The World in One Paragraph by Chris Hedges

"Extraction industries, like wars, empower a predominantly male, predatory population that is engaged in horrific destruction and violence. Wars and extraction industries are designed to extinguish all systems that give life—familial, social, cultural, economic, political and environmental. And they require the obliteration of community and the common good. How else could you get drag line operators in southern West Virginia to rip the tops off Appalachian mountains to get at coal seams as they turn the land they grew up in, and often their ancestors grew up in, into a fetid, toxic wasteland where the air, soil and water will be poisoned for generations? These vast predatory enterprises hold up the possibility of personal wealth, personal advancement and personal power at the expense of everyone and everything else. They create a huge, permanent divide between the exploiters and the exploited, one that is rarely crossed. And the more vulnerable you are, the more the jackals appear around you to prey on your afflictions. Those who suffer most are children, women and the elderly—the children and the elderly because they are vulnerable, the women because they are left to care for them." Chris Hedges

This just about says it all of our age and our society. I have long suspected that all our species' problems have arisen out of misogyny. Seems there are others also leading to that conclusion.

Five Reasons Ottawa Should Not Extend Iraq Mission

Daryl Copeland gives a concise overview of why Canada needs to end its military involvement in Iraq and not extend it into Syria (“Five reasons Ottawa shouldn’t extend Iraq mission,” Toronto Star,  23 March 2015): -  Reposted on Ceasefire.ca 

1. It doesn’t work.
2. It plays into the hands of Islamic State strategists
3. It spoils Canada’s brand:
4. It reinforces the gross imbalance in the distribution of international policy resources
5. It is militarily insignificant and wasteful.

Copeland points out that Western military action has proven ineffective in defeating extremists; it destabilizes the nation and leads to the creation of groups like the Islamic State; bombing Iraq and Syria is exactly what the Islamic State wants the West to do; it plays directly into the propaganda that the West is at war with Islam; it destroys Canada's previous reputation as a force for peace; it emphasizes the military as a tool of foreign policy rather than diplomacy and development; Canada’s contribution is purely symbolic and a waste of resources.

What we should do is get out and vote for the NDP or the Greens, write letters to our MP's, educate ourselves through discussion groups. Fill the leadership void with civic literacy. Educate friends and neighbours. Be compassionate - it's not pretty dealing with our own vulnerability against centralized power.

Beyond Pessimism and Optimism

Chris Hedges - Wikimedia Commons

Chris Hedges is a brilliant journalist, activist citizen and father.  He took President Obama to court over "section 1021 of the National Defence Authorization Act, which permits the U.S. military overturning over 150 years of law to carry out domestic policing on American city streets, to seize American citizens who "substantially support" the Taliban, Al Qaeda or something called associated forces -- another kind of nebulous phrase -- strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military facilities."

In this interview with H.G. Watson (uploaded to rabble.ca) Hedges warns Canadians about Bill C-51.  In fact he is concerned enough that he was making his way to Toronto to participate in the protest.

"We can't talk about free citizens in the state where everyone has all of their electronic forms of communication not only monitored, but stored in perpetuity in government computers. It doesn't matter if they're not using it. History has shown that if the government feels threatened or they seek greater control -- and I think that is the trajectory of the corporate state -- they will use it. The goal of wholesale surveillance, and something that Hannah Arendt wrote about in The Origins of Totalitarianism, is not to discover crimes but to give information to the government that it can use if it decides to arrest a certain category of the population. I think this is extremely grave."

There is a great deal of information on the many ways the Harper government is eroding civil society in what we believe is, or was, a democracy.  Hedges is concerned that most of us are not responding to these events or the total effect of them.  Why is that? Why do we not seem to be up in arms? Why are most of us not out on the streets protesting?

The core of the crisis appears to be that we are losing the freedoms and choices that have taken centuries to install so that we don't become victims of fascism.  We suspect the frog is being boiled and is not aware of it yet, and we are generally busy trying to keep our personal lives together - caring for family, for our jobs and our community.

