The New Agora March 2010

Free

the March 2010

A

Get Real

gora www.TheAgoraNational.ca

Permacultu re

by Jesse L emieux

Solution: A Workable ury End Us Kennedy

by Tommy Healthy Living Th rough Sound

by Pepe Danza

Corkey , t Green he 100%

by Phy Mouse sOrg.c om

the News Renewing Wolf

by Naomi

t Energy Zero Poin l Hey

by Michae

Systems Change ...

But to What and How?

by Greg Dean

Ubunt u = No Stude nt De More bt?

by He lla D

Vancouver Hea rtbeat Raising the M edia Bar

by Aleksandra Rea

solutions CONTENT ADVISORY

2

Contents

march 2010

The Agora: Leading the Canadian Print Media Revolution

In Canada, a handful of corporations control nearly all news media. As the consequences of this monopoly on information become increasingly apparent, dependence on these outlets for reliable and relevant information becomes unacceptable. The cynicism and apathy built up within this society are now in need of remedy.

With the development of the internet it has become possible for anyone to bypass the monopoly of big media and get the word out on an endless range of issues. This technology has rapidly ignited a renaissance in freedom of expression. The paper you hold in your hands is dedicated to carrying this renaissance through into a full blown revolution in the realm of print media.

We provide a professional platform to all the news and views you have not been seeing in the dying corporate press. We are committed to a revival of true print journalism. We also strive to provide workable solutions and ideas for action. In order to accomplish these goals while retaining integrity, Agora abides by an open source philosophy of content generation. This means that no one voice may use money or undue influence to drown out the others. To be sure we do not become beholden to any one editorial bias, our editorial crew has been populated with feisty humans to disagree on practically everything.

After all, who knows better what information you should or should not be exposed to: A few monolithic corporations? The Government?...Or You?

Renewing the News Naomi Wolf

Human Value System Matt Berkowitz

Burlesque Beauties Calamity Kate

Health Not in a Needle Dr. Tenpenny

Intolerable Cruelty Harrison Koehli

Olympic Aftermath

Solidarity in Vancouver, by Isaac Oommen Broken Glass and Baton Brusies, by Sid Ishon Black Block Tactics, Police State Victory, by Terri-Lynn Olympic Opposition: Rude, Messy, Awesome, by Garth Mullins

Health

8 6 7 8

Health Not in a Needle, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny Health Food and Politics, by Ellen Atkin Computer Games may Cure PTSD, by Melanie Grimes Pharma Researcher Fakes Studies, by Mike Adams Time to Stop Consuming Soy, by Dr. Jay Davidson Pesticides Killing Birds and Bees, by Ethan Huff

34 5 32 34 32 32

An Angry Vote Is An Ignorant Voter, by Wray Herbert Corkey the Mouse, by Physorg.com Spray on Glass, by Physorg.com The Year of Ubuntu, by HellaD Man, Machine, and In Between, by Jens Clausen Zero Point Energy, by Michael Hey Permaculture, by Jesse Lemieux

30 38 38 36 35 16 13

Science

Culture

Recipe for Doro Tibs, by GoJo’s Restaurant Burlesque Beauties, w/ Calamity Kate Spirituality, by Maitreyi Slave Revolt, by Derrick Jensen The Future of Facts, by Esther Dyson Renewing the News, by Naomi Wolf Intolerable Cruelty, by Harrison Koehli Updating the Human Value System, by Matthew Berkowitz The More You Know, The More You See, by Alexander Nichols Systems Change...But to What? by Greg Dean Towards a Coherent Jewish Culture, by Zev Tiefenbach Freedom for Families, by Sheila Northcott Ocean of Sound, by Joseph Pepe Danza Vancouver Heartbeat, by Aleksandra Rea Where’s the Humanity? by Kevin Kelso Artist Spotlight, with Amanda O’Keefe and Laura Zerebeski The V-Spot, with Vera Zyla Change Makers, Presented by The Agora

Politics

News Atlas Stop the B.C. Hydro Sell Off, by BC Refederation Party A Dim View of “Enlightened Sovereignty” by Dee Nicholson Why Harper Prorogued Parliament, by Doris Foster Canada is Not a Democracy, by Eric Partikian National Sovereignty and the Global Banking Crisis, by Paul Glumaz An End to Usury, by Tom J Kennedy The New Generation of North American Citizens, by Dana Gabriel

Crime

Water War Crimes, by John Carten and Karen Gibbs Steady Stream of Drug Money Departs Afghanistan: U.S. Officials Flummoxed, by Kurt Nimmo

39 10 11 35 30 31 26 20 17 14 15 15 12 12 9 4 3 3 28 15 22 23 23 25 24 31 18 35

How To

Slave Revolt Derrick Jensen

“Enlightened Sovereignty” Dee Nicholson

Systems Change...

Greg Dean

ADVERTISE IN AGORA

The Agora is now on the lookout for quality advertising for exclusive placement within these pages.

Want to show your support for the revival of fearless print media?

Want to secure a place within the fastest growing revolutionary outlet in Canada?

We seek to work with businesses and entrepreneurs whom reflect the spirit of freedom, creativity and social conscience of this paper.

Our rates undercut those of other Vancouver papers substantially.

Our distribution is strategic. Rather than decomposing on doorsteps or in street corner boxes, our papers get into the hands of those who will read them and pass them on.

Even better, we will cough up a 20% commission to anyone who can bring us “the goods”.

What on earth are you waiting for? Let’s get this revolution started!

Call 778-840-4050 or 778-828-8246 to learn more.

Advertise@theagoranational.ca

Contact Us Advertising advertise@theagoranational.ca Article Submissions submissions@theagoranational.ca General Information www.TheAgoraNational.ca 778-840-4050 778-828-8246

Subscription Information 1 month: Canada $5 - North America $7.50 - World $10 6 months: Canada $25 - North America $37.50 - World $50 12 months: Canada $45 - North America $67.50 - World $90 Bulk subscriptions available upon request.

To subscribe go to www.TheAgoraNational.ca or call 778-828-8246

Disclaimer The Agora is a periodical that represents opinions and articles on a wide variety of issues and disciplines to its readers. The Agora is edited for appropriate content, and the authors swear that all articles are original and appropriately sourced. Neither The Agora nor its editors are liable for any damage incurred by the material printed herein. To the best of our knowledge all images and content are not copyrighted material. The opinions expressed are those of the contributors and may not reflect those of The Agora or the businesses that advertise with us.

Advisory

march 2010

Vancouver

3

The V-Spot With

Vera Zyla

, otherwise known as V to my inner circle. Suffice to say that all that is sexual is my passion and if I am not talking and teaching seminars on the topic I am reading about it or doing it!

I acquired a degree as a Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner and Acupuncturist prior to the career shift into the pleasure realms so my knowledge has a holistic Taoist bent at times. After discovering this passion for pleasure I helped pioneer a unique education based sex shop in Kits called The Art of Loving. www.TheArtofLoving.ca After 8 successful years and many learning opportunities that involved the latest research, state of the art toys, the sex positive community, the kink world as well as hearing thousands of personal stories from people, I am here to offer up my knowledge.

So send me those burning questions or maybe those flirting thoughts about something you can’t bring yourself to talk to your intimates about. I hope to share my V-verbiage and answer your questions straight up with zero Viagra.

Contact Vera at: Dear

V

I have been with my wife for 6 years now, and over that time I have really fell short in the gift giving department. It is rare that I will get her something nice(or anyhting at all) for her birthday or even Christmas.

Sure money is tight, and that is the excuse that I usually have for not bringing home the gifts. She knows I love her and care about her and I do things for her, but I am just wondering if not giving her gifts is hurting our relationship more than she lets on.

Thanks D

V_Spot@TheAgoraNational.ca

Dear D, There are a few theories out there that relate to your concern. What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do once in a while. The other school of thought says that you need to learn the LOVE LANGUAGE of your partner (and yourself for that matter). I think a blend of both is the best approach so here are the goods on the Language of Love.

Here is a little test to determine your partner’s Love Language: Which one of these statements would your partner most agree with?

I feel most loved when……….

1. my partner expresses feeling for me with hugs, kisses and physical contact.

2. my partner pays attention to me, spends lots of alone time with me and really focuses on what I have to say.

3. my partner says how grateful they are me and for the things I do.

4. my partner does favours and chores for me to help make my life easier.

5. my partner buys me very special gifts.

Of course, all of these forms of loving expression are important to varying degrees in every relationship, but one of them will invariably be at the top of the list for her.

If you are clueless after 6 years together as to which one of these really gets her going, now is the time to ask her. If she replies “number 4”, then you should definitely fix

condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance

T

o begin, we would like to thank the Agora Creators for allowing us to contribute to the wonderful vehicle of awareness and education that is this newspaper.

Changemakers (CM) is an idea-logical continuum of The Agora. We’d like CM to be a template where the like minded, informed and proactive can come together, resonate, and share knowledge and ideas in a face to face environment.

CM is about attracting those with a wide peripheral outlook and opinion of what is going on and that realize that “something is wrong with the ‘illusory’ picture”.

CM is not only about theorizing, writing or philosophizing, but about community building. It is for people who want to actually create and facilitate communities, locally as well as globally.

There are changes coming - however you see them - to this current society we’re in. It’s coming to its end and we’d like to create the template wherein those who understand this can help one another in the time of transition

and build t h e foundation for what is coming around the mountain, so to speak.

We’re going to have our first “Social” on March 19th, 2010 at the Beaumont Studios - 316 West 5th ave. We’re going to share some knowledge with those that attend and we think it will spark dialogue and conversations as to how we can work together and implement positive change.

The key is to have like minded individuals come together, be ready to contribute with an open mind and open heart.

CM is not about exposing false flag operations or sounding the alarm on the next vaccine shot. Yes, understanding matters such as these is important, but our mandate is to

come o t e r m s with these matters and then create a community that rises above and blossoms into a reality we can truly call sane; To live as we were meant to live.

CM will be about service to others, love, friendship and being pragmatic. Does any of this appeal to you?

“It must be hard for those, that take authority as truth, rather than truth as the authority” -Gerald Massey.

CM would like to gather the truth seekers and inspire them toward a path of even greater awareness and consciousness. To be part of CM is to have a thirst and hunger for knowledge, of what ails this planet, the past t

that wobbly leg on the dining room table when she mentions it. I call this one choreplay (instead of foreplay. It works the same on some levels).

Having this intimate knowledge about your partner and putting it into practice daily will be the best gift you could ever give her.

Being aware of your partner’s needs and fulfilling them will help things get better for you both!

Here are the categories to remember.

1. Physical Touch 2. Spending Quality Time 3. Words of Affirmation 4. Doing Acts of Service 5. Buying Gifts

-V

-Einstein

and the present. Are you ready to embrace the future, see the challenges posed and look at the future with opportunity in mind and not the despondence so many are trapped by?

Yes, CM will have an umbrella of opinions, but we plan on not getting too esoteric.

Nor will we allow our vision and template to be hijacked. It will be interesting to filter what is real and what is not, but that will be part of the journey into which we invite you.

Agent provocateurs should just have a coke and a smile and carry on their way, in silliness and misdirection.

We will try and educate on a number of topics in the upcoming issues and we really look forward to meeting and interacting with others who are climbing the same mountain and want to create the same path, gaining strength in numbers and participating in being guardians and trustees of life on this earth.

So if you have been looking for us, we’ve been waiting for you. Those that are meant to understand, will. See you there!

4

Vancouver

march 2010

Artist Spotlight See Amanda’s work on page 11

Yurt

Interview with Amanda O’Keefe by Jordan Turner.

JT - Amanda, where do you originally come from?

AO - I was born in Northern New Jersey, went to school in Boston, lived in Brooklyn and Jersey City as well.

JT - Why were you interested in bringing your art to Vancouver?

AO - It’s always good to stimulate discourse in new terrain, especially while crossing the Canadian border with strange paper fibers, which is apparently a suspicious act.

JT - How does the Rare Earth Societies’ Full Circle Artist Residency differ from the time you spent in 2009 on the ‘Unorthodox Alchemy Exhibition and Artist Residency’, with the Red 03 Art Gallery in Barcelona, Spain?

AO - Barcelona was amazing, the festiveness on the streets, Costa Brava, Picasso, Dali, Miro, Goudi, Cades de Estrac, wine with breakfast….perfecto. I painted shadows of my art on the red03 gallery walls. The culture there is of course different from that of Vancouver. Here I am during the Olympics living in yurta. I can see fireworks from my window every night. I chop wood with an ax. The similarity between the two experiences is that in both cases I was welcomed into an artistic community, and this I have to say, is the best way to travel.

JT - When and how did you begin incorporating metal and stretched organic materials together in you sculpture?

urative forms, displaceAO - I have always + Artist = Yurtist been interested in usment, and satire. : Amanda O’Keefe is a ing multiple maJT - How does mixed-media and sculpture artist terials; intrigued your knowledge and interest in by the mix from New Jersey, currently participatneuro-anatoand overlaps ing in the Full Circle Artist Residency in my manifest that provoke Vancouver. Amanda was selected from over itself in your translucency, 100 local and international submissions to live textures, and art? and create her artwork in an award-winning tensions.

AO Yurta on the front lawn of Gropp’s Gallery The pracThe coolest thing about tice of paper from February 13th – March 27th, 2010. She a piece of making really will be using the Yurta as a live/work studio art or of any began to drive space, to hash out the creative outcome my sculptural interception of her stay in Vancouver. For more practice around of perceptual information or to contact Amanda, experience, is the 2007. The process ability to introduce a of breaking down please visit amandaokeefe. completely novel stimorganic fibers, and recom. constructing them possess ulus to people. The physian utterly malleable versatility. cal pathways involved with how these stimulus environments are received In order to create a framework for the paper, I began welding forms to allow myself to became very interesting to me. Also, the way draw in space. The forms serve as structures of nature as its own mechanical universe, that that influence the formation of the stretched persists to keep us in function. The relationpaper, and become their own sculptural enti- ship between the biological and mechanical became a reference for me. ties.

JT - On your web site you devote an enJT - Why electric-metal etching? How did you come to create work in this particular me- tire section to audio recordings. What is the significance of these audio experiments and dium?

AO - The metal etchings came about as a how did you become interested in this form of side project of sorts in New York City. I was artistic expression? working a full time gig doing web sites, prodAO - I am interested in time-based media; uct development, and graphic design at place its capacity to stimulate a perceptual interprethat makes custom hardware for rich people. tation of new forms, rhythms, tones, and psyA colleague of mine, David Pulliam, and I chological realities. Although my completed wanted to experiment in this “steam punk” sculptures stand (or hang) stagnantly, the diprocess as a creative outlet. We would work verse processes involved in creating them ocon some of the experiments after work in the cur in a sort time-based performance manner. shop; and we pooled resources; metal, car bat- A future project idea is to merge the medias.

JT - Many of your pieces have an architery charger, salt-water, alligator clips, copper wire. I like the way the textures of eaten metal tectural quality to them. Why? Do you see carry imagery, transforming tins into precious your interest in architecture having an influence on your path through life and the arts? objects.

JT - Your sculptural pieces look as if they AO - I am interested in architecture as an are the products of an organic free flowing all-inclusive artistic experiment that engages process. Is this the case or do you work more all of the senses, and manipulates society in a meticulous pre planned fashion? throughout a given space. I had been applyAO - The cultivation usually is free-range ing to architecture schools when I found this and organic. Drawing in space, one line feeds residency online, and ironically enough, one off of another. However, I am influenced by of the schools I applied to is UBC. My desire the structures around me, by industrial and fig- to study architecture stems from my interest

in escalating my artistic endeavors to the level of large public sculptures. In this way, the residency began brilliantly; I was able to assist in the construction of the Yurta before settling in; which I feel is extremely important to the experience. There will be, an architectural dialogue between the work I create and the structure that I inhabit. Interestingly enough, my sculptures possess features similar to that of the yurt; hard skeletal framework, stretched with soft exterior.

JT - Hey Amanda…are you getting much work done in your cozy yurt?

AO - I am developing a productive routine that is strongly influenced by the environment; the yurt, art, and community engagement. Dayto-day, I have been chopping firewood, salvaging old metal scraps for sculptures, sharing the project with the passers by. The yurta is a total warp of time and space, which is great for productivity. There has been, however, some discontent from certain individuals that have caused some authorities to threat a forced removal of the yurta. This is unsettling, and an interruption to say the least. However, this project is far too awesome to be shut down. I plan on taking full advantage of this residency, and to create large sculptures out of found metal and paper. *** To see more of Amanda O’Keefe’s work, check out www.amandaokeefe.com, or come out to visit the Blood & Culture Exhibition and the Full Circle Artist Residency at Gropp’s Gallery. February 13th – March 27th, 2010. Open Studios Monday-Friday 1-5pm. Its free and open to the public. Drop by and meet some local and international artists, intellectuals and celebrities, and check out the awardwinning Yurta – our Artist Oasis in the Big City of Vancouver. There will be lots of local art for sale at reasonable prices – along with a house/ gallery/micro-utopia that is a spectacle in itself, and not to be missed by any local or visitor to the area.

We will be hosting a closing exhibition for Amanda O’Keefe’s 45-day residency on March 27th, 2010 from 7-11pm. Please drop by to see the culmination of artistic works!

For more show and gallery information, or to contact the artist directly, please check out www.groppsgallery.com , www.amandaokeefe. com and www.rareearthsociety.ca

whatever happens in politics, theres always a good reason, and then theres the real reason.

-Mandelhaus

Laura Zerebeski

I

grew up in a pulp mill town in BC’s interior and loved to paint as a kid. My art teachers were often exasperated because I wanted to go by instinct, which I guess means I am mostly self-taught. However, becoming a starving artist scared me: after growing up in the 80’s recession, I craved stability and opted for a BA at the University of British Columbia. I still painted, and my poor roommates had to put with a lot of somewhat gothic subject matter over the years. With every new painting I put up, they’d tactfully suggest that I should get some fresh air and sunshine. Painting was my way of working out frustration at a world I couldn’t control.

After UBC, I embarked on a 16-year corporate career, painting sporadically and eventually rarely between various systems projects.

Along the way, I met my husband, we had a son, and I started painting again. This time I focused on local subjects, things I knew. I was inspired by the everyday stuff, because sometimes there are days when the ordinary becomes absolutely beautiful due to whatever effects of light or season or one’s own mood.

I began painting professionally and developed two styles of work: exuberantly satirical landscapes which depict Vancouver and the surrounding province and more introspective abstracts where I pull inspiration from music,

literature, and poetry. As an avid runner and cyclist, I try to portray the feeling one might have when moving through a scene. Certain landmarks you see might hang in your head and then you see another point of interest; in your mind, it all seems closer together and brighter because of endorphins, fresh air, and good weather. Meanwhile, my abstracts show internal landscapes and the transition from one emotion to another. The common point

between both styles is the sense of motion and change.

My paintings have elements of distortion and vivid colors to create a whimsical, cheerful view of the world. I’ve learned that you can’t control the world but you can interpret it, and I like to emphasize the color and character and electricity of life. There is so much joy and motion around us and my hope is that those who appreciate my paintings get a jolt of familiarity.

march 2010

Health Food and Politics I

f you are in good health, you respond better, you think better, you feel better. If you are not in good health, you feel depressed, slow, achy, or worse yet, you may have a disease. What is the difference?

How do you get from one polarity to the other? Who fault is it? Whose responsibility is it?

Well, you can blame the government for letting genetically modified franken foods slip into our food supply unlabeled and untested. You can blame Monsanto for creating them. You can blame some undisclosed sentient being(s?) for spraying hazardous chemicals into the air through contrail emissions.

You can blame the government for adding fluoride to the water. You can blame pharmaceutical companies for their sick making drugs and vaccines. You can blame your doctor for prescribing them. You can blame mainstream media for under reporting all these facts because their bosses are members of the same club promoting these bizarre and inhumane practices. Let’s not leave out factory farming either.

...a poisoned food and water supply, processed and refined food with no nutrient value seen as normal, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, coffee, SUGAR…you can choose to not engage in any of it. Turn away and you will find a thriving alternative health community.

I called a Canadian Senator’s office recently (Art Eggleton) to protest the passing of bill C-6, which rolls over portions of Canada’s sovereignty to an international body, (the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization) and engaged in a little debate with the secretary. She asked me if I wanted Canada to become the dumping ground for substandard international products, like milk, baby bottles and something else she assumed I needed. I told her I didn’t drink milk and that people should just be educated about good health. She immediately replied that I was being unreasonable.

I thought back to government education programs like ParticipACTION in the early 80’s and the continuous promotion of healthy initiatives from all levels of government hence. What is so unreasonable about that?

They do it all the time.

All this being so - brainwashed clerks in government, (well you have to admit it must be easier to handle that way), a poisoned food and water supply, processed and refined food with no nutrient value seen as normal, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, coffee, SUGAR… you can choose to not engage in any of it. Turn away and you will find a thriving alternative health community. Converging aspects include, the Slow Food Movement, The 100 Mile Diet, the Living and Raw Foods Movement, buying and growing organic, fasting and cleansing, fermented and cultured food, seed storing, herbal remedies, and on and on…

These movements have emerged because our increasingly poisoned and toxic

environment has taken second stage to the profiteers of industry. Indeed, our great grandparents practiced most of these movements as a matter of course. Now we want to maintain the integrity of these movements so they will not be co-opted by the powers that be. Codex Alimentarius recently discussed allowing a certain chemical into the production of organically labeled bananas.

Codex Alimentarius is the project funded by the World Health Organization to set an international standard, supposedly for our own good, on everything ingestible. This is the international standard the senator’s secretary was talking about. Codex Alimentarius is comprised of international delegates who almost solely defer to the interests of big agri-business hell bent on controlling the world’s food supply. For our own good?

