Paying a Tithe to US Imperialism — The F-35 Boondoggle FT. Tamara Lorincz

All the people who work on The Red Review live and work on stolen Indigenous lands across Turtle Island. There can be no reconciliation without restitution, which includes Land Back, RCMP off Indigenous land, and seizing the assets of the major resource corporations and returning them to the commons.

In December 2022, the Canadian government announced its intention to award Lockheed Martin a contract to supply Canada with 88 F-35 fighter jets. Projected life-time costs currently stand at over $77 billion CAD, making this the second largest procurement in Canadian history.

Is this the latest escalation in the new cold war with Russia and China? Or is maybe Canada already at war with Russia?

We asked Tamara Lorincz, a fellow of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute and organizer with the No Fighter Jets Coalition, this question and more. From the purchase of nuclear-armed war planes, to the supposed Chinese 'spy' balloon, and all the way to the Russia-Ukraine war, Emily and Daniel discuss with Tamara what this all means for the international working class and the prospect for peace. 

Tamara Lorincz and Socialist Action are both members of the No Fighter Jets Coalition and the Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network, which are organizing a weekend of action between Feb. 24-26. Resources and information below.

Stop the War, Stop NATO International Weekend of Action – February 23-26, 2023

• Register for the "No to War, No to NATO: North American perspectives on Ukraine, Russia, and NATO" webinar on Feb. 19 here: http://bit.ly/3JYvqVh
•  Learn about local events to Stop the War, Stop NATO here: http://bit.ly/40LxKoo

Resources on Canadian Procurement of Fighter Jets

• Read the new 48-page report "Soaring: The Harms and Risks of Fighter Jets and Why Canada Must Not Buy a New Fleet" published by Women's International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF) Canada.

Organizations

• Website: Canadian Foreign Policy Institute
• Website: Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
• Website: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
• Website: The Canadian Pugwash Group
• Website: No to NATO Network
• Website: No Fighter Jets
• Website: Canada-Wide Peace and Justice Network

SIGN THE PETITIONS:

PETITION: NO NEW FIGHTER JETS

Please sign & share our parliamentary petition and to tell the Trudeau government to #DropTheF35Deal: https://bit.ly/3Jvrawb  

PETITION: APPEAL FOR PEACE: End the war in Ukraine, the world wants peace.

Target: National governments, the Commission of the European Union, members of the European Parliament, UN Secretary General, further responsible persons in Europe, the USA and Canada, and the global interested public: http://bit.ly/3jM82zB

Transcript

Emily Steers  
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of The Red Review: a podcast hosted by Socialist Action. I am one of your hosts Emily and I reside in the traditional territories of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, and neutral peoples known as Guelph.

Daniel Tarade  
And hi comrades happy revolutionary new year Daniel here, he/they pronouns, and I'm coming to you from Tkaronto the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. All people that work with Socialist Action, live and work on stolen indigenous land from across Turtle Island. So we echo the call of Land Back and we demand that there can be no reconciliation without restitution, which includes seizing the assets of the major resource developers and returning them to the commons.

Emily Steers  
Today we are delighted to be interviewing Tamara Lorincz, who is a friend of the podcast and friend of Socialist Action and is one of the biggest voices in the Canadian anti-war movement. We are so honored to have her here to talk about the state of peace and war and conflict and how this all connects to our work as Revolutionary Socialists.

Daniel Tarade  
First, let's hear from our sponsor, the only Corporation brave enough to sponsor this in depth interview on killer fighter jets.

Comrade Helen
This month our Red Review podcast is not sponsored by the Royal Bank of Canada. Despite CEO Dave McKay's claim that RBC is leading the way in business disinvestment in fossil fuel companies and on the way to net zero McKay is accused of greenwashing his corporation's massive and ongoing investments in the polluting industries. While Dave McKay was receiving his second "Business Leader of the Year" Award at the Ivy business school in 2022, he was dubbed Climate Villain of the Year by protesters outside the Ritz Carlton Hotel. As Greenpeace, indigenous groups, and other groups representing 2 million people have pointed out in an open letter, the Royal Bank profits from its $263 billion in fossil fuel investments, including the Coastal GasLink pipeline, which violates the Wet'suwet'en people's sovereignty over their own land. While RBC made shameful claims of reaching its climate emissions targets by 2030, simultaneously, the Canadian Competition Bureau is investigating the company for greenwashing, the reality of its business operations. According to Greenpeace, RBC is the fifth largest financier of fossil fuels globally and would require a 50% absolute emissions reduction to come in line with target set under the Paris accord. Dave McKay holds degrees in mathematics, and it might be said that his major must have been in simple addition as he adds to his $15.5 million pay package, while his failing must have been in subtraction as he fails to reduce RBC's fossil fuel investment. As environmental protesters have pointed out McKay is all talk and no action.

Emily Steers  
So a little bit of a précis before Tamara joins us: Tamara has been talking a lot over the last few years about the "No Fighter Jets" movement. Beginning in July of 2020, Canada has advanced its plan to purchase 88 new fighter jets. The sticker price for a new fleet of these nuclear-armed death machines is $19 billion Canadian with another $58 billion Canadian projected for operation and maintenance over the lifespan of these weapons. To put this in perspective that $19 billion Canadian amounts to the second largest procurement in Canadian history.

Daniel Tarade  
While people and politicians have been talking about the fighter jets for quite some time and the campaign against purchasing these new fighter jets has been going on just as long. We saw some of the ambiguity clearing in late December of 2022 when defense minister Anita Anand announced that a contract with Lockheed Martin which manufactures the F35 fighter jet quote, "...will be concluded in the very short term with assets to arrive soon as possible," end quote. It was only two days later, a leak revealed that the federal government actually already approved $7 billion to be spent on the initial order of 16 F35 jets, which is not unusual. Most countries buy their F35 jets in phases. That $7 billion will also include other startup costs, which includes the construction of new facilities.

