Dear Canada: Beware of Peter Hoekstra!

As long as U.S. policy is one of annexation and domination, Hoekstra deserves to be treated as a hostile guest—not an ambassador worthy of distinction or trust.

US Ambassador to The Netherlands, Peter Hoekstra gestures as he speaks during a press conference at the US embassy, in The Hague, on January 10, 2018 after presenting his diplomatic credentials to The Netherlands' King.
Photo by JOHN THYS / AFP

Hank Kennedy
Mar 08, 2025

Common Dreams

On February 22nd, the Michigan Republican Party met in Huntington Place in Detroit to elect a new chair. After the ballots were counted, State Senator Jim Runestand prevailed over President Donald Trump’s choice, “fake elector” Meshawn Maddock. Even though he had delivered Michigan to the GOP column, incumbent Peter Hoekstra didn’t run again. He couldn’t, because as of November he is awaiting confirmation by the U.S. Senate to be Trump’s ambassador to Canada.

During his three-decade plus career in government, Hoekstra has amassed quite the right-wing record. In the 90s, he was a fierce foe of workplace safety and union reformers. Teamster warehouse director Tom Leedham called Hoekstra “a congressman who tried to eliminate the forty-hour workweek, and gut overtime and job safety laws.” As chair of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, Hoekstra led a witch hunt into the Teamsters that ended up removing Ron Carey, the only reform president ever elected in Teamsters history, from office shortly after the union won a hard fought battle against UPS. Hoekstra proclaimed in 2000 that if he and his allies “had not acted, Ron Carey would still be president of the Teamsters.”

On foreign policy, Hoekstra’s tenure was similarly malicious. After voting for the Iraq War, Heokstra remained convinced well into 2006 that Iraq had possessed weapons of mass destruction. To that effect, he announced that U.S. troops had actually found WMDs that year. Too bad for Hoekstra they turned out to be defunct weapons that predated the Persian Gulf War. The WMD lie remained just that, a lie. He also palled around with David Yarushalmi, an anti-Muslim bigot who once called Blacks “the most murderous of peoples.”

Hoekstra’s views and previous tenure as a diplomat should make his appointment a complete joke, but there’s danger in his appointment as well.

In 2012, Hoekstra attempted to unseat Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenhow. His campaign’s Super Bowl ad featured an Asian woman, bicycling through a rice paddy, who castigated “Debbie Spend It Now” in broken English. A clear attempt to resuscitate the “Yellow Peril,” a journalist called it “the most racist political ad of the year.” Heokstra’s campaign floundered and he lost in a landslide.

Hoekstra’s post-Congress years saw him argue that the CIA’s torture program, euphemistically referred to as “enhanced interrogation,” produced “actionable intelligence.” He took time in 2016 to defame Hillary Clinton advisor Huma Abedin over her “egregious” ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. After co-chairing Donald Trump’s winning Michigan campaign in 2016, Hoekstra was back in government. For his services, he was rewarded with an ambassadorship to the Netherlands, his birthplace.

As Trump’s ambassador, Hoekstra was dogged by reporters over his false 2015 claims that there were Muslim “no-go zones” in the Netherlands, in which cars and politicians were “being burned.” In 2020, the official Twitter account for the U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands posted a bizarre image of a graveyard containing German soldiers from World War II. The account said the graves were a “terrible reminder of the cost of going to war and why we must always work towards peace,” seemingly forgetting what side the U.S. was on during the war. The whole thing was reminiscent of when President Reagan went to a graveyard containing bodies of Hitler’s SS to declare the dead Nazis were “victims just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.”

Hoekstra’s tenure was marked by accusations that he openly interfered in Dutch politics. In 2019 he hosted a party for the far-right Forum for Democracy whose anti-Islam, anti-immigrant views nicely dovetailed with his own. Diplomats are prohibited from interfering in their host countries politics by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. Although other political parties in the Netherlands complained, Trump lost the following year’s presidential election and Hoekstra was out. Or was he? Hoekstra’s reward for helping Trump win the Mitten State, is once again, an ambassadorship, but this time to Canada.

Hoekstra’s views and previous tenure as a diplomat should make his appointment a complete joke, but there’s danger in his appointment as well. Given that he has already violated diplomatic protocol via his involvement in the domestic politics of the host country, and that a stated goal of the Trump administration is the annexation of Canada as the 51st state, it stands to reason that Hoekstra will use any available means to further that project as ambassador. In short, he will attempt to undermine Canadian sovereignty under the guise of diplomacy.

