This is prompted by the aimed demise of the 'Long Gun Registry' a policy that belongs in the realm of a registry for Kitchen knives, meat cleavers, baseball bats and any household item that may be used as a weapon especially by someone being attacked and takes defensive action.
One of things that still totally mystifies me about Canada is that given all the cross border influences that go north from the US and the rather paltry amount that goes south to the US from Canada, is that no where in Canada, despite all the pro sentiments concerning the right to own and have guns, both rifles and pistols, that there is nothing even close to the American NRA(not the modern-day version that seems only concerned with raising moneys and hiring lobbyists to badger any and all legislatice governments in each state and their Federal Government on a 24-7 basis making themselves totally obnoxious and generally making people bored with them, but the pre 1980's version NRA that quietly did the same general type of work in a much more reasonable manner, most times on a one to one basis, and being helped by all sorts of social and professional groups to help maintain a positive regard and outlook ; certainly a more positive attitude towards guns and the legitimate owners and dealers. From PTA's to all the Scout organizations to all sport clubs to all the groups like the Lions, Elks, Forestry workers, Game wardens, police organizations etc. etc. And yes, I do know and understand why the NRA has basically changed / meta-morphed into what is now euphemistically called 'the gun lobby'; all the combined anti-gun groups, media, people/victims of shooting crimes, etc. etc.)
Having learned my shooting skills and respect for guns from both the NRA at their indoor and outdoor ranges in Washington DC and even starting in the Cub-scouts through the Explorer level, I simply cannot understand how Canada has so dismally failed to help their citizens obtain or appreciate the civic duties and responsibilities in allowing guns to be owned by any citizen.
I remember the NRA's magazine The American Rifleman...one on the first pages in every issue as far back as I recall, was called The Armed Citizen. It listed crimes against people all across the US every month in which an armed citizen had to defend themselves with/ by or even having to actually fire, using a gun. To give an example :"After repeated break- ins at his father's Moses Lake, Wash.; gas station, Micheal Curtis began sleeping at the station. The vigil ended when Curtis, armed with a shotgun,apprehended three burglars, two of whom were former employees. (The Daily Herald, Moses Lake, Wash. 7/11/79
Another read:"Shortly before closing time, two armed men entered a Grand Rapids, Mich. grocery and announced a hold-up. When one of them jumped the counter and pointed a gun at part-owner Theodor Tonning, the grocer pulled a gun and fired, wounding him. The other robber, who was armed with a sawed-off rifle, took a shot at Tonning, but the rifle misfired; Tonning fired and killed the man. (The Press, Grand Rapids, Mich. 6/18/79 No citizen defending or making an arrest until police showed up was charged. In Canada the police would automatically charge whomever defended themselves or made a citizen's arrest with an assortment of gun related charges to begin with...To me that is in itself criminal.
On this page it was stated: Mere presence of a firearm, without a shot being fired, prevents crime in many instances, as shown by news reports sent to the The Armed Citizen. Shooting usually can be justified only where crimes constitutes an immediate threat to life and limb or, in some circumstances, property. This should be and should always have been the attitude of all Canadians, especially the courts and police. Imo!
If you were asked, or rather tasked with telling someone "This is who I am" and "this is what I believe I am", what would your answer be?
At one time, it was the "in thing" to go looking for oneself, or yourself. Mothers left homes, as did fathers to go look for themselves' No one, it seemed, knew who they were. Many of those are still looking and as always, in all those 'wrong places'...
Finding yourself is an inner journey and search; who knows if the self that you will find will be a happy surprise or an unpleasant revelation; perhaps champagne or medicines to help you cope...
Perhaps this is why most of us just shuffle along day by day without rocking our psychological boats by asking just who are we, or what are we meant to be doing with our lives that intuitively we feel is not quite right...
It's a challenge to stop and actually make the effort to think. Many tend to simply scurry about trying to be busy and accomplishing daily mundane tasks because, like a mountain, they are there. But if we weren't doing this, what else would/ should be doing? Do we dare even ask...it's a big risk if you go in search of yourself, right?