Emily Steers  
So we've said that this is the second biggest procurement in Canadian history. The largest was the national shipbuilding strategy launched in 2010, which involves the quote "renewal of Canada's federal fleet of combat and non combat vessels for the Canadian Navy and the Coast Guard."

Daniel Tarade  
It may shock you to hear that the building of new warships involves the Canadian government throwing billions of your tax dollars to two privately owned shipyards and the shipyard tasked with building the new warships is Irving Shipbuilding Incorporated based in Halifax Nova Scotia. Yes, it is that Irving family. The same family that essentially owns all of the industry and media in New Brunswick. If you thought we can get through this episode without name dropping our favorite oligarch family, you are wrong.

Emily Steers  
They pop up absolutely everywhere, don't they? Both the national shipbuilding strategy and the recent purchase of new fighter jets signifies the continued buildup of this new cold war with China and Russia. Our ruling class spouts lies about needing to defend Canadian sovereignty but there remains no bigger threat to life on Earth than the United States, which remains the only nation to ever deploy nuclear weapons in war, the biggest military in the history of our planet. Most people prefer that funding were to go towards health care and housing rather than war. But our elected representatives do not represent us. They represent the capitalist class, which derives massive amounts of wealth from imperialist expansion,

Daniel Tarade  
Case in point, there's not a single mass party in Canada willing to touch the issue of fighter jets with a 10 foot pole. Indeed, the only labour party in either the US or Canada, the NDP, boasts a particularly unsavory history of critiquing defense expenditure as being too low. Cough cough, former NDP MP Randall Garrison, who said in 2017, that quote, "the money the Liberal government is proposing will not keep pace with the rate of inflation," and then asked "how do you expect the military to keep pace with operations when they have no new real dollars in their budget?" end quote. That's the track record of the NDP on military. They want more money.

Emily Steers  
Wouldn't it be nice if anyone in government was planning on doing anything meaningful about us managing to keep pace with the rate of inflation when we have no new real dollars in our budgets?

Daniel Tarade  
In the run up to the 2021 federal election, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, which boasts friends of the podcasts like Yves Engler Tamara Lorincz as fellows, sent a survey to all the federal parties running in the election. And to their credit, the NDP was only the second party to respond following the Canadian Communist Party, but their answers to the survey didn't offer any comfort.

Emily Steers  
Yeah. When asked if the government's focus on NATO or NORAD, Five Eyes and the Haiti Core Group would change if the NDP were elected, they replied, it would remain the same. The NDP today, which is kind of this right leaning Social Democratic leadership continues to support a kinder, more gentle made-in-Canada fleet of killer war jets. In a press release on March 28 2022, the NDP National Defense critic Lindsey Matheson said, "Canada's men and women in the armed forces deserve the best equipment and support possible to carry out the difficult and dangerous work we've asked them to do." So there's no objection to buying new weapons of war, but the New Democrats, quote, "have called on the government to use a made in Canada approach to replacing our aging fighter jets." This is the definition of imperialism when the NDP fights for better working conditions for workers in Canada and fights for state of the art war jets to bomb children and workers in super exploited neo-colonies.

Daniel Tarade  
Yeah, it's a bit odd. For as long as the Canadian government has been announcing its intention of buying new fighter jets, there has been a coalition, the "No Fighter Jets" coalition that has protested this at every turn by holding rallies and protests, distributing petitions and directly confronting our politicians to their face and demanding that they stop lying about this need for new fighter jets. Tamara Lorincz has worked tirelessly with this coalition and Socialist A ction is also a proud member of the "No Fighter Jets" coalition.

Emily Steers  
If you don't know Tamara she is a phenomenal activist. She is a friend of the podcast and she is a vocal activist about the struggle against Canadian imperialism and an advocate for demilitarization and peace. Tamara is a PhD candidate in global governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. She also has a master's degree in international politics and Security Studies from the University of Bradford and a law degree and MBA specializing in environmental law and management from Dalhousie University. She is a member of the Canadian voice of women for peace, the Women's International League for peace and freedom, the Canadian Pugwash group and the No to NATO network. She is also on the International Advisory Council of world beyond war and the global network against weapons and nuclear power in space. 

Daniel Tarade  
Welcome Tamara.

Emily Steers  
Welcome Tamara.

Tamara Lorincz  
Thank you very much for having me.

Daniel Tarade  
Absolutely. It's always a pleasure. And the last time we spoke with you, it was before this most recent announcement that the F-35 was going to be the jet that the Canadian government was going to purchase. So let's just start with the immediate struggle against Canadian militarism. Peace activists from coast to coast are drawing a line in the sand. Canada does not need to buy any more fighter jets. In your opinion, why should every Canadian that belongs to the working and oppressed classes oppose this procurement that the government is planning?

