A year and three weeks ago, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was in Ottawa, meeting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the wake of the lethal attack by Israeli commandoes on the international Freedom Flotilla.

The Ottawa Palestine Solidarity Network had already planned a protest of Netanyahu's arrival -- but the murder of nine activists and the injury of dozens more aboard the 2010 flotilla, while Harper glad-handed with the man responsible, transformed a protest against Netanyahu and Israel's war crimes and occupation into something more.

At the time, we could feel it in the Ottawa streets that this moment was an important turning point. Indeed, from coast to coast, many were beginning to have the same idea.

It is increasingly clear that a dramatic reduction in military spending has become an economic necessity. Yet, the Harper government is doing the opposite, while trying to conceal it. And so, as President Obama makes his first visit to Canada, Prime Minister Harper is busy forging ahead with a stealth 'war stimulus' that will actually stoke the fire of the economic crisis.

Edinburgh — At the time of what may be thelargest protests Scotland has ever seen, we, the ACT for the Earthcontingent from Canada, find ourselves staying in — of all places — the OrwellLodge. George Orwell's 1984 is not just a critical book to read, norjust an excellent song; it is the time we live in.

George Orwell brilliantly portrayed how an unjust system works, proppedup by sophisticated propaganda, techniques for controlling the generalpublic and a complacent population.