All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (desktop version)
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
I once again find myself in a position where I must comment on the federal NDP’s stance regarding foreign affairs. Only this time, its position on some foreign affairs reverberates in a deplorable reactionary manner in the party’s actions within Canada.
Before I deal with the current situation, I would like to briefly alert the readers of Ethnorama to a time when I felt compelled to take the federal NDP to task over its foreign affairs policies in the past.
Shortly after Jagmeet Singh took over as leader of the NDP in the fall of 2017, I wrote an article entitled: “Open Letter to Jagmeet Singh: NDP’s reactionary foreign policy positions must be changed.” In this article I denounced the NDP’s policies that were totally aligned with US policies to undermine Venezuela, the NDP’s support for Ottawa’s adoption of the Magnitsky Act and sanctions on Russia, its support for the White Helmets in Syria, its partisan support for Israel, its support for the 2014 US-inspired reactionary coup d’état in Ukraine, and other matters. I sent the article to all federal NDP members – without a single response. Moreover, the NDP since then has not changed its position on any of these reactionary policies.
Earlier still, in 2015 I published an article entitled, “Lament for a Party that has lost its way.” As the 2015 election approached, consistent public opinion polls indicated that the NDP was headed to form the government. But then because of plainly stupid reactionary policies, the NDP was dealt a devastating blow, reducing it from the 103 seats it won 2011 to 44 and relegated it once more to third party status. I started my article saying:
“I write this with sadness and dismay. . . the NDP must do some serious soul-searching to find its true raison d’être. From my perspective, it is fundamentally wrong for the party to abandon its basic social democratic principles in a misguided attempt to veer to the centre-right and try to become “electable” as a supposedly non-threatening capitalist party, not much different from the Liberals or the Conservatives.”
I then pointed out that columnist Thomas Walkom commented after the election:
“What is the point of a social democratic party that is afraid of democratic socialism? What is the point of running as faux Liberals when the real Liberals are already there? . . . If a left- wing party’s only chance at power is to move rightward, why bother?”
But enough with the past; let’s take a look at the present. In mid-October Winnipeg MPs Leah Gazan and Daniel Blaikie contacted Ethnorama and stated that they had been instructed by the Ottawa NDP to cancel their advertisements in Ethnorama because of the article they had published by John Ryan on the Ukraine-Russia issue.
There is some confusion about why the federal NDP took such a course of action. Initially, it appears that Ethnorama was informed by Leah Gazan that the Ukrainian Canadian Congress had disapproved of my article and reported this to some federal NDP caucus members. As a result, these two Winnipeg NDP MPs were instructed to withdraw their advertisements in Ethnorama because Ethnorama had the audacity to publish my article.
Confusion then sets in because Leah Gazan now apparently says that the Ukrainian Canadian Congress wasn’t involved in this matter. If that’s the case, who was it that was instrumental in getting these two MPs to withdraw their advertisements from Ethnorama? Was it pro-NATO federal NDP members? If so, based in Ottawa, how did they discover my article in Ethnorama?
As the current Ethnorama editorial states:
“The concern of Ethnorama is not merely the loss of support in ads from these two MPs but rather the fact that the federal NDP would capitulate and succumb to such censorship and infringement on journalistic freedom, and commitment to finding the truth in this military conflict.”
I would like to note that my article had been originally published by Global Research on April 27, then reposted the same day by The Unz Review, and later reposted in two parts in August and September by Ethnorama. In the Unz Review there were 149 comments devoted to my article, with very few who added more to what I had to say.
As with all my publications, this article is fully and properly documented. Despite this, it appears that in my article I revealed information that challenged the views of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. It seems highly likely that this was made known to the federal NDP who then instructed the two Winnipeg MPs to withdraw their advertisements from Ethnorama. The federal NDP did not cite any specific objections to my article, except for where I had it published. For some bizarre reason they wanted to punish Ethnorama for simply re-publishing my article.
In present day Ukraine, all political parties, aside from the party now in power, have been banished and nowhere is there a publication that challenges the party in power. And nowhere is this reported in our media. I pointed this out in my article, and this is probably one of the reasons why this is verboten in the “freedom loving West.”
As for the federal NDP, to its further discredit, it appears highly likely that on the basis of pressure from a politically biased organization, they would “capitulate and succumb to such censorship and infringement on journalistic freedom,” as so eloquently stated in the Ethnorama editorial.
*
Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
This article was originally published on Ethnorama News Winnipeg, November 2022, Vol. 4 Issue No. 10.
John Ryan, Ph.D., Retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar, University of Winnipeg.
Featured image is from davidduke.com