Tamara Lorincz  
There are so many reasons why Canadians need to oppose Canada's procurement of a new fleet of fighter jets. We are buying fighter jets for fighting. And that's something that we need to stop doing. And that's really fundamental, you know, to our opposition to this, what the new fighter jets represent is this continued pursuit of war and militarism and imperialism. And this is why, you know, we have struggled not just for the past three years for the past 13 years, when the previous Conservative government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced in his defense strategy that Canada was going to buy fighter jets, and he wanted to buy the F-35s. And so we've been struggling against this purchase since 2010, trying to say we need a totally different direction for Canadian foreign policy. And we need to reimagine what defense means what security means. And the fighter jets here represents a 20th century conception of defence and security. It's for the Cold War, it's for continued armed conflict. And then of course, the other thing is, it locks us into carbon intensive militarism because they're fossil fuel powered. And we need to decarbonize really rapidly to try to meet the Paris Agreement targets. We have tried to put forward the array of reasons why buying any fighter jets is a bad decision. But we've also been very well aware of the fact that for the past 25 years, the Canadian government has been part of a consortium of countries led by the United States on the development of the Lockheed Martin F 35, Joint Strike Fighter stealth fighter jet. We make annual payments of approximately $50 to $100 million a year to be part of this Development Consortium. And the combined annual payments that we've made have amounted to about a billion dollars. This amount of money that we've spent because I tallied this, I looked to see all of the payments that the Canadian government has made to be part of this F-35 development program versus how much the federal government has spent for the Department of Women. It was previously called the Status of Women department. And now it's called the Women and Gender Equality department. The Canadian government for the past 25 years has spent more developing an American fighter jet than it has spent on the Canadian Women's department. We have known all along that the federal government was going to announce its intention to buy the F 35. And when the Trudeau Government announced in 2020, that it was going to launch a competition for a new fleet of fighter jets, and in the running was the Lockheed Martin F 35, the Saab Gripen and the Super Hornet we knew that it was just a sham, this competition was just a sham. And that, you know, the decision was really already made on the F 35. And we've been following the development of the F 35 for the past 13 years. And we know that this war plane is a really bad war plane. It's not been developed very well. It's not been manufactured very well. It's a really bad investment. If you're somebody that wants to buy fighter jets, the F 35 would be the last one that you would buy because it's so riddled with problems. And you know, Daniel, I could take a minute to just explain some of the problems. We're buying this F-35. Last year, the US Government Accountability Office released two reports. The first report showed that the F-35 still has over 800 open deficiencies, there are many technical manufacturing problems, there are problems with the lack of spare parts. There's problems with the logistics, with the weapon systems, with the pilot helmet, with the controls, every aspect of this plane continues to have problems, the extent of the problems is so vast that the US government cannot issue approval for the F 35 to go into full rate production. 

Daniel Tarade  
Wow. 

Tamara Lorincz  
It's still in development mode. And in fact, there's only about 40% of these F 35s that are being manufactured are considered fully mission capable. So very few of them are even, you know, built for purpose. And then the other report that the US Government Accountability Office released was on the engine. So these fighter jets only have one engine. Most fighter jets have two engines. The current Canadian fleet of CF-18s have two engines and only having one engine is really risky. And it's especially risky and dangerous, you know, flying in the Arctic, where there's very little infrastructure or runways or you know, help. But these Pratt & Whitney engines are so bad that most of the planes that are being built that are coming off the line, don't even have an engine ready for them. They're not expecting these engines to be ready until 2030. The problems are so bad that the US House Armed Services Committee also held a hearing last year with a member from the US Government Accountability Office and the US Department of Defense, asking questions about all of these problems. And in fact, some of the members of this committee are inquiring about the possibility of terminating the F 35 program because it's so bad. And these members have described the F 35 program as a "rat hole" as a "debacle" as a "boondoggle". So all of these problems are very well known. They're known to the Trudeau Government. They're known to the Canadian Department of National Defense, but still our government is buying these fighter jets. So we have to ask ourselves, what is really the reason why we're buying these fighter jets and for us in the anti-war movement, and with the "no fighter jets" coalition, we think buying the F 35 is the price that we are paying to stay a member of NATO and to stay in the defence partnership with the United States NORAD.

Daniel Tarade  
So we have to essentially give billions of dollars to something we know is not going to be great, just as a- as a tithe almost to the church that is American imperialism.

Tamara Lorincz  
Yeah, to militarism. And just to add to what you said in your opening segment, this is the second largest federal procurement in Canadian history, the plan right now is to have the first lot, 16 fighter jets for $7 billion dollars. And then over the next eight years, this crucial period where we need to rapidly decarbonize to meet the Paris agreement by 2030, Canada is going to be buying the remaining 88 fighter jets, and that the lifecycle cost is going to be at least $70 billion dollars. But right now, the Canadian Parliamentary Budget Office has sent a letter to the defense minister, Anita Anand, and to the department requesting the contract, all of the documentation about these fighter jets because we are certain that the PBO is going to do an economic analysis about this procurement and show that the costs are going to be astronomical even more than $70 billion. The other thing that our coalition has done is we've looked at the opportunity costs of Canada investing in a new fleet of fossil fuel powered fighter jets that have this lifecycle cost of $70 billion, and that will be used over the next 30 to 50 years, and what Canada could instead be investing in. We could be building state of the art healthcare complexes, awesome hospitals that are desperately needed, health clinics in indigenous communities, sports facilities for communities and for youth, high speed rail that we don't even have one kilometer of in this country, more investment in public transit, and especially in affordable housing. We have an affordability crisis, we have a homelessness crisis in this country, more encampments in our cities. And we could instead be investing in green affordable housing all across the country, instead of buying fighter jets that are really just going to enrich Lockheed Martin, the largest weapons manufacturer in the world.

Daniel Tarade  
Yeah, that's the one person that's going to do very well or the one group of people that's going to do very well in this deal regardless, the shareholders and Lockheed Martin,

Emily Steers  
I'm finding it very interesting. It doesn't matter what side of the argument you're on like, if you're in the military, if you support the military, or if you're an anti war activist by any metric, the F 35s are a absolutely terrible purchase. And it's interesting to hear it, there's so much more going on behind the scenes that is not at all the message that's being sold to Canadians, you know, this is this is being billed as something to keep us safe to keep our country safe to protect our national interest, blah, blah, blah. So F35s or not, we know that it is going to be the F 35s. But why do we need to purchase fighter jets in order to keep us safe? And whose safety are we talking about here?

