I know that many out there will think my little choo-choo has finally gone around the bend.  Have I slipped into madness?  To think that the government staged burning police cars and smashing windows is just insane, right?  And that is exactly why governments get away with it.  It is insane.  But let’s look at the most important evidence:  the motive.

The first measure of the veracity of a conspiracy theory is motive.  This is where most conspiracy theories fall apart.  If their is no compelling reason to conspire to do something why go to all the trouble and risk?  Take the Kennedy assassination for instance.  This conspiracy has been around for 47 years now but the problem with every scenario is the why.  Kennedy was in trouble politically.  Why waste a bullet and drawing all that attention on a president that was about to become another one term wonder.  But in the case of the G20 the motives are strong, compelling and multiple.

First there was the enormous cost of the security operation.  While it certainly is the least important of the motives it is still compelling.  An election is almost certain within the next 5 to 12 months.  Having spent over a billion dollars on security how could the Conservative party face the electorate if nothing very notable had happened?  This is a variation on the old saying ‘What if they threw a war and nobody showed up?’ In this case what if they spend all this money and the protesters don’t cause enough damage.  With Canadians suffering economically the Conservatives could not afford to be seen to be spending money frivolously.  Especially not after FakeLakeGate.  The only way to be sure that the protest would get out of hand and frighten Canadians was for police agents to physically start the process.  After all you can’t trust a bunch of tree-hugging, hippie, leftist peaceniks to start a decent riot now can you.

This brings us to the second motive:  frightening Canadians.  In the pages of this blog and billions of others around the globe people like me have been warning of the impending security, financial and environmental reckoning.  Even the Pentagon report to the Bush administration stated clearly that this planet will not be able to sustain a population of more than 3 billion people by 2100.  That is less than half of today’s global population and less than a third of the 9.1 billion projected for 2050.  The Pentagon estimate I should add is the most generous of all I have encountered.  Most others estimate a maximum sustainable population of around one billion and a few even less.  The lowest estimated sustainable population for 2100 that I have come across was approximately 100 million.  Today there are a few hundred thousand climate refugees.  Within a few short years there will be millions and then billions.  James Lovelock suggests we built barricades and heighten security if we happen to be among the fortunate to live in a part of the globe that will still support human life.  To do this we must end this dalliance with democracy.  But we may not have to worry about that.  The financial and security reckonings may preempt the ecological.  Spillover from Iraq or Afghanistan or more likely both has the potential to draw in major powers resulting in large fast population reduction with the added turmoil, dislocation, lingering deaths of such a war destabilizing much of what survives.  And the financial meltdown has only begun.  It will play a role in the timing and ferocity of planetary ecological degradation and destabilization of global security.  The unwavering faith of our leaders in the American economic model shows their intellectual inability to conceptualize anything else thanks to a battered and bankrupt education system rather than the strength of the system.  Laissez-faire capitalism is a chimera.  It has failed every time it has been attempted.  But this time it has been pushed farther and the very institutions that society had created over the centuries to protect itself from the worst consequences have been systematically dismantled or undermined by the priesthood of the New Right.

Government officials may deny the inevitability of these events.  They may assist their lackeys in the main stream media to foster confusion.  But at the highest levels they know as well as I do that these events will take place.  Their plan or assumption is that they will be among the survivors and the rest of us be damned.  To do that they must heed Lovelock and end democracy.  To seize power arbitrarily would trigger a backlash.  Too messy and uncertain.  Much more effective to convince Canadians to surrender their rights and freedoms in the name of security.  A quick survey of the letters to the editor in support of the police actions in Toronto should prove beyond a doubt that the tactic is working.  Canadians seem more than willing to surrender everything they say they fought for in the world wars and are supposedly fighting for in Afghanistan.  What irony to send troops half way around the world to fight for a value we do not prize at home.  The G20 events in Toronto had a powerful effect on the unsophisticated and uninformed.  We will see the anti-terrorism laws renewed expanded when they next come up for review and we will see a general and substantial increase in police powers over the next five years.  The G20 protests will be as powerful a symbol in the hands of Canadian elites as 9/11 was to American elites as they stripped the liberty from Land of Liberty.  They needed it and they got it because they did it.  As simple as that.  Any who question rising authoritarianism will be shown pictures of burning police cars as Americans who question are shown the images of 9/11 and in an earlier generation on another continent those who questioned were reminded of the Reichstag fire until the die was cast and they could be silenced more effectively.

The final motive is chaos.  In chaos it is a human tendency to cling to the known rather than fly to things we know not of as Shakespeare might say.  New economic ideas, new ecological initiatives and new diplomatic peace initiatives all take a leap of faith.  It always seems risky to move in a new direction.  And it is risky but better risk swimming for shore than cling to a sinking lifeboat.  Is it a surprise to anyone that those who benefit most from the status quo should want to disparage alternatives.  By painting the protesters as the lunatic fringe, the current elites can assure the support of the timid which is most Canadians who face the challenges of day to day living.  As Otto von Bismarck said  so eloquently ‘A man who relies upon the state for his pension is not likely to rebel against that state.’ By the time most Canadians realize that their comfort is no longer exists it will be too late.  In this way the political and economic elites of this country smear their opponents and solidify their support.  It is a bold stroke.

