culture
If we see culture as the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, and artifacts that we use to order and understand our world, it follows that alteration of these cultural patterns and symbols would have an impact on our perceptions of the world as well. Culture provides many of the attitudes we adopt and enact, often by rote. A culture’s militarization and the subsequent hardening of attitudes strengthens this feedback effect by emphasizing hierarchy and introducing additional factors such as propaganda. This is a pattern we see in periods of history such as those following the burning of the German Reichstag and the demolitions of 9/11. The German people of the Weimar Republic era were as urbane and educated as they came – and yet they chose a dictator in the face of internal and external threats fabricated by National Socialism. Why? Because they’d been well prepared in advance by their culture and media.
Smoking Guns — Suggested Reading
Native residential school hearings open in Manitoba
Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America
The Culture of the Warrior: Canada’s military invisible no more
Nazi Olympics exhibit opens in Vancouver
Atlas felt a sense of déjàvu
Toronto School Board to ‘review’ The Handmaid’s Tale on one parent’s complaint
They killed their neighbors: genocide’s foot soldiers
Comedian begins asking Harper question, cuffed by RCMP
Archive (Most recent headlines first)
2010
States Must Honor Gun Rights, U.S. High Court Says | Canadians apathetic about monarchy: poll | Black Bloc tactics sparked Saturday G20 vandalism, confrontation | G20 protesters clash with Vancouver police | Naomi Klein and 500 marchers crash party at tent city | Protesters flood the streets on first day of Toronto G20 summit | Huntsville G8: Military, locked down security, few protesters | Toronto no longer feels like home | Police TASER Grandmother in Bed | 48% See Government Today As A Threat to Individual Rights | Soldiers and secret police: Some in Huntsville ‘getting nervous’ over G8 | Peaceful protests continue in Toronto as G20 nears | Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commissioners Pleased With Outcome of First National Event | Toronto activists launch G20 alternative media centre | How will democracy fare under the G20’s new world order? | Activists plan walkout and tent city to protest G8/G20 summits | Native residential school hearings open in Manitoba | Pro-copyright bill group busted as recording industry astroturf campaign | First Nations: The Ontario no G20 or G8 leader will see | Native residential school forgiveness granted | Harper government secretly monitoring online chats about politics | Pot activist Marc Emery on his way to US jail | Nicolas Sarkozy’s cabinet approves bill to ban full Islamic veil | Obama Czar Wants Mandatory Government Propaganda On Political Websites | Cellphone brain cancer link still open question | Autistic Boy Charged With Making Terrorist Threats Over Stick-Figure Sketch | Pirate Bay Appeal Judges Cleared of Bias | Canwest sells newspapers to creditor group for $1.1B | Marc Emery, ‘Prince of Pot’ will be extradited | Tories revive mandatory sentences for drug crimes | Shaw buying up CanWest TV assets from Goldman-Sachs | Elite Bishop College a ‘Place That Destroyed Children’ | Wildlife documentaries infringe animals’ privacy, says report | Police chief supports marijuana decriminalization | Protesters and police get ready to square off at G20 summit | Sex ed opponents claim victory in Ontario | The Psychiatric Drugging of Children: Inventing Disorders | French government prepares total ban on full Islamic veils | Gun activists rally in U.S. capital | Vancouver bans smoking in parks | Canadian taxes fastest-growing expense: Report | Ont. smoking club appeal tossed by top court | University of Toronto, Peter Munk to reveal new School of Global Affairs | Chomsky Warns of Risk of Fascism in America | Niqab gets 2nd Quebec student expelled | Up to 50,000 protest Charest’s tax hikes | Feds mulling plan to turn Parliament Hill into high-security zone | Taliban support strong in Kandahar: poll | Newfoundland residents protest national park fees on ‘traditional’ land | Ottawa busker bylaw enforced | ‘Anarchists’ Plan to Disrupt April 15 US Tea Party Protests | CETA worse than ACTA — EU Trade Negotiators Demand Canada Completely Overhaul Its Intellectual Property Laws | Pope wouldn’t discipline priest who abused 200 deaf boys | UK: Met