[Sundaycommunity] Fwd: ACTION: organizations invited to join #NoIsraeliArms4Canada a campaign related to the $5B armed drone procurement

Fri Aug 6 08:50:26 PDT 2021

Hello all 
Here is an important op ed connecting climate change, fossil fuel ,nuclear threat and Toronto. Much to think, pray and act on. 
Peace Dwyer 

Dwyer

Act Justly, Love Tenderly, Wall Humbly With  Your God
    - Micah 6:8

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jan Slakov <janslakov at shaw.ca>
> Date: August 6, 2021 at 7:58:02 AM MST
> To: Mary Groh <marygroh05 at gmail.com>
> Cc: Doug Hewitt-White <hwdoug at gmail.com>, Dave Bechtel <dbechtel75 at hotmail.com>, Anna Nieminen <am_niemi at live.com>, Elizabeth Curry <bassish at gmail.com>, Charlie Diamond <chdiamo at rogers.com>, Scott Albrecht <salbrecht at golden.net>, Jeevan Bhagwat <jeevaniv at yahoo.ca>, edwyersullivan at gmail.com
> Subject: Re: ACTION: organizations invited to join #NoIsraeliArms4Canada a campaign related to the $5B armed drone procurement
> 
> I agree this is important to endorse.
> 
> and for those who are interested, I’ll copy below an article Lyn Adamson wrote that was in today’s Toronto Star, in honour of Hiroshima Day
> 
> love & best wishes, Jan
>> On Aug 5, 2021, at 6:28 PM, Mary Groh <marygroh05 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi All,
>> I just got this message, and some of you also may have received it.  I am in favour of Conscience Canada  endorsing this project, which is clearly anti-military.
>> Militarism holds too much power in Canada, even when we see ourselves as at peace.
>> Mary
>> 
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: Karen Rodman, Just Peace Advocates <karen.rodman at justpeaceadvocates.ca>
>> Date: Thu, Aug 5, 2021 at 6:12 PM
>> Subject: Fwd: ACTION: organizations invited to join #NoIsraeliArms4Canada a campaign related to the $5B armed drone procurement
>> To: <nonewfighterjets at googlegroups.com>
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Dear No New Fighter Jets friends
>> 
>> Organizations are invited to join the Canadian BDS Coalition campaign as an endorser HERE 
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: Karen Rodman, Just Peace Advocates <karen.rodman at justpeaceadvocates.ca>
>> Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2021 at 18:01
>> Subject: ACTION: organizations invited to join #NoIsraeliArms4Canada a campaign related to the $5B armed drone procurement
>> To: 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> <graphic drone.JPG>
>> 
>> Dear friends
>> 
>> 
>> We write to you as a representative of one or more organizations who stand against war, and with social justice, and who has joined in previous campaign/s such as "stop illegal Israeli military recruiting in Canada" or "CPPDivest." 
>> 
>> We ask you to have your organization/s sign on to this call to stop armed drone purchases by Canada, and impose a military embargo on Israel.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Armed drones threaten people’s lives around the world. Rather than making the world safer, they are used in extrajudicial executions, surveillance of targeted populations and other violations of human rights. Palestinians in Gaza live under a constant threat of armed drones, filling the skies nightly with their distinctive hum. Now, the Canadian government wants to spend taxpayer dollars to purchase armed drones – and one of the leading contenders was “battle tested” on Palestinian and Syrian civilians by the Israeli military.
>> 
>> The Canadian BDS Coalition urges action to stop the armed drone procurement process and impose a military embargo on Israel.
>> 
>> The Canadian government is moving nearer to obtaining armed drones, worth $5 billion of Canadian taxpayer dollars.
>> 
>> Canadian government officials briefed industry partners on systems requirements which includes long-range surveillance and the ability to engage targets remotely, both considered important features to protect Canada as well as for participating in foreign missions.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Organizations are invited to join our call as a campaign endorser HERE.
>> 
>> THE CALL
>> 
>> To: Minister of Public Services and Procurement Anita Anand
>>       Minister of Transport Omar Alghabra
>> 
>> We insist the Canadian Government cancel immediately the procurement process for the purchase of remotely piloted aircraft systems for surveillance. (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System for the National Aerial Surveillance Program (T8493-150035/D))
>> 
>> It is essential that civil-society groups are engaged in carefully scrutinizing the policies that would guide Canada’s military use of any drones for domestic surveillance and in foreign missions. This is even more essential when these unmanned devices may carry arms.
