Journalistic coverage of Bill C-51 (SECRET POLICE)
should include what is known about SURVEILLANCE of citizens in Canada. It is critical context for understanding the scope of the threat we face.
Extensive machinery for mass surveillance is ALREADY IN PLACE.
Ed Snowden and Glenn Greenwald (in other interviews) explain things very well.
This interview of Snowden is informative. He describes that once “backdoor access” to a data base is established, it is there and available to more than the NSA (if it is an NSA backdoor, for example).
Other postings on this blog document the extensive data base on Canadians at Statistics Canada. The Government awarded contracts for census work to Lockheed Martin; Lockheed Martin works for the NSA, one of its specialties is surveillance.
You have to be gullible to believe that the FBI / NSA does not have back-door access to the StatsCan data base on Canadians – – even if StatsCan discontinues the Lockheed contracts.
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2015-02-03 Edward Snowden Warns Canadians To Be ‘Extraordinarily Cautious’ Over Anti-Terror Bill (C-51), Huffington Post
Canadians do not have a clue about the degree of collaboration, access to data files on Canadians that has been simply given to the U.S. Military. Read the little insert, “12 Things Harper Doesn’t Want You To Know”, at the bottom of the article. A quick way to get a sniff of what’s going on.
Bill C-51 is about the addition of secret police to surveillance. And removing more of the democratic rights of citizens.
The best overall article I’ve found: 2015-02-24 Harper’s anti-terror law will turn Canada into a police state, by Elizabeth May.
A LEGAL ANALYSIS:
2015-02-18 Bill C-51 (Secret Police): A Legal Primer by Clayton Ruby, C.M., and Nader R. Hasan
leads me to conclude that workshops I have attended, and probably statements I’ve made, place me in the category of “terrorist” under the broad net cast by Bill C-51. If me, then a large number of my friends, too.
ACTUAL TEXT of C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Bill is at (look on the righthand side for the “download” button: http://www.scribd.com/doc/254215014/Bill-C-51-Tories-Anti-Terrorism-Bill
SHORT TITLE – ‘Anti-Terrorism Act’
LONG TITLE –
‘An Act to enact the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and the Secure Air Travel Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts.’ (i.e. the Canada Evidence Act, Aeronautics Act, Competition Act and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act)
The ATTITUDE OF THE RCMP, as explained in this article, was a shocker that woke up many Canadians:
2015-02-17 “Anti-petroleum movement a growing security threat to Canada, RCMP say.” The Globe and Mail.
Fortunately, there is mass mobilization, information-sharing about C-51:
We cannot be lazy about C-51. Time is short, Harper is pushing it through as fast as he can.
There is wonderful news out of the USA, a victory on net neutrality that Canadians helped achieve. We must muster the same determination to stop C-51. If our colleagues in the USA can achieve a win of this magnitude, we can beat C-51.
- (circulated earlier) 2015-02-18 Open letter, Ralph Nader to Stephen Harper, What’s Happening to Canada?
- 2015-02-19 Bill C-51: 4 Former PMs Call For Better Intelligence Accountability (former Prime Ministers and 5 former Supreme Court Justices, etc.)
- 2015-02-25 AVAAZ Petition, Big Brother comes to Canada
- 2015-02-19 Ideas, how to: Stop Bill C-51: Protect Rights Thanks to Lawyers Against the War.
- 2015-02-11 Timing of Terror Arrests, by Matthew Behrens (Reference the Nader letter; Harper turns whatever he can into a “terrorist” event, trying to create fear in the population so that we will accept the imposition of what is effectively a police state. People with mental health problems perform terrorist acts, as do environmentalists.)
I promised every week at Girl Guide meetings when I was a kid: “I promise on my honour to do my best, to do my duty to God, the Queen and my Country, to help other people at all times and to obey the Guide Laws.” (today’s wording is not as onerous!) If C-51 gets passed, my duty to my Country will become terrorist activity. How times have changed!
I have wondered, if I had lived in Germany in the build-up to World War Two, would I have been one of the ones who saw the writing on the wall and left? Or would I have been one of the ones who stayed to ‘fight the good fight’ and as a consequence experienced the horrors?
Support for Bill C-51 means there has been a successful fear campaign about terrorism and there is insufficient information in the public sphere. So let’s get at ‘er!! Sign the petitions, spread the word, phone your MP! … Rest easy, have fun, do a small part – – there are SO MANY of us, we can beat this thing!
TO GENERATE A LIST OF RELATED POSTINGS
always look immediately under the Title of the Posting, small text on the left. It is the “category” that the Posting is filed under. In this case, you are clicking on “Bill C-51 Anti-Terrorism, Secret Police”
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Coincidentally, just prior to the announcement of, and rush by Harper to pass Bill C-51, I read two excellent books:
- In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, 2011 by Erik Larson. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Garden_of_Beasts
Summary
Larson recounts the career of the American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, particularly the years 1933 to 1937 when he and his family, including his daughter Martha, lived in Berlin. The Ambassador, who earned his Ph.D. in Leipzig 40 years earlier, was initially hopeful that Germany’s new Nazi government would grow more moderate, including in its persecution of the Jews.[2] Martha, separated from her husband and in the process of divorce, became caught up in the glamor and excitement of Berlin’s social scene and had a series of liaisons including among them Gestapo head Rudolf Diels and Soviet attaché and secret agent Boris Vinogradov. . . .
- Savage Continent
http://us.macmillan.com/savagecontinent/keithlowe
Winner of the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize
“A superb and immensely important book.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
The Second World War might have officially ended in May 1945, but in reality it rumbled on for another ten years…The end of World War II in Europe is remembered as a time when cheering crowds filled the streets, but the reality was quite different.
Across Europe, landscapes had been ravaged, entire cities razed, and more than thirty million people had been killed in the war. The institutions that we now take for granted—such as police, media, transport, and local and national government—were either entirely absent or compromised. Crime rates soared, economies collapsed, and whole populations hovered on the brink of starvation..
In Savage Continent, Keith Lowe describes a continent where individual Germans and collaborators were rounded up and summarily executed, where concentration camps were reopened, and violent anti-Semitism was reborn. In some of the monstrous acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands.
Savage Continent is the story of post–war Europe, from the close of the war right to the establishment of an uneasy stability at the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries, Savage Continent is the chronicle of a world gone mad, the standard history of post–World War II Europe for years to come.
NOTE: I sent information on Savage Continent earlier: 2015-01-02 (U.S. Torture) Collaborators and Vengeance. Savage Continent, Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe.
A key take-away for me is the untold story of the vengeance that rocked Europe in the years following World War Two.
At what point do we become collaborators?
And what are the consequences of collaboration?
^ Agreed. Thank you for all your hard work and leadership Sandra. ~ Don N