1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien

HAPPY CANADA DAY

REVISIONIST HISTORY

1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien

"When the right to freethinking, whether religious, political or scientific, is as generally proclaimed as it is it by the laws, the values and the practice of our days, it cannot be lost. Judicious people will not need to demand it later."

THIS IS PAPINEAU'S DENUNCIATION OF CONFEDERATION AS A SCAM OF THE RULING CLASSES IN QUEBEC AND ONTARIO, THE SAME GROUP KNOWN AS THE "FAMILY COMPACT" WHICH RULED BOTH COLONIES.  

THE FATHERS OF CONFEDERATION WERE A SMALL GROUP OF THESE WHITE MEN, BOTH CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT, WHO SIGNED THE ACTS WITHOUT TAKING THEM TO THE PEOPLE

IT IS FOR THIS BASIC DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE OF NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION THAT PAPINEAU ACCUSES THEM FAILING TO GET CANADIANS  AND CANADIENS APPROVAL. THE CONSTITUTION THAT EVERYONE IS AFRAID TO OPEN AND DISCUSS TODAY IS BECAUSE THERE NEVER WAS A DISCUSSION OR VOTE BY THE ENFRANCHISED PEOPLE AT THE TIME OF CONFEDERATION 

THIS DOCUMENT WILL SHOW YOU THAT WHILE THE CANADIAN RADICALS OF 1827

PAPINEAU AND MACKENZIE KING WERE IMPRESSED BY ASPECTS OF AMERICA

PAPINEAU EXPLAINS WHY CANADA HAS A DIFFERENT SET OF LIBERAL IDEALS 

THAN OUR SOUTHERN NEIGHBOUR. 

HE WAS SO FAR SEEING THAT HE PREDICTS THE COMING OF CHINESE IMMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION FROM ASIA IN GENERAL TELLING CANADIANS TO LOOK TO THE WEST ACROSS THE PACIFIC FOR CANADA'S FUTURE 

THIS  SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING IN ALL SOCIAL STUDIES AND HISTORY CLASSES IN CANADA IF WE STILL HAVE THEM IN K-12

1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien 

Among the most important and useful truths, those that pertain the the better political organization of a society are at the forefront. They are among those of which it is a shame to have not studied carefully, and cowardly to dare not proclaim, when we believe that those we possess are true and therefore useful.

The good political doctrines of modern times, I find them condensed, explained and delivered for the love of peoples and for their regeneration, in a few lines of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

The true sociological doctrines of modern times can be summed up in a few words: Recognizing that, in the political and temporal order, the only legitimate authority is the one to which the majority of the nation has given its consent; that are wise and beneficial constitutions only those for which the governed have been consulted, and to which the majorities have given their free approbation; that all which is a human institution is destined to successive change; that the continuous perfectibility of man in society gives him the right and imposes him the duty to demand the improvements which are appropriate for new circumstances, for the new needs of the community in which he lives and evolves.

It is not the precipitated acceptance of the butchered Quebec Act of confederation that can prove the wisdom of the statesmen of England. It is not their work; it was prepared in hiding, without the authorization of their constituents, by some colonists anxious to stud themselves to the power that had escaped them. The sinistre project is the works of badly famed and personally interested men, it is the achievement of evil at the British Parliament, surprised, misled, and inattentive to what it was doing.

At first sight, the act of confederation cannot have the approval of those who believe in the wisdom and the justice of the Parliament and the excellency of the English constitution, since it violates its fundamental principles, by taking control over the sums of money belonging to the colonists alone and not to the metropolis nor to any authority in the metropolis. It is guiltier than any of the preceding acts. It has the same defects, and it has new ones, which are unique to it, and which are more exorbitant against the colonists than were those of the parliamentary charters granted or imposed before. 

The others were given in times and conditions that were difficult and exceptional. The transfer of a new country, with a majority whose religious beliefs and political education differed deeply from those of the minority, could have let us fear that the latter be exposed to denials of justice. Full religious tolerance, the most important of the rights which belong to men in society, had not been understood nor allowed at the time. England was persecuting at home, insane and unjust; she was insane and unjust here, here more than elsewhere, because the public law was supposed to protect us from evil. She ignored it. If she had restricted herself to protective measures for the minorities, she would have been praised; but she exceeded the goal, she oppressed the majority, she did wrong. But it was then a common error which misled her and which excuses her. The odious laws of intolerance are repudiated by all of the civilized world today, except for Rome and St. Petersbourg. There too however, sooner or later it will be necessary to render justice at the sight of the benefits which it pours on the States which respect it.