>> 
>> At least one of the companies on the short-list is the research, development and manufacturing arm of the Israeli military, Israel Aerospace Industries. The Israeli military, using IAI products developed explicitly for its use, routinely commits war crimes against the people of Palestine and exports war machines that have been ‘tested’ on Palestinians and Arabs, especially in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
>> 
>> In recent months, people of conscience in Canada watched in horror as the Israeli regime ruthlessly targeted Palestinians from all regions of historic Palestine. What started as a popular movement to #SaveSheikhJarrah residents from further ethnic cleansing expanded into a broad unity of Palestinians from Jerusalem to Gaza to Haifa to Toronto and Vancouver all sending the same message. Palestinians will no longer accept the status quo of Israeli apartheid.
>> 
>> As the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq has reported:
>> 
>> “Israel has used its arms industry to systematically control the Palestinian people and repress all Palestinian challenges to its military occupation and apartheid regime. Israel uses unnecessary, disproportionate, and excessive force while suppressing peaceful protests, at search-and-arrest operations, and at checkpoints, in complete disregard for Palestinian life. Israel’s excessive use of force is further evidenced now, as Israeli forces continue to attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian protesters throughout the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
>> 
>> We further join the call to exclude ZIM, Israel’s largest cargo shipping company, which routinely transports Israeli arms to their final destination, from Canadian ports. As noted by the Canada Palestine Association:
>> 
>> Port Authorities in Canada fall under the Ministry of Transport. As such, Minister Alghabra, allowing and enabling such Israeli apartheid profiteering makes both the ports and the Canadian government further complicit in the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinians.
>> 
>> Thousands of people have already called upon you, Ministers Alghabra and Anand, to cancel the $36M Canadian government contract with Elbit Systems, another Israeli arms company selling weapons “battle-tested” on Palestinian and Arab civilians, for a remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS) or drone.
>> 
>> We insist that you show leadership by:
>> 
>> ·       Cancelling the procurement process and ending the contract for armed surveillance drones
>> 
>> ·       Cancelling the contract with Elbit Systems for Arctic surveillance drones;
>> 
>> ·       Prohibiting Zim ships from accessing Canadian ports
>> 
>> ·       Ending all trade in weapons with Israel through a two-way arms embargo and ending military-security cooperation with Israel.
>> 
>>  
>>  ---
>> 
>> We will be going public with this call later in the month. At this point, our focus is to have organizations sign on as endorsers Please do not share on social media, but do share with any organizations within Canada, Palestine or internationally that would have interest in endorsing.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>  We hope your organization will join our call as a campaign endorser HERE.
>> 
>> 
>> In solidarity
>> 
>> Karen Rodman for Just Peace Advocates, a member of the Canadian BDS Coalition
>> 
>> www.justpeaceadvocates.ca
>> www.bdscoalition.ca
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
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>> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nonewfighterjets/CAN3GPQ-GCLtcRsbU7qM8PimWiQfSvpW3%3D_ayHVm6y_ErB-avjg%40mail.gmail.com.
>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
> *********************
>> From: Lyn Adamson <lyn.adamson9 at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Op Ed in the Star this morning - We Restricted Nuclear Weapons. Now we must limit Fossil fuels.
>> Date: August 6, 2021 at 3:36:19 AM PDT
>> To: VOW Board <vowboardofdirectors at googlegroups.com>, Sandy Greenberg <greenberg.sandy at gmail.com>, Yusur Al-Bahrani <vowapplication at gmail.com>, Tamara Lorincz <tlorincz at dal.ca>, Jan Slakov <janslakov at shaw.ca>
> 
> Hi all,
> My op ed is published in the Star today.  I wanted to say so much more - because nuclear weapons are still a major (and even growing) threat to global security - until all  countries sign the UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted in 2017 - which Canada has not signed. However the NPT did limit the spread of the weapons to other countries.  And an op ed has to be focused and make a clear point.  Right now the climate crisis is an even worse threat to our global survival so that's what I focused on.  Every year there's a commemoration of the Hiroshima bombing, this year Toronto's is online at 7 pm tonight so if you are able to join in register here: https://actionnetwork.org/events/hopefortheearth