So there you have it.  The motives for the government to commit insanity.  I suspect that many remain unconvinced.  They will say that this is too Machiavellian.  After all these are good people, good Canadians.  We just don’t do these kind of things or have these kinds of motivations.  To those I say this.  To deny that the above is plausible is to deny:

• that there were no Residential Schools;
• that there have been concentration camps in Canada (1914-18, 1930-36, 1940-46);
• that Canadian POW camps at the end of World War Two allowed Nazi officers to hold courts martial and execute German prisoners under our protection with guns and bullets supplied by the camp administration;
• that over a million Canadians were spied on and blacklisted by the RCMP during the Cold War.  The information gathered shared with the United States.  Many had their lives and / or careers destroyed.   Several committed suicide or died prematurely from stress.  Their crimes included subscription to the wrong journals, activity in their trade union, support for the United Nations, support for peace, etc.;
• that there was no Maher Arar;
• there is no Omar Khadr.

The list could go on but I think you get the picture.  So before you judge me mad you must first explain why our government should be trusted given the track record.

But in 2010, as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel sat on the dais next to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, representing the opposing powers of the conflict that had more in common than differences, where are we?  What has happened to the dream, that moment of pure joy and hope?

As its predecessor, World War Two was not the war to end all wars.  Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the list is long and bloody.  Our ability to kill has improved with each new conflict.  Diplomacy is ridiculed as the the fires of nationalism brightly light the banners of the legions.  The eagle of Rome and Germany now demands the people of the world bow down to the eagle of  America.  That the symbol of power since early history has been a scavenger should speak to us.  But somehow it doesn’t.  Fear, distrust and ignorance drive us into our imagined communities, not seeing the realities that connect us behind the myths that divide.  And so the story continues written in the blood of millions.

Political lies continued to swim in human blood.  In Hungary and Iraq honest people were encouraged to rise up against tyranny only to be abandoned when they did so in good faith believing that they would be supported.  The Hungarians listened to Radio Free Europe spew its propaganda East.  Not realizing that this was only a tactic to undermine Soviet stability they rose up and awaited the aid implicitly promised.  They stood firm as the Soviet tanks rolled over the Hungarian frontier and into the streets of Budapest.  Still gazing West in desperation as they were slaughtered, the survivors later lost in the void of the Gulag.  The Shi’as of southern Iraq encouraged by Bush senior to rebel were again abandoned as were the Kurds of northern Iraq.  How much different is this to the guarantees given to the Czechs and others prior to the war.  Horribly the Tutsi and Hutu at different times learned that ‘Never Again!’ was hollow rhetoric as did the people of Srebrenica in their turn.

Domestic persecution so abhorred in the Third Reich still visits us as well.  From the Cold War where America and the Soviet Union tried to outdo each other with show trials and mock patriotism to the Patriot Act and Canada’s anti-terrorism laws and Arizona’s yellow sombrero law (see previous post The Yellow Sombrero) we have repeated the ideas and concepts of Hitler and Himmler.  People persecuted, hounded for what they believed or what they were not what they had done.  Over one million Canadians were blacklisted as communists/socialists.  Rarely were any Soviet spies.  That was not the point.  It was the idea that was feared, not the people.  The idea needed to be destroyed lest it upset life of the power elite.  Today it is Muslims.  The ‘experts’ talk about Islamic culture and say it is violent, that it praises terror, that it is regressive.  What they don’t say is, like Nazi depictions of Jewish culture, it doesn’t exist.  It is a fabrication.  There is no ‘Islamic Culture.’  There are several Arab, Persian, Turkic and Malay cultures.  Most North Americans see ‘Islamic Culture’ and think Arab Culture but it in itself is not a monolith and Malay is the largest Muslim ethnic group.  If the threat is real why would it be represented by a mythical creation?  It seems only that some threat must exist.  But why?  What is it that the powers that be don’t want us to see.  Today we can look back at the Third Reich and see what Hitler and Goebbels didn’t want the world to know.  Will historians 65 years from now be revealing abominable secrets buried behind American imperialism?  Research the provisions and justifications of the Enabling Laws introduced by German Chancellor Hitler in 1934 to see a reflection of the Patriot Act and its ilk.  Racial profiling of Mexicans and Muslims is no different than that used by Nazi administrations.  Look at the propaganda below showing the same basic caricature used in two contexts but really about the same people, Semites.