The concision in the word of Cavour: "The free Church in the free State", is one of the most beautiful titles given to respect, love and admiration, justly acquired by this famous statesman. These happy words, which once stated can never be forgotten, which, in a short sentence, contain a complete and perfect code on the subject they expose and explain, in one moment, -- as if all the tongues of fire of the Coterie had touched all those which tried to retain them -- allow us to understand, love, and proclaim the full truth which was only obscurely perceived and timidly loved before. And yet this revelation, sudden for a lot of people, is already codified, since a long time, for all, in the thirty-six States of the Union next door.

The free, independent Churches, separated from the State, do not require anything from it in presence of one another, are the happiest and become most useful, because of this separation from the State and the proximity of their rivals. They rely on their knowledge and their virtues, they do not require nothing else. They as nothing of what they consider useful to the promotion of their cult, all to the benefit of all their ministers, their charity, and their benevolent organizations. Watching one another, they are eminently moral, because the exposure and publicity would punish each fault they commit. No fault being able to go by unpunished, one will rarely occur. Where only one Church rules, it is not useful, it represses heresies, schisms and witches. Its adversaries claim: "it must necessarily be that it is wrong, if it is so cruel." and its friends say: "it must necessarily be that it is divine, if it obtains support in spite of these cruelties."

When the right to freethinking, whether religious, political or scientific, is as generally proclaimed as it is it by the laws, the values and the practice of our days, it cannot be lost. Judicious people will not need to demand it later.

Other parliamentary acts against Canada were acts of rigour, following disorders which would have been prevented by a tiny portion of the concessions that were granted much too late. The merit of these concessions is small and has little value, because they were made only after executions which were murders.

(The reference here is to the rebellion of 1837 in Upper and Lower Canada which Papineau was a leader of SEE I Am Canadien http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/07/i-am-canadien.htm)

The present act was inflicted to provinces which were peaceful, where there no longer existed animosities of race or religion to calm down. Where nobody was guilty, all were punished, since they received a law for which they were not consulted.

This new governmental plan reveals, more than the others, the violent animosity of that the aristocracy feels towards elective institutions. It was only after long years of ceaseless efforts that the Legislative Councils were made elective. 

Did those who had been morally glorified by tearing off this important concession to the colonial and metropolitan authorities glorify themselves much today by ravishing it to their compatriots? On the contrary, they felt and they knew that they would not escape the contempt that these tergiversations deserved. They fought among themselves with eagerness to obtain nobility titles from overseas. They defrauded on the one hand their country and other the other they were even defrauding among themselves for the superiority of the rank; and they found ways to associate many accomplices to their shame, as if it was less dark because it was shared! They promised the elected councillors to have them counsellors for life. They created themselves a fake aristocracy, that became such by their participation in an obvious violation of the law. All these intrigues were immoral enough to please the English cabinet and to push it to adopt an act even worse than almost all its past wrongs. These reactionaries were asking the institutions of the Middle Ages back at the very moment the noble English people was demolishing them.

No, it is not true that the political discussions, which were as sharp in both Canadas, were a fight between races. They were as rough in Upper Canada, where there was only one nationality, than here, where there were two. The majorities of both of them were uninterested friends of rights freedoms, and privileges due to all the English subjects. They were voluntarily exposing themselves to lie full slanderings, to dangerous angers, to sanguinary revenges sometimes, from egoistic minorities, by themselves weak, but supported by the strength of the baionnettes paid with the gold of the people, but everywhere directed against the people.

The privileged people always think that the prayers and the complaints against the abuses which benefit them are an invitation to repress them by violence. 


Proud, just and enlightened men, whose convictions are intense because they are the result of strong studies and long meditations, have faith in the empire of reason, and it is for reason alone that they ask the correction of the abuses. Their efforts are addressed to all, to the powerful ones initially, to inspire them sympathy for the people that are suffering and that were impoverished by the abuses. They present them with glory and happiness to conquer, if they know how to render the society of their time more prosperous and more moral that it was it in the times which preceded. They address them initially and preferably, because their mind being more cultivated, they would be better prepared to be able to consider questions of general interest under all their various aspects, and to solve them quickly and correctly when selfishness does not blind them. They address the masses after, to say them that the sabre is not in their hands, but that reason is the richest and most invaluable of divine gifts and that it was separated almost equally amongst all, that the culture of the mind can centuplicate its fruitfulness and strength; that to clear the land one needs physical strength enlightened by experience, but that in order to make good constitutions and good laws, and to apply them wisely, it is necessary to have before all a strong reason, enlightened not only by serious studies, but above all by a real devotion to the country, and the absence of any personal covetousness of ambition or interest. Here is what could seen before, here is what has since become so rare, now that fortunes acquired at the expense of the public and personal honor, have become so numerous! How badly do these reproaches of propensity to violence come from those who constantly have recourse to violence to prevent the free discussion of political or social questions, physical violence by means of the law, moral violence by the anathema!