The media will not let us have peace. But does it help to simply broadcast one crisis after another without the contextual information? They are not in business to educate the citizens just as the government is not there to look after the people of Canada. What is clear is that we have been abandoned by the institutions who our ancestors built through blood, sweat and tears. The message we are getting is that we are powerless.  That power is held in the hands of a few corporations because they have the wealth to purchase think-tanks and governments, and who view people as a resource or nuisance.

The message of Chris Hedges is not just to tell us how bad things are but to get us to think beyond that.  The question is - what is it that we must do?

The "must" is another imperative and when it is told from one person to another does not inspire us to be creative, to act.  But when we ask ourselves this, we can apply the skills we have to do what is best based on the knowledge we have.  

For change to take place we can't afford to be pessimistic or optimistic - that requires a huge perspective that is vulnerable to so many competing messages.  We can use our perspective based on experience of what has worked for us, using our accumulated wisdom.

But what if we are influenced by propaganda on things we cannot access or understand?  Most of us are not lawyers so we don't know how Bill C-51 really works. We don't know what Stephen Harper thinks about every minute of every day even though his actions and speech give us a broad sense of his intentions. Most of us are not scientists so we don't really understand how climate change works. But who does?  Who is absolutely sure they are right? And how much do the experts really know?

We need (I believe) to get together those who have great confidence in their own knowledge, those who second guess everything, those who have ideas that seem to come out of nowhere, those who have scientific minds and those who are philosophers, those who are artists, writers and musicians, those who are open and loving and those who are risk averse.

People such as Chris Hedges, George Orwell, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Elizabeth May, Hannah Arendt, Edward Snowden, and all the other voices of conscience - have already paid so much in terms of risk and pain - we can at least help the future unfold with our serious and reflective engagement.

How much more do we need to know about Bill C-51

Global Research: "As its critics have shown, the bill isn’t really about terrorism: it’s about smearing other activities by association—and then suppressing them in ways that would formerly have been flagrantly illegal. The bill targets, among others, people who defend the treaty rights of First Nations, people who oppose tar sands, fracking, and bitumen-carrying pipelines as threats to health and the environment, and people who urge that international law be peacefully applied to ending Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. (Members of this latter group include significant numbers of Canadian Jews.)"

22 minutes - Connie on Anti-Terror Legislation - Youtube 
For some of Marg Walsh's transcribed text go to Ceasefire here.

Global News - Trudeau says Harper government fostering fear and prejudice against Muslims

The Tyee: Six Things Protesters Need to Know about Bill C-51.
"Canada's privacy commissioner, ex-CSIS officials, former prime ministers and international whistleblower Edward Snowden have all raised alarm about the bill's impacts on Canadians' freedom and privacy. Lawyers at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association have gone over the bill paragraph by paragraph, and we've outlined the parts of this document that concern us most."

Rabble.ca, Marc Zwelling "As civil liberties advocates insist, Bill C-51 turns the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) into an enemy of the people. The bill allows the authorities to spy on anyone they feel threatens the "security of Canadians." Such a broad definition of a security threat smears picketers, writers and protesters as terrorists."


Elizabeth May: Harper's anti-terror law will turn Canada into a police state
"Acts of terrorism are a threat. They are criminal acts of horrific cruelty and sadism. Luring of disenfranchised, disenchanted, alienated Canadians into their barbaric crusade must be addressed, but the new law, C-51, is not primarily an anti-terrorism law. And legal experts are already pointing out it "undermines more promising avenues of addressing terrorism." (Bill C-51 backgrounder, Professors Kent Roach and Craig Forcese)


Daniel Leblanc, Globe and Mail "A parliamentary committee will hear from strong supporters and vocal critics of the government’s anti-terrorism bill, but not from four former prime ministers who have decried the lack of increased oversight in the legislation" ... “What we have seen so far from both ministers is a tendency to wave the fear flag rather than discuss the contents of the bill,” said the NDP’s public safety critic. “With a two-hour session with the ministers and all their officials, we are not likely to get very far.”