Mussolini said that fascism could more accurately be called corporatism.  Is that not the culture we have today in Canada and the United States?  Is not the corporation and the financial sector the new Rome?   Is it not the sum total of existence, that which gives meaning to our lives?  We are told constantly that there is not enough money, enough wealth to maintain the welfare state that was to raise all boats; to create a floor not a ceiling to use William Beveridge’s phrase.  Apparently the neo-conservative Right has taken him at his word and want to cut the floor out from under the powerless in order to extend their ceiling to the heavens.  Corporations steal our money to fund their failures.  And still George Will this morning on This Week (ABC) claims that the crisis in Greece is the masses thinking they are entitled when their is no money left to fund such entitlements.  What better example of self-entitlement than the bail out of General Motors or Lehman Sachs and the rest.  They told us they were too big to fail.  They told us we needed to give them more of our money for our own sakes.  Those who would now eject us from our own homes, destroy our retirements and deny our children of the same education and career opportunities as their children feel so entitled as to believe that such behaviour is an act of gratitude.  Don’t tell me there is not money to fund entitlements.  You mean there is no money to fund those who don’t belong to your class Mr. Will.

But corporations have always held the people in disdain.  They always believed in a natural leader class.  That is why so many of them supported Hitler and nazi ideology, before and during the war.  Ford enriched itself on slave labour in Nazi occupied Europe.  IBM vaulted to the lead in tabulation later computation by designing the system that sent six million Jews to the gas chamber.  President Roosevelt had to relieve Joseph Kennedy, father of the future president, from his post as ambassador to the Great Britain because of his praise of Hitler and Nazism and his repeated effort to undermine British resolve in the face of what he considered a superior German system. Do we believe that suddenly they changed their philosophy when the war was over?  Are we that naive?  Or just so afraid that if we say such things somehow we will be next on the train to the camps.

German education under the Nazis convinced young Germans that they were superior by blood to the other races of the world.  They twisted ancient northern European myths to create an image of the Teutonic race as the defenders of civilization against the barbarian hordes.  Anything that might bring that image into question was dropped from the curriculum.  Self appointed ‘experts’ shored up the image with quasi-science and bad academics.  Education seen as the conduit to maintain the social order whether or not that order is right.  Sound familiar?  Does to me.  I see it every day in the classroom and I am both sad and afraid.  I know where it will lead, not might lead.  Young Americans today are brainwashed into believing that the American way is not jut the best way but the only legitimate way.  Other cultures, other peoples, other values are ridiculed or vilified.  The lie of democracy used to shade the evil intent:  Power.

So what have we learned in sixty-five years?  What has happened to the possibilities of 1945?  Today they are just the puppets of power.  Power corrupts.  But mostly it perpetuates.  Those who have it seek to keep it.  Those who don’t lament their suffering as the Athenian generals counseled the Melians in Thucydides account of the Peloponnesian War,“for you know as well as we do that right … is in question only between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” or they live Zapata’s words:  “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.”

Today I mourn not because nazism and fascism were destroyed but because they survived.  I mourn because the ideals of Adolph Hitler are the ideals of the Obama administration and American Imperialism.  They are cloaked in the facade of democracy and humanist rhetoric but they are the same.  I mourn because my country, like so many others, complacently accepts this outrage lacking the courage to die on our feet if needs must.  We play the Jester to America’s Lear.  Around the world today the celebrations are not of the end of something but of its perpetuation in secrecy.  Hitler’s mistake was to open a window and let the world see.  That could not be countenanced if the power elites elsewhere were to continue without public outrage.  Secrecy reigns once more and all is well in Washington as on Wall Street.  So celebrate, but excuse me if I weep.

So what is an illegal alien?  I suppose Martians who fail to check in at Area 51 in neighbouring Nevada would qualify.  And I hope all those evangelicals have gotten the papers in order for that second coming they keep going on about.  How they are going to do a background check with the Roman administration for that guy I have no idea.  Tiberius was known for keeping track of his pornography not citizenship records.  Of course I am just being silly.  They mean citizens of other states who are in the United States without having jumped through the appropriate bureaucratic hoops so that the unemployable relatives of senators and congressmen can keep getting a paycheck.  Police across the state will be on the lookout for those nefariously beautiful tall Nordic types and stake out any bar and they are sure to find an Irishman, Scotsman and Englishman not to mention the proverbial priest, rabbi and minister.  Germans can be found in the back of bakeries reading Clausewitz and the French are strolling the streets insulting everyone they meet.  No racial profiling here.

What would you like to bet that the only people questioned by police under this law are olive skinned or black haired or have a Hispanic last name?  Of course Italians and other Mediterraneans will get confused in the mix.  One sheriff in Arizona claims he can tell an illegal from a legal by the shoes.  Methinks this has more to do with his foot fetish than with good policing.  How can you tell an illegal immigrant in a nation of immigrants.  You can’t.  And while there may well be undocumented Swedes in Arizona, they are not going to be the ones questioned about legal residency.  This new law shows the depths to which, not just American, but Western societies collectively have descended.  Can a yellow sombrero patch sewn onto their clothing be far behind?

Which one do think police will question?

While some police in Arizona have registered objection to the new law, the official line is trust us we will not abuse this power.  Police in the state promise to apply this law with the same professionalism that they apply all the rest.  I am sure that is what worries Latino Arizonans.  Opponents of the law are characterized as outsiders who don’t understand the state.  Probably the same outside influences that thought Blacks in the South should have rights.  How can we trust an organization to make a ‘reasonable’ judgment in an irrational situation.  We might as well say we are giving police x-ray vision or secret decoder rings to determine who to question and who not to.