Police launch net café spy operation | Residential school survivors fear network end | Copyright conviction raises privacy concerns | Pot, Palin and prorogation: Stephen Harper gets grilled on YouTube | UK Government Ad: Use Cash And Enjoy Privacy? You’re A Terrorist | PM turns to YouTube — and takes questions | Goldman appeals CanWest, Shaw deal | Cyber-bullying cases put heat on Google, Facebook | UK: Hundreds more town hall staff to get police-style powers | George Jonas: Mr. Bumble’s gun registry | Frustrated Icelanders vent rage by voting no in referendum | Fingerprints Now Required to Shred (That Means Skateboard, Dude) | UK: Pupils aged five on hate register: Teachers must log playground taunts for Government database | Twelve New England towns demand 9/11 reinvestigation | Croissant causes downtown St. Petersburg terror evacuation | Finklestein: This Time We Went Too Far — Truth and Consequences in the Gaza Invasion | Anti-prorogation group becomes pro-participation | Black bloc taints anti-Olympic movement | CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights | Halifax apologizes for razing Africville | Feared police crackdown absent during Games | More Details Emerging About School Laptop Spying, And It Doesn’t Look Good | School Spycams Case Explodes As Feds Initiate Probe | For many aboriginals, the truth of residential schools is irreconcilable: commissioner | UK photographer films his own ‘anti-terror’ arrest | Vancouver Olympics protesters fall silent as Black Bloc ruins it for everyone | Pennsylvania schools spying on students using laptop Webcams, claims lawsuit | Bruce Anderson: We not only have a right to use torture. We have a duty | Police lines block overwhelmingly peaceful Olympic protest march on BC Place Stadium | Shaw Cable moves for acquisition of controlling share in Canwest Global | Protesters in Vancouver slum force Olympic torch off-course | Google shuts down music blogs without warning | Troops Randomly Patrol Streets In Pittsburgh in Wake of Snowfall, Respond To “Domestic Disputes” | Exposed: Naked Body Scanner Images Of Film Star Printed, Circulated By Airport Staff | Protesters target final leg of Vancouver Olympic torch run | ‘Governator’ Arnold Schwarzenegger to carry Olympic torch | Washington DC transit system holds anti-terror drills | Hitchens: North Korean’s stature, worldview stunted by authoritarian hate and ignorance | Let the Olympic surveillance begin | Toronto Star Columnist Fiorito: The cops came and took my gun | Pie tossing is terrorism, MP says. Seriously. | German ‘Fleshmob’ Protests Airport Scanners | Privacy no longer a social norm, says Facebook founder | Tipping point at CanWest | Only $350 to join GPS bandwagon and jettison privacy: track kids, auto, social network | Canada no longer a haven for war resisters | Shock study: 12% of kids sexually abused in govt. custody | Most U.S. homegrown terror suspects are young men: study | Body scanners coming to Canadian airports | UK: New scanners break child porn laws
2009
Underwear Bomber Renews Calls for ‘Naked Scanners’ | Prominent Chinese reformer on trial for subversion | The future of the residential school commission — An interview with Judge Murray Sinclair | Fury grows over Tory anti-Semitism charge levelled against Canadian churches | Photographers claim assault at Toronto torch run | Olympic torch delayed by Toronto protest | China Imposes New Internet Controls | Facebook Privacy Changes Break the Law, Privacy Groups Tell FTC | Police State Canada 2010 and the Olympic Crackdown | UK: From snapshot to Special Branch: how my camera made me a terror suspect | Vancouver orders removal of anti-Olympic mural | Olympic torch protested in Montreal | Diane Francis: We need a global one-child policy | Italians march to demand Berlusconi step down | UK: Photographer questioned under anti-terror laws for taking pictures of Christmas lights | Mumbai highlights security on attack anniversary | Irish church and police covered up child sex abuse, says report | UK Police routinely arresting people to get DNA, inquiry claims | The Culture of the Warrior: Canada’s military invisible no more | Anti-Olympic activists decry ‘Orwellian’ treatment | UK Citizen snoopers recruited to spy on Londoners | UK University student fined £80 for dropping matchstick on Oxford pavement | BC Native tribe will petition Ottawa to remove its Indian status | Teacher rejects fingerprinting for work on religious grounds | Parliament votes ‘in principle’ to scrap gun registry, bill moves to second reading | Tories move closer to killing gun registry | UK: Music filesharers ’spend the most on music’, says poll | Canada’s royal link has rusted out | Privacy watchdog OKs ‘naked’ airport scanners | Protesters block Olympic torch relay | UK: Parents need license to play with children in public | Protesters disrupting question period detained and bloodied by hill security | U.S. artists slam use of music in Guantanamo interrogations | Students Protest Cops In School After One Of Their Own Arrested | Police fend off protesters at Bush speech in Montreal | Video shows violent B.C. police takedown | War resister takes refuge in Vancouver church | UK: 70% oppose internet ban for filesharers, poll shows | Canada’s military peers into future, sees drone patrols, draft, insurgency | UK anti-terrorism strategy ’spies’ on innocent | US Government Propaganda To Infest Network TV Shows | Television — not in front of the children? | Security may soon test ‘virtual strip search’ at large Canadian aiports | Obama wins Nobel peace prize | DHS Video Portrays Average Americans As Terrorists | Toronto high school arrest caught on video | Think before you post, privacy czar says | Pulitzer winning anti-racism classic ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ faces censorship in Toronto schools | Military chopper lands in Kenora for burgers | Pope ‘led cover-up of child abuse by priests’ | Municipal cat police taking things a bit too fur | Marijuana activist Emery surrenders to court, awaits extradition | US braced for surge of protest over war in Afghanistan | G20 Police & Military Savagely Attack Peaceful Protesters In Pittsburgh Park | A hostile takeover of Zionism | Immortality only 20 years away says scientist | Toronto police seize 400 guns in ’safety push’ | Obama: We Need To Bailout Newspapers To Stop New Media Taking Over | As Olympics loom, B.C. wants to force homeless into shelters in extreme weather | The Case for Killing Granny | Canada, at war, to urge peace for everyone else during Olympics | Liberal MP introduces war resisters bill | Body of 130th soldier killed in Afghanistan comes home | US Spec Ops operates psychological warfare websites targeted at UK | CF-18s join B.C. Olympic security drill | Charlie Sheen urges Barack Obama to reopen 9/11 investigation in video message | UK: Now Big Brother targets helpful parents — 1 in 4 Britons vetted for giant new child protection database | American dissenters urge: “Stop the 9-11 cover-up” | Serve your country to honour memory of 9/11: Obama | Military helicopters over downtown Montreal for exercise | The making of a homegrown terrorist | It’s a great day for freedom of speech: ‘Hate Speech’ laws found to violate Charter Rights | Keeping Google out of libraries | Cyber Bullying Case Officially Dismissed for Vagueness | ‘Freedom lover’ behind ‘Obama Joker’ posters | ‘Global War on Terror’ rebranded as call to address extremism, social change | California fertility clinic offers celebrity look-alike sperm | Baby emissions fuel global warming | Alabama County May Call In Troops To Perform Law Enforcement Duties | Pregnant mother tasered at baptism party | Spanking vote underway in New Zealand | US Homeland Security: Terror fight needs public’s vigilance | Pentagon Caught Subverting Protest Group | Global warming is the new religion of First World urban elites | Associated Press Tries To DRM The News | Alberta Hutterites need enhanced driver’s licence photos: top court | UK: Big Brother state wants even more spy powers | iPods, Internet won’t end dictatorship | Canadian defends anti-medicare ad | US Lawsuit: Cops tasered 3 kids in shelter, threatened one with sodomy | Copyright Consultation Launches: Time For Canadians To Speak Out | UK: Man refused liver transplant by NHS dies | Third stab at copyright law ‘reform’ to kick off with consultations | Facebook violates privacy law: watchdog | ‘They were looking for the ideal Manchurian Candidate’ | Headed to National Socialism | BC Bars swipe patron IDs, collect data | B.C. ‘public guardian’ accused of abusing senior’s rights, property seizure | Should linking be illegal? | 50 Toronto high schools to have armed police presence | Illegal Victoria Transit bag searches reinstated under new policy for Canada Day | ISPs must help police snoop on internet under new bill | Prentice tables bill to expand NWT park under UNESCO | Canadian Courts don’t buy word of government | CRTC keeps new media exempt from broadcasting regulation | Vancouver pot activist Marc Emery to plead guilty to U.S. drug charge | UK Schoolkids Protest CCTV, Hidden Microphones in Class | Expand sex ed to all grades: report | Alberta allows parents to pull kids from controversial classes | UK recruits an army of snoopers with police-style powers | Crisis spurs spike in ’suburban survivalists’ | Unannounced Toronto school lockdown drill backfires, police descend on neighbourhood | Quebec woman gets ticket for refusing to hold handrail | Abuse ‘endemic’ in Irish Roman Catholic schools: Report | Winnipeg group lobbies to have hometown street renamed in honour of spymaster ‘Intrepid’ | ‘AmeriCorps’ Domestic Paramilitary Propaganda Ad | Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More | Lunchtime lockdown to promote healthier eating: T.O. school plan | Secret report details Nazi plan to create a European Union | GM bankruptcy likely, CAW says | Lessons of 1976: swine flu, fear, mass vaccinations, wasted millions | Canada placed on USA copyright blacklist | Global warming alarmists out in cold | Should schools ban starter’s pistol? | US government may take controlling share of General Motors | UK: Police caught on tape trying to recruit climate activist as informant | Fredericton police arrest well-known N.B. blogger on legislature grounds | Hands off: Cellphone driving ban approved | UK: Children to be tracked by sat nav to stop bad behaviour | Alberta bars could collect names, photos under proposed bill | Female war resister granted leave to appeal deportation order | Cops can now ‘take all your stuff’ | Serious offences declined before Tories: study | American Stonehenge: Monumental Instructions for the Post-Apocalypse | No vote scheduled on Tory bill to kill gun registry | British Army to Police Medicine Hat During Urban Warfare Drills | Jail terms for Pirate Bay founders, appeal in works | Urban warfare drills coming to Medicine Hat | David Attenborough becomes patron for population reduction | UK: Every teenager will have to do 50 hours of community work, Brown says | Mother who smacked son, 8, with hairbrush is forced to give him up to social services | Manitoba board considers random drug tests for high school students | Protests in Moldova Explode, With Help of Twitter | An inconvenient truth: Libertarianism is a counterexample to traditional political categories | Canadian Parliament votes again to let U.S. war resisters stay | Britons block Google Street View van | Afghan rape law spurs anger | Who counts as ‘human’? | CSIS won’t rule out tips derived from torture | RCMP credibility battered by TASER inquiry | Top Constitutional Scholar: Secret Bush Memos Reveal Plan For “Massive Military Takeover Of US” | War resister Kimberly Rivera gets 11th hour stay from deportation | London Police Encourage Citizens To Inform on Neighbour’s Garbage | US Senate Rubber Stamps National Enslavement Bill | UK Home Secretary unveils civilian anti-terrorism security force | US Congress passes mandatory national service bill | ‘Idea of Communism’ conference sells out in London | Erasing traumatic memory possible, researchers say | Judges give Iraqi shoe thrower 3 years in prison | Atlas felt a sense of déjàvu | Military may patrol bar zone in Barrie | Instructed to curtail crushing red tape, guards watched girl die in her cell | Time to emulate Roosevelt’s New Deal and create green jobs | New World Order Crony Gary Hart Calls for “Civic Duty” | Designer baby row over US clinic | UK: Government ‘using fear as a weapon to erode civil liberties’ | Justin Trudeau introduces National Voluntary Service motion | US Democrats Introduce Public National Service Bills | Do you snoop on your teen? | Geronimo’s descendants fight Yale secret society for their ancestor’s remains | Schools seek more police as crime drops | Former MI5 chief: UK Ministers ‘using fear of terror’ to restrict civil rights | UK: Landlord fights police plan for CCTV at pub | Queen’s silences campus language-police program | Olympic security good for Canada, IOC head says | Military and police practice integration during Olympic security exercises | UK House of Lords warns over ’surveillance state’ | UK: Why protesters are now stalkers: An object lesson in legal usage creep | Police presence in high schools makes the grade | Chinese Learn Limits of Online Freedom as the Filter Tightens | 24 star Keifer Sutherland opposed to torture, questions role of series in inspiring interrogations | Montreal may ban insults to police | Zero tolerance for squirrel-feeding | London Times: 2009 Heralds “A New Age Of Rebellion” | Woman swats children on plane, charged with Terrorism | Inauguration triggers joy, jubilation around world | Toronto School Board to ‘review’ The Handmaid’s Tale on one parent’s complaint | A decade later, Lastman proud he called in army | GPS wristwatch helps parents track children | U.S. war resister, mother of 3 must leave Canada | France braced for ‘rebirth of violent left’ | They hate us for our bombs
