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Election 2006 (and beyond): Digital Copyright Canada
From: Russell McOrmond <russell_-at-_flora.ca>
To: Paul Black <paulcblack2000_-at-_yahoo.ca>
Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 12:37:39 -0500 (EST)
Note to others reading this in the Web-archive of this forum, the Website for Global Democracy Ottawa is http://www.flora.org/gdo/ On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Paul Black wrote: > Do you realize that by supporting global democracy Ottawa, you are > doing the following: As the owner of the hardware that FLORA Community WEB operates on through my business <http://www.flora.ca/>, and as the person who posts all the articles to http://weblog.flora.org and manages that homepage, I will respond. > - Supporting a group that wants to stop discussions between > legitimately elected officials and others they choose to talk to. As a > local community group, how can you reconcile supporting those who wish > to prevent others from speaking with your own views on freedom? This is actually a misconception on your part. The people in these meetings are not legitimately elected officials following up on publicly debated public policy and representing the views of citizens. They are most often unelected government bureaucrats without any accountability to the citizens of the nations they are supposed to represent. Most often they only represent extreme monied-and-powerful special interests, specifically directing polices which will benefit these special interests against the rest of society. I also often call into question how "representative" even our relatively powerless elected representatives are, which is why I sponsor the hosting on my computers a number of Electoral Reform related organizations as well: http://www.FairVoteCanada.org/ http://www.VotePR.org/ By involving ourselves in very visible "Democratic Theater" we have been extremely successful at drawing attention to the content of the discussions, and bringing this conversation out into the open. What little is now visible to the average citizen has been very much a direct result of our efforts. Yours is a very common and understandable concern. Unfortunately the only way for you to truly understand our position is to walk a few miles in our shoes, and recognize that not only are the channels you might suggest we take are ineffective, but also how responsible a part of democratic debate that protests are. My advice to you would be to attempt to get involved in the discussions of the policies of the G20, specifically the Bretton Woods Institutions (the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank). First, learn what these institutions are, who controls them, and what their major policies are. Talk to your local representative about them and ask how much input they have on these policies, with them being the only indirect influence that you as a world citizen have on these institutions. Most of the policies of these institutions are policies that would not in any way be tolerated if imposed on regular citizens. The only way they get away with what they do is because the general world population is so far unaware of what they are doing. Get informed, and get involved. When the talks inside the meetings are representative of the interests of those who are informed and involved, the number of people outside participating in democratic theater will dwindle to nothing. > - Supporting a group that may be violent and/or that seems to be > assisting violent protesters. I will be posting a message to http://weblog.flora.org/ about this later, likely as a shorter version of what I am going to post here. In fact, those who wish to be violent (both from within the Police and the Protesters) are in an extreme minority. In relation to often referenced property damage (which is not itself violence, even though many wish to confuse the two), it may look considerable due to the way the media presents it. Many of the residents of Seattle commented that the damage was comparable to a rock concert or sporting event of similar size, and very few are suggesting that these forms of entertainment be shut down even though they serve much less positive purposes. It is also important to realize that the majority who attend these democratic theater events are there specifically for peaceful non-violent protest, and stood out against the agressive behavior. Many will be doing everything they can to reduce all forms of violence, both at events such as this and elsewhere in the world. I too had concerns with the GDO's "Guiding Principles" http://www.flora.org/gdo/principles.html and what seemed to be their very laissez faire attitude towards some excessively agressive activist tactics. I saw their attempt to be inclusive as actually being considerably detrimental to our common cause. The inclusion of these agressive activits has very much excluded some who are not tolerant of violent behavior of any type. I consider the aggressive behavior of a few individuals to be to the detriment of the much larger group, to the issues that we are trying to make visable to the public, and do not in any way find this tactic tolerable. Unfortunately, their method of attempting to separate the groups into different areas according to tactics may be the only possible response. Unlike the top-down hierarchical structure of the minister-cabinet-police-etc, the protest movement doesn't have leaders and followers. There is no way for one organization to decide what others will do. I have thought about this problem quite a bit over the last few years since I was initiated into the movement with the MAI discussion, and have not been able to come up with anything better than what the N16-19 Spokescouncil has come up with. My main hope is that all people concerned will honour this, and consider their actions in the context of public safety. I also hope that the media will not focus on those few individuals using more agressive tactics, and instead focus on the majority who are specifically non-violent, and those attending the various informative conferences also happening this weekend. I have very specifically indicated to members of GDO that if I see someone at the peaceful events taking on an aggressive stance against police or others, I will do anything in my physical power (and I'm not a small man ;-) to stop them. It is unfortunate that the police will not be that selective to focus on the agressive minority, so it will be our responsibility as supporters of non-violent activists to deal with these individuals ourselves. Beyond these comparatively minor issues, you also need to look at the larger picture, and not just the well-filtered visuals you will receive from corporate media on the minor events of this and other weekends. If you take a number of dictionary definitions of 'violence' <http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=violence>, it very specifically includes many of the major policies such as "Structural Adjustment Programmes" of the Bretton Woods Institutions (the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank). To discuss the small-v-violence while ignoring the large-V-Violence of these institutions is to miss out on some very critical