou arrest
• two thirds of page O2 given to long-time China critic and cheerleader for American exceptionalism Brahma Chellaney, who implores us to stand firm against Chinese bullying
• the lead editorial slagging China and celebrating our close relationship with the US
• seven of eight letters to the editor on the topic being stridently anti-Chinese.

Yes, China is a bully, whereas the US, in the words of Mike Pompeo, tirelessly lobbies for "...every citizen unlawfully detained around the world..."

That's a head-spinning bit of sophistry, that is. Every citizen of the world unless they happen to be unlawfully detained in Gitmo, or in prisons in al-Sisi's Egypt, in Israel, in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, or even in Incarceration Nation itself.

Yes, aside from all those and many more, the US remains the shining city on a hill, tirelessly advocating for the downtrodden and oppressed, at least in that handful of countries reluctant to take direction from Washington.

As Canada's national newspaper of record, I'd like to see the Globe and Mail go a little further in promoting an independent foreign policy for Canada, and rein in the glaringly obvious toadying to American interests.