"the reliability of the U.S. ... has collapsed" - David Suzuki

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Photo: Anastasiya Dalenka via Unsplash Trade turmoil shows need for new internationalism Since the April federal election, Canada has found itself in unchartered terrain.  The United States–instigated  trade war against long-standing allies rages on,  as do its extreme deregulation and increasing  attacks on digital infrastructure, data and communication systems that protect the public interest and  monitor implementation and respect for the rule  of law. The consequent risks to energy, food, water and human security in Canada have led to a regrettable resurgence of political interest in,  and support for, fossil fuel pipeline construction throughout  the country, and in finding new trade partners for Canada’s  polluting fossil fuels. This archaic response in the context of the climate crisis would  decimate public health and ecosystems and go against the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and  International Energy Agency’s scientific recommendations  while locking Canada into stranded assets, further  expanding the immense economic, social, environmental  and cultural costs of fossil fuel exploitation. The reliability of the U.S. as a trade partner, as well  as its trustworthiness as a member of the international  community, has collapsed. A more prosperous approach would be to use this historical  moment of disruption to strengthen coherence between trade  and environmental agreements and propel implementation  of global commitments under the Pact for the Future,  Paris Agreement, Global Biodiversity Framework and  other co-operative mechanisms that support  evidence-based and scientifically informed approaches  to sustainable development. While the U.S. is busy dismantling its environmental laws  and the federal agencies tasked to protect public and  environmental health, Canada’s government needs to  acknowledge that expanding trade with the U.S.  will undermine environmental and public health  protection across borders. Canada should ensure  that all our future trade agreements integrate  fundamental environmental standards, including  the precautionary and polluter pays principles and  intergenerational equity. With a review of the Canada–U.S.–Mexico trade agreement  approaching, some have suggested that Mexico and Canada  should each pursue bilateral agreements with the U.S. But  this would further empower the U.S. and go against the two  other countries’ interests. The reliability of the U.S. as a trade  partner, as well as its trustworthiness as a member of the  international community, has collapsed. Pursuing trade  relations with a rogue superpower such as the U.S. will  substantially weaken Canada’s national resilience to  systemic shocks. Canada’s renewed trade policy should prioritize economic justice and environmental sustainability by adhering to forward-thinking guiding principles. But it does present a historic opportunity. Rather than launching a regressive nationalism based on reinvesting in a deceptive and declining boom-and-bust fossil fuel industry that has unfairly profited off the struggling working class to the benefit of its executives and shareholders, Canada must strengthen relations with long-standing and new trade partners — the European Union and Mexico as well as the Global South and emerging economies. The wealth embedded in this approach is immense: new renewable energy markets, stronger domestic industries and a leading role in a global economy rooted in environmental justice and co-operation. By aligning its trade approach with the aim of reforming global economic structures to promote equitable development and reduce global disparities, Canada can forge a flourishing and just trade policy. Canada’s renewed trade policy should prioritize economic justice and environmental sustainability by adhering to forward-thinking guiding principles. These include respecting Indigenous sovereignty, reinvesting wealth in local and Indigenous economies and eliminating tariffs on environmental goods and services. New trade agreements should define and phase out harmful fossil fuel subsidies to eliminate market distortions that favour carbon-intensive sectors, promote eco-labelling and implement periodic environmental impact assessments. Canada has a unique opportunity to reclaim its leadership on the global stage. A renewed trade approach should also emphasize transparency, public participation and inclusive governance in trade negotiations, allowing for meaningful participation of civil society groups and Indigenous rights-holders. This approach should support lifting trade barriers on green technologies, advancing climate change adaptation and collaborating with developing nations in sustainable trade. It should further promote environmental justice, workers’ rights in informal economies and ethical supply chains that respect human rights and environmental protections. As the world faces new challenges from the U.S.’s growing trade isolationism and attacks on domestic, regional and international rules of law, Canada has a unique opportunity to reclaim its leadership on the global stage. By embracing a new internationalism, Canada can strengthen its alliances with like-minded nations and set pathways for multilateralism and trade embedded in the protection of fundamental rights, including environmental human rights. This will not only reassert Canada’s historical role as a bridge-builder on the international stage but also enable us to lead in shaping a fairer, more cooperative world order amid shifting geopolitical dynamics. By David Suzuki, with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Quebec and Atlantic Canada Director General Sabaa Khan Read Online Share this story! Support the David Suzuki Foundation Your gift will help push for bold climate action, protect nature so it can sustain all life and create resilient communities that benefit everyone. Donate Today The David Suzuki Foundation is a registered charity in both Canada (BN 127756716RR0001) and the United States (94-3204049). We are located at 340-1122 Mainland Street, Vancouver, B.C., V6B 5L1, and we also have offices in Montreal and Toronto. Please visit our website for more information on how to contact us.

