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Author Topic: Stop Ottawa Arms Shows! Online Petition, Protest and more!
Richard Sanders
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Babbler # 1131

posted 02 September 2008 04:56 AM      Profile for Richard Sanders   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Stop Arms Bazaars coming to Lansdowne Park in Ottawa! (Sept.30 - Oct.1)

For the first time in almost 20 years -- since ARMX in 1989 -- the City of Ottawa is hosting arms bazaars at a municipally-funded facility.

Online PETITION:
Whether or not you live in Ottawa, please sign the COAT petition to oppose arms trade exhibitions scheduled for Ottawa!
Sign it Now!

View signers and comments

Background:
The Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade(COAT) was founded to expose and oppose ARMX, Canada’s largest military trade show. During COAT's campaign, the City of Ottawa passed a motion condemning the international arms trade and banning arms expos like ARMX from all municipal facilities. COAT's campaign rallied thousands for a peace march through Ottawa's downtown that culminated at the gates of ARMX, at Lansdowne Park.

So what's happened now?
City staff have signed a contract allowing the "U.S. Embassy Defense & Security Exhibition" to be held at Lansdowne Park this fall. It is part of a three-armed military trade show called "Secure Canada 2008." Its sponsors include the U.S. and UK governments, major U.S. war-related industries, the top lobby group for U.S. arms makers, the US Chamber of Commerce in Canada, and two Canadian magazines catering to the U.S.-dominated military-industrial-security complex. City of Ottawa staff -- saying that these events are not really "arms exhibitions" like ARMX and that the City's motion no longer applies -- have also leased municipal property at Lansdowne for an even bigger arms trade show in 2009, called CANSEC 2009.

We stopped them before! Let's stop them again! Join us!

Spread the word!
After signing COAT's online petition, please encourage others to do likewise. Circulate this notice to friends, colleagues, list serves and post the petition link to as many web pages as possible.

Contact Ottawa City Hall
Tell the Mayor, City Council and Staff what you think!
Click here for info on contacting Ottawa City Council by phone, fax and regular post.

Protest!
COAT is organising a peace rally to protest these manifestations of the international arms trade in Ottawa. Please join us to expose and oppose the warmongers and merchants of death who plan to flog their deadly wares in Ottawa!

More Information!
For many more details about the arms bazaars scheduled to showcase their deadly products at Ottawa's Lansdowne Park, please visit the COAT website

HELP!
Your support in signing the COAT petition, contacting City Council and encouraging others to do likewise is greatly appreciated!
Click here to learn how else you can help.

Keep informed
If this is the first you've heard about this from COAT, then you aren't on "COAT's official email list."
Join the COAT list

[ 02 September 2008: Message edited by: Richard Sanders ]


From: Ottawa | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 02 September 2008 05:44 AM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good luck with your efforts, Richard. An arms show in Ottawa is completely inappropriate in my opinion.
From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 02 September 2008 05:52 AM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There was one comment on the petition I especially like:

"The cost to the city for security when the Ottawa Peace Community turns out in nonviolent protest will be huge."

I hope the 'Ottawa Peace Community' block every entrance to Landsdowne Park and make those 'costs for security' to the city as high as possible. Teach the bastards (at city hall) a lesson they will never forget!


From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Paul Gross
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posted 21 September 2008 05:59 PM      Profile for Paul Gross   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector in closed thread:
No explanation is offered for the cancellation. I'd bet it's because of the election.

You are correct, Sir.

quote:

Ottawa - The Privy Council Office has put an unprecedented clamp on government business during the federal election, slowing the workings of the bureaucracy almost to a crawl in some areas.

With marching orders from the PCO, public servants are bowing out of long-scheduled conferences, speaking engagements and meetings with everyone from consumer advocacy groups to industry representatives - all in a bid to avoid making any gaffe, musing or comment that could somehow spill into the hustings and affect an already heated campaign.
...
An Ottawa security trade show, set for the end of the month, was cancelled this week after the main speakers, ranging from generals to colonels, declined to show up because of the PCO order.


citizen


From: central Centretown in central Canada | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged
bigcitygal
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Babbler # 8938

posted 21 September 2008 06:02 PM      Profile for bigcitygal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The arms show has been cancelled (see this thread for info).

Aww, dammit! Now where am going to get that armoured personnel carrier and those sniper rifles I was gonna get for that someone special? Frig!


From: It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent - Q | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
Webgear
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posted 21 September 2008 06:10 PM      Profile for Webgear     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
BGC

I have some sources, they are somewhat on the shady side however they are fairly cheap.

Send me a list; I can have them by sunset on Wednesday.