Papineau was 81 years old when he appeared at the Institute in 1867


Papineau Bio See https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/lhn-nhs/qc/manoirpapineau/decouvrir-discover/natcul1/a

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED  Saturday, July 01, 2017

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for I AM CANADIEN

SEE:

Edward Gibbon Wakefield

Happy Canada Day/Jour heureux du Canada

Origins of the Capitalist State In Canada

Rebel Yell

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.

Mental Illness May be a Myth, but Trauma is a Societal Crisis

Nicky Reid

 May 22, 2026

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“In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.”

-Thomas Szasz

 

Häxan (1922) | 2024 Restoration (Director's Cut)

 

In the beginning, there were shamans; wild eyed wiseman communing with the ancestors, drawing down the moon, and swapping genders like loincloths. They were strange and mystical creatures born with a downright uncanny connection to forces beyond the veil of the seen world and every village had one.

Then progress began and spiritual diversity got in the way of profit. Villages became cities, tribes became governments, and individuals became citizens. A handful of shamans were rebranded as prophets and messiahs, but they ultimately proved too unruly to govern while they were still alive. So, a few dead messiahs were chosen and churches were built around their carefully edited texts while the rest of the shamanic class were simply deemed heretics and slaughtered.

As progress continued and the cities became states and the states became empires, even religion became inconvenient, reduced to nothing but an anesthetic relic. The heretics were deemed lunatics and asylums were built, first to simply contain them and then to “treat” them. A new religion was established around such treatments. A secular temple preaching chemical subjugation and societal assimilation as its dogma. They called this church Psychiatry, the Clinic was its God, and its Devil was a mysterious affliction known as Mental Illness.

This is the history of people like me, the history of madness, and it is a history that the various organizations behind Mental Health Awareness Month would really prefer you weren’t made aware of. That’s because mental illness, at least as they define it, is a myth, and these same organizations are a part of a multibillion-dollar industry built to perpetuate this myth for prestige and profit.

Thankfully, a handful of disgruntled psychiatrists and academics broke away from this cult by making the radical decision to actually listen to their patients and blew the whistle on the entire madness industrial complex during the countercultural heyday of the 1960s.

Chief among these whistleblowing therapeutic renegades was a psychiatrist and professor by the name of Thomas Szasz who continues to shake the establishment to its faulty foundations from the grave with his groundbreaking 1961 bestseller, “The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct”

In this carefully researched manifesto, the good doctor largely exposes mental illness as a social construct designed to control those of us driven by unconscious forces to violate the social norms of conventional society. As Szasz shows, this conspiracy to domesticate civilization’s neurological malcontents is achieved by declaring our numerous eccentricities to be medical ailments treatable by a variety of forms of therapeutic coercion, from the simple, quick fix of pharmaceutical intervention to our involuntary internment at glorified prison camps deemed inpatient facilities.

Szasz didn’t reject psychotherapy entirely, however. In fact, he encouraged its widespread use as a means for consenting adults to seek outside guidance in order to “learn more about themselves, others and life.” In other words, Dr. Szasz advocated that therapists behave more like shamans than priests while deriding any notion of mental health being pathologized as a corrupt junk science that deprives the individual of autonomy and basic human dignity.

As someone who has spent a good portion of my life at the mercy of bad shrinks and overly simplistic diagnoses, I can vouch for the good shaman, Thomas Szasz, but that doesn’t mean that I am well. Quite the contrary. I am indeed a deeply disturbed individual, but the source of my disturbance is not medical; it is societal.

I suffer every day from the trauma inflicted upon me from a young age by the systems that toxic constructs like mental illness built. I am a survivor of multiple forms of child abuse only made possible by institutional powers that left me defenseless and at the mercy of the sexual predators who have managed to carve out their own class amidst the midlevel echelons of bourgeoise society: priests, teachers, politicians, cops, doctors and indeed therapists; institutional authoritarians who prey upon the classes constructed beneath them quite simply because the system tells them they can. They’re allowed.