Yeh right.

Realistically we can assume that these modern, back to the good old days, movements are only adopted by a small percentage of the population. You may hear about them but adopting them is another story.

True, the grocers are bending to the trend by offering more local and organic food, but there is more to understanding your food than pulling it off the shelf.

You may know that you need to do something about your eating habits but before you even begin you may read a disparaging article in the newspaper that headlines organic food has no more nutrient value than regular food and breathe a sigh of relief that you don’t have to change. Or you may have seen and heard someone speak about the wonders of being on a certain diet and got turned around with morbid fascination and incredulity at a very sickly looking person speak about health. There are many paths to finding your own good health equation.

One in four people are still getting cancer. Nothing breaks my heart more than to see the cancer industry continue to throw the wool over well meaning people’s eyes.

I have seen a broke small business woman write a check for 100.00 to some ridiculous marathon for cancer research; young girls at a film festival brightly and innocently asking for donations for breast cancer; and the most heartbreaking of all, grannies set up in the mall with hundreds of man hours worth of hand knitted and crocheted baby stuff, doilies and toques ready to hand it all over to a bunch of crooks. With all the brain power in the world these days and billions of dollars down the drain, does it make any sense that there is still no reported cure for cancer?

Probably 10 - 15% of the population actually makes efforts, often misguided and misinformed, to live a healthy lifestyle.

Probably 25% are sick and dying. The rest are in a regulated state of slow decline. We will probably see a rise in sick and dying as more people are born with failing systems due to inherited malnutrition. What is going on here?

While we should be heralding breakthroughs in agricultural science, soil and water purification and increased yields, we are choosing to die for bad habits stemming from misinformation. This is where choice and personal responsibility come in. You decide if you want to live in health or decay. Nowadays disease reversal can easily

Vancouver

5

by Ellen Atkin

be accomplished through simple diet modifications. Cancer, diabetes, arthritis, and the entire, ever increasing, list of labels for internal toxic sludge are easily reversed to radiance with a little discipline, fortitude, positive attitude and a whole lot of education. Use your common sense when you wade into the alternative health arena. If you are feeling better you are on the right track. Don’t buy some guru’s diagnosis of “healing crisis” if you aren’t feeling it. I have been fasting and cleansing and making diet modifications (swinging from good to bad) for over 30 years and I have never had a “healing crisis.”

Personally I have reversed all kinds of cumulative nuisances like, indigestion, gas, bloating, joint pain, sallow skin, constipation, asthma, allergies, liver spots with diet modifications and cleanses. My biggest evolutionary leap occurred in 2006 when I officially “went raw” or became a raw foodist. Within a few months of eating a 90% uncooked diet, I lost 15 pounds and experienced a remarkable rise in energy, vitality and endurance. I could articulate better. Joint pain disappeared. Oddly enough, these two things put together made me a faster typist. My skin sparkled. Things began to improve on another level as well. My dreams became more vivid while I slept better. I became more psychic and aware while awake. I actively set about to find God. I changed my whole life. I abandoned all I found disagreeable in my life and plunged like a mad adventurer into the unknown.

I would like to think that I have staved off larger health concerns by being aware for the better part of my life about alternative health. Lucky for me one of my first jobs was in a health food store that wasn’t very busy. So I read a lot of the books on the shelf. Maybe you aren’t so lucky. The point is start somewhere, or not. I couldn’t really care less. Just don’t complain to me about your ailments. Nothing is incurable. In the final equation, you are responsible for your own health.

Skipping the middle isles in the supermarket, relearning everything you knew about food preparation and adding supplements that you have never heard of are a few of the modifications you may make. At first it can be expensive but once you get the hang of it, a living foods diet can be a lot cheaper. It really isn’t that easy until you do it. Thinking about it is the hard part.

There is so much good news coming from the alternative health and organic food movements, that there is no need to succumb to illness, malnutrition or hunger. One example of breakthrough science includes a subtle energy enhanced water filter developed by Ken Brown and Dr. Yuri Kronn of Energy Tools International. Dr. Kronn has invented a way to impart the energetic frequency of vitamins and minerals no longer present in our soils, into the filter, which carry out to the plant. It really works.

Food scarcity and overpopulation is a myth invented by the same people who are trying to curtail and co-opt the thriving alternative health movement because they see their monopolies being weakened. People don’t want to go along with the idea of a few large businesses controlling the world’s food supply. So government is trying to make taking responsibility for your own health illegal!

Well it won’t happen. If it takes another election to finally get this nasty business of Bill C-6 off the table, then so be it.

The fight against bill C-6 and the corresponding Health Care Bill in the states is on.

It is not about your health. It is about control, population control specifically. It is important to fight these bills not only to maintain your right to access natural cures, but to stop this mad agenda against sovereignty on a global scale.

It will be an interesting time ahead as we watch consumers continue to define the marketplace and agribusiness shuffle and hustle their positions to stay in control. Redefine terminology a little here, jail a few herbalists there, and raid a few organic farms, heck they must really be losing it. It has gotten so serious that they are trying to legislate their way into total domination. It only takes a change of government that has the moral fortitude to buck the internationalists. As a leading and uniquely positioned member of the industrialized nations, it is really Canada’s job to do this.

Ellen Atkin and RawBc are holding a speaking engagement with Scott Tips, president of the Natural Health Foundation – the only health freedom organization to have attained official Codex-recognized status, in the Spring of 2010.

Ellen Atkin is a photographer and health promoter based in Vancouver, BC. Ellenatkin.com ellenatkin@gmail.com

There is so much good news coming from the alternative health and organic food movements, that there is no need to succumb to illness, malnutrition or hunger. One example of breakthrough science includes a subtle energy enhanced water filter developed by Ken Brown and Dr. Yuri Kronn of Energy Tools International. Dr. Kronn has invented a way to impart the energetic frequency of vitamins and minerals no longer present in our soils, into the filter, which carry out to the plant. It really works.

6

Vancouver

march 2010

~The Agora reminds readers that the content herein constitutes the views and dispositions of the authors exclusively, and does not reflect the viewpoints of The Agora directly. As an open source news venue, The Agora strives to make available a wide range of perspectives on all issues. As always, we trust in the reader to make his or her own determinations regarding views expressed.~

Broken Glass and Baton Bruises one sunny Vancouver Morn The 2010 Heart Attack Demo

by

E

arly Saturday morning (Feb. 13th) in Thornton park, under the main street skytrain platform, Squatchi the anti-olympic mascot gives a stirring speech no-one can hear over the traffic as masked anarchists and other protesters mill around. No-one’s sure what to expect and the police presence is subtle, mostly ghost cars and bike cops ready to do the usual traffic control.

The march forms up and drills it’s communications team, practicing changing direction on the fly using signal flags and cell phones, and then it heads north towards Hastings.

It was later confirmed that police were using a mobile electronic surveillance hub to monitor the march’s recon team. The organizers used a simple but effective network of scouts on bikes to recon different march routes and keep police guessing about where to set up barricades. The march could feign one route, and then quickly veer off with a sudden redirect via the signal flags at each end.

This system even earned a few nods of approval from the pigs themselves, duly impressed by the use of actual tactics. They’re unfortunately not used to seeing this in Vancouver... yet.

Vancouver says it wants to be a world class city? World class cities aren’t completely baffled when they see a black bloc. They ‘re able to discuss it on an adult plane, instead of grasping for childish platitudes about “hate” and “criminality”.

The black bloc is a widely documented part of the geopolitical landscape for almost 20 years.

I was front row center for Vancouver’s first black bloc and I make no apologies. I stand in solidarity with those who facilitate their autonomy by masking up. A hundred skinny anarchists and like-minds sent a crystal clear message to the douche bag autocrats of the IOC that this is no longer a town content to be passive when it shows its outrage at the injustice that permeates the Olympic Games. This message was equals parts aimed at the “security apparatus” of Vancouver, both public and private, both temporary and permanent. May the message of the day inspire all future host cities.

The police state paymasters wanted the same old passive protests they could easily dismiss and discredit. They can always aim the cameras the other way. But the lure of what was ultimately a miniscule amount of

n good healt retired for many opinions for his ow politicians who’ve been ng hi nc pu ly om nd ra reat d the state an eets. He lives for the th str r ou h ug ro th d rte co ity will learn years and walk unes st all logic that human ain ag s pe ho d an e pl of a good exam s ... . The struggle continue before it destroys itself

property damage is too strong. The shameless voyeurism of the mainstream media turned against itself in an orgy of camera flashes and a sudden dose of adrenaline. The eyes of the world may have taken notice of the family friendly demonstrations resisting the torch and opening ceremonies on Friday (Feb. 12th), but on Saturday morning, the world blinked in surprise.

And let me guess, your line sounds something like: “The media will just spin it out of context and use it to discredit the peaceful protestors.”

True, that’s their standard op and anyone who’s been organizing for any length of time knows this, but they also know how little attention passive protest garners without something to sensationalize. If you understand the meme warfare of corporate media so well, I think you

“

th too bourhood anarchists wi

endly neigh smashing Sid Ishon is one of your fri h. His turns-on include

the courage and conviction I saw as I write this article.

It was passive protest at its finest and my point is, the web traffic only spiked.

On Saturday morning, when those windows started breaking, ORN web sites started crashing. The web traffic overwhelmed the host servers. The writing is on the wall.

This is what the digital world wants to see.

I’m as sorry as anyone that these are the rules of the info wars, I think it speaks volumes about the sorry state of the collective mind set, but I will play the game I see in front of me, and I will use whatever underhanded methods to force people to at least engage on these issues, regardless of their opinions.

Whichever side of the fence you’re on, if you’re talking about it, our day’s work is done.

I wa s fro nt row cen ter for Van cou ver ’s firs t bla ck blo c and I ma ke no apo log ies ... Th e pol ice sta te pay ma ste rs wa nte d the sam e old pas siv e pro tes ts the y cou ld eas ily dis mis s and dis cre dit .

Th ey can alw ays aim the cam era s the oth er wa y.

Bu t the lur e of wh at wa s ult ima tely a min isc ule am oun t of pro per ty dam age (wa s) too stro ng.

need to acknowledge that for the price of a few bank windows, we jacked up the international profile of the Olympic resistance network (ORN) by an exponential factor.

ORN web sites and their affiliates noted an increase in web traffic that started Friday morning as footage of demos to block and harass the torch relay began to hit the airwaves. I participated in those actions throughout the day, and my heart almost burst to see such a wide spectrum of activists, community workers and elders standing together (and in some cases, chasing the damn torch right out of their neighbourhoods). It was powerful stuff, visual poetry and I wonder if I’ll live to see anything so good again. I’m content with that and I offer it as proof that I am not fetishizing one set of tactics over another. It was a privilege to be there in that moment when countless variables seemed to click and I’m still in awe of

”

That is to say, whatever underhanded methods short of harming other living things of course, unless they directly try to harm me first. I won’t destroy something of real value just to make a point, it’s too narcissistic for my tastes. I am not a pacifist, nor am I sociopath.

I attack the lies, the thin facade our society presents to the world.

“Violence” only pertains to other living things. Equating property damage with harming living beings is to completely abandon rationality. Its magical thinking, blind faith in the word of law as a substitute for a real sense of personal morality.

In fact, the black bloc mostly creates jobs for guys who replace windows. The storefronts are insured, it’s economic stimu-

lation for the glass manufacturing sector. (We await their sponsorship cheques) As an amusing aside, a bunch of proolympics revellers broke more windows that same night just for the hell of it. They’d been drinking, and no-one, including the cops gives two sh*ts what their motivation was.

Some political context seems to be the difference between “hateful criminal thugs” and “boys will be boys”, and I want to point out that no riot cops were chasing them, and they weren’t picking and choosing targets, in case anyone is keeping score.

By definition of the word, the only initiation of “violence” that morning was by police and one random yahoo who thought it was smart to walk into a mob of masked anarchists and start throwing punches. I’m just as shocked and appalled as you are! Alright ... I’m kidding. It wasn’t shocking. More like we were curious exactly how long it would take for the pigs to start bootfucking us. I’m amazed we made it as far as we did. Many of my friends have fat purple and green bruises from those batons, but you know what? They wear the welts with pride and a sense of humour.

I see a whole new generation of brilliant kids with no fear on its way up, and I know a lot of soulless, old, lizard-lookin’ demagogue mother fu*kers in expensive suits see exactly what I see. And I know it makes them very, very nervous.

So it should.

I also want to acknowledge that as always, we’re only dealing in symbolic victories here, but the black bloc is about seizing temporary autonomy as much as it was a publicity stunt in a town like Vancouver.

Compared to what goes on in Athens for instance, the 2010 heart attack demo was child’s play.

But it’s a start as well as a point of no return.

Congratulations Vancouver! Welcome to the big leagues, now just try not to embarrass yourself again asking stupid questions like “Why are they wearing masks?”

Read up on the history of the black bloc and the various roles this tactic has played throughout the world, and maybe someday, you’ll find yourself trying it out. Anger is an admittedly blunt instrument, with its proper time and place, ideally (and rarely) guided by careful forethought.

Let’s be clear, I’m not TELLING you to do anything, just drawing attention to that little ball of cognitive dissonance everyone’s walking around with these days. Combine with righteous indignation and stir.

Deep down, you know you wanna smash the state. You know you do. Carpe diem.

march 2010

Vancouver

7

Black Bloc Tactics = Victory for the Police State

by Terri Lynn

W

ell folks, the party’s over, and for many it is a time of reflection. While many nurse Olympic spirit hangovers, and business’s add up the books to see if they made enough to get them through the projected and inevitable burst of the Olympic economic bubble, those who chose to protest instead of party also have much to reflect upon.

The activist community is abuzz with heated debates over what worked and what didn’t in the aftermath of sought after media attention. With that in mind lets review the more controversial tactics, in order to build a better understanding of the debate.

The day of the opening ceremonies thousands of people flooded the Vancouver downtown core, to noisily, but peacefully protest the Olympics. Various activist groups and individuals with diverse causes ranging from

homelessness, the environment, Native land claims, animal rights, to concerns over imminent police state and soaring public debt, found themselves unified in solidarity under the anti-Olympic banner, to take advantage of the world wide media spotlight and make their causes known. While the demonstration was widely reported in the media, it was soon overshadowed by the events that took place the following day.

Early the next morning a different kind of action was taking shape. A group of around 400 people gathered for ‘Heart Attack 2010’ a planned demonstration with the stated goal of blocking the Olympic traffic going to Whistler at the intersection of Denman and Georgia. Roughly a third of the protesters were militantly dressed in all black with their faces covered. ‘The Black Bloc’ led the march, waving black flags and Anarchy symbols and were flanked by colorful musicians and a couple hundred anti-Olympic protesters. Most of these, it is safe to say, were unaware and unwitting cohorts of the planned destruction that lie ahead, although it was advertised on many Olympic resistance web sites that, “The demonstration would respect a diversity of tactics and aimed to disturb business as unusual on the first day of the Olympics.” One of these web sites belonging to the APC (Anti Poverty Committee) who flew their banner proudly in solidarity with the Black Bloc, until balaclava clad youth started dragging newspaper boxes into intersections to block traffic. At which point the banner flipped around to show only the back black side, then as the destruction increased to smashing newspaper boxes through windows, the banner disappeared completely.

There is no question now that the

term, “diversity of tactics,” meant to those in the know, that specific targets would be attacked. This tactic is commonly called, “violent direct action,” though many anarchists believe that it should not be classified as violent because, “violence,” as per Wiki definition, “is the expression of physical or verbal force against self or other.”

One supporter summed up this sentiment nicely by stating, “Windows and buildings don’t have feelings, but people do.”

In fact the Black Bloc maintains that the only actual violence in this event perpetrated against human beings was done so at the hands of the police, and that the blood soaked history of “The Hudson’s Bay Company”, one of the main targets, far outweighs the destruction caused against them. The important debate, as this writer sees it, is not in definitions or whether or not the attacks were justified. Because anyone who understands the history of genocide and abuse suffered by the natives due to the, “The Hudson’s Bay Company,” would have a hard time arguing that this small scale destruction is not indeed justified. But the question that begs is rather, in our heavily media centered culture is this tactic an effective tool in the resistance toolkit?

Granted, it definitely got world wide attention, so if its quantity they’re after then I’d say they hit the mark. But what about quality?

I’m willing to bet that all the finer details of the message the Black Bloc had to share with the world was lost to the masses.

It fell on deaf ears of a huge demographic; the baby boomer generation who were guided by the MSM (main stream media) into interpreting what they saw on T.V. as a few spoiled kids dressed in black, crashing the party in a frenzy of chaos and violence and randomly smashing stuff. The backlash of the MSM and the general public, not to mention much of the activist community themselves, has been fierce. I personally witnessed an angry bystander being interviewed beside the broken Bay window saying, “ I think they should all be rounded up and thrown in camps!”

It is sentiments just like this that has the activist community scrambling to distance themselves from the destructive stunts that took place.

Many activists are keenly aware that in this post 9/11 world, the definition of terrorism is being continuously broadened, eroding the rights of free speech and assembly in its wake and threatening to ultimately envelop the entire activist community if left unchallenged. Of course this encroachment is challenged diligently and relentlessly through many avenues; protests, blockades, boycotts, culture jamming, alternative media, organized resistance and non-cooperation, even by individuals getting in the face of elite scum bags and calling them out on camera for all of YouTube to see. This is the

thorn in the side of the corporate sellouts er.. I mean Federal Government, and indeed the ruling oppressors worldwide, and what better way to silence the whole bunch, than by using the example of a few, “dangerous radicals,” to clamp down on the rest, ironically in the inTe r r i - L y n n i s a f r e e d o m , t r u t h terest of public safety. and peace activist zand artist.

Anarchists smashing windows, is ultimately a victory for E m a i l : Te r r i @ v u l t u r e c u l t u r e . c a the police state because, In the eyes of the general public it valWe b s i t e : v u l t u r e c u l t u r e . c a idates the need for massive police budgets, more cops on the block the highway did the riot-cops show street, more cameras, and stricter policies. up. At that point the riot cops used a unusual I mean, there’s dangerous violent radicals and menacing tactic of making lines between out there, we need more protection! Righ- groups of people, trying to split them up, hht, just like the world needs more bombs to which led to pushing and shoving, instigated keep the peace. It plays right into the police by the police first. As police created lines bestate trap. Which leads us to the subject of tween crowds and advanced toward people, agent provocateurism. media and protestors alike, they shoved them Most of the readers will be aware people in all directions, eventually leading to of the example from Montebello, Quebec violent clashes and arrests. where members of the police were dressed The likely answer as to why the police in the unofficial uniform of the anarchist, would stand back until the damage was done black on black, with black bandanas. These is because they wanted to make sure that the officers were pretending to be demonstra- protesters were seen as the bad guys and they tors threatening with rocks in their hands were seen as the good guys on the evening in an obvious attempt to incite violence at news. the peaceful demonstration, until they were This brings me back to my original quesexposed and isolated by peaceful protesters, tion and conclusion, “In this day and age of then the cops pulled them back into police mass media and public relations campaigns, lines. is this tactic of ‘violent,’ direct action an efLeading up to the Olympics there was fective tool in the resistance toolkit?” much speculation among activists that these Assuming that all forms of resistance to same tactics would be employed during the tyranny ultimately share the common goals planned anti-Olympic demonstrations. Im- of freedom and peace and justice, even acpossible to tell at this point if that was the case here among the Black Bloc, although personally witnessing the size and age of the majority of masked perpetrators it seems unlikely.

I’m not saying that the Black bloc movement could not have been unknowingly infiltrated, militarized, and radicalized at some point, cepting the argument that some forms of viothat may very well be the case. Regardless, lence, if used defensively, may be approprithe groundwork has been laid and they may ate, necessary, and unavoidable in the never not need agent provocateurs to actually do ending war of the lower class to redistribute the dirty work anymore, as long as they get the unfair balance of power. There is only rethe results they need. ally one way to organize a massive rebellion One question we should ask the police that has any chance of succeeding. is, “Why did it take them so long to get the History shows you are going to need the riot-cops there?” hearts and the minds of the people behind I estimate it took them 25 minutes from you. Otherwise who is to care as they start the time the first newspaper box was tipped branding activists as terrorists and imprisonand dragged into the street in the lower east ing them for simply standing up for truth and side, to the time they arrived to intercept justice in the face of a totally corrupted systhe Bloc. They could have been well on top tem? of the perpetrators before they hit Georgia We need all the support we can get. So I and Granville, where all the corporate tar- say, “screw breaking stuff, I wanna keep my gets are. Instead they stayed back and kept peeps outta camps!” angry bystanders back who wanted to stop The Black Bloc may think they have the offenders. Not until all the damage was won that battle, but buy using the tactics they done and the crowd had moved to peaceably do, they are losing the war.

8

Olympics

march 2010

Solidarity in Vancouver A Weekend of Protests, Memorials and Marches

Isaac Oommen is a nomad writer, originally from Dubai and now residing in Vancouver. He traveled extensively through the Middle East and south-central Asia before settling in Vancouver to write.

by Isaac Oommen

I

often get communication that ends with the line, “In solidarity.” I had never really thought about the latter word really until very recently. This Valentine’s weekend was once that made many people, me being just one of them, realize everything that stands behind this word.

My very first quote going into the weekend was from a Canadian flag-poncho-wearing pro-Olympics person who tried to crash the Friday Take Back Our City convergence.

Wiping a bead of something from his upper lip, a merry Robert Mintak told me, “With all the media here, we want to make sure both sides are heard.”

