Why? It’s not enough for Big Brother to watch and listen to everything we do, say, write, or think. He also wants to know what we exfoliate.
All in a day’s work for the Central Intelligence Agency, which never rests in its mission of protecting The Free World from democracy. As the heading on their website proclaims: The Work of a Nation. The Center of Intelligence.
Stephen Harper’s toxic legacy. (Photo: via PriceofOil.org)
The tar sands corporations and the Harper regime are hard to tell apart. Both believe that plunder is their right, even their duty. Both are obsessed with greed and power, their religion. Both do harm on an almost numbing scale, and call it “good management.” Both depend on each other in myriad ways for their survival. Both hate democracy.
In addition to the tar sands nightmare, the Harper regime has presided over a full spectrum of unnatural disasters, including: systematic assaults on environmental protections and honest science, starvation of the national health care system, massive surveillance, escalating military budgets and eager participation in criminal wars wherever US authorities choose to attack.
In a sane society, all of these would be considered major crimes. In Canada, the current regime hopes they will be grounds for their re-election.
I have no illusions about elections as a solution to the enormous problems we face. I know that once in power, none of the parties on offer will go nearly as far as I think they should to address these vital issues honestly, fairly, and adequately. But:
By now we know from bitter experience that if the Harper regime can fool enough Canadians into voting for it in October, the disasters will only deepen and multiply.
Best comment, from Gary Magwood: “Daryl’s office called the police because we were ‘disruptive’, we were ‘noisy,’ and – here’s the best part – we were distracting the office staff from attending to constituents’ concerns. Now don’t you love that for double-speak? Aren’t we constituents?”
Which is exactly why so many Canadians regard Bill C-51 and its authoritarian authors as a threat to national security.
After participating in the Belleville protest, I reported having mixed feelings, even doubts, about its value.
After protests across the country and from many sources, the ruling Conservative regime has made a show of amending the bill. Like paint slapped on a rotting house, the proposed changes will have minimal impact on the bill’s nightmarish potential.
So, today’s protest.
Where: At the Belleville constituency office of Daryl Kramp, the local Member of Parliament. He’s a Conservative, ie a Northern Republican, and he’s chairing the committee currently sliding the bill through Parliament. Kramp was absent from the Belleville office today, being rather busy in Ottawa.
Who: 40 – 50 people from the area who are alarmed enough by what they’ve learned about this bill to protest it in public. The rally was called on short notice, in response to the proposed ‘amendments.’
After a few decades protesting a panorama of injustices, bigotry, stupidity, greed, crimes against the earth, abuse of power, state terror and such, at today’s protest I experienced a familiar mix of reactions:
I believe it’s crucial to be here, to inform the powerful that some of us see through their lies, and care enough to resist their schemes to the extent that we can. On the other hand, knowing how power is constructed, I suspect our resistance is too little, too late. On the other hand, it’s crucial that we be here. On the other hand…
This mix, and the gradual shedding of illusions over years, eventually led me to stop going to protests like this one. But then I was grateful that some people took the trouble to organize it, and that other people bothered to show up on a bright spring afternoon in the middle of a week. But then I know well enough that the real decisions are made far from here, in cabinet rooms and board rooms, by sociopaths in suits, over lunch.
Even so, how can I justify staying home in my comfortable, safe little cave, pretending that I accomplish anything that matters simply by writing? And who knows what effect each of these acts of resistance might have? The arrogant managers would have us believe they are oblivious to our protests, and nothing we do will make any difference. But when they lie about practically everything else, why not about this, too? Wouldn’t things be that much worse if we left them to their own devices?
Be careful. But not too careful. TSA “Behavior Detection Officers” are watching, closely.
Photo: AFP
As The Intercept reports, the US Transportation Security Administration’s new checklist of suspicious Behaviors is quite long. A handy sampler:
exaggerated yawning
excessive throat clearing
widely open staring eyes
wearing improper attire for location
gazing down
exaggerated or repetitive grooming gestures
rigid posture
a bobbing Adam’s apple
arriving late for flight
and so on.
Remember: Avoid repetitive grooming gestures, excessive throat clearing, rigid posture, and – oh, just avoid all Behaviors, of any kind.
And welcome to the United States.
* For a short trip with eyes widely open into the murky depths of surveillance, see Bold Scientists. Read an excerpt here. Scroll down to chapter 6, The Cloud.
Image: Clearista.com
Photo: AFP
Michael Riordon 