Tamara Lorincz  
These fighter jets, the F 35. These are stealth fighters that are for first strike attacks. So they're not defensive planes. And if we look at the history of Canada's current fleet of fighter jets, the CF-18s and we look to see what they've been doing over the past 25 years. Well, we see that in the late 1990s. The Canadian CF-18s were used to bomb the former Yugoslavia in 1999, which was an illegal NATO operation, Canadian fighter jets were used to bomb Libya. In fact, it was Canada that led the NATO bombing of Libya. It was Lieutenant General named Charles Bouchard, who led that bombing campaign. And then when he retired from the military two years later, he became head of Lockheed Martin Canada and started lobbying the Canadian government to buy the F 35s. And then we had our CF-18s being used to bomb Syria and Iraq from 2014 to 2016. Over the past five years, Canadian fighter jets have been positioned in Romania and in Poland and in Germany, and they're doing air policing missions up and down Russia's border. And they've been doing that for the past five years, which has been really provocative towards Russia. And it's something that Russia has really opposed. The other thing that's important to remember is that these F 35s have been designed to carry a nuclear weapon called the B61-12. It's a smaller tactical, laser guided nuclear weapon, but it packs a massive punch. It's just as terrible as the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you look at the US nuclear posture review under the Obama administration in 2010, under the Trump administration in 2018, and in the Biden administration, the review that came out last year, you will see that the F 35, features prominently in the nuclear weapons architecture of the United States. And so our coalition is very concerned that Canada's fleet of F 35s could be used to carry American B 61-12s, if they're in the European theater, and they just might be used. And so that would violate Canada's commitment under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty that was signed by Canada, Canada was one of the first parties to that treaty in about 1968. So we would violate that. And then of course, it escalates the nuclear threat that we're already under. Another important point about the F 35s to consider is that these fighter jets are designed for first strike attack, right? And our so called enemies that we're constantly told by the media, and by our government, is Russia and China. But the F 35 only has a flying range of 2200 kilometers. So it can't fly over the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Arctic without refueling or without flying alongside an aerial refueler. These are really big tankers. They're kind of like gas stations, but in the sky. And so it negates the stealth characteristic of these planes because you see these planes flying along these big tankers across the ocean, you know, supposedly going to bomb another country, we need to question why we would even make a decision to bomb another country. Why are we investing in these war planes that require a tremendous amount of fuel that are polluting our atmosphere that are exacerbating the climate crisis? You know, we need to have a full and honest discussion about this. Now we asked every single member of the House of Commons committee on national defense and every single member of the Senate Committee on national security and defense two years in a row and 2021 and in 2022. We sent them packages with information and a big formal letter asking them to do a comprehensive review of this procurement and we included this report that we did you know, comprehensive 48 page report called "SOARING: The Harms and Risks Of Fighter Jets and Why Canada Must Not Buy a New Fleet" It's on our website, nofighterjets.ca. We sent copies of this along with other material to every single member of these committees. And we said, do a study, do a study, look at the climate impacts, look at the environmental assessment, do a gender based analysis, do a public health study because these F 35s are even louder than our current fleet of CF18s, and they fly over indigenous communities. That's a really important issue that we haven't got to either that I hope that we can address before the show ends. We asked to do a fiscal and economic analysis of the fighter jets and an opportunities cost and we didn't get a reply from any committee member and no one in Parliament has asked the critical questions, has called for a study, has called for real investigation of this purchase. So our elected officials are really failing Canadians on this purchase.

Daniel Tarade  
It seems again, from the opportunity cost to just the inherent destructive nature of these fighter jets that it's not going to help the vast majority of people. It's only a small number of people that will be further enriched by this. And it is shameful then that our elected officials aren't doing their due diligence and actually asking who is this going to help and who is it not and it seems like it's just being rubber stamp through. We mentioned at the top that buying new fighter jets building the new warships in Halifax, all of this is a really ominous black cloud in the Cold War between the American led Imperial corps on one side and China and Russia on the other side, but some point to the Ukraine-Russia war as evidence that this Cold War it has already turned hot. So it's probably fair to ask at this point: is Canada at war right now with Russia?

Tamara Lorincz  
So don't take it from me. One of the most preeminent economists in the world, an American economist named Jeffrey Sachs has claimed in a number of high profile speeches that he's given across Europe that the United States is at war with Russia, and that makes us at war with Russia. And in 2019, one of the top scholars on US-Russia relations, an expert on Soviet and Russian history and in US foreign policy, Stephen F. Cohen. He was a longtime professor at Columbia University. He spoke and read Russian, he went to Russia throughout his life. The last book that he published before he died in 2019, was a book called War with Russia question mark from Trump to Russia gate and Putin and Ukraine. And he made the argument that over the past 15 years, US foreign policy towards Russia has really been a plan for war with Russia. You know, what the United States and Canada and other NATO countries did in terms of stoking the Maidan protests in 2013 and 2014. And then orchestrating the coup against the Yanukovych government in 2014. And then arming and training for the past eight years, a very violent ultra-nationalist National Guard, the security forces in Ukraine that have been shooting and shelling into the Donbas, the Russian speaking minority in south and eastern Ukraine, and trying to draw Russia in into a war. And then, of course, the unprecedented pernicious sanctions against Russia. It's a form of economic war. And then, of course, we have this information war constantly portraying Russia over the past 15 years as an enemy, as an adversary, in NATO documents like the latest strategic concept. And the one previously, Russia is always considered the top threat. And what's very concerning is in this past strategic concept that was announced at the Madrid summit last June, China was also listed as a threat. And you can see, I mean, Jens Stoltenberg was addressed in Asia, just before he went to Washington this week, he was just in Asia, just in Japan, you know, meeting with Asian leaders to try to drum up support. And, you know, this comes at the time where the United States is expanding its military presence in Asia with new bases in the Philippines. We've got American bases encircling China, and they've been encircling Russia. And this has been taking place over the past 15 years. Putin asked many times NATO, you know, before the invasion in 2014, what is your intention here? What is your intention? And now we see you know, what's going on. We see this war that NATO is prosecuting and prolonging, NATO wanted this war they never engaged in diplomacy in 2014. And now we see the same thing happen that NATO has done against Russia, what is being done against China, and it's extremely dangerous. It's extremely dangerous, and it needs to be resisted, and we desperately need to build a bigger anti war and peace movement in this country.

