An American Warning to Canadians

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO ALL CANADIANS....

Many years ago, one of your nation's greatest singers, Burton Cummings, sang these words: "Stand tall.  Don't you fall. Don't you go do something you'll regret later."  The time has come for Canadians to stand tall, not fall, and not do something you'll regret later.  Sure, politeness is nice.  But there is a difference between politeness and apathy, and bartering away your freedom to a bully for a temporary prosperity will not go well for you in the end.

The problem, as many of you know, is this:  The U.S. Government is demanding that Canadians give up control of their media and financial support of their own arts.  Doing the bidding of what Trump calls "the fake media," Trump's own administration is insisting that Canada open its media markets to big American media companies, which would then set up shop in local Canadian markets.  Eventually, as Trudeau knows well, Canadians would have no control of their airwaves.  This fact would lead to the filtering of relevant and necessary content, and this filtering would lead to Canadians eventually having access only to the information deemed appropriate by the foreign media giants.  In the United States, the "news" deemed appropriate by the media giants consists of gossip,  political snickering at the mention of certain ideas, virtually no real investigative reporting, constant hype, the use of buzzwords designed to instill fear and divisiveness, and a lot of sensational weather-related broadcasting (e.g., Florence, "a storm of biblical proportions").  Then there is the non-coverage of  certain politicians and issues.  News broadcasting in Canada would shrink to a small percentage of its current time allotment.  Gone would be the reporting of anything that really matter to Canadians.  Pretty much, everything that makes Canadian news reporting good would be gone.

Control of information would then naturally lead to control of thought.  Next to go would be Canadian health care - which would be juicy booty for American health care companies.  After all, the hospitals and equipment would already be there, having already been paid for by Canadian taxpayers.  American health care companies would move in, smiling and promising the world, but people currently covered under Canada's system would find themselves uncovered.  Canadians might even welcome the new privatized system at first, having heard such wonderful things on the American-owned stations.  But once in need of health care, Canadians would find that their costs would skyrocket, coverage would be reduced, and insurance companies would deny their claims time and time again (many years ago, an expose revealed that one American health care company's practice was to deny a claim eight times before paying).  Canadian taxes might decrease slightly, but insurance costs would more than eat up any tax savings.  Currently in the U.S., many Americans would rather risk dying than be bankrupted by medical bills.  Crazy?  Exaggeration?  Consider this: Children's Hospital in Phoenix charges more than $25,000 for a single dose of scorpion anti-venom.  Eventually, of course, many Canadians would go bankrupt -- but how likely would the smiling faces on the American-owned stations in Toronto or Calgary or Montreal be to report this story with all of the detail necessary to convey the scope of the tragedy?  Not very likely, especially since their programs would be sponsored by those very same health care companies.  Of course, most healthy Canadians would be blissfully unaware of what's going on unless they have personal experience.. and even that personal experience would likely be considered "bad luck" and not indicative of the larger unreported problem.  That's life.  That's what Canadians can expect if Canada gives in to this idea that American investors with yachts and jets should profit from the sickest and most desperate of Canadians.

Give the U.S. and inch of Canadian sovereignty, and it will take a yard.  Canadians, get tough!  Stand tall!  Don't you fall for it.  Don't go and do something you'll regret later.

5:21 p.m.

Something strange happened. Something really strange.  Something impossible.

If it had happened on any other day in any other city, we might still be demanding an answer.  But because it happened at 5:21 p.m. on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the impossibility of it all has dissolved in the pulverized rubble of our collective subconscious.

The entire day had been full of impossibilities, after all.  We were in shock.  There was so much information being thrown at us.  We were running on instinct, adrenaline, and a macabre fascination with watching the human drama associated with that morning's events.  It seemed like the movies that we had paid so much money to see in theaters.  Only this show was free.  And it was real.

The events of that day are now a blur in the rear view mirror.  And, along with our consciousness of it, Building 7 of the World Trade Center (WTC) disappeared into the ever-darkening shadows of history.

