This Is Not Happening In The Ukraine / This Is Happening In Canada!

This is not the Ukraine. This is Toronto, Canada during the G-8 protest.

Archemdis

The pictures in this post, some of which I took personally are not pictures taken in some foreign country, they are not pictures of police in the Ukraine attacking unarmed protesting civilians, or the private police force of some dictator violently putting down an illegal protest; these are Canadian police ordered out in full riot gear to disrupt, arrest and hurt if necessary, Canadian citizens in order to suppress and silence the voices of those not pleased with the actions of their government. Canada’s federal, provincial and civic governments unleash law enforcement in full riot gear on peaceful demonstrators (Its citizens) all the time without provocation; in fact the riot police are not called in if trouble occurs, they are sent and placed in front of the protesting citizens at the beginning of a protest as a way to intimidate the protesters, spark their already short fuse and get the protesters to do something stupid like challenging their authority and give them reason to shut the protest down. Did you know that Canadian police are trained to consider and treat Canadian citizens as the enemy? People teach their children to go to the police when they are in trouble, to not be afraid of the police and to trust the police, but the police are trained to mistrust the citizen, see every citizen as a potential threat and to be ready to kill their fallow citizens on command, whether they feel threatened or not. As I said earlier this is not happening in some public square in the Ukraine, this is happening all over Canada whenever a group of Canadian citizens gathers to legally protest the actions of their government, be it federal, provincial, or civic.

This is not the Ukraine. This is Montreal, Quebec during the Anti Police Brutality Protest.

I find it amazing that this country and its government would to try to protect the right to protest in a foreign country as a fundamental right and not a privilege, while advocating that it is not a fundamental right to protest in its own, but a privilege. “I am concerned for the people protesting in the Ukraine, but I think that Canada because of the way it treats peaceful protesters in this country, should not throw stones. I believe in the right of a country’s citizens to protest and gather in the streets to voice their approval as well as their disapproval of their government, because after the election is over there is precious little else that can be done by the citizen in this regard that effectively gets the job done.”

This is not the Ukraine. This is Toronto Canada

We have a Prime Minister who has stated publicly on the record that he believes that the Charter of Canadian Rights and Freedoms is no big deal and need not be followed to the letter. Steven Harper has inferred that he sees the Charter of Canadian rights and Freedoms as a flexible guide, but in no way a legal document that binds the government of the day to follow the principles, or ideals found within it, if the words contained within the document gets in the way of the government doing what it feels it must do. Steven Harper has on many occasions chosen to simply ignore it like he di in Toronto during the G-8 summit and allowed to happen in the Occupy Protests all over Canada. In doing this government has trampled on all of the rights afforded to each and every Canadian, while making tough sabre rattling speeches in the House of Commons, threatening countries like the Ukraine for doing exactly what he and his government not only promotes in Canada, but makes possible in every level of Canadian government.

I will give Steven Harper and his crew credit for having the gall and the arrogance to criticize and threaten others for doing the same as they are; it is behavior befitting for the hypocrites that they are. After what they pulled off in Toronto during the G-8 summit, they would threaten another country for using force to put down protests in their own country? On what premise does this government base its threat to the leader of the Ukraine when in Canada:

The right to strike has all but been outlawed, because it interferes with the governments economic agenda?
The Harper government has declared that all strikes to in some way deny some Canadians somewhere of one essential service or another and are therefore illegal.
The government given itself the legal authority to be the employer, the arbitrator and the only mechanism to decide which strike has merit and should be allowed to go forward.

Wearing of masks during a protest now illegal in Quebec

We have seen that when it comes to its citizens no Canadian government, be they federal, provincial, or civic supports protesting, or striking by its citizens and mostly because they find them embarrassing internationally and an affront to their governance. One only has to look at how the government of Quebec chose to deal with what happened during the student strikes and protests in Quebec to get a sense of the hypocrisy. The Quebec government used an unruly bunch of student protesters to gain the leverage it needed to strip all Quebecers of their rights to assemble, strike or protests by changing the laws of Quebec by:

Making it illegal for more that a certain amount of people to assemble during a protest.
Making it illegal for a protester to wear a mask or anything that covers their face.
Making it illegal to hold a protest without first getting permission to do so.
Making it illegal to have a protest march without giving the police your route.

