The Net is awash in weapons of mass deception. DeSmogBlog, a web site dedicated to defusing the WMDs employed by climate change deniers, identified one yesterday that deserves your attention.

500 Scientists with Documented Doubts – about the Heartland Institute?
29 Apr 08
UPDATE: we have received notes now from 45 outraged scientists whose names appear on the list of 500. We’ve published more quotes here.

Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

The article, by Hudson Institute director and Heartland “Senior Fellow” Dennis T. Avery, purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that human-induced climate change is endangering the world as we know it.

DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afternoon, calling their attention to the list. So far – in less than 24 hours – three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, denying that their research supports Avery’s conclusions and demanding that their names be removed. READ MORE.

Finding accurate news and informed commentary is a challenge, but a manageable one if we refuse to accept anything on faith and check the sources.

One of my favourite source-checking resources is PRWatch, operated by the Center for Media Democracy in the United States. They are dedicated to unmasking the hacks, flacks, spin doctors and associated bottom feeders who grind out corporate propaganda.

Independent Tribunal Established to Investigate Mass Grave Sites

For a century, the Canadian Government with the assistance of major Canadian churches kidnapped thousands of aboriginal kids and locked them up in residential schools where they could be “civilized.” Far from their families and communities, young and defenseless, they were beaten for speaking their languages. Many were sexually abused.

Fast forward to the 21 century. After much foot dragging, hand-wringing and stonewalling, some of the perpetrators have said they are sorry (still awaiting an apology from the Feds). Financial compensation has been paid. End of story, right?

Wrong. On April 10, in Vancouver, an organization called the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (FRD) released a list of twenty eight mass graves across Canada that they believe contain the remains of hundreds and perhaps thousands of aboriginal children who died in these schools.

According to the FRD:

The list was distributed today to the world media and to United Nations agencies, as the first act of the newly-formed International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC), a non-governmental body established by indigenous elders.

In a statement read by FRD spokesperson Eagle Strong Voice, it was declared that the IHRTGC would commence its investigations on April 15, 2008, the fourth Annual Aboriginal Holocaust Memorial Day. This inquiry will involve international human rights observers from Guatemala and Cyprus, and will convene aboriginal courts of justice where those persons and institutions responsible for the death and suffering of residential school children will be tried and sentenced. . . .

Eagle Strong Voice and IHRTGC elders will present the Mass Graves List at the United Nations on April 19, and will ask United Nations agencies to protect and monitor the mass graves as part of a genuine inquiry and judicial prosecution of those responsible for this Canadian Genocide.

Read more.

Indian Residential School, Camperville – constructed 1894-1897. Destroyed by man, February-March 1972. Local residents in foreground. Source: Manitoba Historical Society.

Where is the media?

I heard about this only today when a friend sent me a copy of the FRD news release. Wanting more information, I consulted Google News. I got two hits, neither of them widely distributed. I tried the CBC web site. Nada. Same story at CTV and Canada.com.

The story is getting wide distribution among bloggers. Maybe the mainstream media will wake up when Eagle Strong Voice presents the list to the United Nations. Maybe.

In the same way that the parties to the Indian Residential School system buried the hopes and the bodies of aboriginal kids, it seems that Canada’s mass media plans to bury their story.

Winnipeggers demonstrate against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
March 15, 2008. Photo: Paul Graham

I heard this poem at a peace rally in Winnipeg on March 15, 2008. It’s powerful. Though it’s been knocking around the Net for years, it was new to me. Perhaps it is to you, too.

A Moment of Silence

by Emmanuel Ortiz

Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.

I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.

And if I could just add one more thing…

A full day of silence… for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.

Six months of silence… for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.
…And now, the drums of war beat again.

Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security” made them aliens in their own country

Nine months of silence… for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin and the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence… for the millions of dead in Viet Nam – a people, not a war – for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.

Two months of silence… for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,
Seven days of silence… for El Salvador
A day of silence… for Nicaragua
Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas…
1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body
That burns in the desert sun
Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly,
A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.

25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
In the south… the north… the east… the west…
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.

100 years of silence… for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people
From this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness…

From somewhere within the pillars of power
You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
And we are all left speechless,
Our tongues snatched from our mouths,
Our eyes stapled shut.

A moment of silence,
And the poets are laid to rest,
The drums disintegrate into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence…
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.

…Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem…
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile.
This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa.
This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York.
This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.

This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told,
The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
The 110 stories that that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

This is not a peace poem,
Not a poem for forgiveness.
This is a justice poem,
A poem for never forgetting.
This is a poem to remind us
That all that glitters
Might just be broken glass.

And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves,
The lost languages,
The uprooted trees and histories,
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children…

Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

So if you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights
Delete the e-mails and instant messages
Derail the trains, ground the planes
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July,
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale,
The next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
Take it all.
But don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.

And we,
Tonight,
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
- Introduction to the BBC Series “The Power of Nightmares,” a three part series that explores the myths surrounding “international terrorism,” broadcast in January 2005.

