I received an email which I would like to reproduce in its (almost) entirety, because it not only speaks for itself, it also includes the most-important links….and, it does raise a ray of hope!
Here it is, in its (almost) entirety (I only redacted a phone number):
1. Just days after our Queen’s Park news conference –‘Ending Race-Based Policing: The Caledonia Act\,’ – where we were joined by speakers from the pro-Israel Never Again Group and the International Free Press Society, MPP Toby Barrett has issued a call for strong action re the Caledonia occupation, and praised our efforts and ideas for reaching a resolution…
“Barrett credits Gary Mchale and CANACE for keeping the issue alive in the media and in the limelight, suggesting a lot of McHale’s ideas have been ‘pretty good’.” They include having more oversight from the Ontario Ombudsman with respect to the OPP and more protection for whistleblowers in the Police service.
December 29th, 2011, is the official ‘Boycott GoDaddy Day’: everyone is being encouraged to move any domain names they may have with GoDaddy
Why GoDaddy?
Let me count the ways…
Yes, GoDaddy has backtracked on their support of SOPA – but this is more than just a case of ‘too little, too late’.
GoDaddy actually helped draft SOPA – and is already one of the go-to companies when the US government (long before SOPA ever becomes a law) wants to blacklist websites:
“That was good enough for Judge Kent Dawson to order the names seized and transferred to GoDaddy, where they would all redirect to a page serving notice of the seizure. In addition, a total ban on search engine indexing was ordered, one which neither Bing nor Google appears to have complied with yet.”
Yes – right now, long before SOPA, a judge had ordered that a website be transferred to GoDaddy in order for it to make it easier to blacklist them – following a court proceeding where the accused may not even be notified until after the ruling is made.
(Aside: this shows that the stated goal of SOPA – to protect copyrights from pirating – is unnecessary, as all of this is already being accomplished under current laws. The scales of justice are already very strongly tipped towards the copyright holder and against regular citizens – SOPA would not only tip them even further, it would destroy the internet as we know it. If, say, one copyright holder complained that one single blogger at WordPress were to publish a link on their blog that led to a home movie of their kid singing a (copyrighted) pop song, under SOPA, the whole of WordPress and all the innocent blogs on it would be blacklisted!!!! Yes – this is what life under SOPA would be, and not just in the US because the effects would be internet-wide!)
It seems GoDaddy is a willing tool at best, an active collaborator in the process of oppressing people without just process at worst. This is the type of behaviour which enables totalitarian governments to keep their populace ‘under control’!
It is easy to see why it is so very easy for people to hate GoDaddy – even before one considers their idiotic commercials or their CEO’s weird hobby of shooting and killing elephants…
In other words, GoDaddy is a poster child for the collusion of government and business – the result of which is that government policy is increasingly shaped by the concerns (and thus passes laws to the benefit of) of a smaller and smaller circle of businesses. This leaves the citizenry unable to affect political change, since legislators of all stripes are dependent on these corporate interests to raise sufficient funds.
Soap box: A box you stand on in the street trying to explain your views to the public. Figuratively, building public opinion for your case.
Ballot box: Public, free, democratic elections. If the laws don’t work, and the elected representatives don’t get it, replace them.
Jury box: If no public representatives get it, neither the elected nor those available to elect, the second to last line of defense is the judicial system, which can overturn laws that go against the most fundamental rights.
Ammo box: If the system has been so thoroughly corrupted that the entire establishment is acting as one, and it is not possible to change the laws to safeguard fundamental liberties, then only one option remains.
Think about this while keeping in mind the lessons of SOPA:
Our soap box is being taken away on the internet using anti-piracy and anti-child-predator laws so badly written that once passed, they can be used to ‘disappear’ any voice on the internet the government does not like – at the same time as anti-terrorism laws coupled with classifying even non-violent protesters as ‘low-grade terrorists’ and the rise of anti-blasphemy legislation is stripping our rights to speak our minds in public.
Our ballot box has been made irrelevant: the political process has been so twisted that now, in order to get elected, governments are less reliant on the citizenry than they are on an ever-narrowing circle of corporate and special interests. We, the regular people, no longer believe that it makes any difference whom we vote for, because all the politicians are responding to the needs of this circle,, not to the citizens. THAT is why the voter turnouts are falling so rapidly: ordinary people believe that the ballot box has been lost to irrelevance…
The Jury box: that is where we are now! We are now relying on the last of the checks and balances – the judiciary – to protect us. But, if the above-linked ruling and the Austrian ruling against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff are any indication, we are quickly but surely loosing our third box, on both sides of the big pond!
Which inevitably leaves us with the very last box: the ammo box… This is not something I would like to see happen, but we must never forget that all our rights exist only as long as we are prepared to take up arms to defend them…which is why there is such a direct link between how oppressive a government is and how much it wishes to disarm its citizens.
So, how did we get from the GoDaddy boycott to taking up arms in defense of our innate rights?
GoDaddy has highlighted just how close we are to having lost our first three boxes.
It has highlighted just how high the stakes are.
It has shown us just how hard we have to fight so that our society does not devolve to that fourth box!
This video raises a number of things that I have been wondering about.
For example, the uniformed police officers do not display their badge numbers, making it impossible to identify them. Is this legal? If so, should it remain so?
Another question: what recourse does a population have if a police force either refuses to enforce the laws of the land or enforces illegal orders?
In my never-humble-opinion, the only way an organizational corruption of this scale can be tackled is by holding the individuals within the organization personally responsible for their actions, including holding them personally responsible for following illegal orders to the maximum level the law permits. Yes, this would mean legal action against individual police officers – if not criminal, then civil – even if these police officers are nice individuals. Still, if they follow an illegal order, they must be accountable for this breech of law.
