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.

The next stage has now arrived.  Chrysler telling Canadian governments that unless they receive more public money and workers accept concessions they will close plants in Canada is a repeat of the old threat of the 1930s, ‘If you don’t like your job and what we give you, there are a hundred people waiting outside to take it.’  That’s right blame the worker because Toyota and Honda have seized the auto market.  Toyota and Honda must be genetically modifying the workers at their facilities.  Maybe they inject each new employee with some Japanese DNA.  Is that it?  Even with the concessions made by American unions, labour costs are still cheaper in Canada,  So the jobs will go to the developing world, likely Mexico where human rights and a living wage are the stuff of dreams.  So who is going to buy your cars Chrysler?  The underpaid Mexicans?  Not likely.  They have more pressing needs to spend their money on than a Neon.  You might not know this in your gated world but most people I know put food, clothing and lodging above purchasing a car.  Do you believe that unemployed Canadians and Americans will buy cars with the paltry sum allotted them by unemployment insurance schemes?  (I know in Canada Paul Martin changed it to Employment Insurance but lets not be slaves to losers and their ideas)  Henry Ford years ago realized that in order to sell his cars he needed workers who were paid enough to buy them.  Interestingly Ford has proposed that governments give consumers significant incentives to purchase rather than just pour money on the funeral pyre of the big three. 

There is another issue at play here.  We are, laughingly anyway, in a War on Terror.  Both the United States and Canada have passed draconian statutes to increase police power and undermine the basic rights and liberties that we have come to take for granted.  I abhor these laws with every fibre of my being, however, in the case of these arrogant corporate terrorists, I am prepared to make an exception.  Just as the murder of a loved one makes our opposition to the death penalty waiver if only temporarily, the spectacle of being threatened by a parasite who has gorged himself on the wealth created by my family and friends, who today face economic ruin because of the incompetence of said parasite, makes my commitment to human rights for everyone waiver.  After all, I am also a staunch defender of animal rights but I sanction the killing of rabid dogs.  At this moment I see no difference between a rabid animal and those that hold our society for ransom to protect their own affluence.  So perhaps there is a time, not against innocent individuals but against those who openly flaunt their acts of terror,  committing them before cameras with no attempt to conceal their guilt, that the new anti-terrorism laws could be justifiably applied. 

Make no mistake about it, what Chrysler did is an act of terror.  Terrorism is not about killing people.  It is about threatening people to cause them to act in a certain way desired by the terrorist.  In 2001 the attacks were not terror because they killed people but because they could be carried out.  The terror was the fear of vulnerability.  The act itself was important only to give credence to the threat.  Workers and governments have no doubt that Chrysler has the capacity to carry out their threat, at least to a significant extent.  Therefore the threat has credence.  Chrysler could reinforce the fear by cutting back or closing one or two plants but in this economic climate that would be unnecessary.  So Chrysler has carried out an act of terror.  They have threatened the well-being of Canadian society as a whole.  Hundreds of thousands of families now wait with bated breath to see the outcome.  Families that may lose their home because of it may be inclined to give in out of fear.  Far from helping, acquiescence to Chrysler’s demands would further deteriorate our economy as those who today can still maintain their home may not on lower salaries and those who might have purchased a home will not.  All the jobs that spin off from the economic behaviour of Chrysler workers and their families will be negatively affected whether Chrysler carries out the threat or not and whether the workers accept concessions or not.  The act of terror is a fait accompli.

This is exactly what Osama bin Laden attempted to do, disrupt Western economies thereby weakening our societies.  If bin Laden sat down at a parliamentary committee he would be hauled off in chains in a blink of the eye.  So why not that Chrysler executive whose actions will be infinitely more successful at achieving the goal of Al Qaeda?  As I watched the fat little slug smugly make his threats, I wanted nothing more than for the RCMP to storm into the room, shackle him and drag him off to the darkest dankest dungeon in Canada.  There to have electrodes attached to his testicles.  Then let the interrogation show begin.  I would even pull the switches myself to watch him dance and sing like Liza Minnelli. 

Perhaps in prison he would learn a useful skill.  Given that he doesn’t look much like a fighter I suspect his training will involve a shower and a bar of soap.

The longer Gaza is under siege and more Palestinians, particularly civilians, die, the broader the effects will be felt.  George Bush asked ‘why do they hate us?’  Are we really that simple?  The entire ‘War on Terror’ has been a recruiting tool for militants and has undermined any hope of a peaceful or successful resolution of the problems.  The West, twiddling its thumbs and launching platitudes in the media about the sanctity of human life, has sent a clear message to the Muslim world and to Palestinians in particular:  ‘You are on your own.’  The United States has firmly stated in act and word that Israeli deaths matter; Palestinian deaths do not.  Well if they didn’t hate us before they damn well should now. 

What should be of great concern to us is that the support of the murders in Gaza are being done in our name.  I am murdering Palestinians through my government’s support of Israel and I don’t want to.  Like me most of you who read this know that we do not really govern ourselves.   We need to admit to ourselves that our democracy is a sham and admit to the world that what the United States and its allies, including Canada, are exporting to the developing world is not democracy but capitalist exploitation.  It is the new colonialism.  If any of you are in doubt on this you need only look to Hamas.  When elections were held in the Palestinian territories Hamas won a clear victory in a clean and fair election according to international observers.  But Hamas was not the government that the United States and Israel had chosen for the Palestinians to elect and so Hamas was immediately denounced, vilified and through the collaboration of Mahmoud Abbas prevented from governing.  Israel and the United States then created an internal Palestinian civil war backing Abbas to try to eliminate Hamas.  While the attempt did not fully succeed, it has created even greater suffering for the Palestinian people. 

 As long as peoples around the world believe the myth that we govern ourselves, they will hate us because of what they perceive as our callous brutality toward them.  Our governments by their actions and their lies about democracy are endangering each and every one of us.  Most of us who followed international affairs knew that September 11 was coming.  We didn’t know exactly when or where or how.  But we knew that a major terrorist attack on the continental United States was inevitable.  Many of us, myself included, were surprised that the kill count was not higher for we had expected a biological or chemical attack.  By our failure to understand the problems and deal with them in an effective way we are guaranteeing that it will happen again and this time perhaps it will be worse.  If we are going to murder innocent people and deny the right to exist to whole populations; if we are going to condone mass murder or even genocide by our failure to effectively confront it; if we are going to say that this person because of this identifier is more important than that person because of that identifier; then we sew the seeds of sorrow and grief for all humankind.