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Canada's foreign policy: Separating fact from fiction.

Yves Engler to talk about his new book which looks at the propaganda machine allowing Canada to promote war and exploitation.
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The author of a book that examines the misrepresentation to the public eye of Canada's foreign policy will be speaking at a public forum on Sunday, 7 p.m., at Room H-115 of Okanagan College.

Yves Engler will talk about his new book, A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation, in which he attempts to reveal why most Canadians believe their country is a force for good in the world, despite a long history of supporting empire, racism and exploitation.

The book details the vast sums Global Affairs Canada, Veterans Affairs and the Department of National Defence spend articulating a one-sided version of Canada’s foreign policy.

With the largest PR machine in the country, Engler claims the Canadian Forces promotes its worldview through history departments, universities, journals, war commemorations, think tanks, academic programs and hundreds of public relations officers.

His book traces the long history of government information control during war, including formal censorship, as well as extreme media bias on topics ranging from Haiti to Palestine, investment agreements to the mining industry. The book also details the corporate elite’s funding for university programs and think tanks.

Written for ordinary Canadians interested in the structures impeding understanding of this country’s role in the world, Engler feels his book should be of interest to journalists curious about the institutions seeking to “spin” them, development workers dependent on government funds and academics interested in the foreign-policy establishment’s influence on campus.

“Having spent three decades on the opposite side of the playing field, I have long been aware of many elements revealed in A Propaganda System.  But, by thoroughly cataloguing and linking these agencies author Engler provides a powerful argument to support his thesis that the Canadian military fields the largest PR apparatus in the nation. This fact runs in stark contrast to Canadians' popular notion that we are a peace-loving country, ” said Scott Taylor, publisher Esprit de Corps.