Jack Layton didn't think she was heroic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9oTSyiK360

Canada's Sweetheart - Courage and Tenacity

Many will recall the term 'Canada's sweetheart' which denoted Olympic champions Nancy Green and Barbara Ann Scott. This reflected their great courage and outstanding achievements at a very young age (admittedly, the term is dated).

In 2011, we must turn to Ms. DePape to find the same level of courage and achievement at a young age..

She is truly inspiring.

Jack was good but not perfect.

Realisticman, while Jack Layton can be seen as an inspiration, as compared to the psychopaths who rule us, not everything he did was necessarily progressive. He was a good man, but not a perfect man - and his flaws are revealed in both his attitude to Brigette and in his support for the war in Libya.

Worth considering other impacts of her actions

It will be interesting to read Ms. DePape's perspectives. It's too bad she had to pull off that "Stop Harper" stunt in order to get people to listen to her.

Not that there is anything wrong with making a public statement of criticism to interrupt a government ritual.

But because -- by doing so in her position as page, rather than simply as a citizen -- she has likely provoked a change in hiring procedures for the page programs that will screen out anyone who has previously participated in anti-government activities.

Ms. DePape may have given up on Parliamentary democracy. But other opinionated and politically active young people should still have the opportunities that she did.

Good for Depape.

Layton, as any person elected to the House of Parliament is obligated to defend its traditions. Those traditions are really set to perpetuate a certain "respect" for the institution that few elected people reflect by their conduct and attitudes to the voter. Good on her for speaking out.

Secondly, I watch Solomon less and less because he sounds more like the usual pundits on the hill and more like he is in favor of the status quo. Bring back Avi Lewis please at least he didn't sound so conservative.

I expect we will see more of Depape in the years to come and that is reason for hope.

.

You're right anarcho

Decorum can use a good kick in the nuts every now and then - Layton to the contrary.

My point Greg

was meant for the crowd around here that constantly bleets about how Canada is a police state run by a fascist dictator.
Such drama! Where as in a real police state such as Venezuela...she would be silenced for what she did. I don't mean anything sinister - but she wouldn't be here critisizing the government or its leader.
It would not be allowed.
The Tyee would not be allowed in Venezuela. TV stations and newspapers have been shut down by Chavez because they offended him. Its an actual law in that country that you may not offend Chavez personally.
Thats what you call a fascist police state.
And thats who I would call a psychopath.

(I can here it now...you fool happy. What do you think Harper is building prisons for. Be afraid.....)

R/Man

The point was - and you brought it up - that Layton thinks decorum is important.

I don't really care who's doing the kicking - we've got too many hungry children and unemployed young people in this country (and this province) for anyone to be worried about 'decorum'.

Layton was wrong, plain and simple, Ms DePape is actually doing something more significant than posting annoying anonymous comments to a mildly interesting small market news site.

In fact, she doing something more important than most of the trained seals who squeal for their dinner in Ottawa.

happy - I'd like to think young people won't LET stephen harper turn this country into a fascist state.

Let me know what you think about his moral sentiments when you see his omnibus crime bill this fall.

Propagandizing about how she

Propagandizing about how she would have been treated in other countries shows that Canada still has a slight hope.

I was sentenced to death by the nazis and to the gulags by the communists.

So what ?

Ms. De Pape`s act, and the fact that we have the Tyee and that the majority weren`t voting for, and many are standing up against the growing international,capitalist dictatorship, culminating with the election of Harper in this country, where I a "New Canadian" have been a registered voter since 1956, is still an example that there`s a chance for Canada to be at the leading edge
for a movement to save the world and humanity from destruction and enslavement.

I wouldn't want to live anywhere else and still hope to see the coming of the Age of Enlightenment, not only in Canada, but over the whole world.

Ed Deak.

Propagandizing about how she

As usual Ed great thought and insight to what is really culminating in this country. Its time to lift the blinders off the majority of Canadians, but most are still asleep or afraid. So it will take courageous souls like Ms Pape to lead others into the right direction, some will follow but many will resist. I too hope one day we will all reach the Age of Enlightenment, but its unfortunate that the majority of humanity is taking the most painful route when there truly is a simpler more joyous loving path to take.
I think the biggest problem plaguing society is this tendency to see every solution as a War such as the war on cancer, drugs , etc etc. To overcome these challenges, society needs to drop the word War, as it carries neg energy. We must confront these problems not seen as the enemy, but as an opportunity to rise above them to help raise human consciousness.
Since there is so much plaguing us, it can become very overwhelming to most, as it has for me at times. So my solution is to focus on what inspires oneself the most and be the change. Every small act will help move society towards enlightenment.
Some will perform large acts and many will perform small, but all are very important in helping us move forward in this crazy yet perfect divine plan!