Emily Steers  
Absolutely. As you are no doubt well aware, this is a difficult thing to talk about right now, because the public perception of the Russia and Ukraine war is that Ukraine is defending itself against the Russian aggressor. What do you say to the people who point at the crisis in Ukraine and say that this, you know, clearly denotes the ongoing need for NATO and for fully armed military to oppose these violent tyrants

Tamara Lorincz  
NATO expansion over the past 25 years with the first tranche and about 1999 with Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic then in 2004, you know, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia. And then in 2008, the Bucharest Summit, NATO announced in its declaration that it was going to welcome Ukraine and Georgia as part of NATO, even though even though Putin was at that Bucharest summit in Romania, he was there. And he'd said, you know, many times NATO expansion is a red line, especially should Ukraine and Georgia and at the time, Ukraine had neutrality as part of its constitution. There are only 30 countries in the world that are part of NATO, you know, Canada, the United States and the European countries, most of the planet is not part of NATO. And there are many countries in Europe, like Austria and Finland and Sweden and Ireland, for instance, that are not aligned that are neutral. And Ukraine was as well. And all that needed to happen was for the NATO countries to respect Ukraine's neutrality, respect Russia's own security needs, and not try to bring Ukraine into NATO. But NATO was pushing expansion and basically made Ukraine over the past eight years, a de facto member of NATO. So from 2015, Canada started arming and training Ukrainian security forces under Operation Unifier in 2017, we lifted the restrictions for arms exports to Ukraine, we started building a permanent military structure presence in the country, even though we've made assurances that we weren't going to do this. And then, of course, Canada's leading a battle group in Latvia. And now we're going to expand it to a brigade in Latvia, we've got to look at this progression of militarism, this NATO expansion in the region and how provocative and dangerous it was to Russia. That's one part of it. The other part of it that's really important to know, is these Ukrainian security forces that we were arming and training after the coup in 2014 were shooting and shelling into the Donbas into the eastern and southern part of Ukraine. That's the Russian speaking minority killing and injuring people, destroying civilian infrastructure. Our presence in Ukraine, what we've been doing in Ukraine, you know, since the coup in 2014, has been to stoke a civil conflict, has been also to stoke this conflict with Russia. Before the invasion, Russia made it very clear in a peace proposal in December 2021, saying, please, let's negotiate. Please do not proceed with this military escalation with this aggression. Please, let's use diplomacy and talk this out. But do you know that Canadian diplomats did not meet once with Russian counterparts there was an open invitation by Moscow for Canadian officials to come to Moscow to meet and to talk about this escalating crisis with NATO. But Canada refused to go to Moscow. And then the Russian said, we'll go to Ottawa let's talk about this. The US and Canada refused to engage in diplomacy. Instead, in January of 2022, we sent special forces, an electronic warfare unit, and warships to the region. And we know now from New York Times investigation that Canadian Special Forces are in Ukraine, helping Ukraine you know, with this war. Canadians need to be honest about our role in this conflict over the past many years and this is something that our elected officials refused to address. They say that this conflict started on February 24 of last year. It did not. It started much earlier, you know, with the protests that we stoked, and with the coup that we helped orchestrate.

Daniel Tarade  
You mentioned some of the very aggressive overtures of NATO flying jets right along the Russian border. If you want an example of how crucial securing airspace is, you just have to look at the recent spy balloon debacle in the United States to see how countries respond to any perceived encroachment on airspace and border. So just speaking a little bit more broadly than about, you know, that spy balloon in the United States. What does that signify about the broader cold war with China and the same escalation and manufacturing of consent for maybe one day open warfare with China?

Tamara Lorincz  
 I think we need to understand this balloon incident in this broader context. Just before the biodiversity conference that Canada was co leading with China in December in Montreal, a week before Canada released its Indo Pacific strategy. That is a very aggressive plan towards China. It called China a disruptive power, a very aggressive posture towards China. So that came out just a couple of months ago. And now we've got our Foreign Minister Melanie Joly in India, right, this Indo Pacific strategy, Canada and the United States are trying to center India in the region over China. And this Indo Pacific strategy also aligns with the US command structure, the United States has the Indo Pacific Command, they are trying to de-center China, they're trying to reduce China's influence in the region. They're trying to constrain and contain China, militarily and economically, because they don't want China to be they call this a "peer competitor" with the United States, with the West. And so we are using everything we've got against China right now. Anything that we can use to portray China negatively, it's what's happening. So this balloon incident, China said it was a weather balloon. This isn't something to be so belligerent about or, you know, thinking that this is a spy plane or something, you know, let's deal with this diplomatically. And at the same time, you know, Canadians should have been asking more questions about the spy plane that we sent to Haiti at the exact same time, more questions should be asked about what Canada is doing in Haiti, and why Canada is so aggressive towards China and why peace and diplomacy aren't on the table? Why do we just try to have this negative relationship with Russia and China? You know, why can't we try to build peace and try to get along internationally, you know?