For a while I was pretty happy to get both sides of the issue. Little did I know that coverage by the major networks would in fact hover towards Robert’s side and cover just a fraction of the 5000-strong festival and march against the Games.

Solidarity was something BCCLA’s David Eby, whom I’m used to seeing take middle ground, embodied when he said very acidly, “None of the pro-Olympics protesters contacted the BCCLA and asked for observers because they feared for their physical safety.”

Solidarity was embodied more than anything that Friday by the black bloc fac-

tion, which showed up in force: a mass of one persistent unavoidable statement. Still, it was not a word I would truly begin to understand until the next day.

Much of the media called Saturday a complete contrast to the day before. They pointed at a select group of, “trouble-makers,” that was ruining things for everyone. I saw something different.

I saw a number of groups, all coming out in support of the sentiments if not the tactics of the protesters that day. A member of the Women for Olympic Resistance told me, “We stand against the increased trafficking of women at family events, and the Olympics are no exception. Police and government look away as women and children are profited off of. The rich come here to take advantage of the poorest.”

This one statement made me realize that this was not a single group of east-coast vandals as the police and mainstream media labelled them, but a movement where people supported the idea as a group but practised tactics as individuals.

I had to confront this idea even more when I saw for the first time two very capable rappers who went beyond just talking about resistance to actually joining the cause. Both walked right into the fray, add-

ing to the size of the group that morning that would cause the city a tremor if not a Heart Attack.

Solidarity was an idea that I also thought about at the low points of the day.

As reports came in of increasing arrests, and as a vigil was held for those incarcerated from that morning, I heard that word many times. When debates raged over the city over the tactics used, and as people sold out their causes, I heard it muttered by those still staying loyal.

It was a word that stuck in the front of my mind that evening as I watched riot police, three layers strong, surround and harass a group of activists who were walking on the pavement without chanting or raised flags towards the jail where those arrested were being held. To credit, every single one of those activists continued walking to the jail, even after the 15-minute stand-off that looked as if it would at any moment turn into a mass arrest.

The spirit of solidarity is what got me the access that I’ve had to this day. I’ve prided myself with trying to cover all angles, though it just so happened that the angle that I agreed with personally was that of the commonly unheard, and of the resistance.

I have come to a point where I cannot

say that I am unbiased, even though this is what is expected of me. On Saturday I was able to use the word solidarity to describe my support of those incarcerated. And I meant it. I don’t think anyone can be unbiased, but instead should be able to tell people exactly what their bias is before presenting their work. Perhaps if the major networks were more open about their biases people would take their reports as viewpoints rather than facts.

I pondered the word one last time on Monday night, thinking about the safety and openness it had afforded me in everything I had covered over the weekend. A message from an interviewee-turned-friend from Belfast who was in town for the convergence solidified everything that I had been thinking.

He used the word solidarity in farewell, to which I thanked him for it.

He responded, “The world is full of good people struggling against powerful asset holes. Unity is strength.”

I didn’t get into this line of work for the fame or money of it. There was a part of me that had wanted to help the good people struggle against these powerful asset holes.

I’m very glad to be able to say: In solidarity,

march 2010

Vancouver

9

Where’s the Humanity?

by Kevin Kelson

W

ould you believe me if I told either be a fading echo of wasted potential, you that you have special or a permanent stamp of achievement. You powers? You possess abilities have the power to choose which. that set you aside from every animal species

on earth. The tragedy of seeing how many Free will people are wasting such powerful tools is overwhelming.

Collectively, these powers are what I call your humanity, because they are what make you uniquely human. Let me tell you about some of them.

Human Cognition the Power of Reason

Living life as if it is something to “get over with” is how many of us operate from day to day. We madly avoid any sort of pain, and will go any length for one small, single morsel of gratification. Though that pleasure, that “richness” is what we feel is what qualifies our life as worth living, it is this very elusive pleasure that distracts us from the true riches of life. Some never experience what it is to be human, to be alive! Many are missing the joy of discovery, and the joy of living for principles they care about so much that they would die for them. We have the power to process a pile of information and translate it into the most logical action. To learn new concepts, then apply them to other situations.

Humans can act upon the universe, rather than being a mere victim of their environment.

The next time you are at Starbucks, McDonalds or Wal-Mart, perhaps you can take advantage of your power of reason and think about what the long term and long range effects of your actions are, on yourself and on the world. Supporting these globalist predators will lead to more (further?) injustice, as well as poorer products (products of inferior quality?) for you. Human cognition is in a class of its own when it comes to life on this planet; unfortunately most people seem to act more like apes than humans. Perhaps we’ve taken Darwin’s theory of evolution too far.

Immortality

Have you ever seen ‘The Matrix?’ When Neo is standing in front of the architect, his advantage is that he has a choice. His will to save his people COULD override his love for Trinity, he is free to choose. The architect speaks of the problem of choice, which is that freedom of choice leaves the possibility that his system could be destroyed (quite easily too.) Today, we have the illusion of choice in government. Typically, you are only offered the two options of blue and red, but skin color aside (think Obama/ Mccain) your choices are never black and white. Whichever side you choose, it is always a win for the plutocracy and a loss for you and I. Nevertheless, there is always the possibility that we as a society will take the third option and actually change the system to work FOR the people. You can overcome any circumstance without the use of drugs, gimmicks, god, or a 12-step program.

The power is in you.

To Dream

Your dream may be a vision of the future, an innovation that no one has yet thought of, or inspiring art that you may bring to life. Imagine having the power to create such a dream in your mind. Although it doesn’t physically exist, you could bring it from your mind into reality, and thereby change the way the world, or even the universe works. I encourage everyone to dream up something beautiful, and do something to manifest it.

To see the future

the Jedi are known as ‘the pre cogs’, in the matrix, Neo could dodge bullets because of abilities he always had, but just discovered.

In reality, it’s a bit different, but not as much as you think. Our power of reason allows us to discover the principles that drive things, and predict the result of their workings; from there we can actually change how they work. Imagine how useful this skill could be after refinement and practice.

The power of good

Use the force! Every human being has the potential to recognize goodness, to become good, and to do good. Every human being has the potential to become make good choices and be a good person. Even once started down a bad path, anyone can exercise their human free will and go back up the path to find the right one. Good people who cooperate with other good people can become a very powerful force.

The more you look at the ‘Star Wars’ analogy, the easier it is to see how a positive entity can utilize and collaborate with other good forces to achieve anything.

Beauty

Creativity

Possibly your most valuable attribute, creativity is what enables you to bring things into existence such as; life, beauty, ideas, goodness and other creative entities. Everything else is just recreating a slightly modified version of itself, or part thereof. This is your godly power to create something beautiful and good. Something that did not exist before, but which intelligently contributes to the increase of the living standard of humanity and all life. To utilize your own godly attributes, and relinquish the need to be overly dependant on any expert or deity.

Remember, a huge portion of the human genome is comprised of inactive genes. It is still largely undiscovered what most of our genes do, so the potential goes beyond what we can even imagine.

The establishment has a lot to lose by allowing us our humanity. Believe it or not, everything noted above is under attack in one form or another. If we are allowed freedom of our minds, it becomes almost impossible to manipulate, exploit and virtually enslave us. Harnessing the creative potential of the human mind is our greatest attribute in our struggle to become independent of the system that holds us down.

This existential crisis we are facing today is our opportunity to come together and evolve beyond such things as war, greed, apathy and despotism.

Let’s try these powers out; think of the future we are headed towards with things like free trade and our monetary system. If you agree that we are being destroyed by them, then you should make use of your new found powers and help build a future you can be proud of.

All we have to do is change the focus of our society to these powers and principles, and we could go from fighting for table scraps, to a new renaissance!

The power to intelligently create and appreciate beauty. Art is remarkable: you are translating something through your own eyes, and then transforming raw materials into something that is meant to make someone understand the beauty you saw. What you are actually doing, without even realizing it, is creating more beauty. Communication gives us the ability to appreciate, and learn. Communication is our innate connection to one another; we must keep our connection to each other and to the world as strong as possible. We need not live in such About the author: Kevin Kelso is a writer, documentarian and the host a bleak and emotionally vacant place. of a radio show Mondays at noon on

Charity

You have the ability to develop ideas, and also to communicate them to others, who can in turn, improve them further. Some say that a part of you is immortalized through a contribution to the development of an idea.

If you were searching for a magic potion of ‘eternal life,’ your efforts are misguided.

Not only can you have a future motiYour only chance for a legacy is your ever- vated action, but you can foresee the problasting contribution to the future, and it can able results of your actions. In star wars,

To recognize that someone needs your help, and to give to them, knowing you won’t get anything back except a good feeling is a great thing. Care and compassion are very underrated in our society. Instead replaced with ruthless greed and indifference. The world is a better place to live when you inject a bit of good will, and you will find that much more comes out of it than goes into it.

102.7FM in Vancouver. Please visit his web site atwww.axiomatica.org for exclusive 2010 coverage, and a massive collection of user generated content.

10

Vancouver

march 2010

Burlesque Beauties The Agora is proud to showcase a Bu x o m B u r l e s q u e B o m b s h e l l eve r y m o n t h .

T h i s M a r c h we introduce Calamity Kate!

Interview by Lulee -Who do you dance with Ms. Calamity Kate?

Screaming Chicken and The Taboo Revue.

-Where can people see you?

I’m taking some time off till the burlesque festival. I preform at Kitty Nights sometimes (Kitty Nights are Sundays at The Biltmore) -How old are you Kate?

21 Calamity Kate is 21. *giggle* -What’s you favorite color?

Black. Duh... Is that a color though?

-Favorite food?

Poutine, haha or potato chips. Deep fried potato products!

-Favorite song that you’ve danced to?

I did a dance to the Cramps. I love doing burlesque to rock and punk. I was a bird in one show, it was a bird dance and them it turned into The Bird is The Word.

-Favorite sexual position?

Ooo. Yeah, I have to think about that one. You know what? I’m kind of like traditional, so maybe missionary, but yeah, I like all of them.

-Where are you from?

I’m from a small, small town in Alberta, it’s called Edston. I left there in 2001. It’s like 7000 people. It’s so trippy going back. You go to the bar and people are wearing sweatpants and pajama pants. But there is something to be said for small towns. I think real people come from small towns.

-Are you participating in the Burlesque festival?

Yeah, I think so. It’s in May and I will probably be part of the Taboo Revue and I also applied. You just apply as a performer and producers will contact you.

-Do you make lots of money?

Doing burlesque? *bursts out laughing* No! I think Dita Von Teese is one of the only Burlesque dancers that makes money. I think the standard is 100 bucks an act and then 50 for each extra dance. So sometimes you can make some money, but you don’t really do it for the money at all.

-How much do you spend on costumes?

It depends, I’d say 80 bucks on average. I paid 250 for mine [corset] but I use it in so many acts so um, it was worth it. Dress Sew is like, a burlesque dancers best friend.

-What’s your dream job?

Burlesque would be my dream job! In the summer I did a two week run in a musical, Shine, A Burlesque Musical. It was so much f*ckin fun! For two weeks we did this play and it was sold out every night and I was like, f*ck I wish I got paid for this! That would be my dream job.

-Can you tell me about your other project? nofuncity.org. I like to plug that. [No Fun City] is a feature length documentary about underground music in Vancouver and kinda like the struggles that musicians and venues, owners and promoters are facing to keep music alive. Me and Mellisa James are producing and directing it, so we’ve been following around, like Malice and Wendy13, the ER kids and Dave Dupree for over a year.

-When is it coming out?

Maybe in the spring?

*Holding a model ship in front of her naughty bits* “I wanna put this here is that weird?!”

“Burlesque dancing to me is actually the most empowering thing that I’ve done. I think some people think of it as stripping, but it’s not the same. My family owned a strip bar, and, um you are taking off your clothes but it’s different because you know it’s for a strong female audience. The audience is mainly females, and it’s about supporting each other and embracing what you have. I don’t know, I used to be really shy about my body and I’m not anymore. I finally actually like my body, not to sound cheesy or anything but it’s true. Women have really bad body issues and the girls that I dance with are so confident, it’s really inspiring to me.”

march 2010

Vancouver

11

Poems by Maitreyi: Spirituality SPIRITUAL SEDUCTION THE EMPEROR’S NEW SPIRITUALITY

Why are we drawn to the illusion?

Why are we so trapped in the dream?

Running after a mirage Aching for what is not real

Enlightenment seems to be the latest buzz word With each flashing theirs Like the emperor’s new clothes

So much built around the artificial So much of branding…so much of spiel Yet the flashy lights mesmerize us Like fire flies that yearn

Born out of tricksters Tricking themselves and the world Only the nakedness is for real Not enamored by their flamboyant fantasies I prefer to stay a child And chuckle at the emperor’s new spirituality

Yogacharini Maitreyi is a Practical Mystic who is creating conscious community world wide.

She is a yoga guide originally from India and will be sharing the teachings each year in Vancouver during summers. She will be facilitating short workshops, corporate consultations and workshops, teacher trainings as well as individual sessions.

Maitreyi9@hotmail.com

For the very thing that depletes Why can’t we just dance around the fire?

Why must we burn?

Cannot help but jump in and be hurt Can we not look before we leap?

Can we not relax and deep inside feel?

That whatever it is we need to find With positive effort will come to us in its time

www.arkaya.net

Do you know the difference between education and experience?

Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.

-Pete Seeger

Sculptures By Amanda O’Keefe

see page 4

12

Vancouver

march 2010

Ocean of Sound by

H

eaven and hell… they are not external places. We carry them inside of us all the time as potential. Our thoughts are the doorway. And under our thought lies... waiting… the Silence… the vast mystery of Existence that our minds could never fathom… Home.

Since time immemorial humans have searched for the Sound of that Mystery, following an instinctual sense that finding this Sound would carry them Home, if only for a moment. From time immemorial humans have also used Sound to celebrate and call upon the Mystery, following an instinctual sense that it connects us to the Universe in a dialogue that is mutually nourishing.

In my young and angry days, I played music that was aggressive and loud. The idea was to express our frustration with the world.

As my life fell apart in a daze of confusion, I

The Way os Sound

Joseph ‘Pepe’ Danza

is an electrifying percussionist and multi- instrumentalist. A native of Montevideo, Uruguay, he began classical guitar studies at age eight, and started his professional career at thirteen. He continued his studies in guitar as well as in piano, composition, music history and the physics of sound at the National Conservatory. All along he was naturally immersed in his native Candombe rhythms, the national groove of Uruguay and a fundamental element in the identity of all Uruguayans. www.pepedanza.com www.myspace.com/pepedanza

came to the deep realization that sound was not something that I produced and it just left and disappeared, leaving me free of those pent up feelings… not at all. The sound that I produced created a self feeding loop that perpetuated and fed my unhappiness and frustration, and that of others!.

The impressions that we expose ourselves to, including and particularly those of our own creation, are just like the food we eat. The quality of our food will determine the health of our body, and, well beyond that, the health of our entire system. Impressions will, in the same way, determine the health of our mental and spiritual bodies, and they work just as food does. We digest them, store some, get rid of some, and use some for our daily functioning. The difference is in our awareness of this fact and our conscious use of this information.

I’m not a fundamentalist and I enjoy the occasional plate of french fries, just as I enjoy the occasional slash and burn “boy” movie, or heavy rock music, but I do keep a constant awareness of the overall quality of my “food” intake, and this includes “impressions”.

That search for the Sound of the Mystery, translated by different times and cultures, has created some amazing music.

Whether it comes from African Drum Rituals, Tibetan Chanting, Gospel Music, Sufi

Ceremonies, Amazonian Icaros, Gregorian Chants, Bach Cantatas or Pygmy vocalizations, these are, for me, the equivalent of “health food” in terms of impressions, and I feel deeply nourished by them. Furthermore, I find that the act of deep listening to any natural sound connects me with the inner Silence, that doorway to my personal heaven, where I realize, in an experiential way, what the Oriental Teachings speak about when they say the world is a self created dream (or is it an illusion we are being fed, as in “The Matrix”?).

Whether it may be a concert by a master musician or sitting by a river, the act of fully showing up and turning my whole being into an ear (opening the Third Ear?) seems to connect me to that energy that some call God. The more I “touch base” with that internal experience of heaven the more it translates into an increasingly calm, accepting, conscious and loving way to live daily life… maybe what the First Nations people call: “Walking in Beauty”..

Maybe we could call this “The Way of Sound”. This involves not only conscious acts of deep listening, but also finding and making our own Sound. A good friend of mine from the Andes tells me that in his ancient language, Quechua, there is no word for “musician”, because everybody plays and/or sings communally… there is no such

thing as a specialized person to entertain others with sound. While it is a privilege to have master musicians regale us with their virtuosic command of sound, it is fundamental that we find and trust our own.

The first step is to regain our capacity to breathe fully. We can only live as deeply as we breathe!.

Part of the Vision Quest in many First Nations cultures involves finding your Song.

Whether it is in a workshop situation or in the shower, finding and singing our Sound is a deeply soothing and healing act. Forget all those “I’m tone deaf” or “I have no rhythm” tapes in your head and let Sound take you in it’s wings once in a while. Once in a while stop and Listen… to your child, to the river, to the wind, to the music playing. Breathe it all in and realize that heaven and hell are ultimately choices we make every moment… here and now. And if you think that your personal circumstances make heaven impossible, just think of the fact that ten different people faced with the same circumstances will react in ten different ways, some sinking into despair and some using them to benefit themselves and the world at large. As my father used to say… it’s like a game of poker… you can win no matter what cards you got if you play it smart.

I’ve got an ace up my sleeve… and I call it the Way of Sound.

“Everyone is born an artist, the trick is how to remain one.” -Pablo Picasso

Vancouver Heartbeat, Raising the Media Bar.

by Aleksandra Rea I’ve been a resident of Vancouver for 5 years now. Working in the film and TV industry I quickly noticed that LA, NY and other big North American cities were casting a shadow on several aspects of the local community. Not just by monopolizing the media content, but also brainwashing local talent to constantly perceive Hollywood as the pinnacle of success. The majority of talent that becomes recognized and well known in Vancouver rush to make LA their home. Then the industry swallows them up and produces a generic likable star that fits a particular trend. This outflow of talent opened my eyes to the bigger picture: that there is little to no awareness and appreciation for anything that falls under the umbrella of local.

In the midst of this cultural imperialism there are a small, but growing percentage of devotees that see the significance of strengthening local communities. Media paired with a great strategy is a powerful tool for playing a significant role in that process. With this intention, it is my great pleasure to introduce Vancouver Heartbeat.

V

ancouver Heartbeat (VHB) is a fresh, edgy, locally ‘grown’ multi media project – an emergency response to, A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, The Bachelor, ET, America’s Next Top Model and Access Hollywood, to name a few overblown US disasters that draw millions and millions of eyeballs every day.

The project is set to shift focus to the true heartbeat of the community - the people who build it’s culture daily. It’s mission is

to boost our economy, further cultural development and give prominence to diversity. The first part is a progressive lifestyle TV program that features local, small and innovative businesses and entrepreneurs, promotes resident artists of all media, and features sustainable choices. One of the four topics is LEADERSHIP (our code word for activism). Leaders in social, economic and environmental change get prime time exposure and an opportunity to call the public to action. In LEADERSHIP VHB also features non profits, charities and movements that are changing the rules and shifting the

debate worldwide.

A unique attribute of VHB is our approach to presenting the content. Focus is on solutions and simple, immediate actions. We hope to present the average Janes and Joes with just enough information so they will be able to assimilate rather than become overwhelmed with the feeling of powerlessness which stops most people from taking logical action (Ex: “It’s already so bad why bother”, “One person can’t make a difference” etc.)

VHB is a mediator between the already convinced and the blind consumers. Only by reclaiming that particular relationship can we

hope to change the present state of society.

Without it, all our efforts will falter.

I am excited to hear from The Agora National’s readers and contributors. Side by side we will extend our influence to everyone. You can check out the project on www. vancouverheartbeat.com/intro. We’re in the early stages of pitching to the local and national networks - a great time to connect with us! Drop me a line and together we will plan an appearance that will leave an impact.

Aleksandra Rea

creator@vancouverheartbeat.com

p.s. you can’t say LOCAL enough!

march 2010

Vancouver

13

Permaculture W

hat is needed to design a sustainable human society full of abundance and security for all living systems? Information, empowerment and ethics.

The Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) teaches students how to use information, resources and ethics to meet local needs on a limited land base.

There are no “bad guys” and nothing is inherently evil. It is the designs of the systems we use that are the problem. A large machine can be use to bring down a forest, or it can be used to repair damage and degraded landscapes. In the same way, I can either use a hammer as weapon, or to build a house for a friend. The difference in outcome is one of intention and design.

The fact is that we are working with a system that was never designed to provide a sustainable or secure place for life on this planet. The system we are working with was designed to concentrate wealth, resources and power into the hands of a few. This system produces elite classes, sickness and environmental degradation.

The justification for such destructive ways was one of service to the larger whole.

In other words, we tell ourselves that while the present way of doing things does not provide all people in all places with a secure livelihood, it can maximize happiness for a maximum number of people.

A great many good things have come out of this system, like this computer I type with.

But it is obvious that the time for change has come. The planet is raising alarm bells. Fancy technological adaptations may give us some extra time, but if we are concerned with the long term survival of the human species, then we had better start evolving and designing our systems using more sustainable models.

At the very core of our problems are the assumptions we make regarding human nature.

We design and build our systems with the underlying belief that human nature is dominated by greed. As a result, we see human interaction with other humans and the environment as brutal struggle, domination and conquest.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

What makes us human is not how savagely we can treat each other. What makes us human is our large brain, and our capacity for abstract thinking and creative problem solving. Human nature is one of choice. We as a species and as individuals are capable of just as much positive action as we are negative. In my experience, 99 out of 100 people have good intentions and want to do the right thing. So what is the issue?