information. > - Encouraging violence because of this support. We are actively trying to reduce violence by trying to bring out into public democratic debate the actions and policies of harmful institutions. > - Giving suburbanites another reason to hate downtown, insist that it > is a wasteland, and that your tax dollars should be used to develop > the peaceful suburbs. (if you doubt this, spend some time in Kanata > and find out what they think of people who live in the core and how > much they care.) > - Giving city dwellers another reason to flee to the suburbs. The choice of venue was not made by the police, protesters, city council, or other such groups so they can not be blamed for any fallout. If you have a problem with the choice of venue, as I do, then talk to the person responsible which is Finance Minister Paul Martin and let him know. He can be contacted via: http://www.fin.gc.ca/comment/COMMEN_E.html The blame for any property damage, or public safety problems to bystanders not involved in the democratic theater, is squarely in the hands of Paul Martin, his ministry, and his fellow cabinet ministers. Do not allow yourself to play into the hands of any of the illogical extremes in this debate. There are those who suggest the police should "just go home" or that the protesters should "just go home". These people need to recognize that the protesters are are doing their duty as citizens, and the police are doing their jobs and following orders. To suggest eithor should just not attend is not in any way a reasonable suggestion. We can and should question some of the orders that the police are receiving, but further suggesting that they quit their jobs does not serve a useful long-term purpose. Having the socially conscious police quit their job is exactly the *LAST* thing we want to be encouraging in any way. It is clearly those giving the orders that must be held accountable for their orders. As to your comment about the suburbs, I am personally painfully aware of "how much they care". I do not believe it is not a simple matter of core-vs-suburbs, but suburban-dwellers-vs-anywhere-they-don't-live. It is a lifestyle choice, and not one that I subscribe to at all. When many from that lifestyle talk of the policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions, if they are aware of them at all, they talk about harm that is happening "elsewhere" (IE: Majority World, often misphrased the third-world by those in the self-named first world). They simply don't care as long as it doesn't effect their little bubble. The only reason that these "Structural Adjustment Programs" are seen as happening elsewhere is because they are being *imposed* elsewhere, but being done on their own by our local (IE: Canadian, USA, etc) governments. This doesn't make these policies any better for the citizens of this or other countries if the local government supports the policy and actively seek to impose it on others. > - Asking the city to use your tax dollars for housing. Not of the poor > or homeless, but fellow protesters who choose to come here. Even those > who will vandalize your own neighbourhood. It is quite common for tax dollars to go into support for international conferences. I do not see you or others in your position complaining about the orders of magnitude larger amounts of money that will be spent to host the G20 delegates themselves, including the considerable economic harm it represents to downtown murchants? How about the changes in Canadian Law being proposed to allow foreign deligates to such state-hosted conferences to be allowed to be known terrorists, and to allow them to not honour Canadian law (IE: Diplomatic Immunity) while they are here? See Bill C-35, the state-terrorism bill that contradicts the stated intention of C-36 which is their so-called Anti-Terrorism bill. http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/Bills_House_Government.asp?Language=E&Parl=37&Ses=1#C-35 Governments often waste money, where waste is defined as money spent on issues not politically supported by the observer (IE: your opposition to the money being spent is more related to your opposition to the even than to the money). There are often self-identified Right Wing organizations that promote considerable tax-money waste. See the recent posting about the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and their opposition to my Gas Subsidy Honesty campaign and its goal of reducing taxes as an example of such contradictions http://www.flora.org/taxpayer/ This amount of money being requested of the city is insignificant, and goes towards an extremely critical public initiative of hosting informative conferences that will happen at the same time as the G20 summit. You have to realize that most municipal governments are on-side with civil society in opposing many of these institutions. This is not a matter of protesters-vs-the-world, but unelected and unaccountable institutions supported by very specific powerful cabinet ministers in specific national governments, against the world. While this meeting is about the G20 (and more specifically the Bretton Woods institutions), our own municipal government voted in favor of a resolution in relation to the FTAA http://mai.flora.org/forum/26312 > From your web page, you are obviously an extreme left wing group. I personally reject the whole concept of "left vs right" wing politics, and do not identify with self-identified Left Wing groups. I do not agree that FLORA.org is "obviously" eithor left or right, and one would have to very much bend traditional definitions of these terms in order to pigeon-hole the site. For more information on my personal politics, See: http://weblog-master.flora.ca/article.php3?story_id=42 I don't care if one self identifies with outdated right-or-left wing politics. I look at the policy under discussion and evaluate it individually. I support as many policies that are identified with the "right" as much as I do the "left". Take a look at http://www.flora.org/taxpayer/ , the Green Tax Shift in general, and let me know if it is left-or-right. Some see the suggestion of greatly reducing (with the goal of eradicating) Income and corporate profit Taxes, and the imposition of increased license-fees and other government collected user fees as "Right Wing". The movement to full cost accounting, including moving to a more advanced measurement system such as the GPI to replace the extremely inaccurate and outdated GDP, happens to be one of my core economic beliefs. > However, I suggest that in this case you allow your self interest to > take precedence over your own dogma. Again, spend some time in Kanata > to see how successful this can be. I fail to see the logic in suggesting that spending time in a sub-culture of (IMHO: uninformed) self-interest would somehow be helpful in the campaign to try to get more people involved as active citizens in critical public policy debate. > Paul --- Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> See http://weblog.flora.org/ for announcements, activities, and opinions Oppose DMCA in Canada! (C) reform process.... IP Counter Essay Contest! It is time to mourn and reflect, not anger.... Appeal 'No more violence!'
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