Although Peter Hoekstra will almost certainly be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, that’s no reason for him to be treated as just another ambassador in Canada. As long as U.S. policy is one of annexation and domination, Hoekstra deserves to be treated as someone who will undermine Canadian independence in the service of American empire.

AUKUS: Flawed and Sinking

Binoy Kampmark

 January 15, 2025
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Photograph Source: Matt Hrkac from Geelong / Melbourne, Australia – CC BY 2.0

A stillborn agreement treated as thrivingly alive; an understanding celebrated as consensual and equal.  The AUKUS security arrangement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, envisaging the transfer and building of nuclear-powered submarines to the Royal Australian Navy, continues operating in haphazard fashion.  So far, the stream has flown away from Australia and into the military industrial complexes of the UK and the US, both desperate to keep the production of these absurd boats steady.

Australia has yet to see the fabled white elephants of the sea and remain at the mercy of the US Congress.  In the meantime, the country is becoming garrisoned, billeted and appropriated to Washington’s geopolitical vanities.  Not being a natural enemy and adversary in any sense, and being the most lucrative trading partner, China has become a fantastically idiotic target for Canberra’s foreign policy dunces.

Announced in September 2021 as “an enhanced trilateral security partnership”, AUKUS has hobbled and stuttered its way into 2025.  Commentary from the pompom holders for war at such outlets as The Economist continue with such mild remarks as “ambitious but expensive”.  The Australian, armed and eager to do battle in print and digital media against the Yellow Peril, features an article about feeding the military industrial complex by politely calling it “a defence revolution.”

19FortyFive fastens onto the idea that Australia’s naval modernisation is central in this endeavour, though never mentions the obvious beneficiary.  (In two words: not Australia.)  “Nevertheless, AUKUS allows for a broader integration of technological advances in its partners and much-needed modernization of the Australian navy.”

This optimistic glow, despite the limping, the delays, and the blunders, can also be found in Australian Defence.  The military industrial complex never needs concrete reasons to exist.    It’s a creature onto itself.  “Global firms are partnering with Australian based entities in a bid to position themselves for lucrative AUKUS submarine contracts, despite law reforms needed to progress.”

One of them is the Texas-based Fluor Corporation, an engineering and construction firm proud, in the words of its Australia & New Zealand president, Gillian Cagney, of its “thousand engineers who have nuclear capability.”  Cagney, like most chiefs and CEOs in this line of work, is good at saying nothing about nothing in particular.  When doing so, the language can be guaranteed a good mauling.  “We have that experience and capability that we will be supporting the joint venture to bring to bear and making sure we’re bringing the best in class globally.”

Even then, Cagney concedes that the whole business of nuclear-powered submarines for the RAN, known in military planning circles as “Pillar One”, is dicey.  Hardly a reason to panic, as this tortured statement testifies: “One of the things as Worley Fluor Australia we are able to do is in multiple sectors globally is to ramp up to meet our customers needs so it’s no different.”

From the United States Studies Centre, that comfortable, uncritical bastion of Pax Americana, a senior research associate, Alice Nason, is found telling France’s Libération that hiccups are bound to take place when the tasks are large.  “In a project of this size, length and complexity of AUKUS, it’s no surprise that disruptions and delays are going to arise.”  The truism here is intended to excuse the unpardonable.  Why projects of such scale are ever needed is left dangling in ether.

These dreary excuses for justifications dressed up as analysis never hide the fundamental defect of AUKUS.  It remains, almost entirely, governed by US domestic and foreign interests.   It says almost nothing about Australia’s needs, merely speaking to confected Australian fears.  It advances the agenda of insecurity, not security.  The analysts, lined up from one row to another, cannot assure anybody about what Congress will do if the submarine supply quota lags, or if there will be a war over that strip of territory known as Taiwan.