The issue is design. The Permaculture Design Certificate teaches how we can utilize today’s tools and technology to shape a more sustainable and equitable world for all species. Permaculture is more than just planting a garden. It is a sustainable design approach that is applicable to all human activities. An organic garden is one element in a total design. Permaculture is about where we place the garden in relation to the house, site topography, climate, water run off, capabilities of the users, where money comes from to finance it ...ect. Using a designed approach place the organic garden in space, time and form so as to gain the highest output for lowest input.

The PDC is an intensive 72-hour study in all things sustainable. It uses the 14-chapter text book “Permaculture, A Designers Manual” as its reference and works through

the following topics: • Introduction to Permaculture • Concepts and Themes in Design • Methods of DesignPattern Understanding • Climatic Factors • Trees and their Energy Transactions • Water • Soils • Earthworks and Earth Resources • The Humid Tropics • Dryland Strategies • Humid Cool to Cold Climates • Aquaculture • The Strategies of an Alternative Global Nation As you can see from the above list, permaculture covers all aspects of human life. It is grounded in practical real world design and extends into the complex realm of sustainable social design. It extends further into the invisible design of organizing energy exchange between people and communities. The PDC empowers, informs and trains people to be effective designers and agents of active change in their homes and communities. The PDC endeavors to teach teachers, in order to spread and localize

by Jesse Lemieux Jesse is a full time permaculture educator and design consultant, operating from Denman Island BC. He teaches a range of different permaculture based workshops and courses, drawing on practical experience that spans 11 years and 3 continents. He is always on the look out for the next garden project or chance to share experience. If you would like to contact Jesse please send him a message: jesse@pacificpermaculture.ca

difficulties of the modern world. We choose to focus our time and energy on a positive and active approach. Rather than spending a Saturday at a rally protesting something I don’t want, I would rather spend the day with a group of friends and strangers installing a food garden in the community. In this way we actively change the world one garden at a time.

Many of my students quickly move on to be involved in all levels of change from

couver in the spring of 2009. She has recently co-founded a non-profit community organization in Toronto known as Reseed.ca. They are involved in all kinds of great community agriculture initiatives using permaculture in their work.

Aaron Elton of Vancouver is yet another student of ours, from the PDC course that Pacific Permaculture hosted last summer on Denman Island. Aaron has initiated a permaculture aid project known as Our Mother Earth Villages, which will be operating in Uganda and teaching its first PDC to local and international students in late 2010.

There is no doubt in my mind that a full education in permaculture design is a positive experience. It’s an investment that anybody can make regardless of profession, background or age.

Pacific Permaculture is offering a second annual installment of a Vancouver part time course starting April 3. If you are interested in the 2-week intensive format, we are hosting a course on Denman Island July 4-17, and teaching another in Saskatoon in the middle of August.

Please visit our website www.pacificpermaculture.ca for more info.

We are not the only group that is offering the PDC in western Canada. Below is a list of other groups and organizations that regularly teach the 72-hour PDC. • Ravis Sustainable (Calgary) http://bit.ly/ coY5tM • Urban Farmer (Edmonton) http://bit.ly/ bviP9U • OUR Ecovillage (Shanigan Lake) http:// bit.ly/9sITrx • Blue Raven Permaculture (Salt Spring Island) • Kootaneey Permaculture (Winlaw BC) http://bit.ly/abXHUS

this important information. Following this strategy, permaculture has spread rapidly to all corners of the globe without any form of centralized administration or governing body. As a result, there are many collectives and collaborations between different permaculture teachers and institutes, but all operate as independent entities. The permaculture community is unified by the common ethic of earth care, people care and return of surplus.

Permaculture does not ignore the massive challenges we face today. We maintain a healthy knowledge of the challenges and

local to global some as private business others for NGOs. Adrian Buckley of Calgary took his PDC in August 2009. This course was taught by Pacific Permaculture on behalf of Ravis Sustainable. Since that time, Adrian has started a small permaculture business called Big Sky Permaculture, which recently hosted its first Introduction to Permaculture Workshop this past January. He is a great example of how quickly a PDC can change the direction of one’s life.

Angela Gentili of Toronto attended the Pacific Permaculture part time PDC in Van-

The term “permaculture” was coined

by Bill Mollison and gifted to the college of graduates of the Permaculture Design Certificate. As teachers, we all agree to adhere to the design curriculum as laid out in the 14 chapters of the permaculture designer’s manual. Only graduates of this curriculum may refer to themselves as permaculture designers and permaculture teachers. However, anyone engaging in activities which relate the ethics and principles of permaculture may refer to their work as permaculture.

Before attending a PDC be sure that the whole 14 chapter curriculum from “Permaculture A Designers Manual” is being presented. The course must cover all the material over 72 hours. and should not have extra material included. Good luck and we will see you out there.

14

Vancouver

march 2010

Systems Change...

But to What, and How?

by Greg Dean

L

et me introduce myself: I am a revolutionary.; because now, civilization wide survival seems to be a revolutionary, outside chance. Most respectable observers and thinkers I talk to have very little hope that we’ll escape billions of people dying off, and hundreds of millions becoming ecological refugees, even just within the next decade or two.

I’m also propelled by having tasted life in radically integral communities, where I’ve just felt like a better human being than I almost ever do in this rat-race based on market competition with price up, price down syntax dictating the relations of our daily lives. In any transition to a new system which could give us a chance, we must primarily look to an ecstatic reconnection with each other as the real source of momentum, instead of navigating by fear or tension.

I started out in a commie family; before I went to kindergarten my mum sat me down and gave me the necessary McCarthyism paranoia, lest we be dealt a tougher go or had family services knocking on the pinko family’ door.

I was a part of the first team to design and lobby for an eco-village at South East False Creek (now Olympic Village). I successfully worked in small blockade crews to shut down a gold mine putting cyanide into a water-shed and another campaign saving large tracts of our massive Doug Firs, North of Squamish. I was probably the first blockade tactician at the WTO in Seattle, flying in June 5th 1999 from Australia because the heeding of the Zapatista call in the international community hadn’t seen U.S. activists come on line yet, so many of us internationally were wondering whether U.S. progressives would properly welcome the WTO. With all those experiences and wild successes under my belt by 22, I still felt totally demoralized. Even after the WTO I felt drained of hope. “But WHY!?” you ask? Because all those successes were merely drops in a leaky bucket. And market capitalism is clearly one heck of a leaky bucket.

Gold prices shot up, and probably 30+ new mines around the planet opened within 4 years of us stopping that particular instance of market gold forces. Lumber prices were going up above $400 a yard within two years of (what was arguably) our win in the Elaho, and soon even Clayoquot Sound came under the chainsaw again. My lived example of the WTO is a perfect illustration of how generally useless protests are. Even though we successfully shut down that round of talks, that’s really all we did, we shut them down and infuriated many who thought they might at least be able to achieve some basic gains for their people. We manufactured a vacuum, leaving the world only with a loud ‘NO’ of what’s wrong with global capitals’ trade regimes. However, we articulated no real systemic alternative to capitalism’s logic of global arbitrage for money and investment.

Even though we helped inspire Brazilian president Lula to side step the WTO and create the G20, Brazil is just as enamored with the neoliberal experiment as ever. Now they’re even bringing the Olympics to Rio de Janeiro to

boost the gentrification and displacement of the masses of poor in that city. Because, what is the alternative?; ‘communism’ with its central command planning? Or maybe market socialism (an obvious oxymoron)? No, it has become obvious none of these systems work. Margaret Thatcher’s famous declaration of TINA (There Is No Alternative... to capitalism) still stands… or maybe not. Noam Chomsky’s protégé from MIT circa late ‘60s Michael Albert - has brought us another model – participatory economics (parecon). I’m convinced this is the first complete economic model ever devised, for it isn’t a vision or an end goal (like the communist manifesto largely was, or especially as is the Venus Project), but a methodology by which we are required to distribute decision making and resources equitably. Parecon requires us to be good to each other by systemizing solidarity, diversity, efficiency, equity, and participatory self-management. I encourage you to study deeply how the interlocking logic of parecon’s process-mechanisms really do require us to be good to each other, and to have intelligent, incorruptible decision making by all the stakeholders who will be affected by a decision.

I’ll always remember that weekend break down from the Elaho logging blockade when my brother put the book – Parecon: Life After Capitalism - in my hands. It took a while to sink in but when it did, the economic vision put a spring in my s t e p

and hope in my heart and mind. I went from being totally despondent about our world reality, to dreaming about the possibility of a future again.

Copenhagen protesters (finally!) called for systems change, but to what? I’ve suggested that ‘what’ needs to be something like participatory economics. But as one friend said after reading Parecon: Life After Capitalism, “Sounds too good to ever come true”. So simply answering ‘to what system’ isn’t enough, we also need a strategy which will allow us to feel like we can bring the methodology of parecon into wide practice and existence; a plan that whilst steeped in fun and community building, also provides for ourselves and doesn’t risk too many individuals’ quality of livelihoods (i.e., not doing activist burn-out).

So what I have done since all that “successful” blockading of some of this systems’ endemic symptoms is develop a transition strategy to realize the systemic change to PARticipatory ECONomics (parecon). This has entailed developing a new kind of co-operative incorporation structure, which takes coops beyond representative democracy, and into participatory governance. We think we’ve also proven in the law how B.C. co-ops can employ complex share structures like Canadian Private Corporations do, so that we can quickly get into our own tax beneficial financing under new principles of remuneration and

value (we need a tax & securities lawyer to finalize, know one?). There has also been a lot of figuring of the transition tools for macro participatory decision making and cultural norms which we must be sure to include in our new alternative institutions, so that we can nurture a culture which allows us to break free of the culture of self-interested action and rationale, competitive win-lose maneuvering, greed, etc.

I’ve spent a lot of time creating a new kind of path because I want to win a new world, not whine; that means building alternative and counter institutions, not burning out on protest organizing. Creating new institutions is long, involved work, but it seems to be the only work left to do; certainly we need whole new carriers for how we do civilization, not band-aid reforms on the gaping wound that is the corporate state. At least if we have our own alternative institutions, we can hope to store and use our gains derived from the current system from within a defendable strong hold. This way we can agitate and force the state into reforms which support the growth of our institutions and are not simply dissipated into making the market system more palatable for more people (at least until the corporate rulers decide to take the gain away again).

Besides, I don’t think protest activism is reaching any where

enough people. I think in the anti-global capital protests we did bring a lot of issues up, but to this day we aren’t offering much other than critique, which often looks like “tare it all down” or whining. This doesn’t exactly inspire belief in the possibility of a new world.

Not only is it uninspiring, but when I go to get help in organizing these initial structural alternatives, most every friend is busy with the latest protest or is recovering from protest organizing. Sometimes they see my point and want to help, but are already committed or burnt out. So not only are we wasting energy railing against the edifice of capitalism (ping), we’re also robbing ourselves of the chance to develop alternative institutions which could give us the capacity by which to achieve deep, viable change.

At this point even if we get some wins here and there, it isn’t going to be enough…

We are now in the 11th hour and need a sea change if humanity is going to win. So please, stop wasting yourself. Stop flinging your good intentions at the corporate-states’ steel walls.

You’re repeatedly pancaking into it and sliding off!

Do you want to win, or are you looking to strike a pose or maybe gain a pair of angel wings?! I want survival. If we’re serious about survival we need to discipline our analysis, get away from reacting and get into strategic probing of the weak points and bottle necks in this current system. Along these lines

of achieving our own, independent analysis of how to get our own alternative system carved out of what we have now, I’ve initiated the University of Revolution project (find the Facebook group).

The current system has many weaknesses, almost none of which we are exploiting to build our own sustainable alternative model. We can analyze it’s injustices to the 16th degree but we generally don’t go to the 2nd decimal point of our own proposals. Please! Join me in changing that, we’ve analyzed to death how screwed all the endemic crises are, let us now analyze to life our own structural alternative.

Although it would be nice to have a little more help over here with prefiguring and organizing for systemic change, fighting for reforms which help in smaller ways is also commendable. So, I’m not saying that we should necessarily stop working for these reformist gains.

But, we could win reforms in such ways that simultaneously win our own alternative institutions more capacity, which fuels our ability to strengthen the momentum of our own system in it’s attempt to supersede the current one.

When I use the terms ‘sustainable’ and ‘capacity’, I’m talking about structuring our own economics system first and foremost. Economics is more properly expressed as political economy. So we can see, just implicitly, that economic power is political power. Until we learn this, I don’t think we’ve graduated from elementary school as change agents.

Here is how I think we easily (much easier than our activist campaigns) get our own economic capacity: We help workers and organizers from various sectors form Participatory Coops within a new federation. Those co-ops mainly do business with each other. Then we go and win the elections to the boards of directors of the big credit unions and co-ops, and other little-contested elections for quasidemocratic institutions, which we then also get doing business within the Federation as much as possible. We empower a new kind of participatory consumer, one that has power and involvement in the design, distribution and even pricing of their goods, and in so doing, the Federation attains loyal consumers. Whenever we find that our Federated co-ops are leaking money for products outside of Federation, we find workers from that sector and bring them into the Federation, guaranteeing financing and all of the Federation’s immediate business if they join and build their own participatory coop. We also must go for mass-media capacity as much as possible so we can promote Federation goods and culture, which we are trying to do with wireless networks through VONICo-op (www.vonic.ca), our programmers & digital media artists’ co-op and Fluid projects. We’re dubbing our vision for a mass-media co-op, the “memes facilitation co-op.“ Most of the big questions and a lot of the quirky transition mechanisms have been fleshed out; whether the question is how we value and bring in people’s assets in a fair way for both the individual and the Federation, or how we host intelligible forums for thousands of stakeholders that remain truly participatory AND responsively efficient.

Come join us at the founding congress of Federated Participatory Co-ops – May 22nd. If you are deeply involved with others in an industry and want to help organize your industry, please email us as to your potential attendance at a preparatory meeting of ‘focalizers’ (March 24th) ahead of May’ founding congress. Whether you work in agriculture and food, construction or housing, financing, law, healing, or administration, please come have fun making the world anew.

Read more about participatory economics at http://www.zcommunications.org/topics/ parecon .

march 2010

Vancouver

15

Towards a Coherent How to stop BC Hydro from being sold off.

Jewish Culture

I

am...A dad. An admitted leftist. A photographer. A writer. A wannabe community organizer. A jew. An anti-zionist. A displaced Pole living in the diaspora. A cook and . . . well, an all-round funny guy.

As a child I had a preoccupation with holocaust literature. In particular, I read virtually every first-person childhood perspective from the holocaust. Books such as A Child of the Holocaust (Jack Kuper), The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square (Joseph Ziemian), and The Upstairs Room (Johanna Reiss) were works that totally absorbed me.

At my Jewish summer camp, while other children slept, I snuck into the bathroom at the back of my cabin and read these harrowing accounts by the dim light of a single lightbulb hanging over the toilet. Pausing at various interludes to read the epitaph inscribed on the door of the stall “I aim to please, you aim too please.”

I struggled with the singular question of why I should have been born in a relative lap of luxury, as opposed to being born into a far more horrific time and place. I could fathom no reasonable justification to understand the conditions of my life as separate from other historical and geographic realities.

That summer would have been the summer that, to the astonishment of my peers at this conservative Zionist Jewish summer camp, I spoke in support of the Palestinian struggle; believing that certainly some response is reasonable under a military occupation. Perhaps in response to this view, the administration of my unit organized a special topic day on “anti-semitism.” The conclusion was that the most dangerous kind of AntiSemite to the Jewish people was the “Selfhating Jew” who “undermined the right of the State of Israel” to defend itself.

And there I was, so very much absorbed in the world of those survivors’ accounts, perhaps by then even migrating to The Oath (Elie Wiesel) which is, in effect, a contemplation of the burden of the survivor, feeling as though the inherent core experience of 20th century Judaism had been lost by an overprivileged diaspora.

I so badly wanted to fight on the side of the Jewish people, but these were not my allies. Indeed, I had a reoccurring dream in which I was detained in a concentration camp. There, my captor bore the face of a smug over-fed jewish peer. That dream crystallized my sense that I was playing on a different team. The identification of Jew did not afford me an inherent affinity within a broad social realm.

In time, I began to understand that I was not a part of North American Jewish culture.

My entrance into traditional places of worship and gathering had become increasingly

compromising and uncomfortable. Moreover, the very experiences core to my Jewish identity (having 4 holocaust surviving grandparents for example) had been co-opted by that culture and had become a rallying call in support of the Israeli war-machine.

This mainstream North American Jewish culture is well financed, dominant, and regressive. Virtually every synagogue across the continent makes it a point to raise money and support for the ongoing Israeli occupation. On the holiest of Jewish holidays rabbis and lay leaders move to the pulpit reverently performing their Imperialist duties.

Overwhelmingly, the small percentage of North American Jewish dissidents congregate in secular political organizations.

Within this fringe infrastructure, our identity as Jews is apparent, but, we are engaged in activities that are inherently reactionary to the establishment and have little recourse to build a living Jewish culture that is a reflection of our value systems.

This distinction between practicing Jew and non-practicing activist Jew has created a dynamic where the heretic Jew (either by choice or by exclusion) is deemed, for dialectic purposes, as less Jewish. Thus, the mainstream Jewish synagogue establishment has effectively laid claim to the entire religion. The public discourse of Judaism, along with the religious practices, educational organs and the establishment of identity are all owned by a politically conservative imperialist movement.

In Vancouver, for all of my complaints about the nature of this city, there happens to be an organized congregation of progressive Jews. This congregation is rooted in a determination to be practitioners of a Judaism that is political, spiritual, and authentic.

For me, it is a wonderful experience to practice being a Jew, not exclusively as a dissident, but as a community member aspiring to raise my family, with a joy and appreciation of the festivals and practices marked by the Jewish calendar.

Here, as a member of Ahavat Olam, I can adopt a progressive world-view living out my perceived legacy as a survivor without denouncing the religion for which my fore-bearers were murdered. Moreover, I take great satisfaction in helping to build a home for a meaningful and sustaining engagement with Jewish practices.

In building a congregation to root our practices, we are far stronger and better nourished in the world. From this foundation, we can better bring about a change in the standards and norms prescribed within the greater Jewish community. In building this house, we create a space to be both Jewish and progressive without compromise or confusion.

We are at a cross roads in history. Our basic freedoms, those which we possess from birth, are now being challenged globally. The inherent right to sovereignty of the body is one of them. Join us as we take to the streets, to the courts, to our schools & local centers. The truth is out and we will never stop fighting for our rights to self determination of the body.

B

C Rail has been privatized and BC Hydro is being privatized. Assets belonging to every British Columbian - handed over to private corporations. The BC Hydro give-away of our power is especially shocking. http://saveourrivers.tv/powerplay_ player5.html.

This is what would have happened to BC Rail and BC Hydro under a BC Refederation Party government.

BC Refed’s Direct Democracy Act [DD Act] would have been passed into law.

Using their new RIGHT under that DD Act a group of citizens would have started a petition to hold a referendum on the sale of BC Rail and the breakup of BC Hydro.

If 50 000 citizens signed that petition a referendum would have been held [mandatory].

If the binding referendum result vetoed the sale of BC Rail and BC Hydro, then the sale would have been stopped [the government could not alter a referendum result].

Here is what could still happen to BC Rail under a BC Refed government.

A group of citizens could hire lawyers to write legislation to bring BC Rail back into public ownership.

If the BC government refused to pass that legislation the group could use their RIGHT to start a petition calling for a referendum.

If 50 000 citizens signed that petition then a referendum would be held [mandatory].

If a majority of British Columbians voted to have the legislation passed, then the

government would have to enact the legislation to regain ownership of BC Rail.

So that is an example of how the citizens can guide their government in a real democracy.

But what happens when or if the Lieutenant Governor of BC refuses to give “Royal Assent” to the legislation?

Under the BC Refed’s Direct Democracy Act a Bill that has received the approval of a majority of British Columbian voters will not require “Royal Assent”. That outdated custom will be bypassed. The Bill will become law in BC because the people gave their assent.

So who gave the Lieutenant Governor the right to withhold “Royal Assent” in the first place ? British Columbian politicians and the British government gave the Lieutenant Governor that power way back in 1891 when they wrote the “BC Constitution Act”. To this day that BC Constitution Act is still in force.

Where will a BC Refederation Party government get the authority to now bypass the Lieutenant Governor? Answer - from the people. A people-approved ”Constitution of British Columbia” will replace the old politician-approved “BC Constitution Act”. In the new “Constitution of British Columbia” the people will approve the Direct Democracy Act that allows them to bypass the “Royal Assent”.

But now another problem will need fixing. The Lieutenant Governor is appointed by the Governor General in Ottawa and is paid by the Ottawa parliament. What will a BC Refederation Party do when Ottawa disallows all these new arrangements made in Victoria?

See the next Issue of the Agora for the answer.

Or visit http://refedbc.com/siteA/

Freedom

For Families

“Peace on Earth begins with Birth” - Jeanine Parvati Baker

“If we hope to create a non-violent world where respect and kindness replace fear and hatred, we must begin with how we treat each other at the beginning of life. For that is where our deepest patterns are set.

From these roots grow fear and alienation or love and trust.”

- Suzanne Arms

W

This is both an emotional and a physical problem, because the hormones stimulated during bonding affect the mother’s recovery and milk production. A normal birth offers the best chance for bonding, breastfeeding, and the general well being of the family.

