"In
Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I
was a Protestant. Then they came for me - and by that time no one
was left to speak up."-- Martin Niemoeller, German
Protestant Clergyman
My aspiration in life was to enjoy my responsible freedom while
not interfering with anybody's freedom and while providing a good
service at work. I was very naive, and as we found out in Ensign
there is no such a thing; today, instead of the exercise of
responsible freedom, there is the exercise of discretional power.
I started to write about Saskatchewan's politics and we found the
insipidity and lack of intelligence of our patriot former premier
Roy Romanow and of his conventional friends. We couldn't shake
things up in Saskatchewan and therefore we had a look into our
federal politics only to find out that our own Prime Minister Jean
Chretien is a master of deception. We had a further look into the
political science of economics and business and we found out how the
present framework of globalization has increased our inequalities
within our country and around the world. We had a peek at the last
presidential election in the United States and we found that
President George Bush was in effect elected by the Supreme Court
rather than by the people. And now after the September 11 atrocities
we are all wrapping up in our national flags and wage a war against
terrorism.
Let me say one thing very clear, democracy has been eroding
little by little for the last three dozens years. The new rule of
democracy has become 'one dollar one vote' and the new world order
is now being executed by fighting terrorism with the machinery of
Free Trade of corporations greased with Oil and assisted by our
military power along with the spin doctoring of our convergent
media. And that is not enough for our hegemonic leadership, we have
now to change the Rule of Law of any country against terrorism as
the US is making legal both state's prescribed assassinations and
the recruitment of unsavory criminals by FBI and CIA officers.
We cannot trust our governments and now I wonder if we can even
trust the Rule of Law. Democracy is in our hands, in the hands of
people and not necessarily in the Rule of Law anymore. And by the
way, you don't bomb a country to eradicate terrorism.
In Canada there is the new Bill C-36 which is supposed to fight
terrorism and the debate is if to have a sunset clause to
temporarily limit the application of the new law. But I have been
doing some reading and there is evidence that our politicians are
all confused as we don't need any new law at all to fight terrorism.
John Lorinc writes in the National Post that "no one in Ottawa seems
to remember that 13 years ago, the House of Commons enacted a law
allowing the federal government to invoke tough, but temporary,
measures to deal with precisely the sort of emergency situation that
has confronted the country since Sept. 11." And lawyer Karen Selick
writes in the same newspaper that bill C-36 is needed "because the
police intend to use those powers to spy even more pervasively on
all of us, in a vast fishing expedition, while they try to figure
out who they'd like to charge with what."
We must deter our politicians to further break down our
democracy. We must recall that the Canadian government had illegally
some 2,000 pieces of information on each citizen while then Human
Resources Minister Jane Stewart was saying that this information was
completely legal and that it was used only to help her department
test the effectiveness of various social programs; and we know how
these social programs constituted the hidden branch of governmental
liberal handouts.
And it was only few months ago that Canada's Privacy Commissioner
George Radwanski informed Canadians that Canada Customs was
routinely opening letters and packages and then duplicating some
information found inside.
And again it was only few months ago that Canadian Information
Commissioner John Reid told us that the federal government has a
culture of secrecy. This is what we know about the policing aspect
of our own government, now we must only think of what we don't know.
Our corrupt politicians and corporations are designing a police
state for the new world order, and we must stop them before it is
too late for all of us.
Some References
Understanding the 'war on terrorism', Mary Midgley, Open
democracy, October 25, 2001 http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=98&DocID=755
What ever happened to the emergencies act?War Measures Act
replacement has sunset clause critics are clamouring for, John
Lorinc, October 27, 2001, National Post http://www.nationalpost.com/news/national/politics/story.html?f=/stories/20011027/756850.html
Be very afraid of anti-terror bill, Karen Selick, October 30,
2001, National Post http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20011030/760863.html
Big Brother Is Watching Canadians http://www.best.com/~advo/good/a0349.html
Mail opened, copied and sent to bureaucrats, CBC Canada, March 3,
2001 http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/03/02/privacy_mail010302
Secrecy in Government. Access to information meets excessive
secrecy, Canada Online June 21, 2001 http://canadaonline.about.com/library/weekly/aa062101a.htm |