We'd all hate to find ourselves and then realize that we weren't worth knowing.
Then there is the question of where you should start looking for yourself. Forget the bars, the clubs or porno sites or the circus. How about Tibet? Or is it OK to just go for a walk in some woods or a jungle after you land in the Amazon and hope that you'll meet yourself on the way back from; perhaps go out to pick up a pizza and never be seen nor heard from again...you never know...
Or you will find yourself on the gut wrenching end og a bungee rope, You know, half way down, doing some soul searching and not just asking yourself, "WTF am I doin'!", and suddenly realizing that you're not the alpha athletic type after all?
The onerous process of finding yourself seems to mean abandoning your spouse, relatives and children for a carefree life. More time to think; to contemplate your navel while sitting naked in some mud or in a field of flowers, maybe?
If your immediate family are holding you back, ditch them! Remember when this bright and selfish idea was popular, back when it was oh, so popular, from the book,"How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World"...
I wonder how many husbands left so many wives and visa-versa, after reading it...
There's a catch though, to simply leaving...you have to take yourself with you.
Hell, if the self you finally 'find' or 'discover' is not so bravely desirable after all, you can always blame the self that you brought along for the ride or if you don't want to find that 'real' you, don't waste the time or effort when you can so easily create a new you from the latest popular movie character...until the next one opens at a theater near you...ummm, Vin Diesal...Lady Gaga....
United Nations peacekeeping is dead. This organization has been proving it since the Sierra Leone ops back in 2001. There is no chance of any success in either Darfur let alone Somalia. It is unable not only to be operationally effective but no nation wants their soldiers killed without the ability to fight back and defeat their attackers, and finally it is even unable to organize its own missions in anything approaching a coherent method. Soldiers abducted, and tortured, ridiculous arguing between commanding generals and hasty retreats of troop contingents by countries such as India, Jordan and Uganda among others are just a few of the festering open wounds.
Many of the third world countries that participate in UN peacekeeping operations are paid in hard US. currency for the services of their soldiers. In essence, the UN hires very poorly trained and totally inexperienced "mercenaries" provided by cash-strapped third world countries who view this as a lucrative method for enriching their countries and soldiers for minimum effort. If the soldiers are killed or just don't return, well, so much the better; they have too many people anyway....
All armies are not created equal, let alone equal on a battleground. Third world countries produce third rate armies
and third rate armies make for third rate missions. In NATO or other non-UN operations, it's pay as you go, with a detailed formula developed over many years.
If war is too important to be left to the generals, the keeping the peace in war-torn countries is too important to be left to the international bureaucrats or politicians. These are first and foremost military operations. It has been said that peacekeeping is not a soldier's job, but only a soldier can do it. Rather than appoint a civilian to head the inquiry, how about a decorated combat veteran officer with multiple missions under his belt.
The best tool a peacekeeper has is a tank. The best peacekeepers are the ones with the best training, weapons, logistics, and equipment as well as command, control, communications, and intelligence assets. The missions listed previously all had these essentials and the will to use overwhelming firepower if necessary. This will not be the case in either Darfur or Somalia if, in fact the UN approves the missions. It was not the case in Sierra Leone. The lack of these requirements will only doom the mission before any boots hit the ground.
NATO's 50 years of standardization make it an effective inter-operable force. NATO staff work is identical across the member nations. Technology and nomenclature have all been agreed upon. Tasks and deployment times that are achievable have been assigned and accepted. Even audits to make sure that all meet the NATO standard are normal.
In Bosnia, under the UN, the contingents that were the most effective were from NATO and the ABCA coalition. But everything had to be re-invented, from orders of operational procedures to deployment under the UNPROFOR banner to accommodate third world armies. It was a disaster. But when NATO's Rapid Reaction Corps arrived, order quickly grew out of chaos.
It is deja-vu in Africa, again. Third world bush league contingents are being deployed and we watch another disaster unfold; civilians and soldiers continue to be massacred.
