For your consideration: two stories, from opposite sides of the world, concerning the attitude of Power toward those who would question its wisdom:

GI's mental health questioned in WikiLeaks case (AP)

China accused of holding woman in mental hospital for challenging officials (Guardian)

The GI in question is, of course, Bradley Manning, the young soldier charged with leaking the video of American gunships killing civilians in Iraq, and suspected of involvement in passing thousands of war-related secret documents to Wikileaks.

Manning has been quoted by friends (and the false friend who betrayed him to the authorities) about his motives for his actions. He has said quite plainly that he wanted to show the American people the true nature of the hideous Terror War operations being carried out around the world by their government -- "incredible things, awful things." One of his genuine friends said: "He wanted to do the right thing." Concerning the video of the gunship atrocity, the friend, who had been in contact with Manning, said: "He didn’t want to do this just to cause a stir…. He wanted people held accountable and wanted to see this didn’t happen again."

by CFS

BCʼs families are paying a heavy price for so-called economic recovery, as  tuition fees climb past record levels and student support programs are slashed.

 

“The government brags about BC having the lowest corporate tax rates in  North America, but students and their families are picking up the tab,” said Shamus Reid, Chairperson of the CFS- BC. “It is a very risky  strategy to dump todayʼs debt onto young people and families.”

 

Although BC already ranks dead last among provinces in grant and other aid  disbursements, student support programs suffer further in the 2010  budget. Despite an election promise to maintain student aid funding, the student aid budget has shrunk from $116 million to $84 million since the election, a 28% cut.

 

“BC families are bearing a wildly disproportionate share of the cuts and  tax increases,” said Reid, referring to tuition fees and the HST.

 

“BCʼs wealthiest taxpayers and large industry are escaping any responsibility for balancing the budget.”

Behind the Israeli Wall:

A Lesson in Reality

by Ramzy Baroud

Writers often romanticize their subjects. At times they even manipulate their readers. A book - or any piece of writing for that matter – is meant to provide a sense of completion. Sociological explanations are offered to offset the confusion caused by apparent inconsistency in human behavior. At times a reader is asked to take a stance, or choose sides. 

 

This is especially true in writings which deal with compelling human experiences. In Behind the Wall: Life, Love and Struggle in Palestine (Potomac Books, 2010), Rich Wiles undoubtedly directs his readers, although implicitly, towards taking a stance.

 

But he is unabashed about his moral priorities and makes no attempt to disguise his objectives.

 

As I began reading Wiles’ book, various aspects struck me as utterly refreshing in contrast to the way Palestine is generally written about. We tend to complicate what was meant to be straightforward and become too selective as we construct our narrative. And we tend to consider the possible political implications of our writings, and thus compose the conclusions with only this political awareness in mind.  

by Peter Ewart & Dawn Hemingway

In British Columbia, under the "Legislative Assembly Privilege Act", the provincial government, acting through the Legislature, can punish or even jail any citizen or citizens that it deems to be "giving false evidence, prevaricating or otherwise misbehaving in giving or refusing to give evidence or produce papers before the Assembly or a committee of it."

 

So it is clear that the government and MLAs have a lot of power to require ordinary citizens to tell the truth.

 

Yet, on the other hand, it is a strange fact of modern life that these very same Ministers and MLAs of the provincial government may themselves routinely mislead, deceive or lie to the citizens of the province and, instead of being led out of the Legislature in handcuffs, receive no punishment whatsoever.

These ecological realities will play out in a world structured by a system of nation-states rooted in the grotesque inequality resulting from imperialism and capitalism, all of which is eroding what is left of our collective humanity. “Collapsing” seems like a reasonable description of the world.

HALT THE TIDE OF ISLAMOPHOBIA: A Call for Solidarity from

The People's Commission Network and No One Is Illegal Montreal

 

The People's Commission and No One Is Illegal Montreal are also concerned for the well-being of the three men who have been named by media as part of the alleged plot and are currently overseas. In recent years, we have seen similar RCMP and CSIS suspicions - even without intense media attention - result in the overseas detention and torture of Maher Arar, Abousfian Abdelrazik, Abdullah Almalki and others.

 

None of these individuals were ever charged with any crime and their names were later officially cleared. However, their lives continue to be marred by the immediate consequences of CSIS and RCMP actions, consequences that include tarnished reputations, the loss of freedom of movement, and, in one case, a freeze on all assets.

 

A few organizations and individuals are speaking out against the storm of racism the arrests have unleashed (see, for example, the statement by No One Is Illegal Vancouver: http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=2328).

Tony Blair, a man who launched a criminal war with no end, declared once again today that “Radical Islam is the world's greatest threat”

He made the remark in a BBC interview marking the publication of his memoirs.

Mr Blair said radical Islamists believed that whatever was done in the name of their cause was justified - including the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

I can’t make up my mind whether Blair’s remark is amusing or tragic for not a single  Islamic leader has ever used “chemical, biological or nuclear weapons”. If anything it is Britain and the USA who deployed weaponry that contained depleted uranium.

 

A recent  study reveals that the Cancer rate in Fallujah, Iraq is worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

The Skies Above Us
by C. L. Cook
The skies above my home in Victoria are mainly clear today, September 4th, 2010. Great bands of rainclouds drifting gently in from the Pacific are currently circling round us, promising rain later tonight, perhaps.

 

I qualify my forecast because as anyone who has lived on the wild west coast of Canada knows, the weather has its own schedule, and only a fool believes the weathermen here.

More predictable however is the appearance of the jet trail fliers. They arrive invariably in pairs, criss-crossing the skies over us for hours at a time, leaving long, spreading, toxic clouds that crosshatch above and persist for hours, making of our evening air a grey murk.

I've watched these guys for years, but the last two days in Victoria were about as bad as I've ever seen for the chemical spraying of the skies above us.

 

But, it was not just Victoria; reports from Nanaimo concur, the whole southern half of Vancouver Island and beyond suffered under the onslaught of chemical application that began before dawn and was still overflying as the sun set.

Loud noises from Washington about a US pull-out from Iraq are a poor disguise for America’s determination to keep waging war. And the same sort of spin is at work here in Britain

Edward Bernays,  the American nephew of Sigmund Freud, is said to have invented modern propaganda. During the First World War, he was one of a group of influential liberals who mounted a secret government campaign to persuade reluctant Americans to send an army to the bloodbath in Europe.

 

In his book Propaganda , published in 1928, Bernays wrote that the "intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society", and that the manipulators "constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power in our country".

 

Instead of propaganda, he coined the euphemism "public relations".