To The Critics of Brigette I...

In news just released on CBC, official papers have been uncovered in Libya that show the CIA was in fact working with the Ghadaffi regime. For instance, they would send him their terror suspects, he would torture them, and provide the info back. The point being that we are dealing with a gangster conspiracy here (that like all thieves, can fall out nonetheless), and ALL actions are needed, useful and necessary to overcome this corporate mafioso global system.

In the case of my friend samuidave's criticism of Brigitte in this series, with due respect again, I disagree with him some. (And with mopled.) In my view, we are at a place with corporate capitalism where near all "progressive" ideas roads and actions lead, in the final analysis, as time and events evolve here, where they will lead to having to challenge this anti-democratic and criminal system reality. The connecting problem they really all have in common is... capitalism.

And this is equally true whether we are talking anti-war actions, issues of the women's movement, (and men's needs no less) challenging the system's poisoning of the planet and its natural and life sustaining systems, organizing the poor and mobilizing the working class to fightback, or struggling to bring into being a more truly democratic economic and political system order as can help move us beyond capitalism... finally. It may not always be seen and understood now, this essential unity of purpose taking shape, manifest in such as samuidave and mopled, but I suggest it will be more so, as all these movements come into being finally and evolve. There will tend to be a coming together. (One movement is not "necessarily" an example of "co-option", though such MAY be, but as likely part of the emerging whole, whether they or we realize it immediately or not.)

It used to be said, that all roads led to Rome in those ancient times. We are again in a place and time, in my view, where "pretty much" all of the movement roads that are and will emerge out of "the people" lead to challenging the national and global status quo. And everyone and all that emerges from here on needs their own time and experience to come to realize this. None of us is the complete answer, in and of ourselves. We need each other.

continued next post...

To The Critics of Brigitte II

from previous post...

Which is why the rightwingers like unrealisticman spend so much time trying to heap scorn and ridicule on the anti-Tar-sands Movement now happening here and in the US for example, the nascent movements of young radicals, students, intellectuals and workers. They sense the ultimate seriousness of what is happening here to their beloved capitalist system, and is about to happen, and the only response right now that they can think of or raise is, to attempt to hold it all up to ridicule. (Later they will get more serious, and be of greater threat... in my view.)

The likes of unrealisticman and his pals right now though, are just troll voices bleating in their own particular kind of class political wilderness.

Keep the faith, as they say Brigitte. And ye others such as samuidave and mopled, I urge you with full respect, mistake not your own cause as the only "true" cause... but see the whole and all its parts. In the end, the one will be strengthened and gather credibility and support from the other. We really do need each other.

A New Age of Enlightenment... Ed

Hear, hear Ed. I agree entirely with your post above here.

Let's all hope. And there is good reason for it because this country is not yet the US or any other place... I suppose it could change out of all recognition if the fascist voices had their way, but we are not there yet. And the best hope that we will never get there, is many, many more people committed to the country and the people... like Brigitte.

To a New Age of Enlightenment indeed! And I hope I live long enough as well. :-) lol

Nonsense About Chavez

Someone has been drinking the right-wing kool aid. Nothing would happen to someone who opposes Chavez. Sectarian anarchists in that country have been publishing a paper hostile to Chavez for years and nothing happens. The bulk of the mass media is right wing.

Yes, we need

Yes, we need extra-parliamentary action, and that young people are starting to realize this is wonderful. But it isn't going to change Canada by itself. It will help, but you also have to get out and vote and, more than that, join political parties and be active in them.

Parliamentary action alone will not change society, nor will civil disobedience and protest alone. BOTH are needed. Protest away, and more power to you, but it isn't enough, you have to get involved in politics at the party level too. People who join parties get to vote twice in every election you know. Once to select a good candidate and once to put that candidate into office.