 

"Hypocritic oath" re Gaza (Judy Haiven's blog)

 

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Hypocritic Oath JUL 23   READ IN APP   Home About Topics July 23, 2025judyhaiven Edit Thanks for reading Judy Haiven’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribed For a second, you don’t notice. Then you do. A pretty girl, who looks startled, worried. She’s maybe 18 months old. She sits on her cot on the tidy red bedspread. Bandaged stumps above her knees. You look away. from Palestinewillbefree.substack.com here The next photo is just as shocking. A young boy, in absolute misery – terror and helplessness. Every day, at least ten children in Gaza lose one or both legs because of being bombed by the IDF. In the midst of the constant death horror, some smaller things, like stumps, fly under the radar. From Palestinewillbefree.substack.com, here In Gaza, more than 5,000 children have lost one or both legs because of Israel’s bombs, armed drones and shelling from tanks, in what Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, rector of Glasgow University and a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon calls the “biggest cohort of pediatric amputees in history.” Nidal Madi comforts his daughter Sila after she lost both legs in an airstrike (credit: Mohamed Solaimane) DARA doctors deny genocide But let’s jump back to Canada for a minute — what do the 555 doctors who proudly and publicly self-identify as Jewish, in DARA (Doctors against Racism and Antisemitism), have to say about this? As a reminder, these 555 Jewish doctors affiliated with the Temerty Faculty of Medicine (TFOM) at the University of Toronto, members of DARA, have pledged to guard against antisemitism, to ensure anyone that criticizes Israel will be punished, and want assurances that Jewish doctors should be able to work openly as Zionists. Of course, no one has ever stopped them from being open zionists. DARA’s founder or leader, Dr Phillip Berger, has publicly railed against the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, calling it “the epicentre of antisemitism at the University of Toronto.” DARA opposes academic boycotts of Israel and “racial or geopolitical bias” –which means criticism of Israel. According to Toronto Sun columnist Lorrie Goldstein, Jewish doctors in DARA “stand firm with Jewish faculty and learners who live in fear in the TFOM.” However, the silencing of doctors comes not from TFOM, but from DARA, which has worked to silence any Canadian doctors or health care workers who have criticized Israel for its genocide against the Palestinians. I’ve written several newsletters here, here and here about the disciplining and firing of some Ontario-based doctors such as Dr Yipeng Ge, and Dr Ben Thomson and even a fourth-year nursing student at the University of Manitoba. If 90% of DARA doctors are parents, can they imagine their children as amputees? My guess is that 90% or almost 500 of the 555 DARA doctors are parents themselves. Can any of them imagine their son or daughter lying in a bed, suffering with two amputations? Can any DARA doctor imagine living under a plastic sheet for almost two years, sleeping on the broken concrete surrounding a half-destroyed hospital – and being the target of a two-tonne bomb, or their families victims of a deadly firestorm created by attacks of Israel’s armed drones? Your son loses one or both legs. Your daughter is shot in the head by an IDF sniper. Today’s news is that each day, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) target a particular part of the Palestinians’ bodies – child or adult — such as the head, the legs, or the genitals. Dr Nick Maynard, who has served as a surgeon in Gaza for 15 years, says he and other doctors have observed clusters of similar injuries — head wounds one day, abdominal wounds the next — raising questions about the intent behind the shootings. Yesterday, Dr Maynard said, “[This] is beyond coincidence. The clustering of symptoms is what makes it so dramatic. And it is something that we at all levels — ER doctors, general surgeons, urology surgeons, neurosurgeons — have all recognized –this clustering of injuries.” Michael “Lefty” Morrill, the organizing director of New Hampshire Peace Action wrote that Dr Maynard describes “. . . a form of tactical mutilation; a macabre design in which civilian bodies become test beds for ballistic research. It is a forensic tableau, a pattern that unfolds like a grisly liturgy. Neurosurgeons prepare for a flood of cranial trauma. Then, as if on cue, it pivots. The intestines next. The genitals. The spine. This is not the fog of war. This is the calculus of cruelty.” Can one of the 555 Jewish doctors imagine his or her partner. or 12-year-old son (or grandson) walking for a day to get to the food distribution point, then to queue for hours for one 10 kg bag of flour and two tins of beans? Only to be killed, like 92 Palestinians on Sunday and over 1,000 Palestinians