Toward a national security state

This excellent but alarming Hill Times article by Murray Dobbin ties in with several posts we have seen lately conncerning free trade, the undermining of democracy and free speech, Canada's shifting image and role militarily, and the use of fear to control citizens.

Dobbin explains how the harper government in particular has been effectivley moving our country toward a security state - Its most familiar elements are privatization, deregulation, so called "free trade," tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and massive cuts to social spending.

But in order for our budding security state to protect itself - as conditions worsen, as wages and living standards fall, as personal insecurity increases, and as the social safety net frays, (all which result from a security state) the threat of a radical response becomes real.

Any one not clouded by absolute love for the Master Strategist knows what that means: protesters are re-branded by the ruling government as criminals, more prisons are built to house them, access to information is reduced to near nothing, freedom of speech and the press is severely curtailed by whatever means available - imprisonment, false charges, threats, smear campaigns.

The national security state is intended to protect the gains made through free market policies, and at the same time, gradually redefine what government means to the citizenry. We have in Harper a prime minister who virtually never refers to medicare, education, social protection, the environment, poverty reduction or indeed any of the issues that the vast majority of Canadians say they care about.

How does he get away with this when polls consistently show most of us are at odds with the priorities of the current government?

Massive campaings meant to distract us.

Fear campaigns: fear of criminals, fear of socialists, fear of terrorists, fear of environmentalist who threaten good, old fashioned entrepreneurship, fear of whatever other country they can paint as a threat.  This allows the government not only to keep us distracted, but to boost military spending, to give greater powers to the military, policing forces, security forces.  It allows the government to invade our privacy and curtail our freedoms, all in the name of security, a security that in reality is nowhere near as threatened as they lead us to believe.

Divide the population: citizens will fight more between each other than with the government; division provides more fodder for distractive campaigns; division allows the government justification for cutting programs; division encourages fear; division allows the government to portay certain groups they seek to undermine as unsavoury, as threats to democracy.

Dumb down and simplify messages:  repeatedly portraying issues as good or evil allows the government to toss issues into one camp or another and to offer simplistic, false solutions.  It also alters the way citizens perceive issues or disseminate information , if done long enough.  Show us only black and white long enough, we begin to lose the ability to even look for shades of grey.

Cut social spending:  not only is the population less educated, then, it is so focused on simple survival that it has little time to devote to figuring out how to fight their own government, how to get information, or even to simply attend protests.  It has little interest in much more than meeting basic needs for them and their families, and when there is a little time and energy at the end of the day, they turn to non-productive activities so that they don't have to think about how rough things are.

Eventually, though, the pressure becomes to much and there is rebellion.  Bloody rebellion because it isn't well planned, and by then the security state is well entrenched to subdue its very citizens through force.

Dobbing lists several recent examples of how our civil rights are being altered: G20 arrests and violations of rights, the Montebello fiasco with undercover cops trying to create trouble so they can justify a crack-down, the harassment of anti-Olympic protesters...

Each time these outrages go unchallenged by federal opposition politicians, the national security state clicks one notch further forward and normal gets a bit worse. When tough on crime bills sail through almost without comment even when crime is declining, and when we are spending billions and billions on defence when we have no enemies, there is something terribly wrong with the body politic.  The country is changing before our eyes, and federal opposition parties are letting it happen.

And so are we, when we see the opposition fail at controlling a vicious, undemocratic minority government that has been systematically leading us toward a security state.  We are letting it happen when we continue to support these parties, offering little more than e-mails voicing our discontent.  We need to make those parties realize they will lose our vote, our financial support, and our public voices.

We will never convince harper to protect our rights and freedoms, so wee need to put pressure on opposition parties to do what they were elected to do.  Represent us and oppose what  the harper government does that undermines our collective welfare.

We need to be as critical of the parties we tend to support as we are of harper & co because they are failing us, and we need to get it through our heads that we can't compromise on fundamental issues related to rights and freedom.   When we refuse to accept the trading off of our right for temporary political gain and quit supporting the opposition parties when they do these things, they may start listening to us and act accordingly.

No backbone = no vote, no donation, no support.
No backbone = stark criticism