From Peace Seeker To War Crimes: To Radioactive Denouement? “For in lapse of time men are constrained to see things they would not willingly suffer.” [1] Canada's recent international role includes being a serial participant in wars of aggression – that which at Nuremberg was deemed the greatest crime. Organized mass murder of people and the destruction of their infrastructure, not as an act of self defense; blowing babies to bloody bits, reducing homes to rubble, this is the stuff of 'wars of aggression'. The typical contemporary template for perpetrating wars of aggression is to demonize the victims, and to justify, even sanctify, the perpetrator. And it is not unknown in the modern era, progress being what it is, to explain to the victims that it was a beneficent act to conquer them, occupy them, plunder them, murder them, wound them, destroy their country. The aggressor usually has a large military advantage, and in the modern context, destroying the designated victim may feature banal distant mechanical and electronic acts, push a button, turn a dial, the perpetrators remote and safe. That many Canadians do not understand, or are in denial about, Canada's heinous crimes is testimony to the effectiveness of modern mass media's 'public perception management'. Pretty hard for busy people, including many people who work in the media and academia and the military and in politics, to find their way to the real, subjected as they are to a dizzying disinformation maze: a litany of lies and distortions and distractions called 'news', either presented with accomplished feigned sincerity, or in ignorance with real sincerity. It all gets very confusing, even for the most gifted manipulators. Rigorous censorship is practiced under the rubric of a free press, and endless trivia contaminate just about everyone. [2] A diabolical aspect of the formal disinformation system is the provision of a wide range of pretend-to-be-honest 'alternative' media outlets. [3] Then add to the disinformation system the seemingly systematic corruption of high profile regulatory agencies [4] and corporate-linked science, and a vast number of NGO's that pretend to be serving some ideal, and the entire global public is enveloped in a rather overwhelmingly bewildering complex of disinformation. Our collective capacity for coherent policy, for intelligent cohesive societal decision, is just about nil. And this all comes just at the moment in human history – the nuclear age – when the best we have to offer would be our only chance of success. But back to our story: On the other hand, some do understand that Canada has gone criminally militaristic. And most of those remain silent. Some are governed by fear, some don't care, some embrace evil; some who do speak concoct bizarre justifications. But Canada cannot escape 'karmic justice' for its international crimes. Shameful militarism elsewhere has inevitable insidious impact at home: You can't endorse or commit mass murder of innocents based on lies without being a monster, or becoming one. And there are other consequences: Fully forthright and knowledgeable discourse pertaining to international and national issues is now just about absent from Canadian mass media or politics: commentary offered either wallows in ignorance or is mere pretense, disingenuous theater. Real unfettered discourse is the forbidden; critical truths are silenced, lies and self-censorship are conjoined perniciously and normalized; integrity is marginalized. This is a recipe for the triumph of the worst elements, the empowerment of social pathology, ensuring societal dysfunction leading to catastrophe. But this is not the way it had to go, for Canada. Once upon a time, not so long ago, a different outcome had seemed quite possible: Canada previously had earned some honour as occasional peacemaker on a planet plagued by conflict; in international affairs, Canada was perceived as capable of periodic common sense and decency and fairmindedness, and sometimes, on a really good day, even verging on virtuous. Within Canada, some decades ago, 'The Just Society' was proffered , without irony, as an honourable national ambition. The future seemed to offer unprecedented beneficial opportunity at home, and prospect was that Canada would be able to provide a significant helping hand abroad. : after all, was there not modernity's burgeoning repertoire of amazing new technology which could be allied to Canada's wealth of natural resources, and its wealth of human decency, intelligence and creativity, to build a country of great accomplishment, and help to build a better world? Consistent with such musing, not long ago, a pleasing self-identity - seriously fanciful, yes, but not entirely so - could be held by many Canadians: it went something like this: Canada was a special, safe, bountiful democracy endowed with a peace-loving, respectable conglomeration of peoples; and furthermore, Canada was a land of boundless opportunity, proceeding relentlessly from good to better. And many Canadians