Saturday, August 28, 2010

Canadian Government knowingly threatens Canadian Sovereignty

Money_200-Euro_152738-480x360Image by Public Domain Photos via Flickr
As many would like to believe our government is looking out for the best interest of all Canadians and protecting our soveriegnty.  And to prove this a government offical would likely point to the recent purchase of F-35 fighter jets, which to my knowledge, no official can actually explain exactly how they protect our soverignty!  Not to mention they can't fly as far an an F-18, nor as fast, and we got less units, 65 F-35's vs 138 F-18's, and we  paid more!  What exactly is the threat that we face and how does this purchase meet our requirements, these questons have never been fully answered.  This inability to inform/communicate is worriesome in itself, but what Canadians should really be worried about is the 'comprehensive' free trade agreement being discussed with the European Union.  In this agreement European corporations would get the ability to acess and privatize public services right down to the municipal level.  And the EU is asking that bans be placed on local preferences for public spending by cities, hospitals, school boards and other public services.  How is that protecting Canadian sovereignty?  One can only be left with the answere that it is not protecting Canadian sovereignty!

http://www.canadians.org/trade/issues/EU/index.html
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Thursday, August 26, 2010

Canadian immigration, Conservative xenophobia | rabble.ca

Sorrowful Tamil refugees on Sri Lanka, Septemb...Image via Wikipedia
Canadian immigration, Conservative xenophobia rabble.ca

After reading this article it is really disheartening that one could speak so highly of immigration, and the tremendous positive effect it has had on shaping Canada, and then to hear a year later the exact opposite in slanderous remarks that these Sri-Lankan's must suffer before any due process has been completed. The lack of humanity and the two-faced statements of this should be cause for alarm. Let's not forget history and where such xenophobia leads! We are humans and have a capacity for memory, imagination and ethics, let's use them and learn from our history, put ourselves in the shoes of others and treat them fairly.

These kind of xenophobic statements leads me to believe that the thought process is something along these lines "What Canadians feel, at a base level, is that these people don't look like them or have the same customs and are therefore alien." Now the conservative think tanks, with either this pessimistic view of us or through transference of their own lowered consciousness, build on that idea buy creating an atmosphere of fear surrounding this, once in a blue moon event, ie..,. a boat load of refugee claimants. They cloud peoples minds with the idea that these people are not only bogus but are terrorists and are abusing our good will, and that it's already going on and these are the people to blame for all our nations and world problems.

Now they've created an us and them scenario, we are now the victims, not these people coming from poverty, war and totalitarian governments. This makes it easier for the conservative government to implement their ideology in immigration policy, they are protecting us Canadians from these would be terrorists, we no longer feel a human connection to these people so it makes it easy to treat them harshly.

This also allows the current government and neo-liberals to skirt around the fact that many economic policy's and so called free trade agreements around the world, implemented by the the first world nations, help create situations that lead to an exploitation of labour markets, resources, land and people. This exploitation leads to an ever increasing amount of desperately poor and disadvantaged people and to fewer and fewer people who hold all the wealth and power of the world! It's only logic that people will try and escape desperate and impossible situations by any means necessary to something better. And until governments and those of us in the first world recognize these facts and find positive and constructive ways to allow all people to live a reasonable standard of life, than the influx of refugees will not subside.

Sincerely,

Blaine
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