Of course, these are easy words to type and there is a world of difference between writing this and actually doing something about it. Still, one ought to gather as much information first…
So, if you are knowledgable on this topic, please, comment and educate me on the laws, rules and procedures – and any other options legally available. It would be much appreciated.
Because to my way of thinking, this is not a ‘native/non-native’ issue: this is a policing issue and equality before the law issue!
UPDATE: Here is a comment posted by Mark Vandermaas, which, in my neve-humble-opinion, is important enough to bump it into the ‘body’ of the post:
The scary part of Caledonia is that all the organizations, gov’t and NGO, that should have been pro-active in protecting the rights of the innocent were unwilling or unable to help: Human Rights Commission; Ombudsman (wanted to help, but not allowed to get involved in police issues); the Opposition (oh, how we tried); the Federal govt (not only wouldn’t they help Harper annointed Fantino as PC candidate!); the OCCPS (old agency for Police Services Act complaints); Haldimand’s Police Services Board; Haldimand Council (other than former Mayor Trainer); Cdn Civil Liberties Association (repeatedly begged them for help to no avail).
It would be hard to list here everything we tried, but some of the key things that worked well were:
1. Dr. King’s methods of peacefully confronting injustice and forcing them to violate your rights (techniques that he learned from Gandhi to influence the media and the conscience of the nation. When one protests with dignity and is willing to be verbally abused and assaulted without retaliating there is very little defence to this approach. Using it we actually caused the union radicals, anarchists, anti-Israel groups and native militants to curb their violence and aggression because – as one of them said at an anarchist’s conference, we were making THEM look like the racists by applying Dr. King’s methods. Just as King did not demonize whites, we did not demonize native people as a group (the thugs would disagree, of course). We tried our best to ensure people knew that the thugs didn’t speak for the good people of 6N.
2. Civil Lawsuits to a degree. I say that because while there were some important court victories such as the $20M Caledonia Class Action, the Brown-Chatwell settlements and some victories achieved by us via the small claim and superior courts, the fact is that racial policing is still practiced and the gov’t, 6N and the OPP have never apologized or ammended their policies.
3. Private Prosecutions under the CCofC. You know, of course, that Gary M, despite not being a lawyer, convinced the courts to charge 5 individual police officers for offences such as Mischief, Influencing Municipal Official and Obstructing Justice, and even won a case at the Court of Appeal. This has reigned in their abuses quite effectively, but apparently, they still have more to learn.
We’ve tried just about everything during the last 5 years. in the end, it’s not one magic bullet. It’s ordinary people taking advantage of every opportunity when presented and, as Gary says, ‘withstanding the test of time’ (while you’re being vilified, assaulted, and arrested). And…don’t wait for anyone to come to help. But, that’s the wonderful thing! A small group of committed people with no money, no power and no connections really can make a huge difference.
Having said all this, there were some good people who did help and paid a price for doing so. At risk of leaving someone out and inadvertently insulting them, I won’t try to list them. But one guy who doesn’t get enough credit is lawyer John Findlay of the Class Action, a lawyer who represents us in several cases including one where he helped mediate a solution whereby the OPP union finally admitted in writing they had no evidence we were inciting hate and violence. Couldn’t have done it without him.
Sorry to go on so long. Thks for listening.
Readers who want to know more should visit the Caledonia: No More Nightmares page at http://www.HelplessByBlatchford.ca which has videos and notes from our 2011 presentation of the same name in Ottawa – where you and I met. Thanks for being there, and thks for the coverage.
Mark Vandermaas Editor, VoiceofCanada Founder, Caledonia Victimis Project
The Supreme Court of British Columbia has upheld the law which forbids polygamy. This is an important ruling – and one which is bound to end up before the Supreme Court of Canada.
It is also an issue I am deeply conflicted on: just where does the line lie between individual choice and State interference lie?
“On an intellectual level, polygamy amongst men and women who have reached the age of consent should be no one else’s business but the participants’.”
“The cold, hard fact is that in the real world, non child-abusing polygamists are pretty much non-existent. Non-wife-abusing polygamists are rare, too.”
While I might disagree with some minor points Mr. Gunther makes, these are tangential to the subject of his article, the body of which reflects my own opinions quite accurately.
Let’s hope that now that we have confirmation of the validity of anti-polygamy laws, these laws will be applied to all members of our society equally!
I have little liking for the #occupy folks and have said so before.
But…
There is so much wrong in the police responses to the #occupy evictions that I don’t even know where to begin ranting.
Please, consider the following video:
First, a cop assaults a bunch of #occupiers (he uses unreasonable force against clearly non-violent people who offer no resistance, at least one of whom had to be taken to a hospital for treatment as a result of the assault), then the whole group of cops gets cowed and cowardly runs away when the mob advances on them!
The use of unreasonable force, especially against people who do not resist, is the second worst thing the cops here did. The worst thing they did was to let themselves be run out by the mob. A peaceful mob, but a mob none-the-less.
The lesson here?
If you are non-violent, police will assault you. If you begin to – even just a tiny bit – look menacing, the cops will run away.
Just marvellous…
This sends a clear signal that the police are willing to neither obey nor uphold the rule of law.
Of course, we have seen this type of a response by police before: peaceful citizens are bullied, beaten and arrested while violent law-breakers go unchallenged. This is true from the Islamist rallies in the UK to Caledonia in Ontario and on and on.
All this type of police response will result in is that all protests will take on a violent streak, if only to protect themselves from police violence. People will loose any vestige of trust they still have in the police,and, by extension, in the rule of law.
How can those calling the shots in the police responses not get it?
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 