Group of 78 Luncheon Speaker Series

Making Sense of the Russia Trump Media Circus

Featuring: Manfred Bienefeld

 PDF

$30 for luncheon and presentation (12:00 p.m.)

$5 for presentation only (arrive 12:45 p.m. Coffee and tea will be available)

 RESERVATIONS: Group78@group78.org  613-565-9449 ext. 22 by Friday Nov 2, 2018 by 12:00 pm

Late registrations are welcome for presentation only.

Individuals who do not cancel their reservations at least 24 hours before the luncheon will be billed $30.

Online Registration

According to the endlessly repeated official “line”, western powers are fully justified in waging economic and diplomatic war on all things Russian because it: has egregiously flouted international law (Crimea); lent active military support to a brutal dictator (Assad); violated the sovereignty of other countries by attacking people it considers “enemies” inside their borders (Skripal); and is actively seeking to sow dissention and influence elections in the US and elsewhere (the DNC hack). But even if all the above charges were accepted at face value, are Russia’s alleged transgressions so disproportionately more serious than those of other international actors, to justify this western hostility? After examining the available evidence, Prof. Bienefeld will argue that any Canadian truly concerned with creating a world in which international law will play a significant and effective role in protecting sovereign nations from hostile diplomatic, financial, informational or military interventions in their internal affairs, should focus on opposing the increasingly provocative and dangerous policies of NATO and its main western supporters, especially the U.S. and Canada.

Manfred Bienefeld is Professor Emeritus at Carleton University’s School of Public Policy and Administration. Having taught, published and lectured widely on the political economy of international development his work has long focused on the key Keynesian insight that relatively unrestrained international capital flows would erode the capacity of nation states to manage their economies in response to their citizens’ needs and priorities and that this would eventually recreate the political, social and economic turmoil of the 1920s. And based on this insight he argued in a 1994 paper that dreams of a peace dividend would remain unfulfilled because, instead of moving into a multi-polar world, we were moving into a dangerous unipolar world in which the sole superpower was determined to universalize an indefensible and ultimately unsustainable neoliberal economic model.