Peace Activist Targets Northern Warmonger

Peace activist and educator David Swanson minces no words in casting side-eye at the United States’ neighbor to the north. The Nobel Prize nominee in a recent commentary takes aim at new efforts to curtail dissent.

As a resident of the most flamboyantly hypocritical and war-crazed nation on Earth, the United States of Armaments, I find it weirdly encouraging when one of the U.S. military’s many vassals and sidekicks goes above and beyond, trying out new forms of abuse that I haven’t encountered here.  Of course, I find such actions awful and often horrific — particularly if we’re talking about new forms of surveillance and torture tested by Israel on Palestinians. But right now I’m thinking about Canada, that miniature imperial warmonger that has miles to go to catch up in number of foreign bases and most other measures of war worship.

A peace organization in the United States can achieve nonprofit status — at least for the moment — whereas in Canada a peace organization must agree to spend half its time promoting war if it wishes to become a charitable organization that can receive tax-deductible donations. That’s innovation!

But Canada goes further. In the United States, if you’re arrested in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., for saying something against genocide, you may end up banned from the Capitol for a period of time. But, as far as I know, you can’t end up banned from going near your friends, or banned from having anything to do with any protest anywhere (including online) that’s related to anything in Western Asia.

But check out this news from Ottawa …

Read the entire commentary at Let’s Try Democracy.

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