Zeinab Merai, Sada al-Mashrek
A few days ago, RT reported that some Ukrainians were being denied humanitarian aid because they spoke Russian. A Farsi proverb (عقلش به چشمش است), which means that people’s minds are fooled by what their eyes see, best describes this madness. Manipulated by warmongers and mainstream media, many can now only see what’s placed before their eyes, not what’s beyond.
In part 1 (صدى المشرق (sadaalmashrek.ca)), Owen Ford, Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War’s executive-board member, made observations based on his long and rich travel experience, emphasising the need for cultural interchange. Human-rights advocate Ford as well told Sada al-Mashrek that the consequences of militarisation and media bias in North America “are mapped onto the domestic scenes.”
In this part, Ford discusses issues like political sensitivity and Canadian foreign policy, noting that the latter “has been hijacked”. The critic believes that change is happening, but that it needs a lot of patience.
“Hijacked Canadian foreign policy”
In May, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly, alongside other Canadian officials visited Ukrainian President Zelensky in Kyiv to show support, whereas they have never bothered to visit any of the war zones of war-ravaged countries like Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan, nor have they even responded to thousands of Canadian individuals and organisations who’ve been repeatedly asking them to reconsider their arms manufacturing and sales.
Humanist Ford points out this is “disrespectful” and that when it comes to Canadian foreign policy “we have no real independence, but we like to think that we do. Effectively, if you look at our voting pattern at the UN, we’ll do whatever America tells us to do... We never take a different position, even when it’s quite obvious what the correct position is. Our record on Palestine, for instance, is absolutely shameful.”
Ford remarks that since “Canada has spent nearly a billion dollars so far just to give weapons to the Ukrainians… It’s absolutely a disgraceful policy; we should find peace there as fast as possible. Giving them weapons just makes people miserable – in Russia and Ukraine.” A government statement (last updated on May 20th) mentions that “Canada has committed $1.87 billion in financial assistance to support the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian economy this year. (Canada Provides Additional Financial Support to Ukraine - Canada.ca)
“The West has lost its mind in this problem with Ukraine, and our media’s lying to us, and it will. It keeps telling that the Russians are nearly running out of missiles or nearly finished and we’re going to win… That’s really child stories, but because most of the people here don’t know, they believe these stories. For instance, you’ll find that many of the cars driving around the city here have this little Ukrainian flags on them. They don’t know what’s going on in Ukraine. They just think it’s the right thing to do, but it isn’t,” warns Ford.
Simultaneously, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Elbit Systems are arming Ukraine, and all of them have branches in Canada. Though Canada claims ‘impartiality’, that definitely means a lot of moneymaking to arms manufacturers and lobbyists. “That’s just the story Canada likes to tell, but it’s a lie. Canada absolutely has no impartiality in this issue, and we can see this. Our deputy prime minister wants to see Russian President Putin dead; she has such a passion for it, so her personal judgement is not correct,” cautions Ford.
The Ontarian activist points out that Freeland has a rather suspicious Ukrainian background, adding that “she hasn’t properly examined this part of herself... She’s fighting the same battle that her grandfather – a war criminal working with the Nazis – fought against the Russians… She’s able to highjack the Canadian foreign policy to do her personal war against Russia…” (Further reading on the subject here: Blank spot: Why Chrystia Freeland’s refusal to acknowledge her grandfather’s Nazi past matters in 2020 - The Progress Report)
Moreover, Ford sees that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “is being handled by the most sophisticated Western media manipulators that have ever existed. The CIA and certainly the British MI5 are very deeply involved in producing and presenting him to the world… He’s the face of the story they’re trying to sell.”
“NATO’s expansionism is backfiring”
About Russia’s insistence on getting paid in rubles for its exports, Ford says this “is inevitable; it’s a tendency that’s been developing before the Ukraine war. It must happen: the American dollar will fall as the global currency, and we’ll see different systems. What’s happened in the Ukraine war is Russia has immediately developed, with China, a new trade or credit system to work with other countries. This is another step in this direction; it’s to get countries to do the deal in rubles.”
