OH, CANADA!

This is a short tribute to this beautiful country in which I was fortunate enough to be born. The only thing these pictures have in common is the fact that the new Canada flag, "The Maple leaf" appears in them all. I remember an older Canadian flag, one that has disappeared from Canadian memory.

The world is in chaos and as we settle in to holiday the long weekend away, it is important that we remember how fortunate we really are. And to step out of our complacency and become more aware of our position in the world.




I'm not an American! I am a Canadian. I come from a "nice", thoroughly unrealistic country.~ Matthew Fisher




We Canadians live in a blind spot about our identity. We have very strong feelings about who we aren't but only weak ones about who we are. We're passionate about what we don't want to be but oddly passive about what we should be.
~ John Cruickshank (in McLean's Magazine)





The US is our trading partner, our neighbour, our ally and our friend ~ and sometimes we'd like to give them such a smack! ~ Rick Mercer





The crisis of Canada today is the combination of economic problems facing us and the increasing impotency of governments that lack either the will or the resources to do much about it. The tragedy of Canada today is that just when we need a country that's pulling together in common cause, we have one that keeps finding new ways to pull itself apart. ~ Angus Reid




Your majesty, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and Madame Houde thanks you from her bottom too. ~ Montreal Mayor Camillien Houde (in 1939 to King George VI)





It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power
that you are a part of. ~ Emily Carr





I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in our my way, free to stand for what I think is right, free to oppose that which I believe wrong, and free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold
for myself and mankind. ~ Anonymous




Canadians are the people who learned to live without the bold accents of the natural ego-trippers of other lands. ~ Marshall McLuhan





The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slow-witted, toothy rodent known to bite off it's own testicles or to stand under its own falling trees. ~ June Callwood





Canada has never been a melting-pot; more like a tossed salad. ~ Arnold Edinborough





We are tremendously proud of our cultures, heritage and achievements and we will continue to break new ground. I am proud to be a Canadian and I hope you are too. ~ Philip K. Lee





If you don't believe your country should come before yourself, you can better serve your country by livin' someplace else. ~ Stompin' Tom Connors





Many Canadian nationalists harbour the bizarre fear that should we ever reject royalty, we would instantly mutate into Americans, as though the Canadian sense of self is so frail and delicate a bud, that the only thing stopping it from being swallowed whole by the US is an English lady in a funny hat. ~ Will Ferguson





It's going to be a great country when they finish unpacking it. ~ Andrew H. Malcom





With or without the Royals, we are not Americans. Nor are we British. Or French. Or Void. We are something else. And the sooner we define this, the better. ~
Will Ferguson





Canada is probably the most free country in the world where a man still has room to breathe, to spread out, to move forward, to move out, an open country with an open frontier Canada has created harmony and cooperation among ethnic groups, and it must take this experience to the world because there is yet to be such an example of harmony and cooperation among ethnic groups. ~ Valentyn Moroz





As far as I'm concerned, I wouldn't want to go to any other country.
It's good enough here. ~ Orviel Kruse





Canada is one of the planet’s most comfortable, and caring, societies. ~ Time Magazine





God Bless America, but God help Canada to put up with them! ~ Anonymous





Canadians don't have a very big political lever, we're nice guys. ~ Paul Henderson

Canadians, like their historians, have spent too much time remembering conflicts, crises, and failures. They forgot the great, quiet continuity of life in a vast and generous land. A cautious people learns from its past; a sensible people can face its future. Canadians, on the whole, are both. ~ Desmond Morton

I don't even know what street Canada is on. ~ Al Capone





A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe. ~ Pierre Berton





The huge advantage of Canada is its backwardness. ~ Marshall McLuhan





What is a Canadian? A Canadian is a fellow wearing English tweeds, a Hong Kong shirt and Spanish shoes, who sips Brazilian coffee sweetened with Philippine sugar from a Bavarian cup while nibbling Swiss cheese, sitting at a Danish desk over a Persian rug, after coming home in a German car from an Italian movie ~ and then writes his Member of Parliament with a Japanese ballpoint pen on French paper, demanding that he do something about foreigners taking away our Canadian jobs. ~ Anonymous





A Canadian is merely an unarmed American with health care. ~ John Wing





When I’m in Canada, I feel this is what the world should be like. ~ Jane Fonda





Gentlemen, we all must realize that neither side has any monopoly on sons of bitches.
~ C.D. Howe (in Washington to resolve a shipping dispute)