If the parents do not recognize their rights regarding the way they bring their child into the world, they will have a hard time exercising them. Many commonly accepted practices are not evidence based, or even safe. Birth is often managed for the convenience of the caregiver or the mandate of saving time and/ or money. We need to be aware of our options and available resources to have a positive birth experience. Here in BC, our Medical Services Plan will cover a home or hospital birth, attended by a doctor or midwife. There is also the option to hire a private birth attendant, a doula or a labour assistant. Some families opt to give birth without a professional.

Recommended Websites: http://www.orgasmicbirth.com/ http://www.mothering.com http://www.homebirthbc.com/

hen a woman is giving birth, her body is doing what it was built for. The baby inside of her is sharing her experience, feeling the effects of the hormones and experiencing the physiological process of birth. When this process is altered with interventions, we cause what is known as a “cascade of interventions”. After this, the mother-baby duo is in danger of experiencing a drugged, instrumental or surgical birth, and may lose out on a key bonding period.

The way the mother and baby are treated at the time of birth can have lasting implications. The mother needs to have the mental and physical capacity to perform instinctual behaviours such as holding, caressing, and speaking to her baby. When the mother and Sheila Northcott is a mother and doula who baby are separated for any period they lose lives in Hope, BC bonding time which can never be replaced.

16

Vancouver

march 2010

y g r e n E t n i Zero Po

by M ic ha el He y

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. it “When I was your age, I always did es etim som y, Wh day. a r for half-an-hou ble ossi imp six as y man as eved I’ve beli t.” things before breakfas

ought to be infinite. According to “Gravitation” by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler: Wh ere “present quantum field theory gets exan there is such an enrid by a renormalization process of ouldn’t this be a different plan- tensive gap in our relative forld wou that um vacu d the mite in is ergy density et if we could draw unli perceptions of reality, it rreno this by oved rem not the if – ite um Why e. infin vacu be mally energy from the useful to look for a caus oil would is there such skepticism and malization”. vast space that fills the cosmos? Peak tion” be of not ept ld conc wou e the And yet even after the “renormaliza nd Gor Al arou a ern, stigm such no longer be a conc e fudg a it call ld wou e (som sucrostruc of ied er process is appl zero point energy? Dozens peddling carbon credits and the pow still is um poin t factor), the energy density of the vacu cessful over-unity experiments have ture of the day would cease to exist. red any hund to e l d 10 to the 94th g/cm³. In other words - the calpast rs i f the refe gy over ener ted been documen The concept of free that ve study- culated energy density of the vacuum for one more en- years - and yet people continue to belie self-sustaining process that releases and human consciousness. Tyls was deof t. tion at a well cubic centimeter of space exceeds the observed zero point energy cannot exis ergy than it consumes. This combina ing under Jean Dubuis who worked le peop t to mos rred that in the mass of the known universe! refe is ce es er Fran The short answ sirable characteristics is sometim known industrial laboratory in tum see. ot cann runs ga they that usin gs ce thin was devi in Furthermore, we know from quan ty lab ve -uni refuse to belie as “over-unity”. An over mid nineteen eighties. This trube ever c can risti icles acte tum ex- physics that no two part on of per- Positivism has been a defining char indefinitely – isn’t that a descripti particle accelerator to conduct quan have we re Whe inher. the re anot her befo one ble teac plica ics ly separate from of western thought since long petual motion, something your phys periments. One day there was an inex once a well known ain why looked, we have always found evidence of was expl It to n. ed lutio ble? seem revo ossi ing rial imp dust is Noth n. you ht osio taug expl double-slit is in- fact that meteorites do not exist. Rocks cannot entanglement. And the infamous If you are a skeptic, then this article the apparatus had failed. act of very the in s that rock us no was experiment has taught g: To con- fall from the sky because there are In a surreal turn of events, the lab tended to accomplish just one thin quana of ome outc the ct a peraffe of red n observation will the sky - QED. a psychic medium who offe by ed vince you that our popular conceptio visit to gy - tum experiment. Our expectations seem be a bility is Many people think of zero point ener warning to the researchers. Do not med petual motion as a scientific impossi stern we ss you fundamental driver to determine the outcome. t the uni- as a myth because if it actually existed, based on a misinterpretation of wha dle with elemental forces of nature unle est This . cars d.

Is it really such a stretch then to sugg would all be using it to drive our verse is actually telling us. possess a calm and clear state of min d ence influ be rves may gy dese nolo and mul that ht tech a t h that zero poin onse to this, the company argument carries some weig resp We live in strange times in whic In , ator oper u- by the consciousness, not only of the ties co- an answer. The non-implementation of zeroated this lab instituted psychiatric eval titude of seemingly incompatible reali oper resthe but of humanity as a whole? to one point technology at this time implies supp s on its employees. It was found that exist in uncomfortable juxtaposition cars turn sug- ation in ty n reali This nicia e. en tech scal prov a the ntal To answer the question: “Why are our is n, ty ume -uni osio mon a expl over on e, sion another. To som night before the have we gy?” y ener man flux and s tum it cy time s quan and pira not running on gests a long-running cons that has surfaced on this planet numerou had had a serious fight with his wife of the arrived at two proposed answers. One is that contemplate the ima. to state Tesl t la keen augh not Niko distr of just the are days that us the d t of lude leas at e conc sinc was os- plications. d have the technology has been suppressed by vested To others, over-unity is a physical imp technician was the only factor that coul the other ds wor the of thermointerest - big oil in particular - and A quick internet search of sibility, ruled out by the second law caused the apparatus to explode. loped deve not ahas s prob snes that ed ciou als een clos cons a reve is that human “free energy suppression” re is an apparent connection betw The dynamics which states clearly that in gy. nolo reate to a level which would support the tech . We all ble cases of suppression are well documented. undeniable fact that attempts to re-c system, entropy can only increase the are es issu rate an. nts in is heading One prominent researcher is Gary Vesperm These two seemingly sepa learned in school that the universe successful zero point energy experime on noti very t.

The . ven coin e /oin rm diso world of- really sides of the sam -http://www.rense.com/general72 towards heat death - a state of maximu home-built laboratories around the h whic anity hum to ent ed elem anity ounc an that there is htm and the reality that much of hum fail, der. Perpetual motion is therefore pron ten our save d y of free ld fail. It would suppress technology that coul -Gary Vesperman’s 137 page stud impossible. believes that such experiments shou ded nloa dow peras be g to work existence on this planet is itself a sign of an can thin ces ion such devi no ress the y energy supp But if there is reall seems that in order for ability immature consciousness. It is hoped that as our ng in the here: petual motion, then why is everythi consistently, we must first acquire the ediment / 205 510 r c/21 sola /do our collective vibration is raised, this imp http ://w ww.scr ibd .com universe spinning? From atoms to to BELIEVE. ble will take care of itself. charac- Free-Energy-Suppression But how does one believe in impossi system to galaxies - spin the is the one of sidgy Con ener . of mon tion As a general introduction to the field com in erva has teristic that all matter things? The law of cons h roug akth “Bre k end blac a mm to energy new energy, I can reco ldn’t it be Conventional wisdom leads ering that we are made of atoms, wou clearly states that in a closed system, . ning Man e Jean gy or ener auth l er Free etua re. couv perp Power” by Van and white view of this pictu er be created, nor destroyed. neith more accurate to state that outside of can ect subj this humansys- Jeane Manning has written about technology holds the potential to save But is the universe really a closed motion, nothing can exist? ressupp rthe you for decades and is one of the founders of NEM“alte Can t tell abou ion. will talk hilat h she anni muc and ity from selfThese days there is tem? Ask any physicist seen be gy h has CA in Vancouver. media and sion of such life affirming technolo native energy”, both in the popular that a closed system is something whic can differ- as anything other than demonic? n and mea re ds natu -http://www.breakthroughpower.net wor in the rved but , obse ents rnm been gove within never ever en hisour in us, ago of t long mos not For Another excellent resource is Dr. Stev And yet it was be approximated in a lab. ent things to different people. only ect: for ods of tory, nuclear energy held similar promise e of Greer, creator of the Orion Proj Beyond the evident non-existenc solar, wind, tidal and geothermal meth n/ tempered d. er soon min emb to was g rem to sprin mism -htt p:// ww w.th eor ionp roje ct.o rg/e nt tely opti orta edia Our imp . is imm n it kind , man power generatio closed systems that ed learn ain l conrem anity .htm the strategy by a very sober lesson. Hum These technologies are here now but that physical “laws” are not laws in hiare huented. For powerful energy can be used to destroy as In his fascinating largely auto-biograp under-developed and under-implem ventional sense of the world. They wlKno n idde Forb a- cal account “Hidden Truth: they hold easily as it can be used to create. conjectures - the universe is not fund those concerned about sustainability s itself. esented man repr use we ntial beca that pote oil s” to the e “law ine the nativ edge”, Dr. Greer writes: “The truth hide w imag alter follo an Now to as some promise mentally bound truth the of ion that vers e a argu tell to the h you if At hard whic is le. ds, In other wor by “free energy”. While it they are non-polluting and renewab prescribe for it. Once there was a law if you But . pted vacce beha be istic ns. can it altru than , tatio of ier table limi lt heav pala tify resu is that suppression is the same time we can readily iden decreed that objects which are , the whole truth and pull e sources iour, it may nevertheless be true that suppresot fly (never mind the birds who had actually tell the truth cann Certainly power generated from thes air even aps , law had the whole veil back it hides itself because it sion has saved our civilization. Perh is not free. been ignoring this law for eons). The the for the strangest things rey read e arch quit rese now humanity is still not erful grip on the human mind that seems not credible. But pow There is a little known group of a such Vancouver responsibility that this kind of technology den openly ally are true... ers and new energy enthusiasts in even when the Wright Brothers bega of the forth g brin es. to ed nativ many to need alter is for t the Finally, for an in-depth look at some time wha to e aps som even mands. Perh who see alternatives, flaunting it, it still took gy is ener flux e tum mak quan will nt Moveme physics that suggests the technology is the very thing that NEMCA stands for “New Energy actually believe in manned flight. n datio foun the colally our actu of er but ble ation larg ty, a flexi elev of not only a reali it safe for us - namely the In other words - we should be Canada”. This local group is part the end mm nt which lective consciousness. our phys- of all physical manifestation, I reco new energy community - a moveme enough to allow for modification of ests sugg taence limi Evid : the phenom- four DVD set “Crossing the Event Horizon” by part nd y rved beyo craz obse e the anity Here’s seeks to propel hum ical laws to accommodat sciou cons y, too the esoteric physicist Nassim Haramein. the mys that our limited comprehension of tions of our current methods and into ena. In physics as it is practiced toda to key is es resid make it to .

-http://theresonanceproject.org/ ness - what it is and where terious realms of the zero point field often the opposite is the case - we try t poin zero as the t ted such abou dicta ses on ding phra ctati our lack of understan Unfortunately mysterious the observations fit the expe “quantum field. Josef Tyls, a Vancouver researcher who “free energy”, “zero point energy” or by the laws. ally d) are usu- has given numerous lectures on new energy What does conventional physics actu flux energy” (as it is sometimes calle g have technologies on behalf of NEMCA, relates a lyin can App ? and ety field soci tum te quan poli the in t en abou spok say ally not have to e ther that s as trate contion illus the ersa h to e conv a whic fascinating story tein field equations we com the same deadening effect on the ze- Eins vacuum exists an intimate connection between the words “conspiracy theory”. clusion that the energy density of the

W

march 2010

Vancouver

17

The More You Know, The More You See Visual Communication - The Battle for your Mind

h o w

c a n

w e

h e l p

By Alexander Nichols

A

ldous Huxley is highly regarded as one of the most prominent explorers of visual communication and sight-related theories of our time.

Becoming “partially sighted” in his teen years as the result of an illness set the stage for what would make him one of the most intellectual people to have ever explored visual communication. His work includes important novels on the dehumanizing aspects of scientific progress, most famously Brave New World and The Art of Seeing. He described ‘seeing’ as being the sum of sensing, selecting, and perceiving. One of his most famous quotes is “The more you see, the more you know.”

In 1949, Huxley wrote to George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four, congratulating Orwell on “how fine and how profoundly important the book is”. In his letter to Orwell, he predicted: “Within the next generation I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.”

Whether or not Huxley’s vision was indeed a harbinger of the spurious brand of socio-economics we are all perpetually exposed to in modern western culture, one thing is for certain; nothing is effectively manifested – not ideas good or bad, not social conditioning, not the latest greatest electronic gadget, without visual communication applied as the primary mental stimulant.

Let’s think for a minute about the recent Olympic spectacle in Vancouver. Major corporate sponsors like General Motors, Macdonald’s, Rona, Coca-Cola, The Bay – all employ a myriad of advertising agencies, be-

haviorists, sociologists, researchers, graphic designers - whatever tools they need to create the visual devices required to support their mission. The mission of course is garnering a piece of very important real estate - ocean front property with a view otherwise known as your mind. And “they” are doing a darn good job of buying that property.

Talk about stimulus! How many times did you see the golden arches associated in one way or another with young healthy, attractive people having a good time during the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games?

Are you clearly envisioning the MacDonald’s logo in your mind as you read this? Of course you are! Mission accomplished! And that little miracle has only cost MacDonald’s billions of dollars and billions of reinforcing impressions on your conscious and subconscious to achieve. And it’s all done through visual communication.

Visual communication is communication that imprints ideas and information in a form that can be read or viewed. It relies on physical vision yes, but effective visuals leave a lasting impression in your mind’s eye as well because they are carefully crafted to connect by association with existing mental concepts. What does an image of a great white shark coming at you from the indigo depths of the sea, jaws agape conjure up for you; Would it surprise and astound you? What about the image of a baby; innocence, purity? How about a huge Sumo wrestler with a menacing look getting ready to jump you; Are you thinking about the impact he might have when he lands on you?

These random images can be used in many ways to promote ideas, products or services depending on precisely what position the entity who originated the visual wishes to occupy in your mind at a consciousness or sub conscious level.

C O R P O R AT E I D E N TITY | E-MARKETING | WEBSITES | TRADESHOWS

Contact us for a sample E-Marketing Mailer and receive a complimentary E-Greeting for your business. Reply by March 31st.

Tel:

604.738.4019

The of a1 good visual design VIV306evaluation Agora Ads.fa.indd concerns the measurement of recall by the audience it reaches. Determining the effectiveness of a visual communication causes the corporation, government or organization behind it to become adept at developing hybrid visuals that command attention.

Ultimately, the goal of visual communication is to direct behavior by first controlling perception in order to invoke a carefully orchestrated set of feelings. As feelings precede action, visual imagery is tantamount to the Kama Sutra of communication and an economic lubricant that is very effective when properly applied.

When Aldous Huxley said, “The more you see, the more you know,” he could not have predicted the extreme level of visual saturation we live in today. It is impossible for our minds to absorb the thousands of visual images thrust at us daily

let alone process these images with12:44 anyPMreal 2/26/10 sense of awareness. The responsibility rests within each individual insofar as what and how much visual communication you elect to expose yourself to. Hopefully, through self-awareness and education, the images that break through will precipitate actions of benevolence and peace. Perhaps a more vivid picture emerges when you begin to understand that true awareness is not simply knowing what the weather forecast is, or the latest hockey score. Being more aware of the visual communications surrounding you and the messages behind them is crucial to becoming an enlightened individual. The more you know, the more you see.

alexnichols@shaw.ca www.pepperidiom.blogspot.com

18

Vancouver

march 2010

Water War Crimes the Traitors Within” F

or decades, political and business insiders, with Canadian and British Columbian governments, have known that the water resources in the American southwest and Mexico were dwindling in the face of an increasing population. A small group of Canadian political insiders saw the opportunity to earn massive profits for themselves from the export of Canada’s fresh water and set about on a fraudulent and corrupt scheme

to capture for themselves an illegal water export monopoly so they could line their pockets with revenues from the sale of Canadian public assets and gouge American consumers. This is not fiction To understand water and bulk water exports and the issues as they relate to Canada you have to understand the big picture and the best way to do that is to take a look at North America from outer space. Looking at a photo of North America taken from outer space, the first thing you notice is the colours.

The colours reflect patterns of rainfall and snowfall over North America are the result of weather patterns in both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans which lift massive amounts of water into the air through evaporation and transport that water, fresh water without the salt and other minerals, to other regions of the planet. Most of that water falls directly back into the ocean as rain or snow, probably seventy percent, but the remainder falls on the lands masses of the earth, 30% of the earth’s surface.

Looking at the photo of North America in summer, it is obvious that the brown areas of the photo represent those areas of North American that receive little rainfall or snowfall and the green areas represent areas of North America that receive more rain or snow. The brown areas are the American southwest and northern Mexico.

Looking back at the photo of North America, the other color one would notice is the color blue.

The parts of the photo colored blue are the lakes and the rivers where the rain and melting snow pools and accumulates before it finally drains away into the ocean.

Some lakes may have taken longer to fill that others and may drain more slowly than other lakes but, nonetheless, all the fresh water, the blue parts of North America, originates in the Oceans and will, eventually re-

By John Carten and Karen Gibbs turn to the Oceans. The streams brooks and creeks are too small to be reflected in a page sized photo of the earth taken from outer space but they are there by the thousands.

If you see any white in the photos, then you are seeing fresh water in its frozen state, snow or ice, waiting for warm weather to convert it to liquid so it, too, can begin its journey back to the ocean where it came from.

So, first and fundamentally, you must understand that all fresh water comes from the Ocean. All fresh water originates in the ocean, falls on the land, and is carried back to the ocean by channels called rivers, streams, brooks, or creeks. Even underground fresh water aquifers are the result of rain or snow melt that trace their origins to the Oceans.

Fresh water is a truly renewable resource. It arises in the Oceans and falls, in Canada, freely and in abundance courtesy of our mother, Mother Nature, as rain in the summer & snow in the winter. The reader should get this right and the reader should get it now because there are a lot of misconceptions about fresh water.

Looking closer at the photo of North America, you will notice that there is very little blue in the brown areas of the photo.

This is because there is very little water comparatively speaking in the American southwest and northern Mexico. In the brown areas, the water is precious. In the green areas, the water is valueless. The water is so valueless that the people allow it to wash away into the sea knowing that it will return each year as snow or rain. In Canada, most fresh water originally appears in the sky as snow flakes, accumulates on the ground and is so plentiful that people pay contractors to remove it from their driveways. This is no market for snow in Canada.

It is a nuisance.

Wintertime in Canada - A Nation Covered In Frozen Water Water and our home, Planet Earth, hove a long history together, 6 billion years, or thereabouts. As humans, we are mostly water, 90%, (some say), curiously, scientists report that Planet Earth is one of the few places where water exists in its three states, solid, liquid, and gas. Canada is one of those peculiar countries where, for six months of the year, water exists in its solid state as snow or ice and the country is, literally, covered in water. However, every spring, the water melts and drains back to the Oceans from whence it came. Politicians and environmentalists may tell you that fresh water is our most precious resource but they do precious little to preserve it. In fact the water is so valueless that Canadian people allow it to wash away into the sea knowing that it will return each year as snow or rain.

In Canada, most fresh water originally appears in the sky as snowflakes, accumulates on the ground and is so plentiful that people pay contractors to remove it from their driveways. This is no market for snow in Canada. It is a nuisance.

Mark Twain observed of the American southwest “Where whiskey is for drinking over and water is for fighting over”. People fight over water in the American southwest and in northern Mexico.

In the 1950’s, retired Canadian General Andrew McNaughton observed that eventually the Americans were going to need Canadian water and that Canadians should figure out how to sell it to them before they came and took it.

In the 1970’s the National Security Administration of the United States reported that the biggest long term threat to the United States economy was the lack of fresh water resources in the American southwest.

Eventually, Canadian political and business insiders realized the enormous potential markets in the American southwest

are bitterly opposed to water exports.

In other parts of Canada, such as Quebec, which has an abundance of fresh-water, there is general sympathy towards earning revenues from the export of fresh water that usually flows into the ocean.

In British Columbia, in the 1980’s, public opinion and political opinion favored the development of a water export industry from coastal streams and rivers. There was ample water and, as long as fish stocks were protected, there was no apparent environmental or other concern with extracting a moderate amount of water from the abundance or water resources that flowed into the ocean annually. The Government of British Columbia estimated that about 400 million acre feet of water flows annually into the Pacific Ocean from the coast of British Columbia. This estimate excludes the Fraser River and rivers or streams flowing south, east and north. Williston Lake drains to the north.

In short, the quantities of water and sources of water available for export in British Columbia are so huge and so varied that they far outstrip any conceivable demand.

These issues of supply and demand presented a practical business problem because free market competition would invariably lower prices and, therefore, lower profits.

The solution was a monopoly.

Monopolies Makes Lots of Money

and northern Mexico that could be supplied with fresh water from Canada and a scheme was devised to make some money out of a worthless resource - Canada.

The Abundance of Fresh Water in British Columbia Presented a Business Problem

The body of water featured here is Williston Lake, British Columbia, the largest lake, a man made lake, in British Columbia.

This lake re-fills itself from falling snow and rain every 2 years. By contrast, Lake Superior, one of the Great Lakes, re-charges itself every 180 years and Lake Okanagan, in the dry region of south central British Columbia, has a re-charge period of 80 years.

Williston Lake sits at an elevation of 2200 feet above sea level (671 m). A properly constructed aqueduct would permit water to flow downhill to California without the aid of expensive energy consuming pumping stations. Ten feet of water, taken from the surface, every year, would provide approximately 4 million acre feet, annually, with minimal environmental impact in Canada.

This is some of the purest, cleanest water in the world. If a fraction of the outflow of Williston Lake, 4 million acre feet, were diverted and sold in southern California for $1,000 per acre foot the annual revenue would be $4 billion.

