{"id":8734,"date":"2010-06-18T18:48:20","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T22:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kselected.com\/?p=8734"},"modified":"2012-02-03T08:03:53","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T13:03:53","slug":"big-wind-police-corporate-police-state-ontario-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/2010\/big-wind-police-corporate-police-state-ontario-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Wind, the Police, and the Government (Ontario, Canada)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2014Calvin Luther Martin, PhD<\/p>\n

Meet Colette McLean. Middle-aged, college-educated, a teacher to Ontario farmers on scientific crop production.\u00a0 Married.\u00a0 Mother of a teenage boy.\u00a0 She’s standing in front of her home, which has been transformed\u2014poof!\u2014into a windplant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Industrial turbines now chop the sky mere yards from where she stands.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nEnemy of the People<\/em><\/p>\n

The grand opening is imminent.\u00a0 The wind developer calls it a “ribbon cutting ceremony.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Colette opposed the erection of these turbines.\u00a0 In fact, she has been prominent in the anti-turbine campaign in Ontario.<\/p>\n

With me so far?\u00a0 Okay, now read this excerpt from her email today, about the visitors who came to her door.\u00a0 Presumably these same visitors came to other people\u2019s front doors.<\/p>\n

Bad news here.\u00a0 Ontario Provincial Police have been by my house asking if I am planning to mount a protest at AIM’s ribbon cutting ceremony. \u00a0I was told they are following up on people who are strongly opposed to wind development in order to maintain public safety.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kind of ironic that they feel the need to scrutinize a hard-working taxpayer for possible violence, when the company is allowed to assault me with these giants at my back door.<\/p>\n

Remember George Orwell?\u00a0 His book, \u201c1984\u201d?\u00a0 \u201cBig Brother\u201d?<\/p>\n

Please bear with me.\u00a0 Now I ask you to read this piece by the deceased Polish writer, Zbigniew Herbert, \u201cThe Goddess Securitas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researchers in mythology have devoted far too little attention to the goddess Securitas. Some have maintained she is only a pale personification, but they are profoundly mistaken. What other ancient deity has survived to our own times and enjoys such robust health? This fact alone should be an incentive for deeper studies and for scholarly reflection.<\/p>\n

We know that each god ruled over a specific sphere of reality, had his own zealously guarded hunting district and favorite human game. The domain of Securitas is murky, determined by an unclear threat. Her entire inventiveness consists in devising ever-new dangers. She skillfully gives these out in doses, for she knows the art of gradation. Sometimes she is satisfied with a rioting suburb, then she embraces a frenzied city, wanders from one continent to another like the plague, captures land, water, air. Her borders are elastic. Who sets them? Most likely fear.<\/p>\n

She does not need temples, sacrificial smoke, processions, or sacred orgies. She is satisfied with a profession of faith in our own miserable physiology. A flutter of the heart, sudden paralysis of the legs, cold sweat, shrieking in a dream\u2014it is not us but our bodies that sing a daily antiphony to her glory.<\/p>\n

Securitas belongs to the species of monsters. Compared to her, what are all these childish monster-giants, dragons, half-men and half-animals, hybrids haphazardly sewn together? Securitas is very much like us. She is a monster with a human face.<\/p>\n

Like every deity, Securitas draws vital forces from our hopes and fears. She possesses a vast amount of psychological knowledge. She does not lavishly give away eternal youth because this is a charlatan’s stock-in-trade. She does not promise other worlds, nor does she deceive us with notions of justice, because when all is said and done each of us\u2014in the depths of the heart\u2014counts only on a final act of mercy. Securitas puts us face to face with the cruel alternative: either security or freedom.<\/p>\n

\u2014Zbigniew Herbert, \u201cSecuritas,\u201d pp. 1-6 in The King of the Ants: Mythological Essays<\/em>, trans. from Polish by John & Bogdana Carpenter (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1999), pp. 5-6.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was born in Toronto.\u00a0 I was raised in Quebec.\u00a0 I moved to the USA at age 17 to attend college, and remained here.\u00a0 (I had dual citizenship, Canadian & American.)\u00a0 I lost my Canadian citizenship in 1969 through a ruse by the American government\u2014long story.<\/p>\n

Today, I am honored not to be a Canadian citizen.\u00a0 You heard me right: honored not<\/span> to be a Canadian citizen.\u00a0 A country that permits this fascist performance is not worthy of my citizenship.\u00a0 This is straight out of Orwell.\u00a0 Or Stalinist Russia.\u00a0 This is neither banal nor funny. I am shattered.<\/p>\n

Big Wind = Police = The Government?<\/em>\u00a0 Absent Bill of Rights?\u00a0 Absent freedom of assembly?\u00a0 Absent free speech?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cExcuse me, Mrs. McLean, we are from the Ontario Provincial Police.\u00a0 It is our duty to ask you whether you\u2019re planning on attending and protesting the grand opening of the AIM windplant?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

What if she had answered, “Yes!\u201d<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Remember, Canadians elected this government.\u00a0 Remember, Canadians tolerate this.\u00a0
\n\u00b7<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2014Calvin Luther Martin, PhD Meet Colette McLean. Middle-aged, college-educated, a teacher to Ontario farmers on scientific crop production.\u00a0 Married.\u00a0 Mother of a teenage boy.\u00a0 She’s standing in front of her home, which has been transformed\u2014poof!\u2014into a windplant.\u00a0 Industrial turbines now chop the sky mere yards from where she stands. Enemy of the People The grand opening is imminent.\u00a0 The wind developer calls it a “ribbon cutting ceremony.”\u00a0 Colette opposed the erection of these turbines.\u00a0 In fact, she has been prominent in the anti-turbine campaign in Ontario. With me so far?\u00a0 Okay, now read this excerpt from her email today, about the visitors who came to her door.\u00a0 Presumably these same visitors came to other people\u2019s front doors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[171,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.windturbinesyndrome.com\/static\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}