Track Changes

Legal Strategy Coalition on Violence Against Aboriginal Women: "reviewed 58 reports dealing with aspects of violence and discrimination against Indigenous women and girls, including government studies, reports by international human rights bodies, and published research of Indigenous women's organizations. The reports cover a period of two decades. (They) found only a few of more than 700 recommendations in these reports have ever been fully implemented." 

Harper's record of refusal: An Act of violence against Indigenous Women. Muskrat Magazine, rabble: "Since 1996...over 40 reports have been delivered to the federal government calling for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women.  In August 2014, the premiers of Canada also called for an inquiry stating there are two possible routes to getting a national public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women: Prime Minister changes his mind and calls one -- or he is defeated in the 2015 federal election." 

Globe and Mail Editorial February 1, 2015; "Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force." 

Letter to PM Harper from Ralph Nader, Rabble: "Particularly noticeable in your announcement were your exaggerated expressions that exceed the paranoia of Washington's chief attack dog, former vice-president Dick Cheney. Mr. Cheney periodically surfaces to update his pathological war mongering oblivious to facts -- past and present -- including his criminal war of aggression which devastated Iraq -- a country that never threatened the U.S." 

ICBC may withhold licence for outstanding court fines, student loans in default. CBC: "The provincial government has proposed legislation to expand ICBC's ability to refuse driver's licences to those in debt.The insurance company is already able to withhold licences from people who owe money, such as toll fees, but the new bill — if passed — would be a "last-resort measure" to collect on outstanding court fines or student loans in default." 

There are many voices of reason from individuals and groups doing all they can, with very small budgets, to influence their governments.  What must be really clear to any concerned and thinking person is that those who hold the highest seats of power  like presidents, prime ministers, and CEO's of large corporations, do not appear to be providing leadership at all.  It's as if holding power is not compatible with social responsibility. Or the media feels its not in their best interest to report when these officers do consider the greater good. That, in fact to do real leadership for their constituents, to do what is wise and responsible, to do what we expect of adults, is likely to cause their downfall. That once they have won their seats they must be obsessed with holding onto their power by any means available.

Social responsibility is not seen to be the concern of prime ministers, presidents and CEO's. Somehow the building and maintenance of order and justice must fall on the citizens, sometimes sacrificing their own lives, to defend society, or to re-build their own structures of governance.

Power without social responsibility and justice is not leadership, and therefore not legitimate power.

Ceasefire and How to Destroy the Islamic State

Nafeez Ahmed takes a look at the roots of the Islamic State (No Piers Morgan. This Is How to Destroy the Islamic State, Middle East Eye, 8 February 2015), arguing that IS should not be seen as a natural product of some inherent violence unique to Islam.

Ahmed argues instead that the radical group uses Islam as a means to gain legitimacy and support from the large numbers of people who witnessed, and were affected by, the huge death toll caused by Western actions in Iraq and elsewhere since the First Gulf War. Many of the fighters that support the Islamic State are motivated not by religion, but by political grievances and/or lack of prospects in life. - See more here: Ceasefire.ca

To cure a disease, one needs to first diagnose it correctly. A disease as mind-blowingly disturbing and insidious as IS requires a process of diagnosis that is commensurate.

Distorted pseudo-religious ideologies don’t become capable of conquering vast areas of land and indoctrinating thousands of foot-soldiers, out of the blue, purely due to the power of fanatical belief. For violent extremism to translate into terrorism requires a material infrastructure: not just ideas, but the capacity to transmit those ideas, receptivity to those ideas, and concomitantly, the organisational training and networks to act on those ideas.

See more here: No Piers Morgan. This is How to Destroy the Islamic State

Pew Research: Social Media and the ‘Spiral of Silence’

"Some social media creators and supporters have hoped that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter might produce different enough discussion venues that those with minority views might feel freer to express their opinions, thus broadening public discourse and adding new perspectives to everyday discussion of political issues."

BY KEITH HAMPTON, LEE RAINIE, WEIXU LU, MARIA DWYER, INYOUNG SHIN AND KRISTEN PURCELL.


Read the  Pew Research Centre report here 

Who will watch the spies?

A video from Leadnow...

Do people really support a bill they haven't read based on questions that interpret this bill?

New poll finds Harper’s anti-terror bill is a political juggernaut? Here is the Globe and Mail article.