who have gathered to seek food aid since 1 June, by targeted IDF (and GHF) gunfire. On Twitter, one DARA pediatrician posted a cartoon of the Road Runner and the words “beep beep motherfucker” – lauding the Israelis for the exploding pagers which killed 12 and injured 2,800 – mainly in Lebanon last fall. How is it that a pediatrician, presumably someone who loves children– or at least wants to treat, cure and comfort children– can take such delight in the wanton injury to children, many of whom were victims of the pager blowups in Beirut? Indeed, two children died and scores were injured. Is there any humanitarian response to the genocide in Gaza by DARA or by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO)? Not at all. Everything is about THEM. Everything is about silencing the truth about Israel’s starving, bombing and incinerating Palestinians. Palestinians mourn their relatives killed from an Israeli army bombardment of Gaza, at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi) For example, The Canadian Medical Association publishes the Canadian Family Physician( CFP), a peer-reviewed medical journal. According to family physician Dr Michael Kalin whose interview in the Canadian Jewish Newswas published Monday: “Right before Shabbat, there was talk in our doctor’s group chat, our WhatsApp group, that there was this article that was published online at first called “The Day the Pagers Exploded.” … I looked it up online, and the article was submitted by a Lebanese physician in respect to a day that she was working in a clinic when she was caring for patients who were injured in the pager attack, which very clearly were Hezbollah patients, a recognized terrorist entity by the Government of Canada since 2002. This article talks about caring for these patients. At the end, she says something which I found extremely objectionable, where she says their stories should be heard about their resilience, denial, faith, indoctrination.” Dr Kalin was furious – in the interview he says he’s not upset with what Israel is doing, and the murders of likely more than 100,000 Palestinian civilians. He is upset that a “Lebanese physician” (code for an antisemite) published an article about caring for patient victims of the Pager blowups—some of whom may have been in Hizbollah. Kalin all but spits out, “We are talking about courageous Hezbollah fighters in a Canadian family medicine journal, and this has no place.” And that’s not all. A third of Ontario’s Jewish medical practitioners say they are considering leaving Canada because of what they call antisemitism in their field, according to a Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) survey in Dec. 2024. Though short on specifics on antisemitism, 31% of the 1,000 Canadian Jewish doctors, medical students, and residents surveyed by JMAO are thinking of abandoning the country! Before Oct 2023, only 1% said they wanted leave Canada. One doctor noted, “I feel I no longer belong in Canada and may need to flee,” Really? Flee Canada? For where? 540 dead Palestinian children for every dead Israeli child Do the 555 Jewish doctors in DARA dare to say that the shootings are acceptable because Israel has a right to defend itself – even against children and babies? That since perhaps a total of 37 Israeli children were taken hostage or killed on 7 Oct—that justifies Israel killing 20,000 children in the next 20 months. 540 dead Palestinian kids for every 1 Jewish child. Does that sound right? Why worry, as Gideon Levy a columnist at Haaretz noted sarcastically on the weekend, “No Jews were hurt.” That’s the key – not one Jew hurt (except for the brave 887 IDF soldiers sacrificed). Ask one of the 555 Jewish doctors. For a list, contact me. I wonder if even one would admit to Israel’s—the country whose military they defend right or wrong — genocide. Cartoon at the top: From Cradle to Grave is a Journey of a Day, by Joe Sacco (6-24). Thanks for reading Judy Haiven’s Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribed   RESTACK   © 2025 Judy Haiven Halifax, NS  from UK Guardian today: UN agency says staff fainting from hunger as starvation spreads in Gaza Israeli official says Hamas’s latest ceasefire proposal is workable as two sides prepare for talks mediated by Qatar   Middle East crisis – live updates William Christou in Jerusalem and Angela Giuffrida in Rome Thu 24 Jul 2025 16.27 BST The head of the UN agency for Palestinians has said its staff were fainting from hunger, as the starvation crisis in Gaza resulting from an Israeli blockade on most aid into the territory worsens. “People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) said in a post on X. At least 113 people have died of hunger in Gaza, 45 of them in the last four days. “This deepening crisis is affecting everyone, including those trying to save lives in the war-torn enclave … When caretakers cannot find enough to eat, the entire humanitarian system is collapsing,” Lazzarini said.