Before the UN dares to launch another military debacle and any European ,U.S./ Canadian personnel become involved, it should be imperative to: Establish a lead nation or alliance from the first-world, first rate armies and set operational standards for the mission; Deploy with overwhelming firepower, being prepared to use it and trained contingents for a bush type war; to move light and fast as did the Selous Scouts of Rhodesia; Do not accept contingents unless they have been properly trained and equipped...no troops with skis , please...Keep the damn bureaucrats out of all military ops. Next time, the UN can get it right.
The US government "has substituted the illusion of security for real security," said Barry Steinbach, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union. "We are fast approaching the midnight of a TOTAL surveillance society."
The struggle to find a balance between privacy and "national security" was one of the most contentious topics at the Montreal
Yet, Chertoff defended the US government's approach, saying it collects only a small amount of personal information that isn't highly sensitive nor personal. He did not elaborate on who makes those decisions...
"I think, actually, by focusing on the people who are the higher risk, we are then increasing privacy of the vast majority of innocent travellers," Chertoff claimed.
New rules requiring Canadians to now present passports or other secure identification before crossing the US border and the systematic collection of data from airline passengers are necessary to help officials quickly pin-point individuals who may be a threat, while still maintaining people's rights to privacy, he stated.
That may be true in-so-far as anyone dressed as a member of the Taliban, with bandoleers around his torso...and snarling "Death to America!" for all to hear...
"We have to develop body imaging technology that respects privacy but allows us to quickly, readily and with a minimum of hands-on intrusion to determine whether someone is carrying liquid explosives," Chertoff also stated. Just try and imagine the scenarios of high school drop-outs peering at all the bodies, chuckling and sneering at what they see as potential "weapons" let alone if a liquid or spray is "explosive"...yeah, right.
There are already many cases on record of US military personnel boarding hired passenger planes of being arrested for having their weapons...on their way to Irag. Chertoff said nothing about increasing the intelligence of those who will monitor or examine those innocent passengers...
However, several critics did take issue with Chertoff's assertions and his re-action to being questioned was one of shock, as in "How dare you question me!" Heinrich Himmler probably reacted the same way when asked about State Security controlling everything, everyone in the Nazi Reich...
"For all it's efforts to strong arm the rest of the world, the Bush administration has been ineffective in fighting the so-called war on terrorism," Steinhardt said. I would have added that it is not only a total sham, but the Bush administration are the real terrorists along with all those who back him and his war and the slaughter of the Iraqi peoples and yes, of even the US military personnel in a totally unjustifiable war to try and establish an american dominated planet empire in which everyone must submit to being a "democratic" slave, where everyone is disposable for the greater glory of the oil companies, Israel, Dupont, Monsanto etc., etc. etc.!
When a tree falls in a forest, does anyone get annoyed at the sound?
Probably not. Nobody really whines too much about the ocean roar or the clatter of splashing rain on windows let alone tin roofs.
When the natural world reminds us that it's there, we usually take a deep breath and sigh or smile, feeling lucky to be able to see and hear the seagulls screeching or even sea lions or seals barking away reminds us why we are glad to be alive in whatever part of this world we live in.
But when our neighbors,(co-workers, family members, anonymous strangers on the street), let us know that they're also here, living in our part of the world, we start to get very "twitchy". The noises that really bug people tend to be the ones created, or facilitated, by other people.
We get annoyed at people who intrude on our environment by playing loud, obnoxious music, using leaf blowers or gunning the engines of their cars. They're just sounds, but we call them noise. And sounds only become noise when it makes people upset.
When people get very annoyed, they want something to happen in response to their anger. They want results. They want studies, they want hearings, and not the kind having to do with sound. That is why most cities are currently , again, studying noise and trying to figure out how to control it with more rules; or even with rules that make sense.
On the other hand, such rules could only apply to human-created noises. What seal or seagull would follow noise pollution laws even if they were in place? We cannot legislate the natural world.
We can, however, make legislation by which other humans must abide by. And we do. Laws, agreements, union contracts, they're all ways this so called democratic society has developed to ensure that every one's protected and no one gets hurt. When legislation is imposed, however, it's hard to feel as though it respects and protects anything, especially our so called "democratic rights".
This is especially true in cases of "back to work" legislation directed at any and all teacher's unions.
Of course students have a right to an education, but don't they also have a right to receive that education in classrooms that aren't overcrowded, from teachers who aren't perpetually overworked and underpaid? When dedicated teachers take a day off from their classrooms to go and make noises in the name of this democracy, you know they're just as serious about upholding that ideal as they are about their working conditions; same for students, parents, teachers and anyone else who are against sending anyone in their military forces to any country in the Middle East.
I don't know about the Liberals or Conservatives and their children, but I want mine to learn that making noises--through talk, protest, action is an essential element of free speech.
And that having legislators not just listen to, but to actually hear, that speech is essential to us as a basic free human right.
But right now, I'm not hopeful. It seems, these days, that if protest chants counted as a noise pollution, our governments would find ways to legislate absolute silence.
Makes one wonder if your exhortations about living in a so called democracy are nothing more than so much noise....we may actually be living in a democrazy...
Regarding the latest meeting in Montreal last month about privacy and "state security" ie, becoming either enemies or enemas of the state, this US Homelands Security Secretary, Micheal Chertoff addressed the privacy forum, offered some rather bizarre and puzzling suggestions that his country is improving privacy by collecting all manner of information on US and foreign citizens.
The only thing that he didn't talk about was when the US government was going to start a national chip implant program into every man, woman and child in the US.
If anyone who values their privacy, they must be willing to surrender any and all personal information, submit to all types of electronic body-scans at airports, ports and prepare for other technological invasions to help security officials identify potential terrorist threats, according to Heinrich Himmler, sorry, Micheal Chertoff, in his speech.
"I actually believe that many of the measures we take serve to enhance security and serve to enhance privacy,: said Chetoff.
Chertoff's controversial remarks were met with some loud concern by some privacy experts, who took public aim at the Homeland Security Department's invasive techniques and over-collection of public and private information.
Part One:
If you think the oppressive hand of "Big Brother" is the only threat to personal privacy in today's digital society, think again.
Our camera-phone toting friends and total strangers in the online universe can be just as responsible for the further erosion of the truly private life as the corporations and various governmental agencies that keep tabs on citizens in the infamous phrase of "national security" and product sales, warned federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart of Canada.
"It's not just Big Brother who's watching you in the Orwellian dystopia," Stoddart said in an interview.
:We're all "little brothers". We're all fascinated with the gadgets that allow you to do this."
The pervasive presence of technology and its unprecedented capacity to surreptitiously track the lives of others, is one of the issues that were addressed at a major international conference that was hosted by Stoddart in Montreal last month.
The conference drew well over a thousand public and private sector privacy and surveillance experts to peer into the unknown but planned out future where tiny unobtrusive cameras, radio-chips, global positioning satellites and online data mining is changing the way our societies operate.
The US Homelands Security Secretary Micheal Chertoff headlined a series of high-profile experts who discussed a wide range of privacy issues, including the collecting of personal information under the guise of "fighting terrorism", the increasing use of computer chips in all sorts of house-hold and clothing items, appliances, and the online safety of children.
With continued advances in technologies, critics are voicing their concerns, as well as, those like you care about. to the risks to personal privacy posed by governments no fly-lists, employers that track their emplyees by GPS and hidden cameras, and data mining that allows companies to target ads to individuals on the basis of their shopping habits.
Stoddart also said that people who complain about these watchful eyes of government agencies and corporations should first take a long look in a mirror. She is perfectly correct.
That's because technology and the Internet are turning ordinary citizens into spies who can and do post , ever increasingly, pictures of the neighbour's yards and inside their homes online.
Even social networking sites , especially those like Facebook, or the dating sites, intended to let people meet people, or tell others what they're up to, can and is corrupted by unwanted circulation or/ and malicious postings...as like copying someone's face to transfer unto a porn site orgy scene...
"We're all participating in the surveillance society," Stoddart noted, adding that "knowledge gives us power".
She also noted that more people are living alone and thus turn to technological gadgets to satysfy a craving for simple human contact.
"There's fewer and fewer of us that live together," She said, "This gives us untrammellted liberty and perhaps a good dose of loneliness and we're reaching out to contact other people through technology.
Although new technologies bring vast potential for benefit---protecting public safety, for instance, or curing a desease, there is also a very dark side that cannot be ignored.
"We all have a role in it, we all have to be conscious of what our choices are." Stoddart emphatically said.
More on this meeting later.
Time is silent. Eons pass. Mind and matter come together and explode.
The Middle East, Greece, China. The founding and development of philosophy, art, law, religion, medicine, science and agriculture. The power of the collective--of society--takes hold around much of the world. The Shang and Zhou dynasties. The Roman Empire. Confucius. Democracy in Athens; military might in Sparta. The written, sacred story spins the wheel of history. Hippocrates, Democritus, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Buddhism, Hindu scripture. New powers, new struggles. Prolemaic cosmology, Galenic medicine. Then finally, at every level, conflict, war, then decadence and military excess. The bubble closes. The collapse of empire begins.
Again, a kind of silence descends. A great period of gestation. A harsh conformity to religious hierarchy weighs on the individual spirit. Turning and turning, time slows down. As consciousness dims, the memory of ancient civilizations drift into oblivion. With little sense of opportunity, life becomes a circle, repetition built upon repetition. Then, with all possibilities forgotten, a match strikes. A glow appears, dim at first. From the darkness, we step out into the Renaissance. Whoosh!
In a single year, the great modern physicist Galileo Galilei dies; the great modern physicist Isaac Newton is born.
"Enlightenment" has erupted, a celebration of possibilities, of building a towering utopia in which some people would be free from the punishing forces of nature and superstition.
Revolutions shake western Europe and America. The sheer force of the acceleration strips the moment of its vestiges of tradition, its shackles to "progress". Science is infused with adventure. Franklin's lightning rod, Whitney's cotton gin, Stephenson's locomotive, Morse's telegraph, Gatling's machine gun, Edison's light bulb, Bell's telephone, Benz's automobile, etc. A sudden shift in art and literature follows, a growing unease that the world is built of chaos. Gauss's non-Euclidean geometry threatens the unity of math and science; Stravinsky's "Rite Of Spring" prompts riots; Einstein crushes time and space; Joyce drags the novel into the river of consciousness. New freedoms are demanded, and reaped. And on July 20th, 1969, the old God Apollo is transformed into a modern back-slapping "good ol' boy" as Neil Armstrong takes one small step on the moon and nearly trips...
Where does the breakdown begin? Atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Twenty some million dead in Europe after a democratically elected regime embarks upon a so called racial Crusade? "Ethnic cleansing"? In some forgotten moment, modernism withers. Another new era of recognition begins, a celebration of hybrids and pluralities, of ambiguity and doubt, of fragmentation and irony, of meaning in multiple meanings; of "Big Brother Speak". With a now familiar suddenness, society embraces the many parallel worlds through which reality forms and is experienced. There's a man behind the curtain and pulls the strings of the puppets and he wears no clothes. The lies are bigger each day and they are many: truth is not truth, but power. Instability is opportunity, time is ether, objectivity is subjectivity, knowledge is being, essence is existence, reality is story, stories are language, language is a game. Science is ideology, ego is DNA, humanity is flesh, flesh is nature, nature is technology, technology is us. We are machines. Futurism as an art movement may be "out of fashion" but it's ideas and symbols flourish... The dream dies, but the dreamer awakens into the nightmare world of the philosophies behind Futurism that once held so much promise ever speeding into the colourful future that now dimly appears as a mass graveyard....
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