This kind of abuse is rampant and takes many forms beyond simple sexual predation. It takes the form of racial profiling and police brutality. It takes the form of coercive compulsory schooling and downright systemic bullying. It takes the form of rigid gender norms and heteronormative grooming. It takes the form of post-colonial subjugation and cultural erasure. It takes the form of industrial warfare and a 24/7 news cycle.

We live in a very deeply unwell society, and the signs that surround us have grown downright dystopian, but our society is not sick, at least not in the medical sense of the word. Our society is traumatized, and we are a society traumatized by Western Civilization itself. A civilization built on genocide, slavery, and apocalyptic Abrahamic cultural supremacy. A civilization that raises its young before the unblinking eyes of Silicon Valley’s smartphone panopticon and then diagnoses them with brain diseases when they grow up to be broken and “unproductive” adults.

And far from fixing the problem, the construct of mental illness only serves to exacerbate it further, by treating trauma with trauma and then further marginalizing the results.

Studies collected by PubMed indicate that up to 66% of people experiencing their first episode of diagnosed psychosis develop PTSD from the inpatient treatment they are summarily subjected to. Treatment experiences which often include such totally legal indignities as forced medication, mandatory isolation, and physical restraint. Under such civilized circumstances, it is really little wonder that 99% of incarcerated men report having experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, with an additional 87-97% experiencing further trauma while incarcerated.

And incarceration is really what all of this comes down to. We are all incarcerated in ways both big and colossal every single day; in schools, in churches, in hospitals, in wage slavery, under constant surveillance, in the fog of forever wars, beneath the state. In a civilization defined by global homogeny and ceaseless growth.

We have become a post-traumatic society, and no pill is strong enough to cure our living affliction. We must end the abuse of progress, unplug ourselves from the global technofascist hivemind and return to an ecosystem built around community, mutual aid, local diversity, and environmental intimacy.

In other words, we must return to the wisdom of the shamans deemed mad by a debased order. Then and only then can we break the chains of Western Civilization and begin to heal.

This, dearest motherfuckers, is what my madness means to me. so, if you must diagnose me with anything, diagnose me as pathologically allergic to the modern world and the blind men in grey flannel suits willing to follow its dictates into the abyss.

Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania and assistant editor for Attack the System. You can find her online at Exile in Happy Valley.

Witches Unite: How Israel and the US Empire Tried (and Failed) to Crush Francesca Albanese

Michael Leonardi

 May 15, 2026

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Photograph Source: Matteo Nardone

The United States government, under first Biden and now Trump, has launched a full-scale assault on one of the most courageous and honest voices at the United Nations: Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In July 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against her — freezing assets, banning travel to the United States, and attempting to financially strangle her and her family — all for the crime of doing her job with integrity: rigorously documenting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and demanding accountability under international law.

In an unprecedented move, this appears to be the first time any country has ever sanctioned a sitting UN Special Rapporteur. The Trump administration’s attack has been particularly vicious. Israeli officials, led by UN envoy Danny Danon, had already resorted to medieval slander, publicly calling Albanese a “witch” with a “spell book” for daring to produce factual reports on Israeli crimes. The sanctions were designed to turn her into a global financial outcast: she has been blocked from accessing bank accounts, using credit cards, or managing any financial resources in both the US and Europe. Even banks in Italy and across the EU refused to open or allow access to her accounts out of fear of secondary US sanctions. Shockingly, neither the Italian government nor the broader European Union offered any meaningful defense of their own citizen and internationally mandated expert.

Thankfully, on May 13, 2026, a federal judge issued a temporary reprieve, suspending the sanctions and delivering a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration’s blatant attempt to punish protected speech and intimidate a UN mandate-holder. The ruling provides critical breathing room for Albanese and her family, though the broader threat remains.

Francesca Albanese has become one of the most authoritative and courageous international voices on Palestine. Since her appointment in 2022, she has methodically dismantled the lies shielding Israel’s colonial project. Her reports, grounded rigorously in international humanitarian and human rights law, have laid bare the reality: Israel is committing genocide, maintaining an apartheid regime, and pursuing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Her landmark 2024 report “Anatomy of a Genocide” and subsequent work have become essential reading.

Her powerful book, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine (released in English in April 2026), has already become a bestseller. The documentary DisUnited Nations further amplifies her courageous navigation of institutional cowardice at the UN while exposing the complicity of powerful member states.

Italy and Europe stand exposed in their moral bankruptcy. Despite Albanese being an Italian national, the Meloni government — ever eager to prove its loyalty to Washington and Tel Aviv — offered her no support, while continuing military and economic cooperation with the genocidal regime. The broader European Union has chosen complicity over conscience.