Emily Steers  
Amen to that. In that vein, among many groups on the anti imperialist left, we have a common demand, where we say negotiate, don't escalate. What does this mean? I think we've talked about it a bit already. But can you elaborate a bit on what that means? And how can Canada push for negotiation where we've seen that a lot of what we've been involved in has just been escalating the conflict.

Tamara Lorincz  
What Canada and the other NATO countries are doing are escalating the conflict. Canada, the United States, the Germans are sending tanks. President Zelenskyy is in Britain right now. And he's just met with the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and he said that the UK is going to help Ukraine get fighter jets, and train Ukrainian pilots to fly these planes. So we're looking at more and more escalation. We need to have elected officials in the House of Commons calling for de-escalation and diplomacy. And we see countries like Mexico and Egypt and Turkey that have said we are willing to engage and to help lead a peace process. On Monday at the UN General Assembly, the Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, you know, we're sleepwalking into a wider war, we need to get serious about peace and diplomacy and adhere to the UN Charter. The United Nations has been totally sidelined on this. I think that the Secretary General and his office should really be doing more to push for negotiations and resolution. And, you know, the world desperately needs peace. We can't risk a nuclear escalation. This conflict is causing all of our countries to suffer in all different types of ways with more inflation in the African countries. I was just in Egypt for COP 27 in November, and you know, they're struggling with a food insecurity, you know, desperate need for grain and fertilizers from both Ukraine and Russia. But there are sanctions, of course, on Russia as well and it's more difficult for countries that are dependent on Russian wheat and Russian agricultural supplies to have access. So one other important thing is we can't achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, you know, for poverty reduction, to protect our oceans and our forests and for gender equality, all of these beautiful goals, we cannot achieve them by 2030 if this war continues, because so much money is being diverted into this war and into militarism. There's been a huge increase to military spending in Canada with the other NATO countries. And it's just going to get worse, we've got to stop this war, we've got to stop this militarism, no fighter jets, investing in the sustainable development goals and in climate action, so that we have a safe future for ourselves and for our children.

Daniel Tarade  
Absolutely. And you put it so beautifully. And yet, despite the very poignant demands for diplomacy, international diplomacy, recognizing that it's going to help all of us no country benefits from war, except for the highest class and each of those respective countries, but all the lower classes, the masses of people in every country at war suffer regardless of which side they're on. And yet, despite the logic behind diplomacy, we see a lot of red baiting. And one of our comrades recently published a letter to the Hamilton Spectator in response to some very blatant red baiting published in the newspaper around the call to cancel this procurement of fighter jets. So we see people and organizations maligned repeatedly in the mainstream media for demanding negotiations and diplomacy, rather than continued war. And some of the attacks are, you know, you get called a tanky, you get called a troll, you get called Putin's useful idiots, or you get called a communist. And notwithstanding those who take no issue with the label of commie and actually wear the label of pride, how do you respond to these attacks, that by pushing for diplomacy that you're just a tanky, or a troll or one of Putin's useful idiots?

Tamara Lorincz  
Well, I'm not going to accept it. I went to Russia in November. And when I was in Ottawa, last week, I sent a letter to the Russian embassy, and I asked for a meeting with Ambassador Oleg Stepanov, I also sent a letter to the Ukraine embassy and asked for a meeting as well with the ambassador, but I got rejected, I am not going to accept that Russia is our enemy, I am not going to accept this new Cold War and an arms race because this impedes this blocks progress that we desperately need. On dealing with the climate crisis and the sustainable development goals. We need international cooperation, we need to build peace. So I am going to take it upon myself to engage in People to People diplomacy, or civilian diplomacy, and talk with the Russians. If my government won't do it, I will do it. So in November, I went to Russia for my first time, it's an absolutely incredibly beautiful country. The people are very nice. It is extremely modern, it has incredible high speed rail, that Canada doesn't even have one kilometer of. I wanted to meet with Russians, I want to get to know them, because the best way to disarm a so called enemy is to make him or her a friend. And so I wanted to go to that country to learn more about it to make friends. I went throughout the region, to Finland, to Latvia to Poland and to Romania to look at NATO expansion in the region and the impact that it's having also to talk to people about the impacts of climate change, and then also to find ways to build peace. I just think to myself, you know, I was in Riga in Latvia, where Canada has its camp Ādaži its big base there, where it's leading a NATO battle group. And it's totally decimated the forest. And when I was there, I had my sign that I held outside that said no to NATO, yes to peace and cooperation. And I took this banner, and I held it outside of the Canadian Embassy offices in every single country that I was in, I held it outside. And I met with people and I told them that I'm refusing to accept this, the narrative that Russia is an enemy, I am going to do what I can to try to stop this war and to try to build peace. Because if you're serious about these global challenges that we're facing, with the climate emergency, the ocean emergency that we have the poverty and inequality crisis around the world, it is going to require us using diplomacy and cooperating with China and with Russia, because we actually have a lot to learn from these countries. Russia lifted 40 million people out of poverty, and you can see it, it's incredible what they have achieved in the past 20 years. And China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and they are doing some fantastic things with their education with public transit. Let's end the fighting and let's start collaborating and learning all of the wonderful things about each other's countries, because quite honestly, I can't wait to go back to Russia. And I can't wait to visit my friends in Ukraine as well. 

