Guest Article by Ken Bilsky Billings Introduction: "Kensky" is an environmental activist, humanist and student of social issues in the Ottawa region. He participated in the Hungry for Climate Justice fast and protest on Parliament Hill in September as well in the Ottawa Media Coop workshop in November. A contributor to rabble.ca, Billings professionally works in multi-media productions at HRSDC.
Ken sent me his response to a pro-war article denouncing the "white poppy" movement in Canada. I agree with his comments. Because the newspaper web site does not display such letters, I decided to publish his entire letter to the editor here.
I suggested the white poppy in Q51: How do Doukhobors view Remembrance Day?
Read: The folly of pacifism, by Terry Glavin, Ottawa Citizen, November 21, 2012.
Copy of same article: Mark Collins. White poppies! Get your white poppies here! Buy two get a free Swastika!, The 3-Ds Blog.
Rebuttal by Ken Bilsky Billing
The message that all the war going on in the world is in the name of peace and democracy is nothing but a lie. The countries involved are for the most part interested in resources and land.
The US and its NATO allies, including Canada, controlled by multinational interests are hell bent on manipulating the Middle East, parts of Africa, Indonesia, Central America, etc for their own pilfering and remuneration.
We don't have any business in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya or Bahrain to name a few. Yet these countries are over run with bombings, drone attacks, and all the sick and heart breaking actions that war perpetrates such as food, water and medicine shortages, energy and housing shortages, lack of work, mass exoduses and senseless slaughters of civilians (More civilians killed since WWII than soldiers). On top of that you have massive corruption, the destruction of infrastructure and the rebuilding of it by multinationals with taxpayers money from back home, all in the name of so called democracy.
Capitalism is not providing us a democracy...it is destroying it and crushing any semblance of debate by creating a media and complicit government, that vilifies dissent, puts fear into people instead of hope and has no vision whatsoever but to create policy that protects the multinational corporations and weak-ins the working class. The ideal is to make the people helpless and indentured by having no means to produce clean food, water, necessities, shelter and transportation. Instead we become totally dependent on the globally run system under the management of our globalization masters who are in turn toxifying our environment and trashing the planet. The ticking time bomb is climate change which we ignore at our peril.
Life is not GDP and profit loss statements. Its people and awareness and community and cooperation. We are loosing our ability to think, to create, to work with nature and build a better world because the concentrated mass media in concert with our leaders and many CEOs have lied to the people and made sure they write the policies and pay half the taxes that a working person does.
The ideas put forth in the article The folly of pacifism in the Oct 22nd Ottawa Citizen is an insult to the Canadian intelligence. The 'White Poppy' does not belong to any person in history, it belongs to an ideal that we are all one tribe that needs to find ways to cooperate, not conquer one another which is the aim of peace. It represents all the people who have needlessly died, who were needlessly wounded, who needlessly starved and who were needlessly driven from their land by violence. In the late 20th Century and early 21st Century, war has become an industry and a means for rich corporations to get what they want at any cost. Most white poppies in Canada were not bought but made by people themselves, because they know and believe that we all share the hurt and suffering that needless war brings upon us.
In the last few years the public has been very concerned with bullying in schools. Well guess what? It starts at the top. Stephen Harper and Barack Obama have blood on their hands and the sooner we stand up to this travesty of extreme bullying, the sooner our children will start to heal.
We want all politicians and CEOs to take heed that we know what is being done in our name and with our taxes and don't accept the lies and the deceit that war has brought us.
Three cheers for those wearing the white poppy and 'the sanity of 'pacifism.'
I applaud this letter, which in fact is a statement of fact. How long will the world be deluded under the concept of 'freedom and democracy' when it is nothing but a guise for the ruthless exploitation pf folk who are weaker than us. The irony is that the benefits, by and large, only benefit he multi national corporations and not the 'duped' populace which is brain washed into supporting the militaryy industrial complex.
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