In some parts of Canada, without abunThe American Southwest and Mexico dant rainfall, such as the southerly parts of In the 19th century American writer Alberta and Saskatchewan, average people

Monopolies are highly sensitive political issues. Typically, governments and the public resist monopolies because they know that the business people involved will gouge them with higher and ever higher prices.

So, the investors behind the bulk water export business hatched a bold and devious two step plan: 1. Obtain a source of abundant water for export from the British Columbia Government.

2. Use the environmental movement and the public media in Canada to persuade policy makers in the Governments of Canada and British Columbia to impose a ban on their competition.

The investors went to work, set up a company called W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd., persuaded the British

Williston Lake continued next page

Continued From Previous Page

march 2010 Columbia government to give it a source of water. Then they hired public relations firms and environmentalists to induce the fear in the general public that by permitting water exports Canada would be drained dry and that the only solution was a ban or moratorium on bulk water exports. The scare mongering began. Canadians were told that fresh water was Canada’s most precious resource, that glaciers were melting, that lakes and rivers were drying up, that Canada could not risk selling any water to the USA and that the only solution was a prohibition on bulk water exports. Of course, the prohibition would not affect rights already acquired and WCW would then have a monopoly.

The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, many Canadians actually believe that water or snow is Canada’s most precious resource when, in market terms, water is next to worthless - in most parts of Canada.

The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, many Canadians believe that water comes from glaciers lakes and rivers when, in truth, it originates in the ocean.

That plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, most Canadians believe that water is a non-renewable resource like oil and that every drop of water exported is gone forever when, in fact, it pretty well returns every year in the form of snow and rain.

The plan was so brilliant that, to this very day, most Canadians believe that the creation of a few pipelines or aqueducts to deliver water to the United States and Mexico will forever destroy Canada’s environment.

The plan was brilliant, it was devious, and it would have been hugely profitable and, incidentally, tax free for many of the insiders who held their interests offshore.

Water Exports and Organized Crime inside the British Columbia Attorney General’s Office It would not be unfair to call the British Columbia Ministry of the Attorney General an organized crime group.

Certainly, the plan to confer an unlawful bulk water export monopoly on W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd. was a well organized crime. In addition, all of the gangsters inside the Ministry of the Attorney General who participated in the crimes appear to have been well paid off - although a few appear to have been murdered in order to silence them.

Government Lawyers Breaking the Law The sign to your left pretty well describes the law that applies to the Ministry of the Attorney General for British Columbia which, according to Section 2 of the Attorney General Act, “must see that the administration of public affairs is in accordance with law”.

Politicians, with the assistance of civil servants inside the Ministry of the Attorney General for British Columbia, commenced in 1985 to give to W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd. an exclusive and favourable but illegal contract, that exempted the company from the mandatory charges under the Water Act, i.e. $383,000 per annum, and conferred on the company an effective monopoly of bulk water exports that was a violation of the Water Act and contrary to the provisions of the recently implemented Canada US Free Trade Agreement, the FTA, and the long standing international trade agreement known as the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, the GATT. A legal opinion provided by the large Canadian law firm of McCarthy Tetrault in 1997 confirmed the violations of the FTA and

the GATT. Furthermore, recently acquired internal BC Government documents now posted online confirm that the violations of the Water Act, the GATT and the FTA were well know to the BC cabinet of William Vander Zalm and that cabinet had advance knowledge that the benefits, provided and intended to be provided to WCW, were illegal, for exactly those reasons, but, they broke the law, notwithstanding this advice and the Attorney General, contrary to its duties, did nothing to stop the crooked politicians from breaking the law. Three of the key Attorney Generals in that period were two lawyers named Brian Smith, Budd Smith and an engineer named Russ Fraser. The key Deputy Minister was Robert Edwards who was appointed to the bench in February 1993, obviously as a reward for services rendered, but who became a notoriously crooked judge and who dropped dead 10 days after legal documents implicating him in the WaterWarCrimes were served on the Attorney General for British Columbia on October 25, 2007. Mr. Edwards died on Guy Fawkes Day November 5, 2007.

i n t r i g u e

Vancouver

t h e e y e c a p t u r e t h e

19

m i n d

C O R P O R AT E I D E NTITY | E-MARKETING | WEBSITES | TRADESHOWS

Fraud, Perjury and Obstruction of Justice by BC Attorney General Fraud is a legal term for lying. When the Attorney General and the politicians were asked why the BC government was favouring WCW, they, under the guidance of their lawyers denied it, but they knew it was true.

When Sun Belt Water Inc. took the government of British Columbia, in Canada, to court and alleged the government was favouring WCW, the lawyers for the BC Government continued the fraud, denied it, and put those false denials in affidavits and, thereby, committed perjury.

When Sun Belt legal counsel argued that the position of the government was nonsense because the written agreement between the Government and WCW said otherwise, the judge, Mr. Justice James Shabbits, a former law partner with dead judge number six, Ralph Hutchinson, grinned like a snake, and said; “Well, that is your opinion Mr. Carten but the government has another opinion” and the case was stalled and, then, dismissed, illegally, and based on the perjured testimony in those affidavits.

A few years later, after the government of British Columbia destroyed his law practice, put him in jail, threatened his life, nearly killed his children, and attacked the innocent woman and her family who had assisted him , Sun Belt Water Inc. legal counsel met with Mr. Colin Beach, the president of Aquasource Ltd. another victim of the WaterWarCrimes, and in a commercial warehouse in Burnaby they discovered all of the internal corporate files of W.C.W. Western Canada Water Enterprises Ltd. that proved the lawyers for the government had lied in court, committed perjury and had been engaged in serious crimi-

Contact us for a sample E-Marketing Mailer and receive a complimentary E-Greeting for your business. Reply by March 31st.

Tel:

604.738.4019

of fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice VIV306 Agora Ads.fa.indd 2 were committed.

The First Police Report dated December 2002, including the exhibits can be found online at: http://www.sunbeltwater.com/images/policereport.pdf When more documents were discovered, a Second Police Report was prepared that contained the additional found evidence and this report was also delivered to the RCMP and the Victoria City Police.

The Second Report to the Police is dated October 3, 2005, is 128 pages long including exhibits and can be found online at: http:// www.sunbeltwater.com/images/policereport2.pdf The Second Police Report implicated Paul Martin’s cabinet Ministers Stephen Owen, Ujjal Dosanjh and Anne McLellan in criminal activity and was hand delivered to Stephen Harper on October 8, 2005. Mr. Harper returned to Ottawa and persuaded Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe to topple Mr. Martin;’s government. The reader can read about the impact that document may have had on Canadian politics by going to the page entitled Stephen Harper and the Water War Crimes.

Deputy Attorney General David Loukidelis

nal activity.

This documentary proof was delivered to both the RCMP and the Victoria City Police in the form of a detailed Police Report which described the crimes, provided the identity of the lawyers involved and provided the documentary evidence proving the crimes

David Loukidelis was appointed Deputy Attorney General effective February 1, 2010. Mr. Loukidelis will be replacing acting Deputy Attorney General, Jerry McHale, who was appointed in October 2009 on an interim basis after Allan Seckel, was caught cheating in the Federal Court of Canada by way of his subordinates attempting to deceive the court with regard to certain matters. Mr. Seckel was appointed Deputy Minister to the Premier Campbell, Cabinet Secretary and Head of the British Columbia Public Service.

Mr. Loukidelis previously served as the Information and Privacy Commissioner for the Province of British Columbia since 1999, where the office had denied requests for in-

formation about the Water War Crimes in or2/26/10 12:44 PM der to protect the Water War Criminals.

Mr. Loukidelis has written hundreds of accessto-information and privacy decisions under B.C.’s public and private sector access and privacy laws. In addition to serving as Information and Privacy Commissioner, he has served as Registrar of Lobbyists under the Lobbyists Registration Act. Mr. Loukidelis received his law degree in 1984 from Osgoode Hall Law School and qualified as a lawyer in British Columbia in 1985. He served as a clerk to a Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada before moving on to the University of Oxford, where he received his bachelor of civil law in 1987. In 1980, he received a Master of Arts degree in English language and literature (medieval studies) from the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland.

Mr. David Loukidelis is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Law, where he teaches access and privacy law and where a number of those connected to the Water War Crime have gone into hiding.

He has been an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law of the University of British Columbia and with the School of Community and Regional Planning of the University of British Columbia.

Mr. Loukidelis faces some formidable challenges with the culture of deceit and duplicity that infects the Ministry of the Attorney General for British Columbia especially as it relates to the Water War Crimes. If Mr. David Loukidelis has the same nose for corruption as Mr. Justice Ernest Loukidelis then he will have little difficulty smelling the corruption in the case of Water War Crimes and the Ministry of the Attorney General.

“A distinct odour emanates from the facts of this case,” Mr. Justice Loukidelis stated.

(Toronto Star Feb 6, 2002) http://fathersforlife.org/fv/DV_funding_ fraud.htm.

To be contined next issue...

For more information please visit www.WaterWarCrimes.com

20

Vancouver

march 2010

by Matthew C. Berkowitz

pears the real wealth of the planet is measured in the available resources we have at hand, not money. Therefore, our most important focus should be on the intelligent management of the Earth’s resources. The best method at our disposal to make objective, unbiased decisions, and thus to manage these resources, is termed s I’ve spoken about in my previ- the scientific method. Nature operates under ous two articles, the approximate- strict laws and does not have the capacity to ly one-year old global movement, recognize or care about what humans wish to The Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm of believe is true. Thus, it is in our best interest to The Venus Project. We advocate broad social learn from and align with nature as best as we changes that entail a complete redesign of our can. This means reexamining our values and culture. If you are unfamiliar with these organi- adjusting them accordingly.

Most people in the occidental world were zations, I invite you to visit: www.thezeitgeistbrought up with the idea that “everyone is entimovement.com and/or www.thevenusproject. tled to their opinion”. I wish to reevaluate this. com; or watch the groundbreaking documentaFirst, I am aware that my critique of ‘opinion’ ry, Zeitgeist: Addendum, which can be viewed could be misconstrued as just another ‘opinonline in various places (one of which is www. ion’.

So, to proceed and be understood without zeitgeistmovie.com). This new social direction ambiguity, my definitions must be clear. Opintranscends the need for the traditional instituion can be defined as, “a belief or judgment tions most people assume to be necessary for that rests on grounds insufficient to produce ‘civilization’, while it instead focuses on a complete certainty.”

Of course, in a universal scientific-based understanding of how we align sense, we can never have complete or ‘absowith nature, of which we are a part. lute certainty’ (In the words of mathematician, The Venus Project could be summed up as, the utilization of the scientific method for so- C.J. Keyser, “Absolute certainty is a privilege cial and environmental concern. However, the of uneducated minds and fanatics.”); however, most colossal shift that The Venus Project is en- if we ‘lock our frame’ (as semanticist Alfred couraging is not the technological component, Korzybski denotes) temporally and/or subjectbut rather the shift in human values. This is an edly, we can arrive at the ‘truth’. Given that the extraordinarily difficult aspect to consider, for universe is emergent, we can never establish most people initially lack the frame of reference the ultimate eternal truth, only the best availnecessary to understand this social transforma- able knowledge up until a certain point this is tion. Today, we still operate in archaic social generally termed a ‘fact’. (Alternatively, one and economic structures that were developed could argue that because we can never possess centuries ago. Our technological advancements all information, everything is subjective. Then have not been met with a sufficiently equal our distinction becomes that of ‘opinion’ and a progression in our social evolution. The Venus ‘more informed opinion’. Therefore, the argument is merely semantic—I will address this Project aims to bring this to fruition.

In this new social arrangement, termed a issue in more detail later.) And to reiterate, the resource-based economy, the Earth’s resources scientific method has proven to be the most acare declared as the common heritage of all the curate approximation of reality—not religion, world’s people eventually outgrowing the need not politics, or other irrelevant hyperbole. So for the artificial boundaries that separate peo- let me boldly suggest that opinion precludes ple. Anything less will result in the same cata- people from the necessity of conducting scienlogue of problems over and over again. It ap- tific or objective research. (I will exempt from this condemnation of ‘opinion’ the apparent subjectivity of things like personal music or film taste).

When it comes to methods for evaluating physical reality, it is best to say, “I don’t [In] a resource-based econknow”, rather omy, the Earth’s resources are than proceeddeclared as the common heriing with ertage of all the world’s people roneous ideas eventually outgrowing the need based on mere for the artificial boundaries that anecdotal ‘eviseparate people... It appears the dence’. When real wealth of the planet is meait comes to desured in the available resources cision-making, we have at hand, not money. we typically Therefore, our most important rely on proven focus should be on the intelliscientific methgent management of the Earth’s ods.

The scienresources. tific method is also a mental perspective.

In the words of engineer, Stuart Chase, “[The scientific method] is con-

A

cerned with how things do happen, not how they ought to happen… it is a way of looking at things, a way of gathering from the world outside knowledge which will stay put, and not go wandering off like the wickets in Alice’s croquet game.” As Jacque Fresco, founder of The Venus Project, explains, “our problems are not political; they are technical”. Understanding this, we see that there is no room for personal biases and prejudices in decision-making, as we can technically define all our problems without resorting to unempirical methods.

In a resource-based economy, we wish to surpass the need for decision-making by use of opinion, and hence the traditionalized notions of government and politics, but rather arrive at decisions by applying the scientific method.

Nothing in nature is self-operating. Nothing in nature can act of its own accord without the stimulus of resident forces. However, the illusion of free will is created due to the infinite and computationally complex sources of human behaviour, values, desires and choices, which stem from a vast array of interacting variables.

The concept of ‘free will’ was created in a period of history where we did not understand human behaviour. Einstein explained, “I am a determinist (the view that all facts and events exemplify natural laws). I do not believe in free will,” and elsewhere that “[t]his awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.”

What about individuality?

Updating our communication and use of language

Many people who are unfamiliar with The Venus Project’s tenets may react subversively to its avocation of a more objective process for decision-making. They do so on the grounds that it takes away people’s ‘individuality’. Individuality may be defined as “the particular character, or aggregate of qualities, that distinguishes one person or thing from others”. Let it be known that, today, individuality seems to be expressed as a product of materialism—that is, people have been indoctrinated to differentiate themselves through their sense of fashion, hair style, the car they drive, etc. A more profound sense of individualism could be characterized as “one’s ability to think critically and be creative”, for each of us has a unique set of experiences and aptitudes.

In a resource-based economy, genuine individuality (if the word is still used) will flourish. People will not be restricted by artificial monetary barriers, which suppress people’s abilities, interests and opportunities. Instead, our full potentials will be realized by abundant resource availability and relevant education. A relevant education would entail how to relate to one another, human behaviour, semantics, dynamic equilibrium; not banking, advertising, business, law, stockbroking, or any other contrived focus that contributes nothing to social progress. Our ‘education’ today paralyzes our true potentials, and instead attempts to browbeat us into thoughtless conformity, in a system where we are merely units of mass consumption. In a resource-based economy, the exact opposite would be the goal. The more enlightened everyone is, the richer our lives and the more prosperous we are as a species.

Don’t we have ‘free will’?

Exactly what do we mean when we say that humans can exercise free will, and what evidence supports that we have it? First, let’s clear up what free will is not. We don’t usually attribute earthquakes to free will, no matter their unpredictability, since we understand they are the result of a chain of causes and effects, strictly obeying the laws of physics. If our desires and choices are likewise the result of natural law, then the notion of free will is to be discredited. If our minds are merely brains containing electrochemical signals—as they certainly appear to be to neuroscientists—then we have no free will.

Furthermore, do we have the free will to make choices that are beyond our frames of reference? Such a supposition would seem absurd.

The languages we use to communicate with were developed hundreds of years ago and are subject to interpretation. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the bible. It is said to be the ‘word of God’, but would an omnipotent being really compose such an ambiguous work as to generate more than 34,000 different subgroups of Christianity?

The study of semantics is not something the majority of people pay attention to. As Fresco explains, “We talk at each other, not to each other”, meaning we assume others understand the words we use in the same way we mean them. When one says, “We live in a great nation”, what does that mean exactly? When someone claims to be a ‘spiritual’ person, does that mean that he or she invites the homeless into his or her house for food and shelter? …or perhaps that they attend sanctuary once a week to engage in prayer? …or maybe they mean they ‘meditate’ to find ‘inner peace’? It is difficult to know, unless terms are defined. Furthermore, in our everyday discussion we often tend to disagree over “words” rather than the intended concepts themselves. We have no shortage of loaded and vague terminology in the English language: freedom, democracy, individuality, spirituality, love, free will, ideology, happiness, utopia, etc. Moreover, the ubiquitous dualities perpetrated by organized, theistic religions compound our misunderstanding, biases and the ambiguity of communication. There is no “good” or “evil”, “right” or “wrong”—every culture has different traditionalized interpretations of these notions.

In an ideal language, our words would be subject to strict definition. As Korzybski explained, “If we wish to understand the world and ourselves, it follows that we should use a language whose structure corresponds to physical structure.” We already have a language as such: science. When an American engineer designs the blueprints for an automobile and sends it to Japan, the same product is turned out. When a doctor writes a prescription, it is not subject to interpretation. Science is the closest approximation to reality that we have developed, and as such, it would be invaluable to adopt a more scientific use of our language.

I am sure to provoke a romantic projection or two with this statement, so we should ask ourselves, “What is the purpose of language?” Is it to effectively communicate ideas without confusion, or do we wish to preserve the quixotic elements that pervade much of our expression?

I will address this in my follow-up article on semantics.

Continued Next Page

continued from previous page

What about philosophy?

march 2010 dress fundamental question of why people contact us forthe a sample do not always behaveand in socially of our eM-arketing receiveacceptable ways. Of course, people often attribute mana complimentary e-Card to send to your clients kind’s perpetual atrocities to ‘human nature’, a

Here I am referring to “the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, values, reason, mind, and language.” People who are more inclined to the philosophical spectrum—that is, those who appreciate metaphysics and ontological conjecture—will likely take issue with the purely scientific disposition. Philosophy-oriented personalities may scoff at the idea of considering opinion irrelevant, because they often derive perspectives from purely subjective or speculative, and therefore biased, methods of evaluation. Metaphysicians postulate without testing their theories tangibly in their environment.

It is not my intention to instigate a thorough critique of basing one’s values on subjective measures. Philosophy is useful as thought exercise. I’d like to quote a forum post I encountered that scrupulously sums this point up, I feel: “I once heard that ‘philosophy is mental masturbation’, and it changed my view of the subject permanently… I think the value in it may be to exercise the brain more than anything

subject I wrote an article about in the previous edition of the Agora. The dominant sociological perspective disregards the idea that there exists any such thing as ‘human nature’, but contends that our behaviour and values are primarily developed through a multi-faceted array of environmental influences. So then, logically, we can explain the seemingly endless patterns of corrupt behaviour as due to social insufficiency—that is to say that our society is not designed to serve the well-being of people, nor is it structured to produce socalled ‘ethical’ behaviour or positive value identifications. Morality is an empty idea, with no empirical referent. As Peter Joseph, founder of The Zeitgeist Movement, denoted, “How anyone in their right mind could ever rationalize that a balanced, peaceful, sustainable, and productive world could ever come out of open competition, and hence open warfare— from individuals competing against each other for work, to corporations battling each other for market share, to governments competing against each other for economic dominance— is beyond me. We live in a paralyzing, detachment promoting, self-serving system which generates parasites and prostitutes.”

A resource-based economy is Philosophy is mental masturbation...The concerned value in it may be to exercise the brain more with designing the conditions than anything else, because conclusions based that enable on thought alone are rarely concrete or dehumans to live pendable. Philosophy is really just a way to without resorthypothesize a direction toward what will hopeing to the artifully become a scientific conclusion. ficial mechanisms we use today to control people’s behaviour—laws, moelse[, b]ecause conclusions based on thought rality, nationalism, and various other irrelevant alone are rarely concrete or dependable. Rather, superstitions we mindlessly uphold. We could they are quite relative and temporal. This is not term this ‘functional morality’, or eventually to say that philosophy does not have any use- render obsolete the idea of morality altogether. ful purpose. Though what is far more valuable Frontiers for the future is based on scientific observable and provable facts. Meanwhile, philosophy is really just a I have attempted to address many of the way to hypothesize a direction toward what will arcane values that still maintain dominance in hopefully become a scientific conclusion.” society today. It is imperative to reemphasize that the universe is always in transition and What about morality? to realize that what we think is commonplace While I’m refuting much contemporary today will be updated, changed or eradicated ‘wisdom’, I may as well touch upon the idea of in the future. Likewise, the monetary system morality. What purposes does it serve? Is this bred values in a time where scarcity was unthe best way to control or guide people’s behav- avoidable; now, in the age of exponentially advancing science and technology, this is no iour and values?

Many people will respond to the former longer a reality. Therefore, it is time we update question traditionally, explaining how we need our social values to reflect our present-day to ‘ethically’ guide people to lead socially ac- knowledge and our true potential as a species. ceptable lives. While this may be true from within our established worldview, it fails to ad-

“

”

SMART IS SEX Y

Silicone Vibrators • Lubes • DVD’s • Sensual Gifts Condoms • Books • Private Batchelorette Parties S E M I N A R S – Register online Mar 8

Call us to X HOST A SE !