No publication, however lovingly disposed to the business of war, can avoid the teasing worries.  Even that pro-Washington, and US defence industry funded outlet based in Canberra, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has gone so far as to consider a heresy.  In December, it ran an article by Peter Briggs, past president of the Submarine Institute of Australia, suggesting that Canberra consider acquiring “at least 12 submarines of the French Suffren design.  The current AUKUS plan for eight nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) has always been flawed, and now its risks are piling up.”  And so we return to where we began: a Franco-Australian agreement to acquire submarines that was sunk in 2021 by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

All in all, forget the submarines, Pillar One, or whatever pillar the strategists tie themselves in knots about.  Focus, instead, on the second “pillar”.  Australia has become captive – aided through its dim bulbed representatives – of an empire that fears growing old, haggard and weak.  It has been enlisted as servitor, grounds keeper and nurse.  Retirees from the US Navy are being given astronomical sums in consultancy fees to divulge wisdom they do not have on junkets Down Under.  Think tankers from Australia purporting to be academics make similar trips to Washington to celebrate a failing agreement with treasonous delight.  The price Australia is paying is already savagely burdensome.  It may well, in the long run, prove worse.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

BELGIAN YELLOW PERIL  COLONIALIST COMIC

Ninety years on, Tintin and The Blue Lotus return in new colour edition

The Blue Lotus, the story of Tintin's adventures in Shanghai, has this week been reissued, as Hergé's legacy enters the public domain in the United States.


Issued on: 12/01/2025 - RFI

Hergé's cover drawing for the first colour edition of "The Blue Lotus", published in 1946. AP - Michel Euler

The Moulinsart and Casterman publishing houses are reissuing the original 1936 version of The Blue Lotus – in a newly colourised version.

This new edition contains "a palette of unprecedented colours, with shades that particularly enhance the night scenes, thus revealing the intensity of the action and the beauty of the vignettes".

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America received the same treatment between 2017 and 2020.

"The purists didn't particularly expect them, but with their large format, they have the charm of today's larger comic book images," said Benoît Peeters, an expert on Hergé's work.

Hergé and Chinese art

The preface reminds readers that Hergé held a deep appreciation for Chinese art, which he studied in order to create his backgrounds.

"I drew my taste for order, my desire to combine meticulousness with simplicity, harmony with movement from it," Hergé said in 1975, quoted in this 2025 edition of The Blue Lotus.

In his home country of Belgium, the Hergé Museum in Louvain-la-Neuve, 30km outside Brussels, explores this influence in an exhibition entitled "In China with Tintin", which opened on Friday.

One key figure in Hergé's fascination with Chinese art was Tchang Tchong-Jen, a young Chinese student he met at the Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

According to the Musée Hergé: "For both artists, this cultural encounter between East and West was a tremendous opening to the world, but also, and above all, the start of a beautiful friendship. Their complicity is such that it extended onto paper, giving birth to a new Tintin adventure, one that was more sensitive and human than the previous stories, as it symbolised the brotherhood forged between Tintin and [Tchang]."

A biography, Tchang Tchong-Jen: Travelling Artist, written by his daughter Tchang Yifei and Tintin expert Dominique Maricq, was also released by Casterman and Moulinsart on Wednesday.

Sculptor and painter Tchang Tchong-Jen, who inspired Hergé's character Tchang in "The Blue Lotus". © AFP - Jean-Pierre Muller

Copyright in the US vs EU

The original black and white edition of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is no longer protected by copyright in the United States, as of 1 January. Under US law, works older than 95 years can be freely exploited, regardless of the author's date of death.

But for the Belgian artist's heirs, this is a "non-event," as they told French broadcaster BFMTV in December.

"The economic stake is low. Tintin is barely present in the US, as seen with the relatively modest success of Spielberg's film," confirms Peeters, referring to The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, released in 2011.

In Europe and Canada, Tintin remains fully protected until 1 January, 2054. European Union copyright terms extend 70 years past creators' deaths, and Hergé died in 1983.

The heirs – Hergé's widow, Fanny Vlamynck, 90, and her second husband, Nick Rodwell, 72 – maintain a strict stance in line with the creator's last wishes: a strict ban on anyone drawing Tintin and his companions.

Peeters explained: "There is often talk of abuse on their part. However, it must be reiterated that in the era of piracy and the theft of books by AI, it is normal to protect an author's work, even long after their death. And that's what they are doing."

(with AFP)

Western Distortions of the Palestinian Struggle

Lamees Hijazi

 October 28, 2024
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Photograph Source: Kiri of Karitane – CC0

Western colonialism and imperialism are the roots of the Palestinian struggle. A common characteristic of western powers is their shared history of colonization and oppression of indigenous populations. This distinction is important because it is clear that there is heavy bias against Palestinians in both western political policy and western mainstream media. The United States and Israel share similar histories and politics as settler colonialist nations, each established through the violent dispossession of indigenous populations. Both countries utilized dehumanization of the indigenous populations they displaced to obtain the land they have settled upon. Native Americans were called “merciless Indian savages,” while Palestinians are called “animals” and “terrorists.” Examining relevant histories with a broader view will demonstrate how western interpretations of Palestine are biased. The prevailing western standard has been nonobjective and heavily promotes dishonest and biased narratives, omitting relevant histories and current event considerations. This biased narrative reads as a prejudiced tale meticulously designed to promote the interests of the more powerful side, an oppressive colonial regime and its imperial supporters.