Emily Steers  
That is so utterly beautiful to hear. And I think you are such a model of humanity and compassion for all of us. And I hope that people listening right now feel just as inspired by your passion and your humanity for everyone. And you're absolutely right, it is by making connections and building solidarity that we are going to make progress as people as a species. War is not useful in growing and realizing our potential. So you've been amplifying this message of stop the war all over the place, as you say, like going to military bases overseas, which is amazing. Also, you're very well known here within the Canadian state as a disrupter. You've recently amplified this message of stop the war by disrupting an event titled defending democracy hosted at Toronto Metropolitan University, where the Minister of Defense and Anita Anand spoke at along with Yves Engler and Dimitri Lascaris. I see you as one of the eminent peace activists who are courageous enough to call out politicians to their face. And so what is the role for disruption for those of us in the broader peace movement?

Tamara Lorincz  
Just to preface by saying that disruption is when you've got no other option often, like in the case of the defense minister, and Anita Anand, we went to her office several times with a letter in hand, and we gave it to her staff and we said, we would like to have a meeting. We don't want Canada to buy fighter jets. We don't want Canada to escalate and send weapons to Ukraine, we want you to use diplomacy. So we did that several times. And you know, she doesn't meet with us, she doesn't reply to our letters. And you know, what we're seeing is Canada escalating this terrible war. And then on top of that too, the government is using this false narrative that we're in Ukraine, trying to help Ukraine preserve its democracy and freedom and sovereignty. Anytime a country says that they're fighting a war for democracy. I mean, you know that that's a blatant lie. And I always think about this exceptional book that William Blum wrote, and he published in 2015, called America's Deadliest Export: Democracy, the Truth about US Foreign Policy. It's an excellent book. It's a must read book. And in fact, the preface of that book, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy, the preface is about what the United States was doing in Ukraine, the so called democracy promotion, which was really a regime change operation to get the President Viktor Yanukovych out, because he didn't support Ukraine's membership in NATO. And he also didn't support the European Union Association Agreement, to get him out, and so that the United States and the European Union could do what it wanted to do. And NATO could do what it wanted to do in Ukraine. It's never about democracy. So our government and our defense minister said that Ukraine is on the front lines fighting for democracy, and I just couldn't let that stand. So when I saw that she was going to be speaking at the Toronto Met University for a Democracy Forum, and she was talking about how Ukraine is fighting for our values. And I know that that's just a lie. I had to go there with my sign that says Trudeau, Anand, Joly and Freeland stop the war, stop lying, stop sending weapons, stop NATO, stop the war, peace in Ukraine, peace with Russia. And I just quietly, you know, held my sign as the cameras were rolling, because this event was broadcast by the university and by Reuters all over the world, actually. So there are people that saw my sign to stop the war, but I am desperately trying to stop this war. And we've done as a peace movement in Canada. We did so much the three months before the invasion on February 24, we did so much calling on our government to de-escalate. We had an open letter, a petition, a national day of action, a rally, a briefing to all members of parliament, we called MPs. We had a webinar, that's what we did just in January of 2022. Then we repeated it all again in February, saying please de-escalate use diplomacy. We don't want a war with Russia. But this is what Canada wanted. This is what NATO wanted, and it just escalated. So this is why it was so important for us to protest and then also to give an example to people to give an example that you know, we are so outraged by this that we are willing to take these risks. We are willing to stand up you know in front of the stage with our sign stop the war. And that's what we did as well, Dimitri, Yves and I, when we found out that our ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae was speaking at the University of Ottawa, and he was giving a talk on walking the talk his pursuit of principles. If you look at his bio, you will see that he describes himself as an expert mediator. And he was an arbiter for this big conflict mediation firm in Toronto for many years. At the event, he was lauded for, like the diplomacy that he used in trying to resolve these international conflicts somewhere in Africa. And, and so you know, there's just this unbelievable hypocrisy, right? He's a diplomat, why isn't he using diplomacy to end this war. And then the other thing to point out is, in October of last year, we also couriered to Bob Rae's office in New York at Canada's embassy at the UN, a letter asking for a meeting, telling him to use diplomacy to end this war. But if you look at Bob Rae's Twitter feed, I mean, it is so aggressive, "more weapons to Ukraine", very Russo-phobic following the US line, Canada doesn't have an independent foreign policy, Ambassador Rae is really championing at the United Nations, this very aggressive NATO Imperial line. And we just couldn't tolerate it, his votes at the United Nations against Palestine against Haiti, against the Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons against the new international economic order. These aren't Canadian values, Canadians stand for peace and cooperation and social justice and disarmament, what he's doing is totally antithetical to Canadian values. And that's why it was essential for us to go to his event, and to disrupt it, and to let him know that we don't agree with what he's doing, and to let the audience know that Canadians are paying attention. And we're going to challenge this.

Daniel Tarade  
We need more and more of this, it's going to be a way to galvanize the movement, because for every person that is in the position to go and disrupt a live event like that, we know that there are 1000s and 1000s of people that are just suffering in silence around the world knowing that peace is the answer. And yet they don't see the movement there yet strong enough to fight for it. So by going there, and at least being the visible face of this, you show people that there's an alternative way to go forward. There's an alternative group of people that they can join with to demand peace rather than escalation of the war. To all of our people listening tell us there's an international weekend of action coming up Peace Now stop the war, stop NATO, February 24th to 26th. So tell our listeners about this and how they can get involved.