Y TOY PART

Giving Good Head Nude Photography

Jan 24

Mar 15

Creative Kissing Anal Play -FREE

Mar 16

Burlesque Tease G-Spot - FREE

Mar 17

Jan 26 Prostate Masage – Live Demo

Mar 22

1 Tantric Massage Feb on Men

Mar 23 Mar 28 Mar 29

Jan 25

Make Her Moan

Burlesque Strip

2 Anal Play –Feb FREE

Better Sex Yoga

Feb 3 Vulva Massage – Live Demo

Creative Kissing

Giving Good FebHead 12

the art of lovin g 1819 W.5th & Burrard 604.742.9988 www.artofloving.ca

y e s

Vancouver w e

21

c a n

C O R P O R AT E IDENTITY | E-MARKETING | WEBSITES | TRADESHOWS

Contact us for a sample E-Marketing Mailer and receive a complimentary E-Greeting for your business. Reply by March 31st.

Te l :

VIV306 Agora Ads.fa.indd 3

604.738.4019 2/26/10 12:44 PM

22

National

march 2010

A Dim View of “Enlightened Sovereignty” Winnipeg-born Dee Nicholson describes herself as a “Truth Seeker”. She takes pride in her special ability to see through propaganda and paradigms, and wields her pen like a sword for our rights as Canadians and part of the human family.

The author of two books, she is a degreed metaphysician, Reiki Master, and life coach, as well as an activist for human rights, especially the right to choose our food, medicine, and health care.

Today finds Dee delving into the real nature of the health care system world-wide, and exposing the fist of controls tightening around our health freedoms, notably through the World Health Organization’s Codex Alimentarius Committee. She was one of the first in the health freedom movement to point to Canada’s expanding loss of sovereignty and ultimate vulnerability to regulations set by foreign, unelected committees of her trade group memberships.

Dee is the National Director of Communication for Freedom in Canadian Health Care, which is a charter group member of Canadians for Health Freedom (www.canadiansforhealthfreedom.org). She is a frequent blogger on the site, offering commentary on a wide range of topics.

by Dee Nicholson

W

hen our well-travelled Prime Minister addressed the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, this January, he made Swiss cheese of our sovereignty – you know, sovereignty, the right of a nation to be unique, to make its own laws, to govern itself without interference from outside its borders, and to protect the civil rights of its citizens.

“humanitarian”, and if you question the process and seek to delve deeper into its ramifications, you are made to look and feel like a selfish jerk who doesn’t care about other people.

This is a propaganda technique: the limiting of the scope of argument (for efficiency’s sake, of course), limits the scope of discussion, which limits the scope of understanding – along with the outcome. At its most manipulative use, the desired choice is presented as being “necessary” in order to prevent something unthinkable from occurring. One is made, in this case, to choose Harper’s “enlightenment” strategy, or else be seen as the aforementioned jerk.

“Notions rooted in a narrow view of sovereignty and national self interest must be reconsidered. We cannot do business as though for one to have more, another must have less. That is not true, it is not just, and it cannot be the path we take …

Our ambition … must be a shared belief that the rising tide of recovery must lift all The illusion of free choice boats, not just some. This is the exercise of sovereignty at its most enlightened.”

Many people will fall into that trap, and ~ Prime Minister Stephen Harper will accept, as they are assured, that there are only two ways to go, thereby leaving How very humanitarian-sounding. And them sacrificing their sovereignty “for the how very deceptive, this sleight-of-hand that good of all”. In order for the reader to unhas him pointing upward to heaven and an derstand exactly how this works, let’s take “enlightened stance”: his gilded phrases paint a peek at a couple of recent examples, right a picture of a more “just” global society, re- from the legislative pens of the Harper govplete with warm, fuzzy images of neighbor ernment. There are a lot to choose from, but helping neighbor through tough times. But these rather stand out. behind the words hide a reality that was easy Warrantless search and seizure of prito miss, in the midst of Harper’s pep talk. vate consumer use data from internet service The trouble with this sort of political providers was hyped by the Harper gang last doublespeak is that the words are often ac- spring, and was touted as the only way the cepted at face value, without an awful lot of government could protect children from the thought, simply because they sound uplifting. ravages of kiddie pornographers who vend But how is this heavenly state of pure justice their perversion over the internet. So if and compassion to be attained? Caught up in you want to preserve our enshrined right of the high of the moment, few will ask. Those protection from illegal search and seizure, who do will find that what Harper paints as you’re in favor of kiddie porn a selfless, just and true path to take must, by The same game was trotted out by definition, involve the collaboration of for- Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, as she eign authorities in order to develop a “shared cautioned the Senate that failure to approve belief”. That would mean each nation would Bill C-6, the late, but soon-to-be-reincarnathave to sit down with other nations to deter- ed Canada Consumer Protection Act, would mine whose sovereign laws had to be “ad- result in the corpses of dead babies stacking justed” – and that would mean that the wishes up. Never mind that the bill wiped out the of the voters of those “free and democratic” law of trespass, provided for the same warnations would be, of necessity, ignored. rantless search and seizure as the ISP legSo far, this “enlightenment” consists of islation, and gave the Minister the judicial lightening our burden of decision-making, as power of judge, jury and executioner. C-6 in what values we should uphold, what laws would give her unprecedented power over to enact, and what standards to maintain, ordinary Canadians, and would open the because, gosh, we shouldn’t be so selfish. door for other areas of legislation to be so Instead, we should accept decisions made affected. But gosh, how could you be in faby foreign-dominated committees. Correct vor of dead babies? me if I’m wrong, but to me, that smacks of And lest we forget, all this harks back a global governance system in fetu, about to to the profound pronouncement of George be birthed and nourished with more and more Dubya Bush immediately after the “attack” collective decision-making, until it is in place on the World Trade Center: “You’re either and in control, a real-life Rosemary’s Baby with us, or you’re with the terrorists.” in the guise of a saving grace for an “enlightThe same sort of pressure was subtly ened” humanity. brought to bear internationally, over the past The fact that the chief pitchman for this year, with the World Health Organization’s idea happens to be our prime minister makes declaration of a Level 6 Swine Flu “panmy stomach heave. demic” -- after it conveniently redefined the What’s really disturbing is the level of word so that it could make that pronouncemanipulation being used here, the subtle ment. Surely, hinted World Health mogul phrasing that ends up creating a clearly two- Margaret Chan, we don’t want this virus sided argument, where if you choose the right spreading, so everybody co-operate and let’s side, you look and feel like a hero for being a all get our vaccinations... and with that, she

gave herself the ability to collapse governments, declare martial law, and force vaccination of entire populations, regardless of sovereign laws, in all nations which signed (as Canada did) the WHO’s International Health Regulations.

The H1N1 “shamdemic” did not eventuate in such draconian measures being taken, but it might have. No matter. What was created, notwithstanding, was a massive windfall for vaccine-makers, billions upon billions of dollars, for useless, largelyuntested, toxic vaccines which ultimately would be refused by most of the world’s population, then foisted upon developing countries as a “benefit” from the “caring” international community, to wreak havoc with their health and their fertility.

The case in point, though, is how it was sold: a choice that was not a choice, just as “enlightened sovereignty” is not a free choice, but a forced hand. Harper clearly thinks we are incapable of figuring out such tricks. But no, Stephen, you can only fool all of the people some of the time.

When we take an enlightened look at Harper’s suggested version of sovereignty, we find that it involves having no real sovereignty whatsoever. Instead, international committees would “agree” on how to govern their sovereignty, in exchange for unspecified benefits to humankind. But wait!

That’s almost the exact definition of a trade agreement, given on the website of the World Trade Organization!

Yessiree, the WTO says that a trade agreement is the international version of a contract, and in this contract, the signatory nation accepts the “benefits” of belonging to the group, in exchange for agreeing to govern its sovereignty according to the direction of the group.

Now, can we understand the nefarious tactics being used here? Can we see the depth, breadth, and height of the mountain of manipulation being foisted upon us at every level, while smiling politicians soothe that this is the “just” and “humane” path?

Isn’t this the most massive of the herd of elephants in the drawing room?

Sovereignty suicide in Bill C-6 Much has been said of the constitutional violations in Bill C-6, which fell to prorogation, but will be reinstated as soon as possible in the new session of Parliament, beginning March 3rd. Hopefully, by that time, our Members of Parliament will be made aware that the Ministry seeking uberalles powers of enforcement is the same one that has already been using and abusing the powers sought via Bill C-6, without benefit of it having become law.

Health Canada has shamelessly and voraciously enforced against sellers and producers of Natural Health Products for years.

Recently, the whole country learned of the gun-point raid of Calgary’s Dr. Eldon Dahl, which atrocity heavily influenced the Sen-

ate’s heroic amendments to Bill C-6 in its last incarnation.

Just this week, we found out about North Regent Rx, a little-company-that-could, based in tiny Lockport, a few clicks north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Their story reveals yet another witch hunt by minions of Health Canada, and involves a natural product by the name of Lipidus, which had been making moves world-wide on a well-known competitor: Pfizer’s Viagra.

An interesting blast from the past, clipped from CBC Online News, December 3rd, 2009: “(Health Minister) Aglukkaq told reporters on Thursday that there is no conflict of interest in the appointment of Bernard Prigent, vice-president and medical director of Pfizer Canada, to the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).”

Health Canada seems to have taken particular pains to pour ice water on Libidus. In fact, a story in the Selkirk Journal, a Quebecor paper, stated bluntly that the agency had deliberately faked data in order to sink the product, and got caught.

This is the ministry which brought us Bill C-6, which in two sections made us subject to the dictates of foreign authorities: can we now see the context into which these clauses fit, in terms of Harper’s “enlightened sovereignty”? This language set a precedent whereby we would have no recourse against international directives, coming from… whom?

While Health Canada attempts to surgically alter our rights here at home, Stephen Harper is selling our national sovereignty down the river at the international level, and telling us it’s all very “enlightened”. Different verses of the same song, with a chorus heralding the birth of global government and the loss of every last vestige of human freedom.

But we’re not supposed to notice that.

Instead, we’re supposed to compare how we’d feel by being part of a “big, friendly club” as opposed to being “unsupportive of humanitarian values”, and pick one.

I hate to tell Mr. Harper, but there is another option. It’s one we used to use, in fact, and it served us very well for a very long time. It was called “being a good neighbor” and “being honorable in all things”. We didn’t have to give up anything, most particularly our rights, to be good neighbors, or to be honorable, and we still don’t. There is no reason why our nation cannot cooperate with others internationally, while honoring our right to choose how we do that.

Free people get to choose, Mr. Harper.

Who gave you the right to take that away from us, or to preach such madness in our name to other nations?

And let’s not forget those tortured Afghans, shall we?

march 2010

by Doris Foster

National

23

Why Did Harper Prorogue?

T

here has been a lot of speculation about Harper’s motivation to end the previous session of Canada’s Parliament. It doesn’t really matter whether we think it was the “right” thing to do or not, but we do need to understand why he did it. There are really many reasons, which all dove-tail into one goal: total control.

One bone-chillingly obvious reason, which I want to focus on here, is Bill C-6.

This Bill was whisked through the House last year before most of us had time to read it or become alert to its insidious dangers ~ much more serious dangers than Maple Leaf’s foods or poorly designed cribs. It is the circumstances surrounding this Bill that shows us one of the significant changes that proroguing, and ending, rather than merely suspending the session, will make when Parliament comes back.

The Bill, supposedly respecting the safety of consumer goods, was really a boobytrapped vehicle ready to blow up in our faces and deprive Canadians of every shred of due process under the law. It set precedents that could easily be applied and extended, with no Parliamentary oversight, to anything the Minister sees fit to use it for. Someone wants to enter your property? No problem. No warrant required. Confiscate or destroy your belongings? Likewise. Wouldn’t want to slow down the execution of laws with silly protocols like reasonable cause, now would we? Arrest and jail you? Easily done, no charges required, no phone call, no lawyer. It would deny us the ability to ask for a writ of Habeas Corpus, without which we cannot demand our right to appear in court and have the reasons for our detention stated and challenged. We’re talking no-frills justice here, folks. Saves a lot on court costs. The same person who lays the charges makes the judgment, metes out the penalties, locks you up, no explanation

required, no day in court, no accountability.

No lawyer fees. Economical. Expeditious.

Tyrannical. And anything could be added to the Schedules of Bill C-6 by the Minister, with no involvement of Parliament. Easy, quick, out-of-control growth. This Bill is more malignant than any cancer. It would kill both democracy and justice in Canada.

Canadians weren’t all as asleep as their Members of Parliament were last year, though. Concerned citizens like Dee Nicholson, of Canadians for Health Freedom, tore into that Bill and discovered its nasty clauses, its far-reaching implications, its complete flaunting of due process. They got busy. After the Bill was read in the Senate, enough people listened, repeated what they learned, and built up pressure. Many individuals contacted the Canadian Action Party (CAP) asking what could be done to fight this Bill. CAP’s Leader, Melissa Brade, sent out a press release strongly opposing the measures in Bill C-6 that suspend the most basic safeguards of civil liberties in Canada.

Senator McCoy heard the messages of the many Canadians who voiced their outrage. She understood and acted. Discussion, debate, blogging; many groups and social networking sites were used to spread information and awareness and finally, amendments were written, argued, and passed!

Adrenalin was pumping. The Bill would go back to the House to be reconsidered with its amendments. The juggernaut was delayed, hopefully even de-fused and disabled. We learned that the voices of Canadians CAN make a difference!

Then, enter Harper. One short phone call. The session ends. All business dies. The amendments are lost. He can now bring the Bill back, give it a new number, maybe even a new name, but the Bill will come back,

fully armed. This Bill is very important to someone. It will forever place the right to due process out of the reach of vulnerable Canadians, whether they are growing healthy medicinal herbs in their back yards or speaking truth to power.

For his next act, Harper appointed five new Senators. This is a number just more than the margin by which the amendments passed. Harper as good as owns the Senate now. We can’t let the Bill make it that far again. If the new incarnation of Bill C-6 gets through the House when it comes back; it won’t be safe to challenge, hamper, or compete with any corporate interests or make any ridiculous demands for accountability from your government.

But there is something very powerful and effective that Canadians can do, now, to make sure it doesn’t fly under the radar and get passed in the next parliament. We have to awaken the conscience of our representatives in Ottawa. It will be their children too, who must grow up in a country in which “innocent until proven guilty” has become meaningless. It will be their fellow Canadians, their families and neighbours, who will no longer be able to risk dissent in order to protect the quality of life in their communities.

If arousing conscience fails, we must scare our M.P.s more than Harper, or whoever wants this Bill so much, has scared them. We have to tell every single one of them that we will personally expose their betrayal and target them in their Ridings if they vote for this Bill. We have to shame them into accountability, because under the present system that’s the only hold we have on them. We have to get so smart and loud about this Bill that even the drowsiest Canadians will open their eyes and ask WHY they are being told they have to give up ev-

ery scrap of due process to make themselves “safe” from listeriosis and toxic or shoddy manufactured goods.

The answer is that they don’t. There are much more effective solutions, like limiting ‘how big’ food manufacturing plants can get before they’re just too big to be kept clean any more; like requiring testing and specifications and developing community awareness.

We need to recognize the value of promoting local agriculture, local processing, and local businesses. We can support and demand quality, instead of quantity and cheapness, and bring dependence on trade back into balance with creating healthy economies within all of our communities.

We don’t need Bill C-6, by any name or number. We don’t need to sacrifice the fundamental protections against the abuse of citizens by the power of bureaucracy and those who control it. There is plenty of legislation to properly deal with harmful products. It just needs to be applied and combined with common sense approaches to meeting our needs and eliminating the root causes of dangerous products.

There is no need to take away our right to due process, and we mustn’t let our government do this. Write, phone, email. Learn what is at stake and speak to everyone you know about it. Our kids are counting on us.

Make sure you understand what the choices really are. Canadians made a difference last year in the Senate and we need to make a difference now in the House. Tell your Member of Parliament what matters to you and hold him or her accountable.

Doris Foster Secretary, Earth Ecology Foundation (250) 379-2815 earthecologycanada@gmail.com

“The truth is that there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity.”

–Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary

Canada is Not a Democracy C

By Eric Partikian anada is a Constitutional Monarchy. The United States are a Constitutional Republic.

Why is it then that more often than not we hear in the media that Canada or the United States are democracies? A pure democracy has to be one of the very worst kinds of government there is, where theoretically, if ever fully implemented, would give 50.1% of the population a mandate to do just about anything it wants to 49.9% of the population. Think about that for a minute: in a pure democracy, 50.1% of the population could conceivably decide that 49.9% of the population should be incarcerated or forced into involuntary servitude. An extreme example, granted, but could anybody with any appreciable life experience think that it would be desirable to live in a democracy?

Fortunately, we do not live in a democracy. As a Constitutional Monarchy with dem-

ocratic processes, Canada cannot theoretically have 50.1% of the population decide tomorrow to deprive 49.9% of the population of it’s rights as listed in this country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms which we have in it’s current form as a consequence of centuries of hard-won experience.

Wars fought at enormous cost, and immeasurable pain and suffering, are really what’s behind our current Canadian Constitution. The rights and freedoms Canadians currently enjoy did not magically appear overnight or out-of-the-blue, but are the result of the many trials, errors, experiences, and ultimately something approaching wisdom, of those who came before us, stretching all the way back to the Magna Carta of 1215 AD. Why then is it almost never mentioned in the media that Canada is not a democracy, and that we are indeed fortunate that such is

not the case? Why does the MSM (“mainstream media”) almost always tell Canadians that they live in a democracy? Is this an innocuous oversight, or innocent error due to ignorance on the part of the MSM? What possible benefit to anyone could there be in falsely telling people over and over that Canada is a democracy?

Heaven forbid a crisis comes along where political demagogues come to the fore and whip up enough hysteria to convince 50.1% of a largely ignorant population, or even 60, or 70, or more percent of that population, that a minority group in this country, be they 49.9% of the population or less, has to be stripped of it’s rights for the “greater good”, as has incidentally always been the case, over and over throughout history, in countries that have fallen to tyranny.

Isn’t a population that mistakenly believes it lives in a democracy, with little or

no knowledge of it’s constitution and laws pertaining to human rights, a potential disaster waiting to happen? Is it to be forgotten that not yet ten years ago, a majority of Americans were deceived into believing that Iraq posed a mortal threat to them and had to be quickly invaded (things of this sort always have to be done quickly “or else” don’t they?) in egregious violation of the U.S. Constitution and international law? Will the next crisis, whether national or international in scope, be met by a well-informed citizenry that knows the difference between mob rule (democracy) and the rule of law (Constitution, Charter of Rights and Freedoms)?

One thing so far seems fairly certain: the MSM cannot be counted on to do the educating.

24

T

National

march 2010

Its Time to Promote Proven and Workable Solutions: An End to Usury

by Tom J Kennedy

hirty years ago, when I was 31 years young, I read a paperback authored

by Gary Allen, entitled “NONE DARE CALL IT CONSPIRACY.” On page 5 of the Introduction by John G. Schmitz, United States Congressman, it is written: “This book may have the effect of changing your life. After reading this book, you will never look at national and world events in the same way again.”

This significant event motivated me to prove Gary Allen wrong, as at that time I had full faith in the system that my parents and educators had exposed me to during my formal years of education. The more I read to prove Gary Allen wrong the more I learned how correct he was in his assessment of global banking, world politics and power. Over the years, I have learned that there exists a conspiratorial clique of usury elitists who manipulate policy at all levels of government thereby heavily influencing our lives - unknown to most fellow Canadians.

Indeed, thirty years later, I can attest to the many ways that the reading of that little paperback was the catalyst to motivate me to become the ardent researcher, writer re-educator and usuryfree creative that I have become. Indeed, not only do I advocate that we-the-people learn how we can experience the reality of 100% usuryfree living, but also I view the electronic and print media quite differently than do my fellow Canadians who still have full faith in the system or illusion that they are a part of.

As we progress into this 21st century the Internet is re-educating multiple millions of people by exposing the truth about the many problems that afflict modern society. It is becoming obvious to more and more dedicated researchers that the global banking cartel is and has been playing a key role in creating their New World Order. In fact, there is plenty of evidence being uncovered now indicating that the design flaw of usury on our orthodox system of debt money is the hidden fifth column that subtly controls almost every aspect of modern society: economics, food, energy, education, religion, politics etc.

Those of us who are dedicated to exposing the problems attributed to the lies, deceit and deception foisted upon us about orthodox economics during the 20th Century have come to be defined as usuryfree creatives as we also advocate creative solutions that can eventually lead to wethe-people experiencing the reality of usuryfree living.

Over the years, numerous author researchers have emerged to become very active in opening the eyes of multiple millions worldwide. These extraordinary individuals have played significant roles in the re-education process in the recent years and I have had the privilege of finding and using their resources and meeting many of them in real life situations.

There is Daniel Estulin, who published the book, “The True Story of the Bilderberg Group” in September 2007. Alex Jones, who releases DVDs on a regular basis. David Icke who publishes books on a regular basis. Jeff Rense who hosts an internet radio talk show and Issac Isitan who created the DVD, “Money, Who Creates It, Who Controls It?”, and Paul Grignon who created the popular DVD, “Money As Debt 1”, in 2006

and, “Money As Debt II”, in 2009.

An inspirational David Wolfe, author of “Eating For Beauty” and “The Sunfood Diet Success System” and “Naked Chocolate,” gives noteworthy presentations at Health Expos in various cities and online where he talks about the New World Order and briefly explains how the banking cartel and their ilk control the conventional, food industry.

David Wolfe’s company, Sunfood Nutrition offers wholesome, organic food products inspired by the principles of sustainable agriculture, living in harmony with nature and ethical, global co-operation. David recommends that we eat as much raw, organic food as possible to take maximum advantage of the life energy and enzymes in the food. According to David, a healthy body transforms consciousness and raises energy levels. As active usuryfree creatives, we recognize the importance of consciousness-raising and high energy.

