The term “sustainable” has been used by so many people in so many different contexts that it has lost much of its meaning. It has become a buzzword in political, economic and development circles. But it is not the excessive use of the word that has ultimately rendered it largely meaningless but the fact that too many efforts to achieve sustainable development do not seriously attempt to actually achieve sustainable development. It is too often suggested that we can simply incorporate more environmentally-friendly practices into our daily lives while only tinkering with our consumption habits in order to achieve sustainability. But this simply is not true. Each of us living in wealthy nations must massively, and I mean MASSIVELY, reduce our levels of material consumption if we are to achieve a sustainable ecological footprint. And this reality is the elephant that is too often ignored in discussions about sustainable development. Continue reading
Author Archives: Garry Leech
Correcting the Zionist Narrative of Israel
The Zionist narrative exists to justify the existence of the state of Israel. It is the narrative that dominates the perspectives of the US and Canadian governments as well as the mainstream media in North America. This narrative accepts as its starting point the right of a Jewish state to exist based on the fact that Jews lived in the biblical lands 2,000 years ago and that these lands belong to God’s chosen people: the Jews. But does this narrative reflect the truth? Or is it self-serving propaganda? After all, given this starting point, the inevitable outcome of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was the ‘cleansing’ of the existing Arab population in that region because a Jewish majority was required to make a Jewish state viable. Continue reading
Why Israel Should Not Exist
The creation of a Jewish state in the middle of the Arab world represents the continuation of European colonialism, in the form of settler colonialism, in Palestine and constitutes an apartheid system that has consisted of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by a rogue nation that has repeatedly violated international law. Given this reality, and the fact that Palestine is the Holy Land of three religions, the only just solution to the Zionist project of the Israeli state and its Western backers is the establishment of a single country: a democratic secular state of Palestine in which Jews, Arabs and Christians all have equal rights. Continue reading
Thanks to Stephen Harper, ‘Canada No Good!’
Walking through the old city of Nablus in the West Bank last week, I encountered a Palestinian man who worked as a tailor in the small store situated in his family’s home. We struck up a conversation. “Where are you from?” he asked me. “Canada,” I replied. Shaking his head from side to side, he stated, “Oh, Canada no good!”
The next day I was riding in a taxi in the city of Ramallah, which is the Palestinian capital of the West Bank and seat of the Palestinian Authority government. The driver asked me where I was from. Again I replied, “Canada.” He raised his index finger in the air and while moving it side to side declared, “Canada no good!” Continue reading
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“A gripping tale of savagery and terror, but also of tenderness, compassion, and renewal.” —Noam Chomsky
Garry Leech 