The threat of terrorism, we are told repeatedly, is omnipresent. It has been used to justify the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is used to excuse the ongoing erosion of our civil rights. Our democracy is suffering the death of a thousand cuts. Incrementally our freedoms are being taken from us.

Whether it is “no-fly lists,” the decision to remain in Afghanistan against the will of most Canadians, or the secret negotiation of a “Security and Prosperity Partnership” with the U.S. and Mexico, our freedom as individuals and our sovereignty as a nation are in question.

When the history of this period is written, it may begin with the words “First they came for the immigrants . . .”

Until a year ago, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service could initiate a process which led to the arrest of permanent residents or refugees who had committed no crime, throw them in jail, and detain them indefinitely with the aim of deporting them, even in the face of potential torture and death. Neither they nor their lawyers were allowed to see the “information” used by CSIS to back their allegations.

This draconian law was used to imprison five Muslim men living in Canada on allegations that they were connected to Islamic terrorist groups. They were not permitted to answer to these allegations in a fair trial because, unlike a criminal trial, the evidence in a security certificate case remains secret for reasons of national security. Their names are Mohammad Mahjoub, Mahmoud Jaballah, Hassan Almrei, Mohamed Harkat and Adil Charkaoui. While only Mr. Almrei remains in jail at present, all are facing the threat of deportation to countries where they could be imprisoned, tortured and killed. Read more.

Last February, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the security certificate system was unconstitutional and gave the government a year to come up with something better. The Tories came back with Bill C-3, which maintained most of the features deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The only significant change was the provision for a “special advocate” who would have access to the government’s secret evidence but who would still not be allowed to share it with the suspect. Read more.

To save us from terrorism, our government insists on resorting to kangaroo courts and secret evidence. Don’t believe for a moment that they will stop there.

Allow yourself to consider, for a moment, that the danger posed by terrorists is greatly exaggerated. Fear of terrorism is a weapon wielded by those who want to control us, who want us to accept “security and prosperity” within a North American union, who want to control, through war, the energy resources of the planet.

http://www.archive.org/flow/FlowPlayerLight.swf?config=%7Bembedded%3Atrue%2CshowFullScreenButton%3Atrue%2CshowMuteVolumeButton%3Atrue%2CshowMenu%3Atrue%2CautoBuffering%3Atrue%2CautoPlay%3Afalse%2CinitialScale%3A%27fit%27%2CmenuItems%3A%5Bfalse%2Cfalse%2Cfalse%2Cfalse%2Ctrue%2Ctrue%2Cfalse%5D%2CusePlayOverlay%3Afalse%2CshowPlayListButtons%3Atrue%2CplayList%3A%5B%7Burl%3A%27ThePowerOfNightmares%2Fchapter1%5F512kb%2Emp4%27%7D%2C%7Burl%3A%27ThePowerOfNightmares%2Fchapter2%5F512kb%2Emp4%27%7D%2C%7Burl%3A%27ThePowerOfNightmares%2Fchapter3%5F512kb%2Emp4%27%7D%5D%2CcontrolBarGloss%3A%27high%27%2CshowVolumeSlider%3Atrue%2CbaseURL%3A%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Earchive%2Eorg%2Fdownload%2F%27%2Cloop%3Afalse%2CcontrolBarBackgroundColor%3A%270×000000%27%7D

Set aside some time and view The Power of Nightmares. The series is available, free of charge, at the Internet Archive. It places our “post 9-11 world” in an historical context and effectively challenges the lies of Bush, Blair and Co.

Then ask yourself, who are the real terrorists?

http://video.google.ca/googleplayer.swf?docid=8350185661070256841&hl=en&fs=true

War has always been a battle for minds as well land, resources, and political power. The rules — portray our warriors as noble innocents, bravely sacrificing themselves for a higher cause; demonize the other side — call them fanatics, terrorists, murderers.

It helps if you don’t speak the enemy’s language, don’t know their history and culture and can hardly locate them on a map. Add a natural sympathy for our soldiers and a compliant news media and it is no wonder that we get such a one-sided view of things.

The truth is, war is murder, no matter who is pulling the trigger. In the case of Afghanistan, we (the “Western We”– the Americans, the Canadians, the Brits, etc.) bear most of the responsibility because we invaded Afghanistan, a land already destroyed by decades of war and civil wars that arose out of the Cold War.

Under the pretext of fighting a post 9-11 “war on terror” and rooting out Osama bin Laden, we joined in an unholy alliance with corrupt, autocratic, woman-hating, drug-running Afghan warlords to rout the Taliban “evil-doers” who, in reality, were no less anti-woman or autocratic, but who, at least, took a dim view of the opium trade.

In joining forces with the so-called Northern Alliance we became partners in their atrocities as did they in ours.

“Afghan Massacre: the Convoy of Death” tells the story of a Northern Alliance war crime perpetrated early in the war. Produced and directed by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran, the film documents the cold-blooded murder of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz in November 2001.

The film describes how some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport. When the prisoners began shouting for air, Northern Alliance soldiers fired into the trucks, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.

Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave.

The only antidote to propaganda is the truth. While this film has had wide distribution in Europe, Canadians and Americans have had to rely on the Internet to see it.

Pass it on.