The governor raises the violence of drug smuggling against the backdrop of a recent murder of a rancher by drug smugglers to justify this law.  Fear is the best way to make the public accept what they know is wrong.  Most undocumented workers in Arizona are not drug smugglers and most of the key players in the smuggling operations live in Mexico.  Drug smugglers are easy to identify.  They are the ones with 50 kilos of powder in their wheel well and an Uzi on their lap.  Undocumented immigrants who do engage in the smuggling racket are the ones with bloated bellies and super strength ex-lax in their pocket.  They are generally being forced through threats to assist the smugglers.  The vast majority of undocumented immigrants break no other laws than the ones that say they cannot live and work where they live and work.  They know that any arrest will end in deportation.  They can’t complain no matter how egregiously they are treated.  They spend their lives more sinned against than sinning.  But it is not the undocumented worker but the documented immigrant who must endure the degradation of constantly proving his right to be.  This law tells him that he is only an American on paper.  He must constantly prove his identity while his northern European neighbour does not.  All because most Latin Americans are mestizo, mixed blood.  So because his ancestors were less racist than our ancestors and chose not to exterminate the indigenous population as we did he must now suffer our bigotry.  Does no one else see the irony in this?

Probably the most interesting and ignored aspect of this story is the people who are most supportive of this law to assert the most basic right of any state as they call it, the right to assert sovereign borders, are the same people who don’t believe that applies to any other country besides the United States.  It is not the most basic right of any state but of the United States exclusively.  America as a nation and Americans as individuals seem to think that if they violate the borders of other countries it should be just accepted.  Ask Iran or North Korea.  But let hard working families cross the border and perform tasks that we would not take for wages we would not suffer, contribute to the local economy everyday by paying rent on lodgings that most often fail to achieve even the lowest standards conceivable and patronize local merchants and we will bring down our fury to wipe them from our sight.  After all America good; foreigners bad.  That is why the Republicans, the largest group in support of the law, hate the United Nations.  It is too full of foreigners.

Let’s end this nonsense before somebody gets hurt.  At what price salvation?  Security isn’t worth it if the cost is surrendering our humanity and our honour.  And this isn’t security it is security theater.  It provides only the illusion of security at the expense of human dignity.  To paraphrase Phil Ochs, “Arizona, find another country to belong to.”

Conservatives are often the culprits in both countries though not exclusively as the reference to Clinton shows.  It is not really that the Liberals are all that chaste.  But Conservatives are always lecturing us to be choirboys, seemingly forgetting that being a choirboy can be hazardous to your virginity.

Some of us are old enough to remember the Gerda Munsinger Affair that scandalized the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker.  Apparently Gerda had done the rounds of the Conservative party leadership including the minister of defence.  She was rumoured to have connections to the East German secret police.  The story was disseminated in the early 1960s, likely by the Kennedy administration who worked tirelessly to oust poor old Dief and install the more likable (at least to Kennedy) Lester Pearson.

More recently there was the scandal over Maxime Bernier leaving secret documents at his girlfriend’s home.  Pundits at the time wondered why he would risk his political career by dating a  woman with biker connections who had once worked as an exotic dancer.  Ah! our intrepid media, a brain trust if there ever was one.  I can give you two very large reasons up front it you would like.  If the reporters don’t realize why they should talk to their cameramen because they always seemed to place the reason front and center.

I always knew Betty Davis eyes were a popular look but Sarah Palin hair?

Now we have the dynamic duo of scandal, Rahim Jaffer and wife Helena Guergis.  Allegations have been brought to the prime minister’s attention of some shenanigans by Ms. Guergis and she was asked to resign from cabinet and was at the same time expelled from caucus.  Although no official word has surfaced as to what specifically she is supposed to have done rumours abound.  The only observation I will make is that having a minister resign is a common tactic to ease pressure and embarrassment for the government.  But also expelling the member from caucus in one fell swoop is not an every day occurrence.  Whatever this is Harper must think it makes him and his government, which is the same thing, look really, really bad.  I can hardly wait I am so excited with anticipation.

In the meantime, let’s have a look at her husband Rahim Jaffer a former Conservative MP from Alberta, land of cold hearts and toxic waste.  Apparently, Mr. Jaffer was internalizing some toxic waste of his own last September when he was pulled over by Ontario police.  He was speeding, drunk and cocaine was found in his car.  In a plea bargain the more serious impaired and drug possession charges were dropped and he pled guilty to the lesser charge of careless driving.  Wait for it.  That’s not the best part.

The reason for pleading Mr. Jaffer down was the Crown’s decision that conviction was unlikely.  Why you might ask?  Well the Ontario Keystone Cops refused to let the man see his own lawyer on request and made the poor man get naked.  That’s right, naked.   Now I know we hear constantly in the media that there is a shortage of cops out there and the workload is getting pretty heavy.  Dalton McGuinty says these little slip ups will happen from time to time.  But really now, give these poor guys some R and R and let them see their wives and girlfriends once in a while.  We can’t have police roaming the highways looking for some unsuspecting speeder to fulfill their fantasies.