CBC: Bill C-51: Privacy watchdog Daniel Therrien blocked from committee witness list.

During Tuesday's meeting, New Democrat MP Randall Garrison attempted to get unanimous consent for a motion to add a one-hour session with Therrien to the meeting schedule, but he was rebuffed by the Conservatives.

CBC: Bill C-51 hearings: Diane Ablonczy's questions to Muslim group 'McCarthyesque'
Ihsaan Gardee, (ED of NCCM): "First and foremost, I'll say on the record that NCCM has condemned violent terrorism and extremism in all of its forms, regardless of who perpetrates it for whatever reason," he told the committee. However, the premise of your question is false, and entirely based on innuendo and misinformation."
Gardee pointed to the group's history as an independent, non-profit, grassroots Canadian Muslim civil liberties organization with a "robust and public" track record.
"These are precisely the types of slanderous statements that have resulted in litigation that is ongoing," he said, including a defamation lawsuit launched last year against the Prime Minister's Office over "false statements" linking the group to Hamas made by now-former spokesman Jason MacDonald.

Stuart Trew, Rabble: Civil liberties, First Nation rights compromised by C-51, committee hears

"First Nations are already labelled as terrorists when they stand up for their rights to land, clean water and sovereignty, said (Chief Perry) Bellegarde, a point made by earlier witnesses, and especially Greenpeace, in relation to anti-pipeline battles. He also emphasized that First Nations rights were violated already by the process in which C-51 is making its way through Parliament -- without the government's prior consultation with Canada's First Nations as per Section 35 of the Charter. Bellegarde asked the government to withdraw the legislation and develop a process with First Nations by which all federal legislation impacting the assertion of Section 35 rights can be reviewed.""

Four Lessons on how to Change the World

Ilona Szabó de Carvalho left her career in banking to lead the Igarapé Institute in Rio de Janeiro, which focuses on security and development policy. In her TED talk she gives us four lessons she learned while tackling the violence around issues of drugs and guns in Brazil.  Carvalho's experience contains an important message for us all – we can challenge big issues and achieve change.

The four lessons she learned in the process are: 1. change the narrative, 2. never underestimate your opponents, 3. use data to drive your arguments, 4. bring together odd bedfellows

What would this look like for those of us who want to change the current political narrative? Below are the thoughts I have wrestled with.

1. change the narrative

We are not nations or religions competing for the most of what each of us want. We are sentient beings trying to survive the cumulative effects of a global hierarchy that enables mass starvation and violence to sustain the power of a few.

The conflict is not between right-wing and left-wing, capitalism and socialism, Christianity and Islam, the conflict is between power and life.

The Operating System has moved beyond tribal competition for territory and is now in the stage where power is valued only as a wholly separate construct from human nature. This requires a structure that upholds, defends and worships the non-human measures of  our culture such as money, technology, numbers, formulas, ideologies, celebrity (not the person but the image), and ideas.  Which also requires a consistent doctrine.

The doctrine tells us that life is not valued because the world is over-populated. Life is a threat to order and must be managed, categorized, brainwashed, dehumanized and reduced through organized war, disease, starvation and addiction. Authorities create fear, insecurity and misery, and make it appear that we ourselves have chosen the conditions we live under.

Hierarchical power requires a rationality that is free of sentiment,  compassion or reverence for life. Any progress that has been made in the last two hundred years is that sophistication and application of purified power and its increasing contempt for anything that breathes. Entertainments must be pornographic to uphold this regime. Food must be genetically modified to its meanest elements. Civil society, art, community must be destroyed for these are the elements of power from within and are difficult to manage. Community is reduced to a shopping mall restricting human interaction to the impersonal , where all other human emotions such as compassion and empathy become a  means to the end of a business transaction. Here we become willing consumers of our own self-hate.