Here are the questions Angus Reid said they used in the poll.

And to support the Harper government Gordon Gibson claims The Supreme Court is a greater threat to Canada than Harper.

Tom Mulcair in The Tyee: "What Stephen Harper is proposing is a bogus choice," Mulcair told reporters in French. "We don't have to choose between our freedoms and our safety; we have to deal with both at the same time."

Elizabeth May in the Georgia Straight says the bill would create a secret police force.

And from Christopher Majka on rabble.ca:
"As many astute commentators have pointed out "terror" is a tactic. It has been -- and continues to be -- employed by various groups in pursuance of political agendas.

Thus, a "war on terror" is a terminological absurdity. One cannot wage a war on a tactic. One cannot bomb a "tactic" out of existence. Nonetheless, such terminological (and consequently tactical) nonsense has dominated the foreign policy of a variety of nations (United States, Great Britain, NATO, and now, seemingly, Canada) for the past 15 years."

Finally a quote by James Baxter "There are, quite literally, hundreds of thousands of ways you are more likely to die or be critically injured than at the hands of a terrorist in Canada. Cancer, heart disease, diabetes… medical malpractice, bad drug interactions, falls in the bathtub… poor food inspection… bad water, malaria, drunk drivers, venereal disease… improper antibiotics, toxic shock syndrome… heck, even bed sores.

"When it comes to violence, statistics would indicate you are still many hundreds of times more likely to die at the hands of your spouse than some whacked-out extremist. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the average American is as likely to be crushed to death by televisions or other furniture as they are to die in a terrorist attack."

Roy Romanow & Ed Broadbent on Bill C-51

"They point out that it gives security agencies too much power to detain suspects without charge. They say it returns Canada to the days when the country’s spies spent much of their time playing dirty tricks against real or imagined threats.

They note that the bill’s definition of what constitutes a threat to national security is so broad that it “could include just about anything.”

Terrorism, they write, is “designed to provoke governments into making drastic mistakes.” Bill C-51, they imply, is one such drastic mistake."


Tom Walkom, Toronto Star: NDP history pushing Thomas Mulcair to oppose anti-terror bill: Walkom

Orthodoxy of War

On Canada’s military contribution to the campaign against Islamic state, Peggy Mason of the Rideau Institute said:


"We’re playing a symbolic military role, [within the context of ] a very short-sighted military strategy, when what we could be doing is playing a much more meaningful role in the broader political strategy that must be put in place if we are going to have anything other than a very long conflict, a quagmire."


Why would that be? Why would the federal government want to play a "symbolic" role instead of attempting to bring peace in such a dangerous area. How would we or the government of Canada benefit by this? What are we trying to attain?


William Astore in The Nation lists seven reasons why America will not be ending war anytime soon. That is to say that Washington intends to keep the war going on for as long as it can.

The reasons given in this article, are the privatization of war, embrace of the national security state by both major parties, "Support Our Troops” as a substitute for thought, fighting a redacted war, threat inflation, defining the world as a global battlefield, and the new "normal" in America is war.

We have seen how our federal government is eager to support Washington wherever it can.

The purpose of war is not to defend the people of a nation but simply to enable the war industry to get rich while the citizens, or taxpayers, pay for it with money and the lives of their children.

Andrew Bacevich writes in Tom Dispatch from his book How Washington Rules:


"By temperament and upbringing, I had always taken comfort in orthodoxy. In a life spent subject to authority, deference had become a deeply ingrained habit. I found assurance in conventional wisdom. Now, I started, however hesitantly, to suspect that orthodoxy might be a sham. I began to appreciate that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high -- whether by presidents, prime ministers, or archbishops -- is inherently suspect. The powerful, I came to see, reveal truth only to the extent that it suits them. Even then, the truths to which they testify come wrapped in a nearly invisible filament of dissembling, deception, and duplicity. The exercise of power necessarily involves manipulation and is antithetical to candor."

Rather than a global threat Peggy Mason reminds us that we are fighting civil wars in other nations and: "The way you end these civil wars [is] not through a military victory …[but] through the negotiation table. There is no solution here without dealing with Assad, and the only way to deal with Assad is to negotiate with him."

Which do we want? For the future of our children and the future of our planet? Peace or the threat of oppression by the centralized power of the arms industry.