So I applaud what you've done, but you need also to get involved in the political system and work for change their. The political system isn't going to go away, but one by one, activists like you joining parties and getting involved in elections can change that system to make it work.

R/M old man....

Tommy Douglas was also an inspiration - and as many rightwingnut types do and did fall all over themselves to point out his erreant belief in eugenics, so you carry on that "great" tradition.

About Joining the Vanguard Party System

"It will help, but you also have to get out and vote and, more than that, join political parties and be active in them." Ed Seedhouse.

There is at least one, good reason why this appeal of adherents to the "working from within" "vanguard party system of capitalism" keeps falling on deaf ears. And why it is received with ever deepening cynicism, especially by the young (and some of us oldies). :-)

In short, there is very good reason why I suggest that all the parties to capitalism and its Big Money manipulated democratic system are the one exception to "worthy movements" as I've described in my post above. (Which I suppose could change, as an extreme long shot. But is not apparent to me now.)

This notion of working from within capitalism to transform capitalism has been around at least as long as I have. The result of which is, for all the tweaking and good intentions, and even the brief "hopeful" period of the postwar II Social Democratic State, now "corporate" capitalism is still with us, fundamentally unchanged. And the problems of inequality, poverty, war, and now dangerous environmental degradation, AND economic depression, keep coming back and back to haunt those of us in the working class. Nothing in these regards has seriously or for long changed, and what was is now being undone. (Save some for the intervention of trade unions... and even then only imperfectly and spotty. And even unions have been in retreat mode since the 70s.)

The political system however, and all the vanguardist politicos it has spawned, corrupts, compromises and effectively co-opts all those and everything it sucks in or touches.

But you all could change that, for yourselves and us. As this period continues to roll out and the economic and political crisis of capitalism near certainly deepens... demonstrate that you seriously can assist the transformational/peaceful revolutionary process, as the people do become extra-parliamentary engaged. Prove it to us. And if you do that in a truly serious way, assist rather than hinder and seek to side-track the coming struggle... there can and will indeed be an eventual meeting of the ways, and you a useful part of it.

But again, you do have to prove it. Indeed, at least half the population, judging from the participation stats, and your declining membership rolls... are unconvinced.

The vanguard party political processes of capitalism are already well established, and have been for a long, long time. Since the 1970s at least however, there has been and is a logjam... a case of severe political and democratic constipation. The stick of dynamite or the dose of Exlax that is really needed to get it all moving, favourable to the satisfaction and contentment of "the people", I suggest, is for them to leave you to your own parliamentary devices, and to build the people's movement as can scare the crap out of y'all. :-)

Chomsky on Chavez

Chomsky's letter
"Judge María Lourdes Afiuni has suffered enough

With this public letter I want to express my open support of the liberty of judge María Lourdes Afiuni, detained in Venezuela since December 2009. In November of last year I was informed of her situation by the Latin American initiative of the Carr Centre for human rights policy at Harvard University. Ever since, I have been directly involved in mediation efforts with the Venezuelan government, with the purpose of releasing her from prison through a gesture of clemency by President Chávez.

Judge Afiuni had my sympathy and solidarity from the very beginning. The way she was detained, the inadequate conditions of her imprisonment, the degrading treatment she suffered in the Instituto Nacional de Orientación Femenina, the dramatic erosion of her health and the cruelty displayed against her, all duly documented, left me greatly worried about her physical and psychological wellbeing, as well as about her personal safety. ..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/03/noam-chomsky-hugo-chavez-democracy

It will be interesting to see.....

how insightful this young woman actually is. Being opposed is one thing but offering up a truly viable alternative to the mess we are in, is quite another.
I will be pleasantly surprised in Brigette has the answers, as heaven knows, no one else seems to. That includes, Presidents, Prime Ministers and Kings ..... and oh yes journalists and bloggers.....

I made up a bumper sticker

Which reads "Brigette for PM". She sounds more intelligent than many we have had. Amazingly mature for her age!

She is actually right about activism outside of the political system. Many of us who joined politics as Mel Hurtig started his National Party, and then upon its demise tried again with CAP were disappointed with the party system. New ideas (parties) don't seem to be welcome in that process.

So activists who want to save Canada have to turn to pressuring the governments via citizen coalitions, and direct action. It seems to be more effective. "The price of democracy is eternal vigilance", as Jefferson wrote so long ago! That means your vigilance and mine!