The so-called “Arab Spring:” is a distant and bitter memory to those who fought and struggled for a better world, not to speak of the thousands who lost, life and limb.

In its place, throughout the Muslim world, a new wave of reactionaries, corrupt and servile politicians have taken the reins of power buttressed by the same military, secret police and judicial power who sustained the previous rulers.

The centerpiece of US and Israeli strategic policy has been to claim that Iran’s nuclear program including the enrichment of uranium, are a threat to world peace and in particular to Israel and the Gulf states. The Non-Aligned Movement meeting repudiated that position, affirming Iran’s right to develop a peaceful nuclear program including the enrichment of uranium.

One year after the Greek government bowed to pressure and enforced he outsourced Israeli blockade of Gaza, the international movement to challenge the blockade is still very much afloat: we may change our tactics, but not our objectives. Our new campaign to challenge the blockade from the inside out emphasizes the fundamental importance of freedom of movement for Palestinians.

Arab citizens of Israel have been living under occupation for nearly sixty-five years now, and the Jewish citizens of Israel are living under a siege that they have imposed on themselves. We are all subjects of a colonialist regime that includes the appropriation of lands and water resources, ethnic cleansing, destruction of the landscape and destruction of the human spirit.

The small village of Susiya in the Israeli Occupied Territories is about to be demolished yet again. But most Canadians have never even heard about the first, second, third and fourth times. But we should know, because Canada is heavily implicated in these human rights abuses as a result of our unconditional support for Israel.

The Syrian situation is extremely complex this being the result of its history, its diverse ethnic groups, its long-lasting repressive regime, and compounded by a decade-long desire of the USA and other Western countries for regime change in that country. And because of the latter factor, much of the mainstream media for the past year or more have misrepresented the turmoil and conflict in Syria, almost in the way it was done in preparation for the war on Iraq.

The Syrian Accountability Act of 2003 began the formal U.S. attempt to bring down Assad, but Clinton, the imperial princess, now demands Syrian President Assad resign in favor of the Syrian National Council (SNC). This hastily formed group composed of exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members, and other groupings, many in exile, would, magically transform Syria via fair elections into a good democracy – and sheep will fly.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who have lost their families and homes to U.S. bullets, bombs and missiles also suffer from PTSD. Why don’t they go on more rampages?

Obama’s contention that a ‘lone unbalanced gunman’ committed the crime is completely self-serving and exposes serious and deep structural problems with the war in Afghanistan. US combat troops in Afghanistan are demoralized and angry because their military commanders have marched them into a cul-de-sac—a dead end. They are engaged in a long, losing war where every dead US soldier is accompanied by scores who are maimed, blinded and mentally traumatized. In Obama’s war, the wounded are patched up and recycled back into the same meat grinder in an increasingly hostile environment, where rape, torture, maiming and murder become their only ‘recreation’. Sgt. Bales was coerced into multiple tours of duty in Iraq and then shipped off to Afghanistan, contrary to his expectations of a promotion and an end to overseas combat assignments.

Even as I write this, the bulldozers have been busy throughout that one indivisible country known by the bifurcated term Israel/Palestine. Palestinian homes, community centres, livestock pens and other “structures” (as the Israel authorities dispassionately call them) have been demolished in the Old City, Silwan and various parts of “Area C” in the West Bank, as well among the Bedouin – Israeli citizens – in the Negev/Naqab. This is merely mopping up, herding the last of the Arabs into their prison cells where, forever, they will cease to be heard or heard from, a non-issue in Israel and, eventually, in the wider world distracted by bigger, more pressing matters.