Now I could be interpreting this wrong.  After all I am reading it in a CBC report where the wording could be read another way.  The actual quote is “… repeatedly denying Jaffer access to his own lawyers and a strip search after he was pulled over on a rural road …”.  So was Jaffer asking for a strip search.  Maybe he’s thought the silhouette of his body in the moonlight would bring a soft sigh and a warning rather than arrest.  Either way our police need to find better ways to relieve the tension.  Perhaps that could be a new use for those tasers they are so fond of.

Of course, even if the Crown had moved forward on the cocaine charges Jaffer could have used Richard Hatfield’s defence.  Hatfield, then Conservative premier of New Brunswick, was found at Fredericton airport with a bag of marijuana in his luggage.  He denied it belonged to him and had the police dust the bag for prints.  When his weren’t found charges did not proceed.

So thank you for being consistent, Conservative party.  Hypocrisy is what you are best at.  Good thing cause you aren’t good for anything else.  The Liberals may be slimy, power-hungry spawn of Satan who would pimp their mother for a vote, but at least they admit it.  The Conservative choir may sing like angels but up close there cassocks smell of booze and stale sex.

Families of nine Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan were shown on the news yesterday visiting Kandahar and the memorial to the Canadians who have fallen in that conflict.  It was a touching moment.  Emotions played on the faces of the family members as they stood before the stone etchings of their son or daughter.  The media followed by interviews with a couple of the pilgrims who unanimously support the mission and support extending it if necessary.

What did the media expect them to say?  What else can they believe but that the mission is important and necessary in order to justify the sacrifice and the grief they have suffered?  The sudden loss of a loved one in a conflict half way around the world must stand for something or their grief would destroy them completely.  All families of fallen soldiers must believe the sacrifice had noble purpose or go mad.

This pilgrimage was a personal journey and should have remained so.  What purpose was served by the media presence?  To the families no purpose whatsoever.  But for the media and for the government the purpose is clear and as petty and self-serving as the reasons that drew us into this conflict in the first place.  Each group, media and government, are attempting to assuage their own guilt by maintaining the myth.  But we don’t need our government giving us myth we need the truth and we need the media to question that truth incessantly.  That is the role of the media.  I can almost forgive the government for lying to us.  In a poll in the United States a couple of years ago the American public admitted they preferred their government to lie to them.  A lie is often easier to deal with than the truth.  Besides governments are by nature secretive little entities.  So it is the media that bears the greatest guilt because it is their job to wake up the public to the truth before it is too late.

The evidence has been there from the beginning concerning our real purpose for deploying to Afghanistan.  Our neighbour, our closest ally and our friend the United States asked us to go so they could free up assets to deploy to their upcoming Iraq invasion.  We said yes because they are our neighbour, friend and ally and because we were in negotiations with them over a  number of cross border issues at the time.  The two most important were softwood lumber and border access following 9/11.  The United States has its own reasons for being there.  Chief among those are access to Kazakh oil and gas without having to ship through Russian territory.  There is also evidence of resources in some of the other Central Asian states as well.  Nothing about this mission has been about human rights or democracy or any of the other catch-phrases that allow us to sleep at night while murdering people half a world away.

But removing the Burka, routing out terrorists, building a modern society (aka. American society) and creating democracy raises pride to console the tears and makes the whole thing a little more bearable.  This war was never about that.  The Soviet backed government of Afghanistan that we worked so hard to topple, which led us to create the Taliban and Al Qaeda was a secular government that had outlawed the burka and encouraged women to engage fully as equals in society.  It was an American tactic to encourage Islamic fundamentalism among the mujaheddin as a way to gain popular support among village elders and traditionalists.  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States and its western allies supported various groups in power in Kabul including the Taliban.  The Taliban were in close negotiations for a pipeline with the U.S. government and private firms such as Haliburton whose envoy to the Taliban was Dick Cheney.

Realpolitik is messy but it, not the spirit of humanity, motivates state actions.  No war has ever been fought for humanitarian reasons and none ever will be under our current international system.  Without a compelling selfish interest no state will risk its assets.  But without a higher moral purpose no democracy will sanction a foreign war.  Hence the lie.  We are manipulated to support something we really don’t understand.  We make it about nationalism just like the Nazis, the ultimate nationalists.  We, like them, take pride in the delusion that we are creating a better world; we, like them, believe we know the mind of god and it is consumerism.

The media knows this.  Instead it pretends as if it is too stupid to be able to assemble diverse evidence into a meaningful package and present a comprehensive report to the public.  That is news and the job of the news organization.  So we don’t have to research raw government documents and expert data on our own; or interview public figures and experts to tease out meaning; the  news media is to bring all this information together, plot its interactions and present us with understandable meaning .  Instead our newsrooms more resemble the Reichsministrie of Propoganda than the movie All the President’s Men.  Much of what is reported is lifted directly from press releases and the rest is assured not to ruffle the feathers of advertisers or their close buddies in government.