From: Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 21 September 2008 06:13 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think Mark Thatcher and a few more scumbags were picked up for arms dealing around the Cape a few years ago. If they're such good weapons, then they should ...
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 21 September 2008 06:44 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Paul Gross:
You are correct, Sir
Thanks for that link, Paul.

I have now posted an excerpt from it in this related thread.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Richard Sanders
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Babbler # 1131

posted 22 September 2008 01:34 AM      Profile for Richard Sanders   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That link to the Citizen article explaining the cancellation of the "Secure Canada 2008" is also posted on the website of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade.
http://coat.ncf.ca

COAT's campaign against all other Ottawa arms shows CONTINUES!

For example we still have our Online Petition to Stop ALL of these Arms Bazaars from disgracing Ottawa municipal facilities.

If Babblers haven't done so already, it is not too late to sign on to help ensure that "CANSEC 2009" and ALL other military trade shows remain banned from City of Ottawa facilities. Please encourage your friends, colleagues and fellow activists across Canada to sign this important petition!
http://prax.ca/view/coat/No-Arms-Shows


From: Ottawa | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Richard Sanders
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Babbler # 1131

posted 22 September 2008 01:39 AM      Profile for Richard Sanders   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In related news...

Local military supplier's website takes racist jab at Muslims
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5h6N8YeBLGr_zeo-i5XELvWdcMkCw

excerpt

OTTAWA — A company that supplies knives...to the Canadian armed forces referred to Muslims as "rag-headed, heathen bastards" on its website as recently as Sunday when the federal government complained.

------------------

They also said a whole wack of other incredibly uncouth things.

Their contracts for combat knives MAY be in jeopardy.

However, they have just been hired by a bevy of Conservative and Liberal MPs who were inspired by their craftsmanship with the language and their clever jokes....

GU Motors (GUM) has therefore now shifted gears into PR work, which was their real expertise from the start.

Gear Up Motors is "located in the beautiful Village Of Richmond, Ont, 20 Km West of Ottawa, and on Iber Road in Stittsville, Ont." Website: http://www.maxus.ca/
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 613-277-0513

[ 22 September 2008: Message edited by: Richard Sanders ]


From: Ottawa | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 22 September 2008 04:48 AM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
From the GUM webpage:

Gear Up Motors is proud to be a fluently bilingual organization. We speak English and American.


From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 22 September 2008 04:50 AM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Richard Sanders:
COAT's campaign against all other Ottawa arms shows CONTINUES!

Please keep us posted, Richard. Shit like arms shows have no place anywhere in Canadian municipalities.


From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 22 September 2008 06:34 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Richard Sanders:
Local military supplier's website takes racist jab at Muslims

quote:
Liberal MP Scott Brison said such prejudiced and "xenophobic" comments are contrary to the values Canadian soldiers are trying to promote abroad and potentially injurious to troops in Afghanistan, where the vast majority of the population is Islamic.

"This type of disgusting vitriol from a Canadian military supplier is certainly not going to help our brave Canadian men and women in uniform in places like Afghanistan and has a real potential to endanger them," he said in an interview.


No doubt the Canadian military will receive the appropriate sensitivity training from their new private "terrorism consultants", the Blackwater-related Terrorism Research Center, so that they won't be affected by xenophobic comments like this.

[ 22 September 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Paul Gross
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posted 24 September 2008 04:49 PM      Profile for Paul Gross   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
A controversial exhibit scheduled for Lansdowne Park has been cancelled by its organizers.

The exhibit was to be sponsored by Secure Canada. According to its website, Secure Canada “redefines national and international cooperation in security, public safety, risk mitigation, threat response and emergency planning.”

For those city councillors who were upset about the exhibit scheduled for the end of the month, the cancellation is great news.

“We had nothing to do with it. They cancelled it themselves. It gets us out of the immediate pickle,” said Bay Coun. Alex Cullen.

The former City of Ottawa passed a bylaw in 1989 that prohibited exhibits that promote war or the sale of arms on city-owned property.
...
“We now need to decide whether we’re going to carry on the legacy introduced by (the late, former mayor) Marion Dewar,” Cullen said. “Her legacy would not support activities that would be supporting war.”


http://www.ottawasun.com/News/OttawaAndRegion/2008/09/24/6868891.html

[ 24 September 2008: Message edited by: Paul Gross ]


From: central Centretown in central Canada | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 24 September 2008 05:15 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The former City of Ottawa passed a bylaw in 1989...
Former? What, have they renamed it Harpersburg?