In March, Reuters reported that a number of Russian banks announced they were going to issue cards “using the Chinese UnionPay card operator's system coupled with Russia's own Mir network after Visa and MasterCard said they were suspending operations in Russia.” (Russian Banks Turn to China as Visa, Mastercard Cut Business - Bloomberg)
And according to RT, Russia has created a “survival plan” and can now accept electronic transfers by means of Russian Mir, an alternative payment system to the SWIFT global financial messaging system, from which Russia has been disconnected. This way Russia can “work with foreign banks and businesses, bypassing Western restrictions.” (What is Russia’s sanctions survival plan? — RT Business News)
Additionally, RT confirms that “Russia and China have had ruble-yuan payment mechanisms for a while” and that “a ruble-rupee trading scheme has been announced for Russian oil exports to India. India, which until now bought only 3% of its oil imports from Russia, has been eager to boost purchases, as has Serbia…”
“I made a joke at the beginning of the war; this would be a good time to buy rubles because their value was going to go up, and I wish I had done that; I’d be a wealthy man right now,” says Ford humorously, cautioning that “there’s too much power that the Americans aren’t using responsibly.”
Ford says he’s confident that the anticipated replacement of the unipolar world with a multipolar one “will make the world a better place with much more freedom of currencies. Maybe for the short term they’re very excited about the war; they may call these sanctions, but in the long term this is no solution. The sanctions will end, and Europe will buy its oil from Russia again.”
“Low & slow political sensitivity”
Asked about how Ontarians’ and Canadians’ political sensitivity to foreign affairs has changed over the past two or three decades, Ford straightforwardly states that “it’s always been a disappointment for me that the level of political awareness in Canada is shockingly low; people don’t care. If people have food in their belly, they don’t care about politics so much, that’s part of it, and partly it’s the culture: people are discouraged from taking interest in politics because that disrupts the powers which want to keep things the way they are…”
“The level of politics in Canada is very primitive and the level of consciousness is very low generally. You’ll find some people who are aware, but for instance when we have demonstrations, very few people come to them, and everyone should be there, but no, people are busy washing their cars or cooking dinner; they just have their boring little lives. That’s one of the big problems here... Has it changed much in the last 2 or 3 decades? Well, I went away for 20 years and came back. I’ve found groups I can work with that weren’t here 20 years ago, so things are changing, just very, very slowly. I do find after a few years of being involved politically that you just have to be very patient,” explains Ford, who sees that “changing these large systems is like steering a ship; it takes a lot of time to turn it around the bigger it is.”
As to HCSW’s efforts at protesting militarisation, Ford explains, “We work with some groups and we organise; it’s a hard fight because we’re a very small minority. So all we can do is make as much noise as possible… They always say if you are against the government policy, it must mean that you’re for Putin, and of course it’s much more complicated. We’re not for Putin; we just absolutely disagree with this stupid war.”
The activist believes mutual cultural contributions are part of the solution to international dilemmas: “The culture here is quite wealthy... People here have a lot of privilege which prevents them from understanding just how difficult life is for other people, so we have to do everything we can to help the rest of the world… We conceal much in our own culture and need to give away and help more and conceal less; everyone will be happier. And to be honest, my travels began I was looking for what was missing from our culture – things we could use back here because we need some help here in how to live..”
“I know my perspective is from my experience outside of Canada, and since so many Canadians haven’t been outside, they don’t have this perspective. However, one of the good features of Canada is that we have a very large population of immigrants who’ve come from the ME, North Africa and Asia, so they bring their experience with them, and that only makes Canada better. They have some sort of a world view; it’s not so defined by the media and not the narrative they’re trying to tell us we have to follow,” confirms Ford.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. You can find Owen Ford on Twitter: @OwenDLFord and me: @Zeinab_Merai
Picture:
<a href="https://www.freepik.com/photos/cooperation">Cooperation photo created by rawpixel.com - www.freepik.com</a>