2008
Ban-happy Ontario accused of ‘Big Brotherism’ | Private firm may administer UK surveillance database | UK: Big Brother CCTV to spy on pupils aged four — complete with CPS evidence kit | Toronto surveillance project to enter new phase pending review | UK Culture secretary wants international age restrictions for web | ‘Greek Syndrome’ is catching as youth take to streets in France, Sweden | Reports reveal concerns over drug use among Canadian military | Canadian Junior Hockey team gets ‘military training’ | Army ‘Strategic Shock’ Report Says Troops May Be Needed To Quell U.S. Civil Unrest | 1,900 Guns Traded for Cameras in Toronto | Public access vs. government secrecy the issue in Supreme Court of Canada case | Afghan war boosts recruiting | Bestiality, suicide questions OK for job applicants, Halifax concludes | Has your child been CAFed? How the Government plans to record intimate information on every child in Britain | They killed their neighbors: genocide’s foot soldiers | SWAT Teams raiding Amish, Food Co-ops in Rural US | UK Big Brother police to get ‘war-time’ power to demand ID in the street | London musicians expected to disclose ethnicity, 8 pages of personal information to perform | Author wins award for work identifying categories of state corruption | UK launches high-visibility community punishment | Queen’s proposed thought-crime cadres prove controversial | Tribunal shouldn’t police online hate, report says | Safety report author Falconer on armed police in schools: “Facile” | Two More U.S. Military Units Assigned For Homeland Security | Australia to Implement Mandatory Internet Censorship | Parents, children to be fingerprinted at initial 250+ nursery schools in UK | Germany rejects full-body scans at airports | US military targets social nets | UK Shortly to Become Worse Surveillance Society than Stasi East Germany | Another U.S. War Resister to be deported | Tasering of mom with baby ‘necessary’ in order to take child, police say | ‘Pre-crime’ detector shows promise | India’s use of brain scans in courts dismays critics | Comedian begins asking Harper question, cuffed by RCMP | Council threatens families with a £1,000 fine… for parking on their own driveways | 27 Toronto schools to get armed police presence | Troops in the Streets: Army Brigades Standing By to Assist in Disasters, Help Quell Dissent | Do Swiss parents need a childrearing licence? | Greyhound bus passengers now subject to arbitrary luggage searches | CCTV cameras spying on hundreds of classrooms | Brain will be battlefield of future, warns US intelligence report | RCMP spied on… Rita MacNeil? | Turning Toronto into a nanny state | Public conditioning continues: Ratings reach ‘Flashpoint’ for tactical assault squad drama | Behavioral Targeting: ‘It’s Only Going to Get Creepier’ | Chicago, awash in gun violence, gives Toronto advice: You need a gun ban like ours | U.S. army war resister’s deportation sparks outrage | RCMP conducts random search and seizure on Canada Day | TASER bracelets considered for airline passengers | Papers Please: UK cops stopping millions in streets | UK Parents Need Government Permission to Kiss Children | In the new Canada, we are all wards of the state | Air passengers to undergo ‘virtual strip search’ | Could humiliation be the next weapon in our war on crime? | Berlusconi puts 2,500 troops on streets of Italian cities to patrol alongside police | Blogger arrests hit record high | Freedom isn’t failing us – we’re unhappy because we’re no longer free | Hats banned from Yorkshire pubs over CCTV fears | TTC Considers Treating Employees Like Criminals with Forced Drug Testing | Pistol Pendant Causes Airport Holdup | $4 Million Earmarked for Cameras, “Respect” at Toronto Schools | Despite criticism, electroshock therapy commonly used in depression
2007
Burmese monks sent to prison camps
2002
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