The Harper government is signalling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel.

Such a move could target a range of civil society organizations, from the United Church of Canada and the Canadian Quakers to campus protest groups and labour unions.


If carried out, it would be a remarkably aggressive tactic, and another measure of the Conservative government's lockstep support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While the federal government certainly has the authority to assign priorities, such as pursuing certain types of hate speech, to the RCMP, any resulting prosecution would require an assent from a provincial attorney general.

Since the time the CIA financed and trained more than one hundred thousand Mujahideen Islamic Jihadists, including a fanatical Saudi named Osama bin Laden, to wage a decade-long proxy war against forces of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, Washington has been obsessed with the idea of penetrating deep into Central Asia in order to drive a wedge between China and Russia.

Early attempts in the wake of the post-2001 US forces' presence in Afghanistan met with mixed success. Now it appears that Washington is frantically trying a repeat, even calling the ageing US Ambassador Richard M. Miles out of retirement to head a new try at a Color Revolution.

There seems to be a sense of urgency to Washington's new focus on Central Asia. Russia is hardly buckling under from US and EU financial sanctions; rather she is looking more vibrant than ever, making strategic economic and military deals seemingly everywhere. And Russia's Eurasian neighbor, The Peoples' Republic of China, is laying plans to build energy pipelines and high speed rail links with Russia across Eurasia.

Washington appears now to be responding.

The problem with the Washington neoconservatives is that they aren't very creative, in fact, in terms of understanding the larger consequences of their specific actions, they are rather stupid. And their shenanigens have become very well-known, not only in Moscow, but also in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and other Central Asian republics formerly part of the Soviet Union.

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Samuel Hersh claimed yesterday that the Obama administration lied to the American people about certain aspects aspects of the 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. According to Hersh, the United States did not act alone when Navy SEALs were sent to capture or kill the world's most wanted terrorist.

The real story, according to the report, is that members of Pakistani intelligence services were privy to the raid months before it happened and that it was a "walk-in" Pakistani intelligence officer who gave up the location of Bin Laden rather than a CIA operation that tracked him down by following various couriers. Further, it has been claimed that Bin Laden was not buried at sea the way the Obama administration said, but rather, his limbs were simply thrown from the helicopter after the mission (suggesting that some portion of his body, perhaps his head, were retained for posterity's sake).

Last Saturday, a massive Victory Parade was held in Moscow commemorating the 70-year anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Red Army and the erection of the Soviet flag atop the Reichstag in Berlin. There were a few unusual aspects to this parade, which I would like to point out, because they conflict with the western official propaganda narrative. First, it wasn't just Russian troops that marched in the parade: the troops of 10 other nations took part in it, including the Chinese honor guard and a contingent of Grenadiers from India. Dignitaries from these nations were present in the stands, and the Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife were seated next to President Vladimir Putin, who, in his speech at the start of the parade, warned against attempts to create a unipolar world—sharp words aimed squarely at the United States and its western allies. Second, a look at the military hardware that rolled through Red Square or flew over it would indicate that, short of an outright nuclear mutual self-annihilation, there isn't much that the US military could throw at Russia that Russia couldn't neutralize.

"The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them." ― Mark Twain

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government's nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do. Yet it was not always this way. It used to be "we the people" telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are "no," "not" and "nor."

Compare the following list of "don'ts" the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which "we the people" are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry's ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, cage protesters, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as "qualified immunity").

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen's right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it's against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen's house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

Ilan Pappe has lately published a new book of dialogues with Noam Chomsky, and edited by Frank Barat, called On Palestine. Pappe is the director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies and the author of many books, notably The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Born in Israel 60 years ago, he left the University of Haifa in 2007 to take up a position at the University of Exeter in England after he called for boycott of Israel and the school president pressed him to resign, while others threatened him personally. I interviewed Pappe by phone in April. The last four questions I sent to him by email, and he responded in kind.

Q. One of the paradoxes you cite at the beginning of the book is the gap between world opinion of the situation in Israel/Palestine, which is with it, and elite opinion, which doesn't budge. Explain this.

I think I became aware of this paradox once I was aware of how significant the shift in civil society or in public opinion was. In other words, the moment you understand that the new attitude toward Israel is not marginal or esoteric you suddenly encounter it everywhere - among people who are in the know, among people who have only partial information, and - it sounds simplistic - but almost any decent person you meet in the west has a clear view of Israel/Palestine with varying degrees of knowledge or commitment. There is a sense of a significant shift, and you would expect that this shift would manifest itself in mainstream media or politics, if not for genuine reasons, then for political reasons, because it is an important issue for your voters.

To my great surprise, and even after the three horrific attacks on Gaza, 2008-2009, 2012, and culminating with the attack in the summer, the cumulative effect has still left the mainstream politics in the same place they were in 20 years ago. I find that bewildering to say the least.

Q. How long has this process taken in public opinion?

It has de facto already happened, Johan Bäckman, a Finnish political activist, author and legal sociologist, is convinced, if not for the country than at least for one of the governing parties.

Bäckman said that supporters of the ruling party in Finland volunteer at the mission of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) which volunteers established in Helsinki a year ago, as reported by the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

"The fact that supporters of the ruling party [in Finland] have started to work in the best interests of the DPR is a significant development," Bäckman said, referring to the Social Democratic Party of Finland, as quoted by the media outlet.

An Iranian bank is suing the British government for £2.3 billion ($4 billion) in damages after the Treasury imposed sanctions against the private business for alleged links to Iran's nuclear program.

The High Court ruled that Bank Mellat's damages trial against the Treasury should go ahead, after the British government attempted to delay the hearing.

Bank Mellat successfully challenged the Treasury's sanctions in the UK's Supreme Court and EU's High Court in 2013, where both bodies ruled in favor of the lender.

The British government was found to have breached the bank's rights under the European Convention of Human Rights and the Human Rights Act.

A US military delegation headed by Army Commander in Europe, Lieutenant-General Frederick 'Ben' Hodges, prepares to visit training center in western Ukraine. Since April, US paratroopers have been training Ukraine's National Guard.

"The US delegation will visit the International Peacekeeping and Security Center (IPSC) at the Academy of Ground Forces named after Hetman Petro Sahaidachny," Ukrainian Defense Ministry's spokesperson Viktoria Kushnir said on Tuesday.

The IPSC was set up at a former Soviet military range near the city of Yavoriv area in the Lvov Region, just a few dozen kilometers from the Polish border. Yavoriv operations site is the largest military firing range in Europe, covering 40,000 sq km. In September 2014, the site hosted vast international military exercises with 1,300 servicemen from 15 countries, including the US, Canada, Germany and the UK.

The UN plans to launch a brand new plan for managing the entire globe at the Sustainable Development Summit that it will be hosting from September 25th to September 27th. Some of the biggest names on the planet, including Pope Francis, will be speaking at this summit. This new sustainable agenda focuses on climate change of course, but it also specifically addresses topics such as economics, agriculture, education and gender equality. For those wishing to expand the scope of "global governance", sustainable development is the perfect umbrella because just about all human activity affects the environment in some way. The phrase "for the good of the planet" can be used as an excuse to micromanage virtually every aspect of our lives. So for those that are concerned about the growing power of the United Nations, this summit in September is something to keep an eye on. Never before have I seen such an effort to promote a UN summit on the environment, and this new sustainable development agenda is literally a framework for managing the entire globe.

If you are not familiar with this new sustainable development agenda, the following is what the official United Nations website says about it...