Framing as a Tool of Erasure

The Palestinian struggle and foundations of Israel are a matter of modern-day colonialism achieved through atrocities. Israel is widely supported by the west over their imperialist interests and maintained by political and media propaganda. Criticism of a brutal occupying force is often harshly censored. The matter is frequently mischaracterized as a religious matter, labeled as complicated, or described as a conflict. Framing the Palestinian struggle as a “religious matter” generally encourages people to reduce politics to faith-based tensions. Dismissing something as “complicated” deters any type of engagement because the implicit message is that the issue is too difficult for most people to understand. Referring to the matter as a “conflict” implies symmetry, leaving no conceptual room for the disparity of power that defines a colonial struggle. It is none of those things. At its core, this is an ongoing process of colonization, resulting in the displacement of the Palestinian people and the violent military occupation of Palestinian land.

The strategic framing of Palestine has been used to support zionism for over 76 years. During a 1970 interview with renowned Palestinian activist and author Ghassan Kanafani, Australian media correspondent Richard Carleton referred to the matter of Palestine as a conflict. Kanafani countered that it is not a conflict, but a liberation movement fighting for justice, continuing, “This is where the problem starts. Because this is what makes you ask all your questions. This is exactly where the problem starts. This is a people who are discriminated against fighting for their rights. This is the story.” Fifty-four years later, these same issues about the framing language persist.

Foreign Policy and Domestic Repression

There are several elements to consider when examining the western distortion of the Palestinian struggle. First, we must look at United States foreign policy as it pertains to Middle Eastern, North African, and Muslim-majority nations. Interconnected to these foreign policies are United States domestic policies designed to target American citizens of MENA and/or Muslim backgrounds. These policies are rooted in the Palestinian struggle. Secondly, we must take a closer look at zionism, a western colonial project supported by the US in large part due to its imperialist goals and American interests in the MENA region. Interconnected to the matter of zionism is the strategy of intentional false conflation of antisemitism to criticism of zionism or Israel intended to suppress and silence criticism so that zionism can continue without accountability. These propagandist tactics are supported and reinforced by the United States over their imperialist goals in the MENA region. Third, we must look at the state of Israel more closely, the brutality in which it was created and maintains itself, and Israel’s influence on American politics and media. Interconnected to the matter of Israeli influence, we must look at lobby and special interest groups such as AIPAC and the ADL. These powerful groups use large sums of money to influence media organizations and exert influence and control over American elections and US policy both foreign and domestic.

United States foreign policy in the Middle East has always been in the absolute interest of western imperialism. This has continuously come at the cost of the suffering of MENA nations and their civilians for over a century. President Joe Biden, while serving as a United States Senator, gave a speech on the Senate floor on June 5, 1986, speaking to US foreign policy in the Middle East. He stated that the US should “operate and move in the naked self-interest of the United States of America.” Referring to Israel, he said, “It is the best three-billion-dollar investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region.”  His current position and statements regarding Israel and the Middle East remain unchanged thirty-eight years later. Biden has openly referred to himself as a zionist to the media on numerous occasions for several decades. He has made repeated statements of support for Israel, even as Israel has been accused of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, and after several decades of its numerous violations of international law. In December of 2023, Biden stated, “I got in trouble many times for saying you don’t have to be a Jew to be a zionist, and I am a zionist. I make no apologies for that. That’s a reality.” The statements then-Senator Biden made on the Senate floor in 1986 speak volumes to the reasons behind the United States’ predisposition to show favorable bias towards Israel and, therefore, against Palestinians.

