It’s nice to know Parliament supports this, but Harper will never, ever piss off his buddy George II by doing anything about it. It’s interesting that during the first Gulf War, Canada gave an Iraqi officer refugee status and permission to stay in Canada on the grounds that he was being forced to take part in an illegal war. Americans making the same claim in the second Iraq war were told to pack their bags and head back to Leavenworth. (Under Mr. Dithers’ Liberal government.)
Archive for the 'Peace' Category
These posters raised a lot of eyebrows, not to mention ire, around T.O. If you check out the website, it turns out to be a charity promoting aid and awareness for child soldiers and children affected by war. As Leigh pointed out: what does it say about how low we Torontonians believe we’ve sunk that so many of us initially took these at face value?
Photo courtesy of Alfons Hudescu.
If you would like our so-called leaders to do something about the ongoing loss of civilian lives in Israel, Lebanon, and Palestine, please consider signing the petition at ceasefirecampaign.org. They hope to have 1 million names when they deliver it to the UN Security Council this week.
Peace,
Vanessa
Today, for the first time in my life, I am deeply ashamed to be Canadian. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is publicly defending Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, so let me make one thing perfectly clear: he does not speak for me. (I sincerely hope he does not speak for most Canadians, but only time will tell.)
Any state which commits war crimes must be condemned in the strongest possible terms by all civilized nations. There are no excuses; no justifications; no rationalizations. There is no special dispensation for Israel (or America) which would permit it to systematically destroy nations, lives, and hopes in flagrant defiance of international law and common human decency. While I wish no ill on the people of Israel, they can freaking well defend their own actions without any moral cover from us.
flames >> /dev/null
Read what’s really happening in Lebanon, through the eyes of some of the people who live there (at least for now.) It’s a refreshing—though heart-wrenching—antidote to the media distortion and the pointless blathering of our so-called leaders.
Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
From Al Gore’s Martin Luther King Day address, via The Raw Story. One more teaser, then you’ll have to read the rest yourself.
Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote: “Men feared witches and burnt women.”
…
It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same.
Happy Martin Luther King Day!
