Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
A day that changed the world
Just over a week from now, the world will mark the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, which resulted in the loss of over 3,000 lives.
The vast majority of us remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when we heard about the passenger jets crashing into the twin towers, and we remember how we felt as we watched those enormous edifices come crashing to the ground.
It was, literally, a day that changed the world. It certainly changed mine. At the time, I was on a spiritual search, trying to find out whether or not my life-long atheism was misguided. I attended a few services at Trinity United Church, had conversations with then minister Alan Mills and attended a number of gatherings at the home of Nancy Minden, where people of different faiths came together in their own search for meaning.
A meeting was scheduled at Nancy's house the night of 9/11. I remember arriving in tears and telling Nancy that I was finished with my search and that all I wanted was blood revenge. That is why I supported the decision to send forces to Afghanistan to wipe out Al Qaeda and the Taliban who were protecting them.
But what I did not - and do not - support was the swift and almost gleeful way in which many western countries used 9/11 as an excuse to impose restrictions on citizen's rights, all done, of course, with the aim of protecting us from the bad guys. For many governments, most notably the United States, the World Trade Centre attack was almost, if you'll forgive the pun, a gift from Heaven. It enabled them to give themselves greater powers to control the populace, who are only useful at election time but are required to shut up and do as they are told the rest of the time.
Ten years later, with not a single additional attack on North American soil, one would think the restrictions on rights and liberties would be eased. But the opposite is true. The restrictions become even tighter, the surveillance of civilians even greater.
Anyone who has travelled by air since that day knows how ludicrous are some of the security measures imposed on travellers: no bottles of after-shave allowed, no bottled water, take off your shoes to go through the security check, body searches and so on. Ten years ago, no one would have thought it possible for an eight-year-old boy to be strip searched in public in an airport, but I have seen the video. No one would have thought it possible for an elderly man to have his trousers removed in public so that security people could check the braces on his legs, but I have seen the video. Supporters of these measures will point out that the so-called "underwear bomber" and the "shoe bomber" were apprehended before they could endanger the planes they were flying on. But if one remembers a few decades ago, there were plane hijackings on an almost monthly basis, sometimes with tragic results, and no authorities thought to make passengers go through body scanners and physical searches then. Indeed, in 1981 I flew to England for a four-day weekend and walked off the plane at Heathrow and right into the terminal without even going through customs.
But it is not just air travellers who are being subjected to this type of scrutiny and tyranny. The powers that be have taken the 9/11 experience and used it to terrorize us with the threat of terrorism. As I mentioned in my last column, the Canadian government is set to pass laws that will enable them to spy on its citizens as never before, using the threat of terrorism as the excuse.
So emboldened have they become by the restriction of rights after 9/11, that police now have little compunction about restricting them in other situations. Witness the behaviour of police at last year's G20 summit in Toronto.
The crazy thing is, most of the bombings and suicide attacks that we read about these days are happening in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan and most often it is their own kind they are targeting. Equally crazy, in a number of countries in the Middle East - where, we are led to believe, most of the terrorists come from - people are rising up against governments that abrogated their rights and freedoms. While they have a long way to go in their struggles, they are demanding an end to dictatorships, secret police, political and religious persecution and the denial of rights - and some are willing to give their lives for the cause. By contrast, the citizens of the western world - Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom most notably - appear willing to accept more and more intrusion by government into their lives without a peep.
Ten years after the Second World War, we were no longer being asked to report suspicious behaviour on the part of our neighbours or being warned that "loose lips sink ships". But 10 years after 9/11, Canadian citizens of Middle Eastern descent are still being subjected to surveillance and crossing the border into the U.S. is becoming more and more difficult and frustrating. The Canadian government's solution to the border problem seems to be to enter into an agreement with said U.S. which will further invade its citizens' privacy and threaten our sovereignty into the bargain.
It seems to me that on Sept. 11, 2011, the best thing to do would be to acknowledge the tragic loss of life, the heroism of the would-be rescuers, the sacrifices of our armed forces in Afghanistan and then move on, trying to better our relations in some way with those who have grievances against us and let the rest of us get on with our lives without all the intrusion and curtailing of our Charter rights and freedoms.
Tell me, am I wrong?