Meanwhile, Israel and its AIPAC-driven allies in the United States have spent hundreds of millions on hasbara — a sophisticated propaganda machine designed to whitewash the sadistic face of Zionism. But the mask has slipped. The colonial, settler project stands exposed: a European transplant in the Middle East, an ethno-supremacist state built on the erasure of the indigenous Palestinian people who are the actual Semitic inhabitants of the land. The European colonizers, who founded “Israel” with their decimation of over 500 Palestinian villages and forced expulsion of millions of Palestinians beginning with the Nakba in 1948, are not.

Despite the massive propaganda blitz by Zionist forces, a global awakening is underway. Millions now see Zionism for what it is: a racist, supremacist ideology rooted in colonial conquest and maintained through relentless violence and apartheid. The live-streamed genocide since October 2023 has torn away the final illusions.

The sanctions against Albanese were never only about her. They were about sending a message: speak truth to Israeli power and the empire will come for you. The temporary court victory is welcome, but the deeper fight continues.

Francesca Albanese remains undeterred. Her courage, intellectual rigor, and moral clarity continue to inspire millions. She is doing what the United Nations was supposed to do — but rarely does: speak truth to power and defend the oppressed.

The empire is striking back because it is losing the battle for legitimacy. The more frantically it attacks voices like Albanese’s, the clearer it becomes that the Zionist project and its imperial backers are on the wrong side of history.

Defend Francesca Albanese. End the sanctions on truth-tellers. End the genocide in Gaza. End the occupation. Free Palestine.

Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com

Judge Blocks US Sanctions Against UN Palestine Expert Francesca Albanese 

Francesca Albanese “has done nothing more than speak!” the judge wrote in his ruling.

By Shireen Akram-Boshar

May 16, 2026

Source: Truthout

Francesca Albanese. Photo: Rafael Medeiros

Afederal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s sanctions on Francesca Albanese, a UN expert on the occupied Palestinian territories, concluding that the sanctions violated her right to free speech after she called for Israeli officials to be charged with war crimes.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said that the sanctions against Albanese violate her right to free speech, as they aimed to “punish” and “suppress disfavored expression” after her recommendations to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Albanese has done nothing more than speak!” Leon wrote. “It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions – they are nothing more than her opinion.”

Albanese had called on the ICC to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders involved in the genocide in Gaza – including Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Defense Minister Israel Katz — after outlining how each of these figures played a part in the “infliction of collective torment and settler colonial genocide” in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed sanctions on Albanese in July 2025 based on Trump’s executive order targeting those “directly engaged” with ICC investigations into Israel’s crimes in Gaza. The executive order came after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for their crimes in Gaza.

The sanctions on Albanese have drastically affected her life; she has described them as imposing a “civil death.” The sanctions led to the seizure of her apartment in Washington, D.C., where she had lived with her husband and daughter, prevented them from returning to the U.S., and froze them out of international banking systems. In Albanese’s own words, “Even outside the U.S., it means financial exile. I cannot hold a bank account. I cannot make bank transfers. My email address was shut down.”

“My ties with the universities I had collaborated with — Georgetown and Columbia — were severed,” she continued, speaking in an interview last month. “I am treated by the United States as an international drug trafficker, punished without due process, without any opportunity to defend myself. There are fines of up to 1 million dollars for anyone who provides goods or services to me. My husband works for a U.S.-based organization. My daughter was born in the U.S. and holds American citizenship. All of us have been affected.”

In imposing sanctions on Albanese, Rubio claimed that she had “spewed unabashed antisemitism,” while decrying her allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Left-wing economist Yanis Varoufakis wrote of the repression Albanese faced due to her outspokenness on the genocide: “Smears. Investigations. Vicious editorials. Frozen bank accounts. Dispossession of the only apartment she had ever owned. The machinery of the respectable turned to crush her.”

The U.S. has also sanctioned at least 11 ICC judges, who described the effects it has had as leaving them and their families “wiped out economically and socially.”

Leon’s preliminary injunction against the sanctions halts travel bans and banking restrictions on Albanese.

Albanese wrote on X on Wednesday, after Leon’s decision: “The interim by the US judge gives me respite but the battle is not over. ICC judges and Palestinian NGOs remain sanctioned with no recourse to justice. The stakes are incredibly high.”

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This article was originally published by Truthout; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.

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Shireen Akram-Boshar

Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist writer, editor and Middle East/North Africa solidarity activist.