It is not just the loss that we experience in the Afghan debacle but where such complicity could lead that is of most concern. We are already experiencing a powerful move toward authoritarianism in our domestic society.  The anti-terrorism laws are only the prominent tip of the iceberg.  Whether police in Ontario charge people with a law that doesn’t exist in the statutes, shoot an innocent man (Dudley George) and then perjure themselves rather than take responsibility or the RCMP taser Robert Dziekanski in British Columbia and again lie in court or  resource companies invade and pollute your land in Alberta without allowing you recourse to protect it, the breakdown in trust between the agents of authority and the citizen continues apace.  Yet the media keeps its silence filling our minds with pleasant snippets and diversions rather than attacking the issues that will impact us most profoundly, if often without our notice until it is too late.  We ourselves must shoulder some of the blame for this.   Where are the crowds outside the major publishers and broadcasters demanding their right to know.

Individual reporters take shelter in their jobs.  They can only report what their editors, publishers and news directors allow.  It is there job.  That was the defence the Nazis used at Nuremburg as well.  We were just following orders.  We had our families to think of.  If not us someone else would have done it.  All true as far as it goes.  But it still boils down to one of two things.  Either they don’t stand up because they agree with maintaining the lie in which case they are complicit.  Or they fear the consequences of standing up and speaking their mind in which case they are cowards.  Those who are complicit I have no words of comfort for you.  May you soon be together in hell with your mentor Josef Goebbels.  To those who shrink from fear I have greater understanding.  But while you might be able to lie to the country you can’t lie to yourself.  You know the truth and you know your neighbours rely on you to make decisions.  Sometimes decisions concerning the life and death of those closest to them.

Each journalist must make their self assessment  and decide whether they are collaborators complicit in undermining the ethic of our society or cowards who to save their own skin let their neighbours suffer.  But shame on both for victimizing the families again to use them as a prop in your deceit.

Tasers are in the news again.  Ontario has announced rule changes for the use of the device and the RCMP will offer a second apology along with compensation to the mother of Robert Dziekanski.  Nothing can compensate the family of Mr. Dziekanski and no apology will return a son to a mother.  All we can do is learn from that tragic night at Vancouver Airport.

So what have we learned?  If the recent report to the Ontario government is any indication, not much.  The report recommends stricter limits on use against ‘vulnerable groups’ such as pregnant women and children.  How I wish Cheech and Chong were still together.  I can hear a rewrite of their famous emergency room sketch where the attendants at the desk are betting whether the old geezer will make it to reception or croak along the way.

Image if you will:

Cheech:  Oh wow!  That poncho is really ripe.  She’s gonna pop any second.  I bet I give her two zaps and that bambino will shoot right out the cruiser.

Chong:  No way man!  I bet she’ll take three zaps without even dilating.

And now a word from our sponsor:

Ed McMahon:  Women are you tired of your pregnancy?  Is that little bugger just refusing to come out?  Well President’s Choice Baby Zap is just the thing for you.  Just place the Baby Zap firmly on your stomach and crank that trigger.  Voila!  Instant motherhood.  Recommended by police wives everywhere.

Why do we pay thousands of dollars for morons to state the obvious?  Of course it is not really the obvious.  The obvious would be don’t use this on pregnant women at all.  If you feel threatened by a bloated human being who needs help to get up out of a chair perhaps policing is not your vocation and you might want to rethink your career choice.  Or perhaps it is a reflection of police intelligence that they need everything spelled out for them.  ‘Duh, I wonder what’ll happen if I zap her?’  Beyond this little gem of reasoning the bottom line is business as usual for Ontario police and tasers.  The only other big recommendation is to discuss expanding their use to all uniformed officers.

Once again police justify the deployment of tasers as less lethal alternative to guns therefore saving lives.  Twenty or more people have died from taser attacks by police across Canada.  I would be curious to see, in say the decade prior to the introduction of tasers to Canadian police agencies, how many people were fatally shot by police.  I have been searching for that information on Statistics Canada but if it’s there they aren’t making it easy to find.  I do know that there are many officers who retire without ever having fired their gun in the line of duty.  The taser has been deployed much more liberally.  I would also like to know how many people have been killed by police using pepper spray or the baton.   In the same breath as saying tasers are less lethal than guns police agencies assert that the taser was never meant as an alternative to the gun but as an alternative to these choices.  Double talk like this by those charged with our safety should make us pause.  Ask yourself this simple question.  If Rodney King had been zapped with tasers instead of beaten with batons do you really think he would have lived to tell about it?

But our politicians are right on the ball.  The Minister of Community Safety is quoted in the Globe and Mail saying:

We’re enhancing Ontario’s position with regards to its measured approach by introducing a very, very significant guideline (that’s) very very prescriptive

Oh that makes me feel so much better to know a genius like you is very, very on top of this.