The great themes of Canadian history are as follows: Keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear. ~ Will Ferguson





Canadians have been so busy explaining to the Americans that we aren't British, and to the British that we aren't Americans that we haven't had time to become Canadians.
~ Helen Gordon McPherson





Canada is an interesting place, the rest of the world thinks so,
even if Canadians don't. ~ Terence M. Green





We'll explain the appeal of curling to you if you explain the appeal of the National Rifle Association to us. ~ Andy Barrie





There are no limits to the majestic future which lies before the mighty expanse of Canada with its verile, aspiring, cultured, and generous-hearted people.
~ Sir Winston Churchill





In a world darkened by ethnic conflicts that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect. ~ U.S. President Bill Clinton





Canada is a place of infinite promise. We like the people, and if one ever had to emigrate, this would be the destination, not the U.S.A. The hills, lakes and forests make it a place of peace and repose of the mind, such as one never finds in the U.S.A.
~ John Maynard Keynes

WAKEY, WAKEY, AMERIKA!

Is the Pentagon building prison camps for Muslim immigrants? For Fifth column Americans? Evidence points to this very possible occurrence going on right under the noses of the media drugged populace of America. It is not as if the corporate media is going to really tell anything of importance, especially supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.

Recent developments suggest that the Bush administration has also been seriously contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy. Apparently this group includes anyone who has voiced serious opposition to the powers that be and this includes all forms of media and the internet. Top officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists. If terrorists are the ones we are being protected from, perhaps the White House itself should be examined minutely.

In January the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers in the United States, to deal with an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.

Halliburton has an abominable reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services. They have even served the troops spoiled food and dirty water from the Euphrates resulting in illness amongst the fighting men in Iraq. "It's hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars," remarked Rep. Henry Waxman. What kind of programmes (pogroms?) would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding at least 5,000 people. Spokespeople for Immigration and Customs Enforcement refuse to elaborate on what these new programmes might be.

Because another home made terror attack is all but certain, it seems likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge of immigrants flooding across the border. Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the special registration detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.

There also was another item posted at the U.S. Army website, about the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labour Programme. This programme provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labour programmes and civilian prison camps on Army installations. The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a rapid action revision on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a template for developing agreements between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labour on Army installations.

Superficially the Army's labour programme refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labour and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the attorney general to establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him and make available the services of US prisoners to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.

Though the timing of the document's posting ~ within the past few weeks ~ may just be a coincidence, the reference to a rapid action revision and the KBR contract's contemplation of rapid development of new programs has raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency. These developments also are drawing more attention because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in counter-terrorism operations inside the United States.

Despite the Posse Comitatus Act's prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities. The Washington Post has reported that since 911, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States.

The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office with authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage. The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. Few in the Pentagon think that new laws are even necessary.

In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2005, the U.S. Army's top intelligence officer wrote, "Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on military intelligence components collecting U.S. person information." Drawing a distinction between collecting information and receiving information on citizens, the memo argued that "MI may receive information from anyone, anytime." This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the programme of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.

There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance programme existed, but could not discuss the details without breaking classification laws. Tice added that the special access surveillance program was violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. With this expanded surveillance, the government's list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.

The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center's central repository holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since the fall of 2003. Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA's domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, "Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA."

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush's definitions for words like terrorist "affiliates" used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities. During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the wiretap programme, Sen. Dianne Feinstein charged that the House and Senate Intelligence committees had not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program. Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaida or what minimization procedures for purging the names of innocent people are in place.

The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States. The plan maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who they insist would harm Americans. There are concerns over how the Pentagon judges threats and who falls under the category those who would harm us. A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 "suspicious incidents" over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a threat. The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically as part of its overall war strategy. Since propaganda is already such a big element of the American mind control for the hive mentality, I doubt anyone would notice much of a change.

The Pentagon has devised a strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the web as a potential military adversary. They speak of fighting the net, and imply that the internet is the equivalent of an enemy weapons system. Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration's perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.

The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for its work in Iraq, and had them openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as some of the most feared professional killers in the world, Blackwater's presence in New Orleans raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here.

A form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the American coup, called now the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 empowering him to detain any noncitizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant. The president decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian president and issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general. He formally assumed the right to dictatorship on May9, 2007.