Tamara Lorincz  
Yes, so the Canada Wide Peace and Justice Network, which is a coalition of about 25 groups across the country, we have been mobilizing together to have this weekend of action. It's in solidarity with actions that are taking place that same weekend in the United Kingdom stop the war UK is having a national demonstration to say stop the war in Ukraine. And then there are also rallies taking place across Europe, we wanted to stand in solidarity and to get out on the streets and to let the public let our politicians know that we're opposed to Canada sending weapons and to prolonging this war, and we want it to end. And we also want Canada to get out of NATO. We want an independent foreign policy that's premised on peace and justice and cooperation. And it's going to require a movement to change the course of Canadian foreign policy. Because Daniel, you're right, what Canada is doing in the world is really causing a lot of harm to other countries, other people are suffering from what Canada is doing. Our weapons are killing people in Ukraine. And it's got to end and it's only going to end if we're out on the streets. If we're putting pressure on the government to say we don't support this not in our name. We want this to end we want peace now.

Daniel Tarade  
Not in our name. I remember that was one of the rallying cries in the opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq not in our name. And that was I think the first movement that I saw that really started resonating with this peace impulse that I think most humans have. I think most humans if you had to choose between war and not war would choose not war because war is just one of the worst things any person can live through.

Tamara Lorincz  
Yeah, absolutely. So the way people can get involved in this weekend of action is by going to peaceandjusticenetwork.ca that website. And the weekend before on February 19, we are going to have a really great panel about the war and about NATO's role in it. And we want to encourage people to listen to this webinar. We have really fantastic speakers, Glenn Michalchuk with the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians. And he's with Peace Alliance Winnipeg. And Margaret Kimberley of the Black Alliance for Peace, and we have other speakers. So that's February 19, at 12 o'clock, Eastern. Information is up on our website. And for people to find out an action in their city close to them, they can go to our website peaceandjusticenetwork.ca and get involved and find out more.

Emily Steers  
Thank you so much for your time Tamara, it's been so wonderful to talk to you. And there's so many things we could ask you even more about, we'll have to have you back on to the podcast sometime in the future. 

Tamara Lorincz  
That would be great

Emily Steers  
Going forward. Listeners of this podcast might want to talk to people they know about engaging in anti war, how can these people our lovely listeners and everyone that we're connected with? How can we best live out these anti war principles and advocate for peace at every level, in our society and globally?

Tamara Lorincz  
Well, peace is absolutely fundamental, essential to everything, you know, we can't have climate justice, without peace. We can't have sustainable development, gender equality, without peace, with armed conflict and wars raging and military spending going through the roof and not being invested in other human needs. It just shows that peace is really so critical to all of this work that we're doing. And there's a link to peace in whatever people are engaged. And so, you know, we need people to make the connection to peace. And we need people to start putting pressure on their elected officials on the political parties that they're involved in to make a demand. You know, we want an end to a war, we want a reduction of military spending and a reallocation to human needs. We want Canada to invest in the architecture of peace. We don't even have a minister of peace, a Department of Peace. We don't have an agenda for peace. Other countries do other countries have ministers of peace and disarmament. We don't have that we don't even have a minister or an ambassador for Disarmament any longer peace is just off the agenda. And we need people to start refocusing on how crucial peace is for all of the work that we're doing. And for a safe and sustainable and positive future. Peace is just critical.

Daniel Tarade  
Thank you so much Tamara.

Emily Steers  
Amen. Amen. Thank you, again, so much, Tamara, for your insight and your wisdom and your time. I know I really appreciate it and all of our listeners do as well. You can find links to all of the things Tamara mentioned during the podcast. All of that will be listed in our podcast description. And you can find lots of Tamara's writing all over the internet. So I highly encourage you to look at all of her work, get involved, fight for peace in your community and in the world. And as Tamara said, there are actions that you can take now today, and keep an eye out for all of the actions that will be happening around February 24 through 26th. We look forward to seeing you on the streets.

Daniel Tarade  
Hey, bonus content for everybody that listened to the end, the first episode of 2023 for the Red Review was supposed to be a 2023 forecast video, we didn't get the script really ready for all of the topics. So we decided that all of these topics that we want to cover for 2023 like fighter jets, like Palestine, like Cuba, like inflation, like the NDP, we will just do them as standalone episodes with interviews with this preceding 10 minute primer. But since we're going to do a review episode, as you may know, we often have our not sponsored by segments and a Canadian Heritage moment. You already heard our advertising segment at the beginning. But here is our Canadian Heritage moment from our Dear Comrade Helen.

Comrade Helen  
In Red Review, we like to mark quintessential Canadian moments with an anniversary of some significance. This month we'd like to acknowledge the 25th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision which recognized First Nations legal title to traditional territories. The case was brought by Frank Calder and other Nisga'a elders and resulted in a groundbreaking decision that recognized indigenous title to traditional territories as a legal right for indigenous peoples. It was a bittersweet moment that had taken so long for the courts to recognize this because the indigenous people should have been granted the title in the first place and because the court decision was still limited in its scope, and had to be challenged with more proceedings. In 1984, the Gitxsan and 13 Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs claimed ownership of portions of their territory in northwestern BC, totaling 58,000 kilometers with rights to take game animals, wood, berries, and other foods for sustenance. More court decisions came in 1988 and as late as 1991. Negative rulings had to be appealed, extending proceedings to 1994. In 1997, then the Delgamuukw and Wet'suwet'en challenged the courts again for title to the use of their lands. And while they lost the case, they were granted the right to negotiate the terms of use of natural resources with the Crown including oil, gas and mineral rights. While the 1973 Supreme Court ruling then was a landmark decision for First Nations in recognizing aboriginal title. It was a bittersweet moment coming so late in the country's history and therefore worthy of reflection as a quintessential Canadian moment.