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Paul Gross
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posted 24 September 2008 05:25 PM      Profile for Paul Gross   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Like Toronto, Ottawa was amalgamated under Mike Harris. 11 municipalities became the new city of Ottawa. The old city of Ottawa was 1 of the 11 and was the only one with no arms-show by-law.

quote:
In 2001, the old city of Ottawa (estimated 2005 population 350,000) was amalgamated with the suburbs of Nepean (135,000), Kanata (85,000), Gloucester (120,000), Rockcliffe Park (2,100), Vanier (17,000) and Cumberland (55,000), and the rural townships of West Carleton (18,000), Osgoode (13,000), Rideau (18,000) and Goulbourn (24,000), along with the systems and infrastructure of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton, to become one municipality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa


From: central Centretown in central Canada | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 24 September 2008 05:37 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Paul Gross:
The old city of Ottawa was 1 of the 11 and was the only one with no arms-show by-law.
So did all the "old" City of Ottawa by-laws get thrown in the trash, or just the ones about arms-shows?

Lansdowne Park is in the old City of Ottawa, no?


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Paul Gross
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posted 24 September 2008 07:01 PM      Profile for Paul Gross   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think previously existing by-laws remain in force until they get replaced with new "harmonized" bylaws. Harmonizing is (was?) a big process, e.g. going from 11 sets of pet bylaws to 1 and so on.

So old city of ottawa by-laws apply until superseded by new city by-laws (which has not happened the case of arms shows)

City staff argue, however, that the by-law does not apply to Lansdowne Park (the city owned facility where the show was supposed to be held) because Lansdowne was transferred from the old city of Ottawa to the old regional municipality of Ottawa Carleton before being inherited(along with everything else) by the new city . The old region had the exact same boundaries as the new city.

Some city councillors, including some not sympathetic to the peace movement, are annoyed that staff signed the contract for the arms show without consulting council.

From the original linked story

quote:

City staff had defended the decision to book Secure Canada, saying they’d been assured “that weapons and firearms will not be displayed at any exhibit,” but they didn’t refer the contract to city council.

That upset some councillors, including Cullen and River Coun. Maria McRae, who felt they should have been consulted before a contract was signed.

Staff said they didn’t see an issue, and that the bylaw became null once the former municipality sold Lansdowne Park to the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton.



From: central Centretown in central Canada | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged
Richard Sanders
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posted 24 September 2008 07:59 PM      Profile for Richard Sanders   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ottawa Citizen article for paper tomorrow is now "online here.

The organizers present peace activists as a big threat to the security of "arms dealers" selling the world's most advanced military and police systems.

Is this an effort to justify huge security budgets, or to get the City to chip in to help pay their security bills?

The police should be investigating the arms dealers for violating international laws as well as local ones re: contraveneing City Motions.

Here are the opening lines of the article:

*Election, protesters cited as defence trade show cancelled in Ottawa*
*David Pugliese, Canwest News Service*
Published: Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The threat of civil disobedience at a defence trade show originally scheduled for next week in Ottawa was the reason for the event being shut down, according to one of its organizers.

But others who planned to take part in the two-day event blame a Privy Council Office edict that prevents senior military officers and Defence Department officials from taking part in various aspects of Secure Canada 2008 because of the federal election.

And one of the co-ordinators of a disarmament group opposed to Secure Canada 2008 says the trade show's officials are using the protesters as scapegoats.

"I think they're totally exaggerating any kind of threat that we posed," said Richard Sanders of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade. "Our main thing was a candlelight peace vigil. That doesn't seem too threatening."


From: Ottawa | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Harumph
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posted 27 September 2008 12:17 AM      Profile for Harumph     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Boom Boom:
There was one comment on the petition I especially like:

"The cost to the city for security when the Ottawa Peace Community turns out in nonviolent protest will be huge."

I hope the 'Ottawa Peace Community' block every entrance to Landsdowne Park and make those 'costs for security' to the city as high as possible. Teach the bastards (at city hall) a lesson they will never forget!


At which point they'll find out, very painfully, how non-lethal arms are employed in crowd dispersion and suspect apprehension. Which will result in more funding being allocated to purchasing said non-lethal arms, which in turn will generate more arms shows, which will defeat the whole purpose.

Whereas actually peacefully protesting would achieve the same political end.


From: West of Ottawa | Registered: Apr 2008  |  IP: Logged
RevolutionPlease
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posted 27 September 2008 12:46 AM      Profile for RevolutionPlease     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Harumph:

At which point they'll find out, very painfully, how non-lethal arms are employed in crowd dispersion and suspect apprehension. Which will result in more funding being allocated to purchasing said non-lethal arms, which in turn will generate more arms shows, which will defeat the whole purpose.

Whereas actually peacefully protesting would achieve the same political end.



From: Aurora | Registered: Oct 2007  |  IP: Logged

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