For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, and the definitions of what constitutes these actions is extremely broad, Bush also revealed what's in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaida operative planning an attack. Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an enemy combatant and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost. Since the court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration's arguments have not been formally repudiated

Despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants. This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield. Given Bush's now open assertions that he is using his plenary ~ or unlimited ~ powers as commander in chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions. This writer believes that the elections for 2008 will be put on hold allowing the Bush cabal to maintain their grip of the evil of the world.

In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the rapid development of new programmes, which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps. Does the U.S. government expect a massive influx of undocumented immigrants some time between now and 2010? In preparation for their arrival, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) backed the National Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which mandates 40,000 new beds and barracks for foreign-born refugees at four undisclosed locations over the next five years.

On Jan. 3, 2006, the Army Corps of Engineers expanded an existing contract held by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) and renewed it to accommodate up to 20,000 refugees from environmental and political disasters. A future expansion in 2008 calls for another 20,000 beds.

Detention of immigrants and other undesirables without charge is nothing new. After the Civil War, many states supplied troops and police to assist private armed guards to arrest and detain striking workers. In 1918, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and Hoover launched raids to round up and deport alleged subversives. In 1934, striking textile workers were interned in camps at Fort Macpherson outside Atlanta, Ga. Congress approved the Internal Security Act of 1950, including Hoover' plan to arrest and detain up to 20,000 dissidents. 1984 FEMA under Reagan reconstituted a readiness exercise, Operation Night Train, code-named REX 84, a potential roundup of up tens of thousands of Central Americans residing in the United States for internment in ten military detention centers.

But the difference here is that the emergency detention and removal plans for 2006-2010 are built on a new contingency support contract. Originally awarded in 1999 by the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service, the contract sought logistical support for imagined immigration events. Contingency support contracts are good business for KBR, which provides insurance for calamities that don't happen.

When George Bush and Dick Cheney moved to Washington, many Texas-based companies teed up for contract extensions and new business opportunities. Among them, KBR was viewed by many in the defense contracting industry as a capable, fast and far-reaching company. KBR has been awarded the last three expanded improved detention center contracts administered by the Army Corps. The awards often come well in advance of the expiration date.

For the latest detention center contract between DHS/ICE and KBR the solicitation went to 26 vendors of detention and logistical support services, 11 of them based in Texas. As with most large service contracts entailing indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, and rapid response time, KBR submitted the only bid for the work. While this does not constitute another cost-plus no-bid contract, which have been cited as particularly vulnerable to abuse and fraud, the contract award to a single bidder doesn't lend itself to much competitive pricing.

Evacuee resettlement facilities can be converted into detention centers quickly. An Army Corps procurement analyst was quoted as saying, "Mobile watchtowers are easily wheeled onto the corners of barbed-wired tent camps."

Immigration lawyers and migrant advocates warn that the government plans to detain and remove more people, including asylum seekers. If the government's intentions are to care for refugees displaced by a natural disaster, that would be just fine. Remember after 9/11, the government detained over 1,000 people in NYC, none of whom were linked to terrorist activity? Based on stories like these, their programme could victimize people fleeing persecution or calamity, the very people that the programme is designed to help.

These elements alarm human rights supporters both inside and outside the US Army Corps of Engineers. One anonymous source within USACE warned, "Don’t wait until they’re putting people behind barbed wire. Don’t wait until the cattle cars pull up. Nip this in the bud."

The prospective demand and requirements for this expanded emergency response activity is in the hands of government agencies. They'll be the ones to decide what constitutes an emergency, be it Category 4 hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, coup d’états in Haiti, African killer bee-induced evacuations of Northern Mexico or, less dramatically, the mass influx of immigrants that crosses the U.S. border daily. Whatever the emergency is, and whatever poor folks will be rounded up, one thing is certain: They will not be free to leave, and their hosts for the next five years will be Kellogg, Brown and Root. Of course one emergency could be an angry American populace who dares voice dissent with the status quo.

Along with this comes tales of UN or NATO troops currently training on US military bases to help US troops with rounding up all us liberals and other trouble makers. For these groups, FEMA has enough special white and black boxcars to hold 15 million US citizens plus another 20,000 boxcars recently purchased from China. Not to mention "white buses" and trucks pulling portable jails beyond that point it gets down right silly. Still considering what we've witnessed as well as what the US government has done to people in the past, this is something you should at least be aware of.