took satisfaction from the fact that Canada displayed – nothing extreme or eccentric mind you - something of an independent streak. One important example of this independent streak was the establishment of the Bank of Canada in 1938 as a public institution – a national bank as public utility. The Bank of Canada was mandated to provide large amounts of interest free funds to Canadian governments, to be used for worthy public projects and infrastructure. This was done with great success until 1974. [5] [6] There is now, through a court case, an attempt being made to restore that previous beneficent function. The government of Canada is opposing it, and the media is censoring news of it. [7] Another example of Canada's independent streak is the establishment half a century ago of a universal health care system, which warts and all has been a tremendous success, and much different than the American for profit health services approach. But back to the less and less pleasant story: An independent streak notwithstanding, there are the insistent facts and funnels of history and circumstance: For example, Canada had centuries ago been conquered by Britain, and somehow the head of the 'royal' aberration-prone bloodline of England retains sovereign powers of sorts, over Canadians. A pretend-democracy has been the result. [8] New citizens and those who work for governments in Canada are asked to swear allegiance to the British Monarch, not to be mistaken for the dwindling lovely orange butterfly that in great numbers graced Canada long before the British got here. Another pertinent Canadian 'fact of life': Canada stretches across an entire continent right beside the United States, and is continually inundated by its 'cultural' emissions. But for all that, there really was, for much of its history, an independent streak, and many Canadians, until recently, could take some satisfaction in the work in progress: a home-brewed , distinctive, modestly progressive, more or less pragmatic, socio-political experiment with great potential. Both in the eyes of Canadians and much of the planet. So it was that Canadians could, again until recently, travel the world with the Canadian flag pinned on, and expect to receive signs of approval. Americans caught on and it was not unknown for desperate reviled Americans to attempt to unsully themselves in foreign lands with a conspicuous maple leaf. Sometimes, when occasion seemed to require it, – especially if the British were in a tough spot - Canada would majorly go to war, with reluctant French Canadian participation. But Canada had over the generations displayed at least a somewhat judicious approach when it came to participating in wars. Canada for example refused to get involved in Britain's Suez conflict in the 1950s. Former Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson, Nobel Peace Prize winner at a time when that prize had less putrid connotation, as in say Kissinger and Obama, was famously verbally and physically abused by US President Lyndon Johnson for mildly chiding US policy in Indochina. Canadians made money from the war, but did not directly participate in the American carnage upon and mass murder of the Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians, during the so-called War in Vietnam. [9] Prime Minister Jean Chretien signaled a residual Canadian reluctance to go to war by refusing to involve Canada militarily in the 2003 version of American (justified by lies) atrocities against Iraq. [10] But tragically, as the twentieth century neared its end, and a new century began, Canada did not have what it takes to resist a deepening involvement on the hell-bent slippery slope of the geo-political agendas and machinations of those who control the United States. And so it was that Canada did not remain marginally independent, and marginally judicious, and marginally good and a bit of an honest broker, and stay out of direct participation in clearly illegal and immoral wars. The NATO war of aggression, facilitated and justified by lies, [11] on Yugoslavia in 1999, included Canada's direct participation. In 2001, based on the false flag lie of 9/11 2001, [12] Canada signed on to the falsehood-enabled 'War on Terror' aka Wars of Terror, and went to war in Afghanistan. [13] Canada in 2004 took sordid part in the overthrow of the government of Haiti. And in 2011, Canada within NATO participated in mass murder and the destruction of the most successful country in Africa, Libya, again on the basis of brazen lies. [14] The Canadian military, camouflaged by lies, has recently been killing people in the middle East, in a veiled attack on Syria under the guise of attacking the Western Powers-That-Be-concocted pathology that is ISIS. [15] And now, Canadian people and weapons and lies are employed to support the war mongering leadership of Ukraine, a demented offspring of an American-engineered coup over the Ukrainian democracy in 2014. [16] And this offspring, true to its Nazi and fascism-tinged ideology and its murderous