Ralph Nader asks: What's happening to Canada?!

Thanks and a tip o' the tuque to Agent 34, who has passed along Ralph Nader's open letter to Canada's Dear Leader Steve Harper, expressing concern about what he (quoting the Globe and Mail) calls Harper's "Secret Policeman Bill".

Just like America's paranoid "Homeland Security Act", Bill C-51 threatens Canadians' civil liberties for the sake of protecting them from the threats of ISIS et al., which wouldn't even be a problem but for Mr. Harpoon's rabid Zionism and pointless meddling in the Muslim civil war in the Middle East.

In his weekly piece on CBC's The National, Rex Murphy warned that the "terror legislation" -- a phrase that cuts two ways -- sits at the intersection of public safety and individual liberty. He said that any proposal to protect the citizenry by abbreviating the liberties of the same citizenry must be examined as to its ultimate necessity, and put to the fullest parliamentary, media and democratic testing. Amen.

Now comes Ralph Nader -- long-time enemy of the abuses of power in the USA -- to ask why Canada is following his country down the Bush-Clinton-Obama road to a police state. Here are excerpts from "What's happening to Canada? Open letter from Ralph Nader to Prime Minister Stephen Harper"

Many Americans love Canada and the specific benefits that have come to our country from our northern neighbor's many achievements. Unfortunately, your latest proposed legislation -- the new anti-terrorism act -- is being described by leading Canadian civil liberties scholars as hazardous to Canadian democracy.

You are quoted as saying that "jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced" as a predicate for your gross over-reaction that "violent jihadism seeks to destroy" Canadian "rights." Really? Pray tell, which rights rooted in Canadian law are "jihadis" fighting in the Middle East to obliterate? You talk like George W. Bush.

How does "jihadism" match up with the lives of tens of millions of innocent civilians, destroyed since 1900 by state terrorism -- west and east, north and south -- or the continuing efforts seeking to seize or occupy territory?

What has all this post-9/11 loss of American life plus injuries and sickness, in addition to trillions of American tax dollars, accomplished? Has it led to the stability of those nations invaded or attacked by the U.S. and its reluctant western "allies?" Just the opposite, the colossal blowback evidenced by the metastasis of al-Qaeda's offshoots and similar new groups like the self-styled Islamic state are now proliferating in and threatening over a dozen countries.

Have you digested what is happening in Iraq and why Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said no to Washington? Or now chaotic Libya, which like Iraq never had any presence of Al-Qaeda before the U.S.'s destabilizing military attacks?

Canadians might be most concerned about your increased dictatorial policies and practices, as well as this bill's provision for secret law and courts in the name of fighting terrorism -- too vaguely defined. Study what comparable practices have done to the United States -- a course that you seem to be mimicking, including the militarization of police forces.

You may think that Canadians will fall prey to a politics of fear before an election. But you may be misreading the extent to which Canadians will allow the attachment of their Maple Leaf to the aggressive talons of a hijacked American Eagle.

Canada could be a model for independence against the backdrop of bankrupt American military adventures steeped in big business profits…a model that might help both nations restore their better angels.

VIDEO: Racial violence in the USA: the real story

No news from Ferguson this week. Everything's quiet now, and the lamestream media have turned their righteous indignation in another direction. They've succeeded in spinning the death of "poor, innocent Michael Brown" into a story about the militarization of Armerican police.

That take on the Ferguson race riots -- for that's what they were, just as in Detroit, Newark and Watts -- is right enough and truly worrying to those of us who care about freedom and liberty. But the real issue remains race, and the abject failure of the President Obarmy to deliver on his promise of a "post-racial America". See "Is Ferguson really about race?", post here August 20th.

That's the point made by Bill Whittle in "Ferguson and the Real Race War" -- just over six minutes of solid truth-telling.



You won't see anything like this in the lamestream media because it makes the point that America's real problem is not white racism but black racism! Best quote: "Black racism is the toxic glue that holds the progressive coalition together." And that's the truth of America today.