Building 7 was a massive 47-story, steel-frame structure.  It was taller than the tallest buildings in some major American cities.  It was the kind of building that, if it were almost anywhere else, people could not help but notice.  But in lower Manhattan, on that particular day, it disappeared in just seven seconds.  Seven seconds of impossibility.  It was there, and then it wasn't.

Some did notice, though.  It's disappearance was immediately mentioned on news broadcasts as an "oh-by-the-way."  Dan Rather observed that its collapse looked like a controlled demolition.  As did New York's local anchors and reporters.  Even over a few years that followed, some celebrities added their voices to a chorus of thousands of architects and engineers who just could not believe that the laws of physics and chemistry could be completely usurped by the government.

Earlier on that day, WTC Buildings 1 and 2 had collapsed after being hit by planes.  Thousands had been killed.  Firefighters and police were busy trying to save lives.  Many of them died, too.  And many more would die over the following years from exposure to hazardous chemicals while begging the government to help them.  Those two buildings, people covered in powder running for their lives, and a haboob of debris rolling down Manhattan streets is what we remember.  Building 7 was just an "also ran."  It could not compete for our attention with the human drama that had begun to unfold eight hours earlier.

Even though the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 defied scientific explanation, there was a least the structural damage and the jet fuel to make their collapse somewhat plausible to the uninformed and unscientific armchair patriots who comprise the vast majority of people in the United States.  After all, we saw what we saw. The planes were the cause.  Planes that, we were told, were flown by people with strange names from strange places who did it for strange reasons.

Building 7's collapse was different, though.  There was no plane to make a big hole.  There was no flaming jet fuel to melt steel contrary to the laws of science.   According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), it simply collapsed because office furnishings caught on fire.  There had been, and would be, worse fires in steel-frame skyscrapers, though.  In 1970, a 50-story New York building had burned for six hours on five floors; it did not collapse. In 1988, a 62-story Los Angeles skyscraper had burned for 3.5 hours on five floors; it did not collapse. In 991, a 38-story Philadelphia building burned for 18 hours on 8 floors; it did not collapse. In 2004, a 56-story building burned for 17 hours on 26 floors, and even it did not collapse.  On 9/11, the world had never experienced the melting of stuff that could not melt.

As they say, "only in America...."

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of over 3,000 architects, engineers, and people with expertise in related fields,  continues to call for a new investigation - but to no avail.  Unfortunately, the Freedom of Information Act doesn't seem to apply in this post 9/11 America.  Agencies paid for by the taxpayers will not cough up the information for which the taxpayers pay.  We probably don't care, though.  We may not really want to know the truth.  Maybe we can't handle the truth.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to admit that the collapse of a 47-story building in defiance of the laws of nature deserves some serious investigation.  The federal government has some explaining to do. Why can't the information be revealed?  Why aren't ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN pursuing the story of Building 7's collapse?  In a democracy (or whatever you want to call what we have), shouldn't we, the people, demand an explanation that makes some sense?  After all, what's to stop this kind of thing from happening again?

But even though we Americans have our suspicions and would like more accountability, we are busy with other things.  Like making a living.  Like home-grown Nazis.  Like immigrants.  Like tweets.  Or so the faces on television tell us.  But we don't know them.  They are just faces.  And Building 7 was just a building, a footnote to the events of that terrible day that are now just blurry memories.

It has often been said that "America lost its innocence" on that day.  Every time something tragic and suspicious happens, Americans lose their innocence.  Is there no end to the innocence that we can lose?  If we ever lose it all, we may unleash a torrent of anger that will lay waste to everything in its path. Maybe that is why we can't get answers (and why we never will).

Remembering Labor on Labor Day

Most people alive today can't remember a time when the history of American labor was actually covered in high school history classes.  But, yes, there was a time when the people who actually worked hard for their measly wages were considered important enough to mention in history classes.  And it wasn't so long ago, either.  Only a few decades.

