From the blog of Ron Moore:
“I want… to provoke you into thinking about the times you live in and the choices that are being made all around you every day. In a time when the President of the United States actually asserts that he has the power to arrest without warrant and detain indefinitely without charge or appeal, any citizen (indeed any person on the face of the Earth) simply by designating them as an “illegal combatant,” we should all be engaged in a vigorous and energetic debate about who we are as a people and as human beings and exactly how we do intend to respond to the very real threat posed to this nation and to the foundations of liberal democracy posed by people capable of, and willing to, fly airplanes into buildings.”
Says it all, really. What does America stand for now? If not freedom from unlawful persecution… what? If the same thing happened in Canada I would make my voice heard however I could, and if it didn’t change I would leave. Because that’s not democracy. It’s not liberty. It’s tyranny in the literal sense. And I don’t care who’s flying into what.
In fact: if you’ve read Animal Farm you know exactly what I’m talking about.
To the folks who commented and have been deleted- there is an individual who has yet to say anything intelligent, not just here but most likely ever in his small-minded life. We nuke his comments, always and without even reading them. You guys got yoinked because you paid attention to him. (and that kind of moron needs no encouragement)
COMMENT:
As Canadians we like to feel like we’re really separated from US-style violations of human rights. Unfortunately we’re not:
Our prison systems violate human rights by holding people without charge in solitary confinement:
http://www.homesnotbombs.ca/hassanhungerstrike.htm
Our customs officers are allowed to make decisions about what we as Canadians can read, look at, or purchase by confiscating materials at the border. We were one of two countries in the world to prevent Rushdie’s Satanic Verses from coming into the country (of course, when word got out that a customs officer with no legal training to determine what is legally allowed in Canada had confiscated this book from coming across the border, the PM at the time -Mulroney- quickly let it through) If you haven’t been following the Little Sister’s case, you should be:
http://www.littlesistersbookstore.com/court.asp
Ernst Zundel, while clearly nutty, couldn’t be charged with anything under Canadian law (he won his court case when charged with spreading “false news”) until new Anti-terrorism provisions, brought in through pressure from the US, allowed the legal system to bring him to court again as a threat to national security:
http://www.rense.com/general60/antiz.htm
http://seclists.org/lists/politech/2005/Mar/0011.html
http://www.canadianfreespeech.com/
It’s important to be aware of injustice happening around the world but if we can’t turn a critical eye on ourselves then we’re really not learning anything. There’s a lot to fight for and against in Canada, too; so, while I’m not disagreeing with anything that blog says, I think it shows ignorance of our own national context to take a ‘holier-than-US’ stance.
Couldn’t of said it better myself fliffer! It’s not that i’m pro-American or anti-Canadian, it’s the hypocrisy that always gets me…
Fliffer, I do appreciate your comment. Very well said. But I’m not talking about the choices of a few people made in ignorance. I’m talking about federal sanction of martial law at the highest level.
I have never said Canadians aren’t human, or that our system is perfect, or that individuals and closed systems in this country are not guilty of violating human rights.
What I am saying is that the single most powerful man in the world wants to deny his own citizens as well as anyone else their same liberties that he *in the same breath* claims to be crusading for. And his citizens, out of fear and paranoia, are not only buying in, but are actively taking this idea in their own frightening directions. I did not reference George Orwell’s Animal Farm lightly. People never think it will happen to them, so they accept astounding violations even when it’s happening to other equally innocent civilians. They accept, and they accept a little more, until suddenly they wake up one day and realize they can’t remember what freedom is like anymore.
We may see denial of liberty and the unlawful curtailing of freedoms in this country, and I’m very glad we live in a country where we have the freedom to watchdog these actions, but you can’t ask me to put Canada on the same side of the scale as the US. I just don’t accept that.