NDP is often jokingly translated as the No Dissent Party or as meaning No Discernible Prospects.  While the latter is just a mean attack on their flagging fortunes it may be more related to the former than first glance reveals.  No Dissent necessarily means no new ideas and why would anyone vote for a party without ideas?  It is equally a wonder why the party would cling to the same old same old when it faces loss after loss.  No Dissent Party is not just a mean joke at the NDP’s expense but a legitimate description.  Of all the Canadian political parties the NDP is arguably the most dogmatic.  The Liberals and Conservatives stand for little beyond trying to get their man (usually) into the Prime Minister’s residence.  The Bloc has similar dogmatic problems to the NDP but these are sometimes softened by the coalition it needs must bring together around its special policy of getting Quebec the hell out of Canada.  To make a comment, ask a question, or worse actually make an argument at an NDP meeting that is not in lock step with the sanctioned view of the party establishment is to invite an atmosphere comparable to a commissar failing to clap long enough for Stalin or suggesting health care is a good thing at a Republican Party convention.  (I wanted to provide a metaphor from the Left and the Right lest any of my readers fall into the trap the only the Left becomes dogmatic.  It can happen to any political group).

To give you an example:  I attended the 1997 Ontario NDP Leadership convention in Hamilton Ontario as a Riding delegate.  The second evening I spent enjoying the benefits of free Scotch from a number of hospitality suites and conversing with fellow members of the party from across the province.  In one of these conversations the topic of open shops came up.  Only in Canada, Britain and the United States is the automatic check off system exclusively used.  This is called a closed shop because workers have no choice but to join the union if they wish to work at that ‘shop’.  In Europe an open shop system is used where workers choose not only whether or not to join the union but which union they want to join.  Their membership and the benefits of it continue even it they are unemployed.  I have always believed that the closed shop, automatic check off system was a mixed blessing.  Canada adopted it during the second world war in a deal between the union organizations of the time and the government.  While it benefits workers by making if very difficult to break a union or to set worker against worker, it also has a tendency to make unions complacent toward their membership and narrow in their outlook.  European unions are broader organizations and far more politically active and effective than North American unions who cannot see beyond the legalism of the contract.  Anyway such was what seemed a pleasant argument between two men well into their cups.

Little did I know that my conversation in its entirety would be reported to union and party delegates who would duly descend upon their minions within my own Riding group at the convention to set me straight.  Slightly hungover and badly needing more coffee I stumbled onto the convention floor the next morning oblivious to the ambush that awaited me.  Suddenly surrounded I was accused of being a dupe of corporations and anti-union.  I was told I did not know what socialism was (it apparently having been conclusively defined by the NDP without my awareness) and that I was damaging the party by having discussions like that of the night before even in  such a private setting as a hospitality suite of an NDP convention.  I suppose there might have been Liberal or Conservative spies present who might have used my words to undermine the prospects for the party to take power.  Considering the party has No Discernible Prospects I thought this fear a little far fetched.  The whole affair seemed to me to be over dramatic.  Again this was just a casual academic conversation over the pros and cons of two sides of an issues to pass the time fueled by liberal (oops. Oh my God! they were right see how it sneaks in) amounts of alcohol.  The idea of a plan to raise a resolution concerning the matter on the floor of the convention didn’t even exist.  We were killing time so we could continue to drink, nothing more.

My relationships within the Riding Association were permanently affected by this incident and  a couple of more like it.  Times when I just, erroneously, believed that I could question the status quo, explore new ground or freshen those things we had come to believe in for a long time by giving them a thorough examination at a meeting or in conversation with another member without being labeled a heretic and my motives and loyalties coming under suspicion.  The final break for me with the NDP came three years after the events described above when a rather innocent incident concerning a strike was twisted into an assault on me by someone who felt it appropriate to settle an unrelated personal grudge using the mechanisms of the party.

So today I avoid joining political organizations of all sorts.  It saddens me because I love the social interaction of people of like mind but I have yet to see one not fall victim to dogmatism, a set truth from which variance is discouraged.  The world is not a set place.  As I said above that which refuses to grow must die.  It is true for organizations as it is for human beings.

This particular IED image carries a 2 fold message in the reality wars.

Take for instance the glitzy NewSpeak for a bomb.  That little word does not convey the correct message.  Every word, every reference must expose a stark difference between us and our foes in a time of war.  We use bombs and we are the good guys so the public must have a different term for a bomb when it is used by the bad guys, i. e. the enemy.  Solution:  Improvised Explosive Device or IED.  Just rolls off the tongue doesn’t it.  Now you know that anything improvised is not official and is just not the tool to use.  The word improvise carries a subliminal message of inferiority.  A legitimate military organization doesn’t improvise materials.  Only some slipshod mom and pop terrorist cell would do that.  I guess if these people want to be taken seriously they need to raise some money and go out and buy an SBED (Store Bought Explosive Device).  That’s what we use and that’s the ticket to legitimacy.