Labor was recognized back then because it was a known fact that the American worker made things and then turned around and bought things.  And that movement of cash and goods was what put money in the pockets of the business owners.  Back then, the myth of the self-made millionaire was recognized as being a myth.  After all, who became rich without relying on the people who made the stuff and then bought the stuff?  It was all common sense, of course.  How could labor be written out of the history books of America?

That recognition, though, was a long time in coming.  There was a lot of suffering along the way.  It wasn't easy... not by a long shot.  It's hard to gain recognition when you don't have enough money to buy it.

The labor movement in the United States arose from a need for people to live safer, healthier, and somewhat pleasant lives.  Before the labor movement, which spanned the better part of a century, people worked in horrible places and lived, often ten to a room, in dirty hovels and tenements.  They worked six, even seven, days each week from sunup to sundown.  Children worked.  Women worked.  Everyone worked (except the rich, who did relatively little except complain about the people doing the work).  It was grueling.  It was dangerous.

Back in those good old days of unbridled capitalism, there was no OSHA to tell the bosses that their workplaces had to be safe. As a result, people were getting killed at work all of the time.  In mines.  In foundries.  In dressmaking factories.  There were lots of people getting killed.  Some were killed quickly when their workplaces would collapse on their heads.  Some were killed slowly by breathing in all sorts of stuff that they shouldn't have been breathing in.  Some were killed in fires because the buildings weren't safe.  But most of the rich resisted any attempts at reform or .regulation because it would cost them money (and regulation was anti-capitalist), of course.

But workers persevered and eventually organized themselves into labor unions and came to dominate a political party called the Democratic Party.  No, that Democratic Party was not today's Democratic Party.  It had the same name, but that was about the only similarity.  But back then, even the Republican Party was drawn along different lines.  Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican who signed anti-trust legislation!  That would never happen today.  Poor Teddy couldn't get elected dog-catcher nowadays.

Labor had to stand up for itself because the greed of the greedy knew no bounds, but any attempt at organizing meant things were likely to get pretty ugly.  And sometimes, even supportive politicians couldn't save the workers from the murderous wrath of the business elite.  If you'd like an example, consider the 1886 Haymarket riot in Chicago.  Even Chicago's mayor had attended a mass meeting and given the meeting his blessing.  But somebody threw a bomb after he left, and everything went to hell in a hand basket.  Eight were convicted of conspiracy, even though there was no evidence that any of them had thrown the bomb.  Seven were sentenced to death.  Of those, four were hanged, one committed suicide, and two had their sentences commuted by the governor.  It didn't matter that none of them had thrown the bomb.  They organized the meeting, and that was enough.  It didn't matter that the mayor had been there and had blessed the event, either. Again, they organized the meeting, and that was enough.  The people who lived in rows of mansions on lush tree-lined streets, and the newspapers, insisted on the executions.  You just can't have that sort of thing going on.  Violence was never acceptable, even if all the workers wanted was an eight-hour workday and that their co-workers not be killed.

The Haymarket riot was just one event in a continuum of unpleasant altercations.  Just a few years before it, there had been the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania, who were fighting for their rights to be treated like human beings.  Many of them were executed, too, of course.  Mind you, not all of the rabble-rousers were pleasant people.  Desperate people do desperate things, after all.

One of the most deadly disasters in labor history was the fire at the Triangle Shirt factory in New York in 1911.  It killed 146 garment workers, almost all of them women and children who worked 52- hour workweeks.  Many were forced to jump out of windows from the ninth and tenth floors of the building in which the factory was located.  They couldn't escape because the doors had been locked to prevent unauthorized breaks.  The disaster was so horrific that it spurred union membership and legislation in New York that required certain safety features.

Is it any wonder that such things used to be covered in high school history classes?  So this Labor Day, let's remember labor.  Let's treat Labor Day with the same respect we give to Memorial Day. Let's remember the sacrifices of the workers who went before us. Let's remember that a living wage, safe working conditions, and a bit of free time are basic human rights.  And let's not assume that today's business leaders are somehow less greedy or more compassionate than those of previous generations (there is no reason to believe that they are).