Learning Stories
by
Mario deSantis

mariodesantis@hotmail.com

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I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, and free to choose those who shall govern my country.” - -The Rt. Hon. John Diefenbaker, Canadian Bill of Rights, 1960

The whole judicial system is at issue, it's worth more than one person.”--Serge Kujawa, Saskatchewan Crown Prosecutor, 1991

The system is not more worth than one person's rights.”--Mario deSantis, 2002


Ensign Stories © Mario deSantis and Ensign

 


"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