Thanks to Agent 17 and his man in Belgium for passing this along, together with this quote which makes a good PS: "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps... then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved." Can you guess who said it? None other than Jesse Jackson.

For more from Bill Whittle and other unPC commentators, check out Truth Revolt. If you want to join the revolution and help defeat the left, it's FREE. Just follow the links on the site.

Paramilitary police rule the Paranoid States of America

Walt is a year older. [Than what? Dirt? Ed.] I'll answer that... I'm so old I can remember when people could write and speak grammatical English. I can remember when popular music had melodies you could hum and lyrics you could sing in decent company. And I can remember when children were taught that policemen -- there were no policewomen or policepersons in those days -- were our friends, human and caring people, the sort who would take a runaway kid back home. [Remember the kindly beat cop in Going My Way? Ed.

But times have changed. Cops have changed. Now, whether as a result of the War on Drugs or the War on Terror -- or the War on Poverty ?? -- North American police see themselves as warriors, "serving and protecting" by keeping "law and order" in our cities by using deadly force against terrorists, criminals and, errr, the rest of us... whenever and wherever they feel like it.

Why do they do that? For the same reason a dog licks his balls. Because they can! Police in the Paranoid States of America [Canada too! Ed.] have been thoroughly militarized. What the lamestream media are now calling the "unrest" in Ferguson MO is just the latest example of how that militarization can play out in city streets.

The cops occupying the St. Louis suburb are -- like most state and local police forces -— outfitted with the armoured vehicles, battering rams and flashbang grenades once reserved for troops. Police and "protesters" have clashed every day and every night since Michael Brown, an apparently unarmed black kid, was shot by an as-yet-unnamed policeman on Saturday. Vandalism and looting broke out the next day. A store was set on fire. Al Sharpton arrived.

As noted here two days ago, police responded in full riot gear. Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly shut down the airspace above Ferguson as a precautionary measure. Against what, for heaven's sake?! You'd think war had been declared. Oh, wait... Surely a more appropriate response to riots -- for that's what they are -- would be officers armed with pistols and billy clubs, not M-16s and grenade launchers.

Writing in Business Insider, Paul Szoldra, asks "Why do these cops need MARPAT camo pants?", referring to the pattern designed for the US Marine Corps, or MARine PATtern. When he was serving in Afghanistan, Szoldra says, they used big trucks and uniforms intended to project an image as occupiers. When, he asks, did this became OK on domestic soil?

As Walt told you last spring in "SWAT teams abuse your right -- 1000s of times a year!", studies by Prof. Peter Kraska, of Eastern Kentucky University, show that between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, the percentage of cities of 50,000 or more, like St. Louis, with a paramilitary unit almost doubled to 89 per cent.

Smaller cities, with populations of 25-50,000, saw an even greater jump –- from 20 per cent to 80 per cent. "These trends would mean little if these teams were relatively inactive," he wrote, "This was not the case."

Once the police are equipped and trained in the ways of the military -- the art of war -- they naturally want to put all that training and all those big-boy toys to use. Cops like bullying people! Cops like shooting people! It is their nature... like the dog mentioned above...

Prof. Kraska found that between 1980 and 2000, there was a 1,400% increase (!!) in police "paramilitary deployments". The majority of the deployments were for drug raids in private homes, not the intended goal of a SWAT team, which is emergency situations like hostage takings and shooter scenarios where the extra weaponry might be required.

Two months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report ominously titled "War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing". Their statistics for the years 2011-2012 confirm the trend identified by Prof. Kraska.

Of more than 800 SWAT deployments in those two years, 79% were to search the homes of private citizens, largely in drug probes. If it hadn't been the police carrying out these operations, we'd call them "home invasions", for that's what they are -- "legalized" home invasions.

The ACLU criticizes US policing for becoming unnecessarily and dangerously militarized. "Neighbourhoods are not war zones, and our police officers should not be treating us like wartime enemies," said the report. Any further comment from Walt would be superfluous.