I have here a few quotes taken from a lecture given by the late Mr. Paul Schneider, ex-NATO geologist who gave up his 1 million dollar a year retirement salary, who has blown the whole New World Order wide open. He was assassinated less than one year after he started talking, after many failed attempts to 're-hire' him. He was told he was doing irrevocable damage to the New World Order by US intelligence agents who visited him in his Portland, Oregon apartment.

He reported this, "Recently, I knew someone who lived near where I live in Portland, Oregon. He worked at Gunderson Steel Fabrication, where they make railroad cars. Now, I knew this fellow for the better part of 30 years, and he was kind of a quiet type. He came in to see me one day, excited, and he told me "they're building prisoner cars." He was nervous. He said, Gunderson had a contract with the federal government to build 107,200 full length railroad cars, each with 143 pairs of shackles. There are 11 sub-contractors in this giant project. Supposedly, Gunderson got over 2 billion dollars for the contract. Bethlehem Steel and other steel outfits are involved. He showed me one of the cars in the rail yards in North Portland. He was right. If you multiply 107,200 times 143 times 11, you come up with about 15,000,000. This is probably the number of people who disagree with the federal government. No more can you vote any of these people out of office. The present structure of American government is "technocracy", not democracy, and it is a form of feudalism. It has nothing to do with the republic of the United States....I believe we can do better. I also believe that the federal government is running the gambit of enslaving the people of the United States. I am not a very good speaker, but I'll keep shooting my mouth off until somebody puts a bullet in me, because it's worth it to talk to a group like this about these atrocities.” Note: within a year, Paul Schneider was assassinated.

Gunderson Steel Fabrication operates under secret contract from the U.S. government to produce these prisoner boxcars. The company received an order from the federal government to build 107,200 full length railroad boxcars with the shackles inside. Gunderson has a satellite factory for making the boxcars with shackles in Texas. Interestingly, Gunderson became the launching pad where then-presidential candidate Governor George W. Bush introduced his plan for social security reform on May 16, 2000, a major part of his platform.

Shackled-boxcars are being shipped in from the world's largest police state, China."Metal worker Lee Harrington has described 20,000 CHINESE prisoner boxcars with shackles and modern guillotines, in the form of 40 foot railroad containers, coming into America via the west coast. They were ordered by the American government through a Senator who visited China and ordered these items. Workers unloading them became suspicious and began to investigate and discovered these horrors from China. Such 40 foot cargo containers from China are now piled up along the West Coast, especially around Long Beach Naval Shipyard, turned over the Chinese.

North Americans, Canada and the States, meet your imported crack team of occupation troops, already well trained. Recently I saw an interview with some German NATO M.P.s who verify they were trained for future American martial law plans. They mention German troops stationed in USA at Fort Bliss, Texas and Holloman AFB in New Mexico. These troops are formally associated with NATO, which has morphed in the past 10 years to become your (un)friendly post Cold War pre-emptive internationalized Nazi-esque attack organization, responsible for illegally attacking Yugoslavia, according to its own charter, and culpable in Iraq in 2003. They describe their training, and refuse to answer pointed questions about whether they would fire to kill on American citizens. To this question, they refuse to answer this by losing all eye contact with the interviewer, cutting off the interview, getting gruff and stiff, turning, and simply walking off.

Reports from Lee Harrington of Valier, Montana, who was a professional metal worker informed mention Glasgow, Montana, summer youth workers who were employed to weld shackles into boxcars in that operation. They were then shipped west to Glacier and stored on remote sidetracks. Passing through the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Cutbank, a local Blackfoot Indian, George Bullcalf, spotted these strange boxcars, some with open doors and shackles, plainly visible, passing through the reservation. Interviews conducted in Columbia Falls confirmed that hunters often stumbled upon such boxcars on remote train spurts in that wilderness region.

In New Hampshire, a retired military vet described yet another boxcar with shackles operation in New Hampshire, with three tiered boxcars fitted with shackles.

In North Carolina there are reports also confirming that railroad boxcars fitted with shackles have been spotted in many locations throughout the U.S. in recent months, most prominently in Montana and Texas and recent sightings in Ashville, N.C.

I would say something fishy is going on, to say the least.