Alex Neve: Time to Close Canada’s Worrying, Growing National Security Review

Human rights violations are always most likely to occur when no one is watching over the police, soldiers and guards who have the power and potential to commit abuses. That is certainly even more the case when secrecy is prevalent; which obviously describes the world of national security investigations and operations. That is why human rights organizations, experts and bodies – national and international – have long stressed that effective review and oversight must be central to the imperative of ensuring that human rights protection is not sacrificed in any country’s rush to uphold national security.

by Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada. This article was orginally published in Slaw, Canada's online legal magazine.

Idle No More

Idle No More Mission

Idle No More calls on all people to join in a revolution which honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water. Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit and intent of the treaty relationship, work towards justice in action, and protect Mother Earth. On December 10th,  Indigenous people and allies stood in solidarity across Canada to assert Indigenous  sovereignty and begin the work towards sustainable, renewable development. All  people will be affected by the continued damage to the land and water and we welcome Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies to join in creating healthy sustainable communities. We encourage youth to become engaged in this movement as you are the leaders of our future. There have always been individuals and groups who have been working towards these goals – Idle No More seeks to create solidarity and further support these goals. We recognize that there may be backlash, and encourage people to stay strong and united in spirit.

Throughout centuries of invasion, war, racial supremacy and exploitation, we have come to a cliff where we must ask ourselves what we want for the future.  A livable society where we learn how to live creatively and inclusively, or a society of fear, dread and a slow lingering death.  

Idle No More, calls for a return to conscience, to nature and justice.  Chief Theresa Spence is putting her life on the line, so that we might wake up, pay attention to the true cost of rapacious capitalism and blind consumerism. The First Nations are teaching us to care about our home, this planet and its peoples.

Bullied to Death

Rick Mercer was interviewed today on The Current about his rant on Tuesday after the suicidal death of 15-year-old Jamie Hubley, earlier this month.

Why would kids bully those they think are gay?  How does it threaten them?

And why do we have so many reports of school aged children committing suicide because of bullying, or if not because of bullying, bullying was a factor in their lives?

What has happened to our places of learning that children are violated in this way, and the school,  teachers, principals, boards, seem to be unable or unwilling to intervene effectively?

What happened to that social factor of teaching fairness?

Society and all its cultural knowledge was sacked in the early eighties, by the people and institutions who are paid to govern, who set upon a course of dismantling civil society in order to appease the power of transnational corporations.  So all we need do is look at the systems running our world.  There is no bigger bully than big business, who have consistently lobbied to undermine human rights, protection against violence, social safety nets, medicare, education for all, ethical journalism and participatory democracy.

Civil service takes years of money, training and discipline but once the student leaves the school for the workplace he learns that the game is about power and strategy for his own survival, and those who do the work they were trained to do, will be tripped up and chucked out. The winners are those who have no conscience and who put all their resources into winning the game.

Civil society has been bullied to death. 

It is a top down ritual of bullying whoever is beneath you, whoever is vulnerable: your spouse, your children, your employees, your cleaning lady and the sales representatives at your local market. Intelligence has been subverted to a single thrust - that of exercising power, control or force over whoever you can.

This is the reason we are unable to deal with bullying - we are in denial. Whenever someone points out injustice, we hate them, we hate the messenger.  Participating in the game is a device to avoid seeing the violence that is all around us.  It is mob rule through unexamined fear, because the ruling principles and ideology is misogynist, misanthropic and nihilistic.  Disaster capitalism is designed to keep us, the members of our fractured and broken civil society, in fear and feeling powerless, through their funded media replays of all that makes humanity appear brutal, unreflective, violent and primitive.

Power is a central element in education and the running of all institutions.  Kids learn about power from the time they are born.  By the time they reach high school and have witnessed how their parents cope, and the thousands of hours watching commercial programming, they feel and sense the tight rope they are placed upon.  They may not be able to articulate that, but they know.  And so they target others in their group - who might be gay, or whose ears may stick out, or who dress differently - for that fleeting sense of power, of superiority. Their fearful hearts sense it won't last but for now they will find a thing more vulnerable than them.

Who will stand up and risk their job to work for social justice by teaching others how power currently works against them if they contribute to its brutality; and how power is in our hands if we work together to return to life affirming principles, such as the nurture we receive from true friends, good parents, and honourable communities?

If you think this conflict between power-over and power-from-within can be dismissed in our society, then consider what happened in the death camps of Nazi Germany.  Consider the women of Afghanistan under siege from their warrior men who courageously set up civic education, and who were crushed again by Western nations, because, instead of giving them protection and support they gave their men more guns. Consider the billions spent on arms in foreign wars as citizens go hungry, without health care, without homes. Consider the degradation of our earthly home so that the most powerful bullies are given unchallenged rights to exploit and rape every imaginable element for greater profit and power.

Consider all this and witness our children committing suicide before they have had time to know who they are. Then look at bullying in a new context.

Challenging the Looming Threat of Fascism

In the alternative press there are many thoughtful articles and essays on the current state of this planet. Mostly, they target specific issues: democracy, health care, justice, poverty, homelessness, crime and the environment.

It's as though these issues stem from different sources, but when you read them day after day, you can't help but feel they are connected, leading to a vague feeling of dread. A disturbing sense that something much deeper and bigger is going horribly wrong, and that shadow, perhaps, belongs to the looming threat of fascism.

So what if we took on the big picture - the supposed cause, instead of the symptoms? 

Using a commonly posted list of fourteen defining signs of fascism (listed in black text), attributed to a Dr. Lawrence Britt, (whose bio is hard to locate and who may even be a fictitious character) I  suggest corresponding actions we can take to challenge them (in blue text). 

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism: <creation and documentation of national forums that enable citizens to be heard as they express their concerns in a respectful, safe, environment.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights: <vigilant defense of human rights for all.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause: <determined and sustained defence of diversity, and equality.

4. Supremacy of the Military: <balance between military and civic powers in training and law.

5. Rampant Sexism: <reverence for the feminine and masculine natures within all.

6. Controlled Mass Media: <public and financial support for alternative, small media outlets, and transparent regulations that keep all media bound by laws of ethics.

7. Obsession with National Security: <democratic world government that sustains human rights by challenging abuses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined: <study of comparative religion as part of public education while upholding freedom of religion and separation of religion and state.

9. Corporate Power is Protected: <regulated corporate power for the protection of consumer and indigenous peoples rights.

10. Labour Power is Suppressed: <protected labour through labour laws, livable minimum wages and safe working places.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts: <support and promotion of the arts and intellectual development.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment: <focus on prevention through early intervention, support for those at risk, and rehabilitation for those who are in the criminal system.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption: <transparency in all systems of appointment.

14. Fraudulent Elections: <citizen based checks on media election coverage, polls and ballots.

Certainly any action has to be followed by a large portion of our population in order to be effective, but all of these actions are being tackled through various non-governmental agencies; they are viewed as different problems rather than symptoms of a larger threat to our future.

What would happen if, somehow, the majority of those who believe they are living in free democratic societies were able to see these movements as defending the freedom of all rather than a collection of special interest groups? And what if, those who are already in the trenches fighting poverty and discrimination, could see their work as having a larger, more profound impact?