Iran In Latin America!

In this article, Obama has just signed a bill, passed by congress, to counter Iranian influence in Latin America. Although the official text of the bill is secret, one piece of this article sums up the validity and aim of this bill: "senior State Department and intelligence officials have indicated there is no apparent indication of illicit activities by Iran". That quote, along with the bills aim of bolstering security and surveillance at the Mexican and Canadian borders, and within Latin American countries, the text provides for a multi-agency action plan to provide security in those countries, along with a "counterterrorism and counter-radicalisation plan to isolate Iran and its allies", gives the impression that this bill is simply more veiled attempts at increasing domestic surveillance and spying in the American homeland, and increasing militarisation of Latin America under the auspices of global security. We should be reminded by the lessons of history that this is simply not the case, as the decades-long drug war and it's legacy of death, destruction, and rampant human rights violations has taught us.

Policy of a Sheep

Back in April, I had posted here about the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, or MEK, being trained on US soil for insurgency operations aimed at destabilizing Iran. Last week, Stephen Harper's Conservative government dropped the MEK from it's official list of terrorist groups. This is one more step the Harper administration has taken to align itself with a US and Israeli approach to foreign policy concerning the Middle East; a policy that is increasingly hostile to Iran, intent on blocking any Palestinian attempts at a Two-State Solution, and complicit in war crimes committed by Israel. Look at the facts:

-Canada recently severed diplomatic ties by closing it's embassy in Tehran, and expelling Iranian diplomatic staff from Ottawa.
-Canada supported Israeli military action against the Gaza strip during Operation Pillar of Defense (which could have been avoided altogether).
-Canada voted against a UN resolution to upgrade Palestine to non-member observer state status in the United Nations. Canada was joined in the dissenting votes by the United States, Israel, the Czech Republic, and the powerful nations of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Panama. One hundred and thirty-eight nations voted for the measure.

These policies have been a large divergence from the traditional peace-keeping, friendly role that Canada has played in world security, and instead now Harper has taken us on a path aligned with an aggressive, neo-liberal policy perpetrated by the United States.