Occupy Montreal Protest as the government evicted them from where they were protesting.

The right to legally protest has been curtailed to such an extent in Canada that any protest becomes illegal at the whim of the government, which could have nothing to do with security. Security is the word that the government uses to instill fear in the average Canadian and create a feeling in the non striking or non protesting citizen that the police and the government are acting to protect your rights and freedoms from a terrorist, anti government horde, out to thwart democracy itself. This divisive tactic allows them to gain acceptance from the non activist, ”for reasons of security” to use sound waves, attack dogs, mounted police, riot police and pepper spray against our fellow citizens when they protest. Riot police are usually ordered to a protest site, whether the protest is peaceful or not. Recent events have proven that these police are usually the aggressors, who arrest and detain protesters for no other reason but to end the protest march; releasing them later once the protest is over and they are doing in by the hundreds and thousands of Canadians at a time. At the same time this government feels that as a country we have the right to interfere in another country’s sovereign affairs for doing the same thing as we do on a daily basis ourselves at every level of our government. Does this government believe that the Ukrainian government is deaf, blind and dumb when it comes down to how we treat our own people in Canada? I know they do not give the Canadian people much credit in ferreting out their purposes and hidden agendas, but is that truly this governments basis for its threats to the Ukrainian government? Is this government really saying to the Ukrainian government, “Do as I say, not as I do?

Eviction of protesters from Occupy Montreal site

That our government makes wild threats and is trying to bully smaller nations really does not surprise me. one bit. What do you think would happen to a group of protesters the size of what we are seeing in the Ukraine suddenly took to the streets, because they were opposed to the new Canada/Euro trade deal? How long would they be allowed to protest, before the government found some reason to send in the police to break it up. The forcible evictions of protesters from public parks during the Occupy sit ins, and protest should give you a bit of a clue. That is when the government said that although the parks are for public usage, they are the sole property of the government and as such any citizen, or group of citizens can be evicted if and when the city or government declares the protesters to be in violation of a by-law or safety code. I will ask again, “Why would our government threaten the leader of a sovereign nation, such as the government of the Ukraine for employing our policing methods, when it comes to putting down protests?”

I can admit that Canada’s methods may not be as harsh as those in the Ukraine, but they serve the same purpose and that is to stifle the voice of discontent from the people. In every city and in every province we saw the systematic shut down of peaceful demonstrations during the Occupy Protests in Canada. We saw laws being enacted by the Quebec legislature that went against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the United Nations treaty that we sign onto and international law. The Harper government not only has participated in these types of actions, but has condoned them and made no effort to stop them in this country, so again I ask yet again, “In light of this evidence, by what right is Canada’s Defense Minister Rob Nicholson threatening another country for doing as Canada does?

This is not happening in the Ukraine. this is happening in, Toronto Canada

I believe that we are not the same country we used to be and the respect for our nation as a peace keeper and neutral negotiator has been lost in our lust for military might. We have made it clear to the international community that we have no further interest in being seen as an arbitrator. We have made it clear internationally that we prefer force instead of negotiated diplomatic solutions. We have become a nation that closes our embassies and kick diplomats out of our country shutting off all talk and a nation that prefers the use of sanctions, embargos, threats and even military force, rather than engage in real honest and open talks.

What purpose does it serve the people of the Ukraine to have the Defense Minister of Canada, Rob Nicholson threaten the Prime Minister of the Ukraine in the manner that he did the other day in the House of Commons? Canada is not able to back up one word that he uttered. I mean really, “We are watching him and if he hurts those protesters the blood will be on his hands.” Is this the way we can best help those protesters in the Ukraine, or would being able to lead by example have been a better approach? Did it do the people of the Ukraine any good that our Foreign Minister, John Baird threatened the Ukrainian Prime Minister with God knows what? My final question is this, “Does all of this threatening soften the hearts, minds and resolve of the Ukrainian government, or do all of the threats serve to harden the hearts and strengthen the resolve of the Ukrainian government and in the end serve to hurt the protesting Ukrainian protesters and even put them in greater danger as the government thumbs their nose at countries like Canada and uses the excuse of protecting its country’s sovereignty to hurt its own people?”