Corporations are the controllers, government are the police and media are the instructors who must continually promote the notion that life in itself has no value, and the more things we possess the more contempt we feel for earth's unpredictable and uncontrollable forces. Social intercourse celebrates and promotes consumerism through the adoration of new gadgets, rare and expensive foods, new trends and sophisticated technology. The household that possesses the most up to date fashionable stuff can congratulate itself as the winner.

Our darkest nights understand that once a weapon of mass destruction is invented that will kill most of the people without destroying the elite playgrounds on earth, it will be used. But it won't solve the problems humanity faces because all, including the elite, are oppressed by the doctrine that power must eat life.

This is the narrative of post-modern literature - Wells' Time Machine, Orwell's 1984, Monty Python, Atwood's Oryx and Crake, and other classics that have warned us.

This is a narrative that makes sense of all that has happened socially and politically. It's not the only narrative but it is one that puts us in the centre of the problem.

2. never underestimate your opponents

First we need to identify who our opponents are. Are they the one-percent, the corporations, the governments, the media, the ideologies? Are they the sum of our apathy, greed and ignorance? Is it our reluctance to examine life?

Many empires have come and gone throughout history so we can’t pin the blame on a singular tribe or a political system. It has been an endless return of revolution and corruption.  That's the force of power-over.

Is the opponent our own ego which separates us from the cause and effects of our habits? Is it the way we try to hide from our inherent malevolence, or inability to see ourselves as the earth sees us? Is it the ruling elite who manipulate us? Is it always the other who is incapable of self governance?

What if we were able to reclaim our human family, to embrace and acknowledge our power from within, through dialogue and reflection. What if we listed all the tricks we use to deny our involvement and responsibility in the evolution and care of this planet? What if we nurtured our world and loved nature? What if the imagination could bridge the small things we can do with the large movements for change?

Our opponent is really our own ignorance on how power is used against us, and how easily we slip into the narrative provided by our oppressors. As we have learned to write, read, decipher symbols, understand metaphors, we can also learn how to recognize power in all its forms.

3. use data to drive your arguments

You can find data in many places. Mainstream media sometimes includes it but other news sources and websites developed by concerned citizens are available.

The Gun Violence Archive; Amnesty International; Humanist and Liberal Religion that celebrates the human experience through diversity; news sites that defend social justice; those who acknowledge the complexity of society and its problems at the cost of making their message less slogan-ready; thought leaders who seek wisdom and do not rely on power-over to influence others; poetry; statistics.  And our own level gaze.

4. bring together odd bedfellows

What and where are the odd bedfellows of this issue? Members of the Gun Club, members of Tax Payers Federation, workers within community services, managers of the CBC, the homeless, the working poor, MP's within all political parties, police chiefs, scientists, environmentalists, artists, writers, philosophers and deans of the academy – all who are willing to talk and listen.

Bring together different narratives of how the world works, different personalities from different faith groups (including atheists and nihilists). Make it clear that their views are important and that everyone has a voice, but the point of the voice is not to be right, but to open doors. 

The future, if there is to be one, must embrace and hold up the reverence and dignity of all.

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.

Rethinking the Global Fight Against Extremism February 24, 2015 by Hardeep S. Puri and Omar El Okdah

"Between February 17-19, a large conference on “Countering Violent Extremism” convened in Washington, bringing together senior foreign dignitaries from over 60 countries, law enforcement officials, religious leaders, and experts. The meeting constituted a reaffirmation of the need for an effective multilateral strategy to counter and prevent violent extremism in today’s increasingly challenging environments. At the same time, it hinted at a very significant change in the international community’s approach to these problems: Scope, strategy, and semantics are being duly reconsidered. And yet a series of contradictions threaten to hamper the possibility of making credible headway." Hardeep S. Puri and El Okdah


Read more here: The Global Observatory

The Network

Six Degrees of Separation - Dannie Walker

A lecture given by Arthur Jensen to Howard Beale from the movie The Network


Jensen: It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Beale: But why me?

Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.