> 
> -  Lyn
> 
> 
> https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/08/06/we-restricted-nuclear-weapons-now-we-must-limit-fossil-fuels.html
> 
> CONTRIBUTORS
> OPINION
> We restricted nuclear weapons. Now we must limit fossil fuels
> LA
> By Lyn AdamsonContributor
> Fri., Aug. 6, 2021timer3 min. read
> On Aug. 6, 1945, a single nuclear blast destroyed Hiroshima, Japan.
> 
> Imagine 400,000 Hiroshima bombs a day. That’s the energy imbalance being created on the planet — an imbalance that has doubled, according to NASA, since 2005.
> 
> And every time we leave our homes in a fossil-fuelled car, take a flight or turn on our gas-powered furnace or AC, we are adding to that energy imbalance. We are saturating an oversaturated atmosphere.
> 
> The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere today is 419 parts per million (ppm). It was 270 ppm at the start of the industrial age, and in 1988 the atmosphere contained 350 ppm. That’s a number that might be a safe level for a stable climate — but 419 ppm most definitely is not, as evidenced by the heat domes and wildfires being experienced in Canada, and floods and droughts throughout the world in a wild weather summer.
> 
> We are experiencing chaotic climate conditions at a global average temperature rise of just over 1° Celsius. But we aren’t about to stay there; we are very quickly heading to 450 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. According to climate scientists, that’s the tipping point when feedback loops will be set in motion that humans will be unable to reverse, and the global average temperature rise will soar uncontrollably.
> 
> When you look out the door in the morning, the air doesn’t look that different to you. But from one day to the next this CO2 level, this energy imbalance, is creeping up — and up — and up.
> 
> This science is available to all of us. Just watch the Netflix documentary “Breaking Boundaries: the Science of our Planet” and you will see the enormity of the challenge before us.
> 
> Despite decades of climate negotiations, we have not stopped adding to CO2 in the atmosphere. Rather, the process is speeding up. That is why it is so urgent that we have a global agreement to immediately stop any new fossil fuel projects, to phase out existing uses of fossil fuels, and to go full tilt into a renewable energy future with everything we’ve got.
> 
> In 1968, the world was headed for nuclear war. An uncontrolled arms race and the spread of weapons to more and more countries threatened our future. Far-sighted leaders saw that this threat had to be contained, and began negotiations for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) that was signed by 191 countries and has limited the spread of these weapons. We need that same kind of agreement now for fossil fuels.
> 
> On July 15, Toronto became the second city in Canada and the fourth large city in the world to call on our government to negotiate a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Toronto has taken many steps to reduce our carbon emissions, but unless all local, provincial, state and national governments around the world are doing the same, the atmosphere we share will continue to contain increasing levels of CO2 — and a future of mass death will cast its shadow over us all.
> 
> This weekend is the anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945, Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, and is a sober reminder of the destruction we humans are capable of. We limited the spread of these weapons. Now the energy of 400,000 nuclear bombs added to Earth’s energy system per day is silently and invisibly dooming our future — if we do not take charge and stop.
> 
> The International Energy Agency has declared the end of the fossil fuel age, and now our governments must do so as well. This proposed Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty offers an opportunity to take this commitment globally, in advance of COP 26, the next climate negotiations in Glasgow this November.
> 
> Canada could be a leading voice in this movement. Let’s call on all of our politicians and all our political parties to pledge no new fossil fuel projects — none — and to build the green energy future we need right now.
> 
> Lyn Adamson is the co-chair of ClimateFast and of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace.
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