origins, launched a pitiless war of aggression on its own people. [17] Among the reasons for Canada's descent into serial international war criminality is Canadian continued participation in the so-called defense alliance NATO, long after NATO lost its nominal reason for being. NATO had long been infected by the hidden perversity of Gladio [18] before its more recent war criminality. The process by which Canada lost its way also includes an economic 'paradigm shift' short decades ago. Canada's Powers-That-Be, spouting lies, foisted upon reluctant Canadians greatly increased economic integration with the United States: So-called free trade, which was lauded by its prominent advocates as the certain route to national prosperity and jobs aplenty; not the basket case that is the current North American economy. [19] This new policy trumped traditional wariness of, or strong repudiation of, significantly increased entanglement with the United States. Generations of Canadian politicians of all varieties had understood that the price of more formal economic union with the United States was less sovereignty and less independence. Canada's increased economic integration with the United States made Canada more involved with the attempt by those who dominate the US to achieve unrivaled global political, military and economic domination, a global empire: necessary to this massive criminal ambition, a hi-tech version of militarized police state/fascism has been put into place within the United States [20]; and abroad, the global domination project has made the US prolific in wars and war crimes, death squads, torture, destruction, subversion, and boundless cruelty. Canada's recent embrace of the demonic has culminated today in some utterly irresponsible national political and mass media behaviour: Currently Canada is simultaneously helping to raise the risk of a major war, including the risk of global nuclear war, by arming the Ukrainian crazies, while lying about Russia's involvement, [21] and threatening Russia. Canada's devolution from peacekeeper to war monger happened while many Canadians dozed in the fading glow of the previously described self-congratulatory national image. But there were many signposts – some subtle, some glaring - that indicated ongoing cultural and societal deterioration [22]. But central to the deterioration was the hobbling of probing, free, full, unfettered public discourse, and the ever increasing power of dishonesty, in all its manifestations, throughout the culture. And then there is Fukushima: Canadian politics and mass media are ignoring the ongoing global nuclear mega-catastrophe of Fukushima, ignoring the death of much of the life of the northern Pacific Ocean adjoining Canada, censoring news of it, lying about it, censoring news of greatly elevated levels of radioactivity across Canada and around the planet: Second hand tobacco smoke incurs much greater outrage. That's about as crazy and stupid as it gets. [23] Canadians are being kept in the dark regarding ways in which individuals and their families can at least mitigate the effects of increased exposures to radioactivity. [24] But that doesn't address the big problem itself. What must be done, pertaining to Fukushima, and nuclear energy and weapons, is the most widely and deeply searching honesty-anchored brain-storming effort that humanity can muster, at this very late date. And that effort must enlist and heed practical people of common sense and broad experience, for it is precisely the naivete and tunnel vision of the specialists and experts – the professionals - who got us into this, and never got us out. Experts are necessary; but very far from sufficient. Nuclear power was born in iniquity, and began its global-reach poisoning enveloped in secrecy and lies. Nuclear power plants having proliferated, something like a Fukushima was inevitable, meaning slow motion ecocide. Thousands of nuclear weapons have long been poised to achieve a near instantaneous hell on earth. The nuclear age is madness merged with dishonesty and secrecy and a terminal technology. [25] So is it to be with Sophocles, via Oedipus Rex: “...sorrows beyond all telling, sickness rife in our ranks, outstripping human invention of remedy, blight on barren earth, and barren agonies of birth, life after life from the wild-fire winging swiftly into the night.” [26] Will a preponderance of people choose to sleep with eyes open or party towards the grave, or choose the fleeting comfort of make believe? Or will a growing number begin to examine the bitter truth to be found in the mirror and in the world, and very late now do what they can to honour and protect earth's wonders? In any case, whatever is to be Canada's or the planet's fate, it will neither disturb not delight those previously vibrant, happy, bright-eyed Libyan children blown to bits by Canada in 2011; in Canada they did not even merit mention, let alone contrition, or mourning. Notes:
Robert Snefjella is an organic farmer living in Ontario, Canada Source URL |