""Rights and Democracy" - Good Riddance ?

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Fri, 2012-04-06 15:41
#1
Rikardo
""Rights and Democracy" - Good Riddance ?

  

The Conservative government has axed Canada's version of NED, the National Endowment for Democracy which funds anti-goverment activists in many part of the world like the Middle East.  Humanitarian Imperialist Ed Broadbent was Rights and Democracy's first boss.  I don't recall him denoucing the UN/US murderous sanctions on Iraq. UNICEF spoke of hundreds of thousands of victims but Mad. Albright (and Ed?) called them necessary.

Egypt has recently condemned Western well-financed  "pro-democracy" interventions in their internal affairs, by Freedom House, NED and others.  R&D wasn't there.

Would, or should we support US or French or Egyptian, or Russian financing of our "civil society" groups?

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Fri, 2012-04-06 20:23
M. Spector M. Spector's picture

I hope you don't imagine that this means the government is going to stop funding subversion in countries that Harper doesn't like. They're using the foreign aid and "development" system - [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/activism/value-foreign-aid-work]and particularly CIDA[/url] - for that.

The demise of Rights and Democracy was planned long ago by the Harpocons who despised it as a Liberal Party pet project. They stacked the board of directors with their own appointees in order to neuter it beyond recognition so they'd have little opposition to getting rid of it altogether.

Next up: the CBC.

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Fri, 2012-04-06 23:15
Unionist

M. Spector wrote:

The demise of Rights and Democracy was planned long ago by the Harpocons who despised it as a Liberal Party pet project.

I thought it was a Mulroney creation? And that he appointed Broadbent to head it up as a reward for his role in the 1988 election. But I'll go look it up again...

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Fri, 2012-04-06 23:32
Boom Boom Boom Boom's picture

Don't forget to comment on "Everybody write to Dalton asking Dalton to write to himself, to stop the budget that would destroy Ontario!" Laughing

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Sat, 2012-04-07 00:08
M. Spector M. Spector's picture

Unionist wrote:

I thought it was a Mulroney creation? And that he appointed Broadbent to head it up as a reward for his role in the 1988 election. But I'll go look it up again...

Yes, it didn't actually start up until 1990, and its real heyday was during the Chretien and Martin years. The Harpocons regard Mulroney as a liberal anyway; so much so that they formed the Reform Party while he was PM.

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Sat, 2012-04-07 04:56
DaveW

well, we agree on something...

btw, that Mulroney names an NDPer to something makes that nomination bad? why not judge it on the merits, ie Stephen Lewis at the UN ?

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Sat, 2012-04-07 13:09
contrarianna

Broadbent interviewed on CBC radio on its phased destruction (posted before):

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Radio/1447825254/ID=2219069257

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