The matter of Palestine has always been at the core of United States antiterrorism laws. Palestinian liberation efforts continue to be a central target of both foreign policies and domestic laws oppressive to Arab Americans. The idea of the Arab or Muslim terrorist was introduced to the west by Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu in 1979. Netanyahu used the term in Washington, DC, in 1984 at the “Second Conference on International Terrorism” he organized where he pushed this label and agenda into American politics. On December 22, 1987, he achieved his goal as the Palestinian Liberation Organization was formally declared a terrorist organization by the United States. This was the “first and only time” Congress designated a group as a terrorist organization. These series of events are directly related to escalations that led to the first intifada in 1987. It was also during these conditions that Hamas, a resistance organization, had formed. The region endured continuous turmoil, and heightened escalations continued until the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Journalism vs. Propaganda: A Brief History

While the media is a very influential source in shaping views on important matters, the United States mainstream media has long ago lost its journalistic integrity.  Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that uses exaggerated and sensationalist reporting often based on false accounts of events to boost sales and attract readers. The peak of early-stage yellow journalism began as a competition between the publications of two major newspaper publishers in the late 1800s, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. To drive public appeal, the two pushed out sensationalist newspapers, which prominently featured political coverage. In 1898, both Pulitzer and Hearst published misleading newspapers pushing a rumor that Cuba had sank a US battleship when, in fact, a coal fire aboard the ship led to an explosion. The US Maine sinking in the Havana Harbor contributed to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Propagandist publications have tainted American journalism to this day and continue to incite both conflicts and hate.

The New York Times’ publishing controversies began in the 1800s and include numerous instances pertaining to significant events from the Russian Revolution to the Iraq War. In more recent times, the New York Times has been cited for publishing articles based on misinformation leading to incitement. In 2003, the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics found that “the New York Times is more favorable toward the Israelis than the Palestinians, and the partiality has become more pronounced with time.” This trend continues today and is an ongoing ethical and moral problem. During the current genocide in Gaza that began in 2023, The New York Times has been cited multiple times for publishing false accounts of events, from false claims of rapes to disproven accounts of beheaded babies. In April of 2024, The Intercept obtained an internal New York Times memo that instructed journalists to avoid “use of the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ and to ‘avoid’ using the phrase ‘occupied territory’ when describing Palestinian land.” They were additionally instructed to avoid the use of “Palestine” or terms such as “refugee camps.” Numerous other mainstream media outlets have also been accused of both biased and inaccurate reporting on Palestine. This trend is commonplace and has persisted for over a century.

A Definitive Bias

The issue of Palestine is deeply intertwined with the rise of anti-Arab hate, contributing to the dehumanization and stereotyping of Arabs. The Middle East and North Africa have rich cultural variances and diverse ethnicities, but there is a strong cultural ignorance in the west about the geography and geopolitics of the MENA region. To many, “an Arab is an Arab” without any thought or attention to regional or political distinctions. The mainstream media promotes this cultural ignorance, flattening public understandings of MENA communities and struggles as a result. Media bias is not only harmful to the populations they target but is a catalyst driving discriminatory hate within their audience here in the United States as well. Media bias plays a role in contributing to harmful stereotypes toward people of Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African ethnic backgrounds, regardless of their religion. Media bias has also contributed to the western racialization of Muslim Americans and has played a destructive role by inciting Islamophobia, giving rise to hate crimes against individuals from these ethnic groups in the US. Natalie Khazaal, associate professor of Arabic and Arab Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology, published an article for The Conversation, an independent news organization, highlighting anti-Palestinian bias in US corporate media: “Reporting can prime audiences to see a Palestinian fighter in a mask as either an icon of terrorism or a hero resisting occupation, depending on how the news is presented.” This one sentence encapsulates the issue Palestinians face in the west. Media portrayals are often biased and tend to leave out crucial histories and background information of events they report on, often totally omitting decades of Palestinian suffering at the hands of an oppressive military colonial settler regime. A definitive bias controls the narrative and information available to the public, leading to a widespread impact and sway on public perception. The media bias infects public viewers and drives large-scale public prejudice against Palestinians.

The convenient western amnesia of Palestinians’ history of suffering must end. We cannot only look to condemn Palestinians, who are blamed for their own suffering. We are now over a year into Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Media disinformation has played a significant role in justifying Israel’s criminal actions. Media bias has grave consequences. The Palestinian fight for liberation will persist as long as Palestinians continue to be dehumanized by mainstream western media and imperialist political agendas. The ongoing Palestinian struggle for liberation remains in a state of great peril. There is no true peace process without taking a more critical look at histories and current event considerations through a more honest lens.

This first appeared on Project Censored. 

LAMEES HIJAZI is a San Francisco State University senior majoring in history, with minors in Middle East and Islamic Studies, and Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas. Her interests include multiculturalism, social justice, anti-imperialism, internally displaced peoples, diasporic communities, Indigenous studies, global anti-colonial solidarity, and media literacy. In Summer 2024, she worked as a Project Censored intern, conducting research in support of Omar Zahzah’s forthcoming book, Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital/Settler-Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle.