Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The site is a sister to Atlantic Free Press and Brick Ogden an American Expatriate in Amsterdam has been a key supporter of this project.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
These are odious days to be a Canadian: The country fighting a shooting war halfway around the world for reasons few paying for the killing understand, the long tradition of peacemaking and peacekeeping a distant memory; political parties on both sides of the aisle of the House of Commons sharing in common the desire to continue Canada down a course determined from beyond the border; more military, more fighting, more killing; ruled over by an imperious minority government that thumbs its nose at the citizenry, confident the "opposition" will nary oppose; citizens turned over to torturers, war resisters and political refugees refused sanctuary and sent packing; wars on crime and drugs brought home to accompany those fought far away; no comment made on war crimes committed by allies, though their victims be Canadian; and now the passing breezily through the Parliament of Bill C-3, or the so-called Security Certificates, a newly improved 'Anti-terror' bill that would deny Canadians the presumption of innocence, an open trial, the right to know one's accusers and to equal access to evidence presented against you; just as its predecessor terror legislation, quashed last year by the Supreme Court of Canada as unconstitutional, did.
That bit of bad fish is due thrown out for good at month's end, an excuse the Liberals have been quick to claim countenances their leader's tactical retreat on the notion of universal Justice in favour of political expediency.
It's a depressing reading, but at this rate Canada will
fully emulate all the worst aspects of Georgian America soon. And when
that time comes, when Canada fully does mirror present day America -
its private prisons full with the unlawful combatants of the domestic
drugs war, its armies cutting deals with heroine cartels in Afghanistan
and Uzbekistan and Pakistan, its pension plans plundered and public
wealth withered - those sad historians of the near future, (you and me
actually) may just look at the passage in the Senate of Bill C-3 as the
passing of the last vestiges of the nation into gloom.
As in America,
Canada's political system is hammerlocked by a ruthless duopoly, that
are so similar, members almost routinely switch affiliations with the
vageries of political winds. Some, like David Emerson of British
Columbia, who shortly after the federal election loss of the Liberals,
decided to take his riding into "enemy" hands in exchange for a seat
close to the p.m.'s ear. He was given the same portfolio he held
beforehand, that of overseeing the parceling off of Canada through
trade deals.
A House "Divided"
House of Commons vote on Bill C-3, February 6, 2008
191-54 passed
It's
a pity the brutes of the Right Wing Consensus have so totally succeeded
in subverting the language; they've cried to death the one wolf that
fits the image to a tee in this instance, that of 'The Great Appeaser.'
Any practicing in recent years the temerity to question muscular
foreign policy adventures were so often tarred with the visage of
Britain's ill-remembered Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the man the
pundits would have was most responsible, next to Herr Hitler, for the
disaster and destruction of Nazism and World War II, that it is
now ruined as a descriptor when ironically nearest true.
Opposition
Liberal party leader, Stephane Dion, explaining his party's support of
C-3 says; (now, imagine the grey and black toned newsreel: Neville
Chamberlain, on the tarmac; fresh home from Germany, he's triumphantly
waving the paper agreement with Adolph for the cameras):
"It's not our first choice, but we think with amendments ..." "...it's improving the bill that the government wants to pass."
Let's
get this straight. The loyal opposition would have a better law, but in
the absence of that, will just go along and harp about "amendments"
knowing the 'New Government of Canada' will never move to make
amendments. Pathetic!
Meanwhile, the very
foundation of the law, going all the way back through the English
Common Law to the Magna Carta, The Great Charter, that led the British
forebears as surely as Moses led the Israelites, out of servitude and
into the light of a new age, an Age of Enlightenment, and destroyed the
calumny known as the Dark Age. That's all.
Amended once, something
tells me the fundamentalist, second coming of the Roundheads would be more wary of
relinquishing power regained.
Of
course, there are reassurances: Secret trials; secret evidence; secret
sentencing; secret prisons, yes; but not to worry, the secrets secrets,
secrets will only apply to those "other:" Non-citizens, illegals,
terrorists; and rest assured, "special advocates" will be assigned to
make sure everything is on the up and up.
"There is no one in the defence Bar on the criminal or
immigration side who could hold their head up after being in a job like
that,” adding; "We believe... we would be supporting a system that is
unfair to the person against whom there are extremely serious
allegations. It’s a shocking process. You are in court one day, and
then the next day they are going to have another court session without
you, and then you come back into court the following day and they have
said things that you, and the client, have no idea about. And usually,
what we guess at, is that the secret stuff is about some personal
relationship our client had, or did not have, with another individual,
and so that’s the kind of evidence that you really need the client to
be able to comment on because its just ripe for false accusation. So
what’s the special advocate going to do?"
This odiferous Bill C-3 must still be ratified in the
Senate.
Canada's body is not nearly as robust, or integral to the
passage, or killing of legislation as is its American counterpart, but
there are technicalities that have been used in the past on
particularly contentious bills to obstruct passage. Social justice
groups are calling on the public to begin lobbying senators to vote
against adoption of C-3.
This week in
Parliament also sees a vote on the controversial Bill C-2, a sweeping
"law and order" bill that too emulates failed American policies on
crime and punishment and promises the same fiscal and social damage in
Canada America has endured in recent years.
Add
to this Afghanistan, and the recent press allusions Stephane Dion will be
called upon again to support the government on extending Canada's
combat "commitment" there, or face an election on the issue.
It looks
like we're well past Chamberlain's acquiescence to Hitler's
campaign to remake Germany. Stephen Harper has crossed his Rubicon, taking Canada closer to his goal of remaking this country in the image of the 'New Government of the
United States.'
Sadly,
Dion isn't the only, and certainly not the greatest of the
appeasers here; Canadians serving in positions of influence, and their
supporters, have taken to the idea we must follow America so closely we
intimate, declaring new vows to harmonize entirely ourselves to
America's will and ways.
There may still
be time to save the rule of law in Canada, and thus preserve the
remnants a post-fascist America will need to rebuild. But it demands we Canadians preserve our legal integrity, something Bill C-3, and it's equally odious twin C-2 does not do.
Contact the senate today! Stand against C-3 today!
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