If these criminals and scumbags, to use the military vernacular, would use legitimate weapons manufactured to precise specification to blow up our troops then we would be able to respect them.  They too would become soldiers and cease being criminals and scumbags.  Maybe we would then celebrate their deaths less and gain a perspective on our own casualties.  As it stands now the subhuman Taliban is gleefully dispatched to Allah and each of our casualties is a fallen hero.

Language is used to persuade, to guide the listener subtly or sometimes not so subtly to the speakers position.  It is the pigment on the canvas of understanding, the colour of reality.  If anything should be painted in the words of reality it is war.  How else will we ever break this sad cycle of carnage.  Even bomb is too kind a word.  And Improvised Explosive Device is so sanitized as to be laughable.  How about we call it what it is, a life and limb shredding horror, whether we buy it from a manufacturer listed on the NYSE or cook it up in the basement.

What the public needs to see is the evidence that could only be attained through the use of the enhanced police powers contained in the anti-terrorism laws and how that evidence directly prevented catastrophic loss of life.  Anything else is diversion.  Everything thus far released could have been achieved using standard police procedures.  Why then do we need the added tools of the anti-terrorism law.  That is what must be justified if those laws are to be extended. 

The weakness of the government’s arguments for maintaining the anti-terrorism laws is demonstrated by the mock explosion.  The only reason to include that footage is to terrorize the public.  Terrorism in service of preventing terrorism, there is a metaphor for the new millennium.  Scared and confused the electorate is prepared to accept whatever the government claims will safeguard them, whether it really will or not.  I am surprised that this footage was allowed in court as it is clearly irrelevant.  Whether you are planting a bomb capable only of cracking a ceramic pot or a nuclear device capable of taking out an entire city, you are still committing a crime.  What possible value could a demonstration of the blast from a particular size of explosive be in a trial to determine if these men were guilty of plotting a terrorist attack?  Would they have been less guilty if the explosion planned had been for instance half the size demonstrated.  Or is this the purpose of out anti-terrorism laws?  Are they needed so that the crown may enter irrelevant and inflammatory evidence in order to convict by hatred and anger rather than law.  If so, then it is a frivolous and dangerous justification. 

Eight years after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington it is time to return to sanity and allow these over-reactions to pass into history.  In the wake of those events a terrified population lost track of what this country and western democracies are supposed to stand for.  Yes it is a dangerous world out there and yes we should be vigilant against those who would threaten our lives.  But in being vigilant let us not become vigilantes.  Let us remember that while law and individual rights and freedoms can leave us vulnerable to dangers, the dangers of a police state without rights are far greater.  In retrospect the chaos of Weimar was preferable to the order of the Third Reich.

“and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” — The Last Will and Testament of Alfred Nobel.

And the winner is Barack Obama.  He has done the most and best work for fraternity between nations by …… uh  ….. what exactly has he done?  Well he must be downsizing the American military.  No U. S. forces are on a recruitment drive.  He is promoting peace by maintaining troops in Iraq, increasing troops in Afghanistan, signing off on extraordinary rendition, talking about closing Guantanamo Bay.  That doesn’t sound like it fits the spirit of the Will either.

The consensus seems to be that he has won the prize because he is a symbol of hope.  At least that is the line being taken by those who support Obama.  Of course Fox News thinks the Nobel committee are a bunch of hippie / commies chosen by a parliament of hippie / commies in Norway who give this prize to other hippie / commies to celebrate hippie / commies.  If the Daily Show isn’t on you can allows tune into Fox News to get your daily laugh.  The upshot though is that no one is defending the prize as actually legitimate.  And that says a lot.

Whatever reason possessed the committee to award the prize to Obama was misguided to be charitable.  There have always been those on the Right who have diminished the importance of the Peace Prize and pointed to winners such as Yasser Arafat as evidence of it mistaken sentiments.  But Arafat had accomplished something.  Now the Right can actually say that someone won it for doing nothing except being liked by the members of the committee.  Worse there will always be the rumour, suspicion that politics played a role.  Obama’s people responded in open-mouthed astonishment that their man had received the prize.  But White House staffers are trained and proficient liars.  Even when they tell the truth it always sounds like a lie.  We will never know for sure and conspiracy theories are likely to abound across the Internet.

What I suppose gnaws at me most is the rush of progressive left wing organizations to jump on the bandwagon and celebrate the prize.  I just read a missive from Avaaz.org, a group that does a lot of good work promoting human rights and keeping governments honest, argue the prize is an opportunity to help Obama justify his winning in the future.  We all condemn the Right when they justify the unjustifiable.  But given the opportunity the Left sounds suspiciously similar.  Blind slavery to any doctrine or person is not only misguided it is down right dangerous.  Have we so quickly forgot the excesses of the Soviet Union.  We can argue that Soviet socialism was not true socialism but then we just sound as dogmatic as the current Right or the old Soviets.

Instead we should be as critical of our own as we are of our opponents.  Mr. Obama you should have refused that prize as you know you do not deserve it.  The prize committee needs to be censured for so callously violating the spirit of Alfred Nobel’s final request.  Shame on you and shame on Obama for sullying the noble gesture of Alfred Nobel.