All of these author researchers and many more are dedicated to exposing the countless problems associated with the endless pursuit of greed, power and global domination as demonstrated by the actions of the usury elites who are members of the Bilderberg Group or similar groups such a the Council on Foreign Relations or the Trilateral Commission.

The time is now to promote the selfimposed re-education process whereby these books, DVDs and live seminar presentations are networked or shared with others who are ready and willing to be re-educated. Additionally, any solution-oriented ideas and concepts that are considered to be proven and workable models based on the time, energy, thought and creation invested by the pioneering usuryfree creatives ought to be likewise promoted to everyone, everywhere.

Spreading re-education and awareness can be done by word of mouth or by a click of the mouse. The giant, trans-national corporations controlled and managed by the global elites, otherwise referred to as the shadow government, are likely to be members of the Bilderberg Group or any of the other New World Order groups. These powerful people will be dis-empowered by we-the-people who are now making conscious choices to spend our money differently.

Relying on the perception of competitive capitalism, the incumbent, patsy politicians along with the shadow government, whose members double as owners and major shareholders of these giant trans-national corporations, have conditioned the masses of common consumers to depend upon them to cheaply manufacture, but efficiently distribute their products and services thereby setting us up to ultimately support their selfish and greedy New World Order agenda by purchasing their inferior products.

Conscious consumers are now advocating a new design of co-operative capitalism that enriches and re-builds local communities thereby reducing any dependency upon the giant transnational corporations. Simply stated, more and more consumers are becoming aware that how they spend their money is more important than how they exercise their right and duty to vote as we progress into this 21st Century.

Of course, this means that we, the awakening consumers must understand that we can empower ourselves and drive any future markets by supporting the more conscious, local market. This also means that we must be willing to change our shopping habits and spend less money with the giant, trans-national, retail corporations and franchises and spend more money with small to medium-sized community retail businesses, SDI - Self Directed Income enterprises otherwise referred to as home-based businesses.

This is happening already, in various communities where people have learned that they can create and spend their own usuryfree community currency or usuryfree personal currency to be used as a complement with their diminishing amounts of federal cash. Participants commonly sign a usuryfree promissory note thereby issuing themselves prudent amounts of the usuryfree community currency. Their promise is to offer their products and services to others and accept a portion of usuryfree community currency for any negotiated exchanges. It is most significant that these promissory notes bear no interest, which ought to be correctly called usury.

These awakening consumers are advocating environmentally responsible living by purchasing green and friendly products such as non-toxic soaps and detergents, quality organic foods, light bulbs without mercury, hybrid vehicles and safe construction materials.

Local wholesale entrepreneurs are recognizing that they can expedite this awareness and re-building process by agreeing to accept a small portion of any usuryfree community currency from any retailers who purchase products for resale. The retailers in turn can then accept a percentage of any usuryfree community currency from consumers who can now afford to exercise their right and duty to shop locally.

Some participating entrepreneurs treat the paper notes of usuryfree community currency as coupons thereby discounting the retail prices while others refer to them as gift certificates.

However the paper notes of usuryfree community currency are treated, it is very important that each unit be valued in the stated amount that is equivalent to Canadian dollars.

The government authorities expect the participating entrepreneurs to treat any usuryfree community currency as federal cash and pay any designated taxes in federal cash. The usuryfree creatives who are pioneering these workable and proven models of usuryfree community currency are advocating that any level of government can accept a portion of any usuryfree community currency as partial payment of any taxes.

They explain in simple terms that any level of government has contracts with local individuals and companies who would willingly accept a portion of any usuryfree community currency as partial payment for any negotiated contracts. All that is required to implement this idea is what is called ‘political will’ otherwise defined as the support of the majority of voters in any election at any level of politics: municipal, provincial or state, or federal. Of course, the only entity cut out of these proposed transactions is the bank, and that’s good.

We will make a difference at a faster rate when we unite in large numbers and promote these proven and workable ideas being practiced by participants within the various usuryfree

community currency groups or networks. When participants realize that they can save some federal cash by using a usuryfree community currency, they learn to pay off any usury-bearing debts with these savings thereby accelerating the process of experiencing the reality of a usuryfree lifestyle.

During the forthcoming Sixth Annual UsuryFree Week, November 13th to 19th, 2010, usuryfree creatives from everywhere will create opportunities for discussions on how to promote the usuryfree community currency movement while avoiding the wrath of mis-informed government authorities.

It is commonly agreed that an optimal strategy for the future is to avoid referring to any usuryfree community currency as a dollar, as that was the particular word that agitated the banking cartel in the 2007 attack on the Liberty Dollar group. As an alternative, it is suggested that we promote the idea of referring to future usuryfree community currencies as wampum, in honour the Native North Americans who used it historically to negotiate trades.

There are now quality, printing companies that have access to unique software packages that can be used to print paper notes of any usuryfree community currency that would be impossible to counterfeit. Other internet savvy entrepreneurs assure us that efficient search engines could effectively upload a collective, online database of usuryfree creatives who are using their usuryfree community currency as a complement with federal cash and make it available for inter-active trading.

Agreements need to be negotiated with a competent, service provider to list our initial lists of offers and requests. Our own ID card for usuryfree creatives would be appropriate also. Perhaps we could embed a verifiable Hologram Certificate in a Kinebar and engrave it with its serial number on a bar code on a UsuryFree Marketing Card? following the model of the Merchant Marketing Gold Card, as offered by NOKI International.

Potential investors with some capital that could be used to permit us to move ahead with the operation of the online database of usuryfree creatives, who are negotiating trades or exchanges by using a portion of any usuryfree community currency, are invited to forward an email to tom@ cyberclass.net with “Potential Investor” in the Subject line.

Readers are invited to review the information at these websites for more background information.

-The UsuryFree Eye Opener http://usury-free.blogspot.com -The SDI (Self Directed Income) Eye Opener http://sdi-usuryfree.blogspot.com -The UsuryFree Cyberclassroom http://www.cyberclass.net/usuryfree.htm -The Barter LETS Cyberclassroom http://www.cyberclass.net/barable.htm -Community Currency Magazine http://www/ccmag.net -Calgary Dollars http://www.calgarydollars.ca -Ithaca Hours http://www.ithacahours.org For links to other relevant background information go to any search engine and type any of these words or phrases: usuryfree community currency, usuryfree network, usuryfree living, usuryfree creatives, life without usury, TommyUsuryFree Kennedy.

march 2010

by Paul Glumaz

E

National

THE ISSUE OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY IN THE GLOBAL BANKING CRISIS

urope is currently the epicenter of a new and even greater crisis than the October 2008 world financial crisis, which required heavy sacrifices from the taxable part of the world population to temporarily stem the slide into world economic depression.

The tens of trillions of dollars of bailouts for the large international financial institutions has now run its course and the global financial system is even more hopelessly bankrupt now than it was sixteen months ago.

Sixteen months ago it was the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Federal Reserve that led the world in the bailout of the system. Now, an even greater crisis has moved center stage to Europe. At the center of the crisis is the reality that in Europe there are no facilities to carry out the bailout that the banks desperately need. Unlike the U.S., or Canada, when the European nations agreed to unite, these nations eliminated their national currencies for the Euro, and now none of the 27 European Union member nations have the power and sovereignty to be the “lenders of last resort” as they once had when each nation had their own national sovereignty and currency.

So the preeminent issues in Europe is how are the international bankrupt banks with thousands of trillions of dollars of exposure in “fictitious” financial instruments going to continue getting bailouts?

The first maxim that one should emphasize is that international bankers always lie about what the problem is. They are the only entity on earth that lies more than their puppet President in the U.S., Barak Obama. Their biggest lie is that if the governments of the world do not bail them out, financial Armageddon will occur and civil society as we know it will cease. This claim is the ultimate form of “banker’s terrorism,” as well as the ultimate “mugging” of the human species.

The truth is quite to the contrary. Every nation that considers itself sovereign has the right to place these banks into bankruptcy and wipe out all the “fictitious” financial instruments

while keeping the depository parts of those banks at the regional level open, under bankruptcy protection, doing the necessary banking business needed to keep the communities and their economic activity going. This is exactly what FDR did in the U.S. in 1933. To assist FDR in 1933, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation that has since been called the Glass-Steagall Act. This act was finally repealed in 1999 under pressure from the international financial community.

Today many are calling for a return to Glass-Steagall, including Gulio Tremonti, the

Finance Minister of Italy, and most of all Lyndon LaRouche, the former U.S. Presidential Candidate. Without a “Glass-Steagall” type approach no economy of any nation can deal with the banking crisis without surrendering further to the banks, or allowing everything to collapse.

The implementation of an FDR GlassSteagall approach, nation by nation, is increasingly being recognized as part of the only way

Glo bal Go vern anc e

other primarily Asian nations refused to dump the Dollar, and thus the crisis has now shifted to Europe and the Euro.

Since the start of the financial crisis in late July 2007, the head of Banco Santander, the key bank of the Inter Alpha group, had been holding conferences with Brazil, Russia, China, and India, called the BRIC to lay the groundwork for a post dollar world. The meeting were attended by the leading decision

European Union, and in turn grant the European Union the sovereignty to tax all of Europe and float bonds at their discretion to bail out the international financiers.

The key to all such bailouts is the imposition of deep cuts in the social net of nations, from which cuts the bailouts of the banks are leveraged. When the austerity goes beyond the willingness of the population to tolerate, then a fascist system is required to discipline the population, which would otherwise erupt in social ferment to prevent the destruction of their lives and cause the overthrow of international financier controlled governments. That is the point that has been reached in the U.S. as witnessed by the events in Massachusetts last month, and that is also currently the situation that has been reached in Europe. Will The the Greek Trade Union movement e c in Pr go along with the discipline? No they will not! Will the Spanish Trade Unions? No they will not! Will the American people do likewise? No they will not!

Will the Canadian population do the same when their time comes?

Will we have fascism, or will we have national sovereign directed bankruptcy reorganization? That is the question! That is the question of national sovereignty!

Whenever you hear about “government costing too much” makers of those countries, including former and the need to “cut the waste,” that is the bankassociates of Lyndon LaRouche. Russian Fi- ers speaking through some politician, or some nance Minister Kudrin was a key party to these very foolish person who is unwilling to undermeetings. The idea was to create a post dollar stand that it is the banks that are bankrupt, not Euro currency world, with a form of convert- the people, or their governments. ible Russian Ruble and Chinese Yuan put in a The solution lies in what FDR did: Use currency basket arrangement with the Euro. the sovereign power of the nation to discipline Meanwhile the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. the banks, not the population. Use the sovereign Federal Reserve were bailing out the interna- power of the nation to generate the credit to put tional banks that were planning to wipe out the people back to work and end the depression. dollar! Both Bernanke and Geithner indicated This was also the solution in ancient times that throughout 2009 that a dollar collapse would Solon of Athens implemented in his day to deal not be so bad, in that it would lessen the U.S. with a similar crisis afflicting the city of Athens. obligations to the rest of the world. Indications As this is being written, the crisis in Europe were that October 2009 would be the month is unfolding, and the most probable outcome in that the Chinese and the Russians would pull Europe is that the Euro currency and the Euroout of the U.S. Dollar. Instead, at a conference pean Union will soon cease to exist. The nations in Rhodes, Greece, a different plan emerged; of Europe will have to reinstate their national not to collapse the Dollar but to use it as col- currencies in order to survive, and the financial lateral internally for credit in Asia, outside the elites will have to fight each other in a cannibal control of the international banks. As a result, like frenzy to see who among them, if any, will the Euro is now the currency that is collapsing survive. faster than the Dollar.

Paul Glumaz is a Northwest organizer with The G-7 meeting of Finance Ministers larouchepac.com and the LaRouche movement that was held in early February in the Canadian internationally. Vancouver Chapter meetings Arctic was so spooked that it did not issue a in March and April are 7:00 P.M. Saturdays on final communiqué. In the next days followed March 13th, 27th, and April 10th, and 24th at an emergency meeting of the 24 leading cen- 5024 Rumble in Burnaby. tral banks under the aegis of the Bank for International Settlements in Australia to discuss the crisis. Then on Thursday, February 11th there was a meeting of 27 heads of state of the European Union.

While nothing was decided, other than to try unsuccessfully to get Germany to bail out Greece, the main proposal on the table is to get the nations of Europe to surrender something like 80% of their indebtedness to the elli Machiav

to solve the deepening economic depression that is setting in as result of the otherwise insoluble financial crisis. Beyond Glass-Steagall, nations will also have to agree to establish a fixed relationship between their currencies in international trade, similar to what existed before 1971. A fixed exchanged system is required as a basic regulation to stop the speculation in currencies that is a the core of the ability of international financiers to blackmail nations.

The international bankers would like you to think that the European crisis is centered on the “sovereign default” of Greece. Greece is relatively insignificant and is a distraction to the real issue. The insolvency of Spain, and the U.K., and from them by extension Brazil, and Latin America is by far the greater issue, because it involves a key Spanish bank Banco Santander. Banco Santander is a core offshoot of Rothschild family’s Inter-Alfa Group.

Banco Santander is the key to the financial bubbles, primarily in real estate, in the above-mentioned areas of the world. Right now, the inner core of the world’s most powerful financial families will soon cease to exist if they can not manage a massive bailout of their worthless assets, a bailout that will most likely have to come from Europe.

The Rothschild’s InterAlpha Group includes along with Banco Santander, The Royal Bank of Scotland, France’s Societe General, Germany’s Commerzbank, The Netherlands ING, Belgium’s KBC, Sweden’s Nordea, the National Bank of Greece, Portugal’s Banco Spiritu Santo, and Ireland’s AIB. This Inter-Alpha group had planned that the dollar would be the first to collapse, not the Euro, and based on their pretenses of solvency, this group had planned to make a deal with Russia, China, and India to establish a post dollar Eurozone centered global monetary system. They had planned that their puppets, U.S. President Obama, Treasury Secretary Geithner, and Fed head Bernanke would have been successful in collapsing the US Dollar by last October 2009. However the Chinese and

25

26

National

march 2010

Intolerable Cruelty: Cover Stories and a Culture of Lies

by Harrison Koehli

There was this boy I sent to the ‘lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteenyear-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn’t any passion to it. Told me that he’d been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he’d do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. “Be there in about fifteen minutes”. I don’t know what to make of that. I sure don’t.

The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, “O.K., I’ll be part of this world.”

- Sheriff Bell in No Country for Old Men

O

ver the last decades the Coen brothers have repeatedly proven themselves to be masters of portraying the tragicomic realities of American life. From the quirky and trivial to the depths of moral failings and utter depravity, their films often focus on the criminal mind and its varied psychological roots. They get to the heart of human weakness, the tempting lure of a “free lunch”, and the inscrutable darkness of the psychopathic mind. Most notable of recent years was Javier Bardem’s rendition of Anton Chigurh, the psychopathic killer from the Coens’ Academy Award-winning adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, No Country for Old Men. In many ways recalling the Coens’ earlier work, Fargo, the audience experiences the film’s drama through the eyes and conscience of a county Sheriff in West Texas, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). We share his confusion and pained desire to understand the senseless violence against which he struggles every day.

As I mentioned in ‘Pathocracy: Brave New World or 1984?’, “while the creation of a literary world (or a film one, in this case) can teach us many things, it cannot provide a way out. For that we need accurate knowledge.”[1] Because if we go out in this world without that knowledge, as Tommy Lee Jones’ character says above, we put our

Harrison Koehli is an editor for the alternative news website http://sott.net and Red Pill Press http://www.redpillpress.com), publisher of Andrew Lobaczewski’s important book, “Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil adjusted for political purposes.” An authority on its subject matter, Harrison’s writings deal with the influence of psychopathy on politics. He maintains the website http://ponerology.com, and is currently writing a book on the subject. He has appeared on Dr. Kevin Barrett’s “Dynamic Duo” radio program and Dustin Cantwell’s “Fane of the Cosmos” and written articles for http://saferelationshipsmagazine.com.

souls at hazard. We must have at least some understanding of what we are to face. That said, the main inspiration for this piece comes from what is probably the Coens’ worst movie, Intolerable Cruelty, starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones as a pair of shallow, greedy shells of human beings in a comedy of Hollywood infidelity and monetarily inspired marital maneuverings. Clooney plays a highly successful divorce lawyer, schooled in the practice of winning arguments by any means necessary.

Zeta-Jones plays a conniving, cold-hearted seductress out to catch, and then divorce, a rich husband for half his money. Both show a stunning facility to lie about anything.

Naturally, they end up together, and while the film itself is unremarkable it does have something to say about the highly ponerized qualities of Western culture.

Take this line from Clooney’s character, Miles Massey, delivered to a cheating wife whose husband caught her in the act, and who, of course wants “fair” representation: “Hmm... Hmm... Yes, your husband did show remarkable foresight in taking those pictures. And, yes, absent a swimming pool, the presence of a pool man would appear to be suspicious. But, Madam, who is the real victim here? Let me suggest to you the following.

Your husband, who on a prior occasion had slapped you, beat you...’

While the Coens humorously push this tendency to create one’s reality out of thin air throughout the movie, sometimes to a ridiculous degree, the line pretty much captures the modus operandi of the film’s characters, and of the entire Western legal system, incidentally, thus bringing me to my point. A culture without a popular understanding of psychopathy faces a very real danger from the very thing of which they are unaware. A culture without a popular understanding of psychopathy and whose citizens demonstrate an almost inborn tendency to lie, to create personal fictions and to even come to believe those fictions, all to present themselves in a better light, is hurtling so fast towards self-destruction that is perhaps unavoidable at this point.

There is a phrase to describe the fictions that people like Miles Massey are so adept at conjuring. They are called cover stories, plausible stories made to put the facts in a light completely at odds with the reality of a situation. The motivations are simple. In a legal system it goes as follows: how can I put my client, who is undoubtedly guilty, in a good enough light that the judge or jury will be convinced that they are innocent?

How can I lie well enough to convince them that it is my opponent that is lying? How can I make my client’s victim look like the guilty party? In other words, it’s all about perception-management, creating a version of the “truth” that benefits the client, and playing with “facts” in such a way that the word loses all meaning.

The notion of the cover story maps our reality so well that if we trace its roots we are led directly to the roots of the human

condition, that murky territory plumbed with such insight by the best philosophers, mystics, novelists, and poets. From the selfdeceptions of everyday life to the “big lies” told by scammers who call themselves leaders, most of our notions about life are often little more than cover stories to hide a truth we refuse to see, and often a reality that is too scary to imagine.

So what is the root of the cover story?

First and foremost, it has to do with the universal human capacity to dissociate. Not necessarily a bad thing, it is because of this special quality of consciousness that we are even able to function as living, thinking, feeling beings in the world of experience.

Dissociation allows us to regulate reality, to focus attention, to not be distracted by the endless expanse of sensory signals barraging our awareness at any given moment.

Dissociation is also what makes a harsh reality bearable. We dissociate consciousness during abuse to mute the pain of the ultimate betrayal. We shunt away unnecessary data in a situation where our lives are threatened and narrow focus is essential to our very survival. But this tendency is easily misused. When we become too used to its calming effects, we run the risk of selfdeception that places us in danger of even greater harms.

Psychologist and author John F. Schumaker lists the types of dissociative processes in his book The Corruption of Reality: This evolutionary strategy [i.e. preserving the many advantages of elevated consciousness while simultaneously reducing the emotional impact of that same adaptation] came in the form of the capacity of the brain to dissociate itself from its own data.

More specifically, the human brain gained the ability to (a) selectively perceive its environment, (b) selectively process information, (c) selectively store memories, (d) selectively disengage from already stored memories, and (e) selectively replace dissociated data with more “user-friendly” data.

[2] Lobaczewski called these processes subconscious selection and substitution of information [3], examples of which are easily furnished by playing variations on the theme of the suave divorce lawyer’s client.

Here’s the scenario: the woman’s husband comes home early, and is somewhat perplexed to see a pool man’s van parked on the driveway of his spacious West Hollywood home, a home by the way, without the pool required to make such services required in the first place. But the anticipation of “the big game” he’s five minutes late for, or perhaps the succulent appeal of the buckwheat sandwich awaiting him in the fridge, causes him to push this paradoxical perception from the purview of his mind’s eye. He’s got more important things to focus on, after all.

He grabs the sandwich, watches the game, and the pool guy slips out on sock-footed feet. That’s (a) selective perception. It’s not quite denial because the relevant information hasn’t been processed well enough to even lead to a conclusion worth denying.

Selective processing (b) is a bit more involved, one example of which is denial, the subconscious blocking of uncomfortable conclusions. In this scenario our unlucky protagonist may

arrive home just in time to see the pool guy get in his van and drive away. He manages to free up enough brain power to say to himself, “Wait a minute...” upon seeing the incongruously placed van. For a moment he recalls past instances of the lingering smell of unfamiliar men’s cologne on his wife, but he simply shakes his head, “That’s ridiculous.” On the threshold of entering through the door of truth, he backs away at the last second. And while he blocks the pain of the truth temporarily, he also blocks the benefits gained from passing through that door and the temporary pain it brings.

Subconscious selection of premises occurs a bit earlier in the chain of reasoning.

If our minds were police officers, subconscious selection would be like tampering with evidence, that evidence being the data, perceptions, and memories we use to come to logical conclusions about the world, others, and ourselves. It occurs when our mind deletes and represses just that piece of information which was responsible for arriving at the uncomfortable conclusion. We come to a conclusion which is ostensibly and logically correct, but it’s “not even wrong” because the premises we use are garbage. In (c) and (d) our memories are simply the data we manipulate. Some memories don’t get stored in the first place, others are blocked via trauma, and some simply don’t come to mind because otherwise we might be forced to face an uncomfortable truth.

Now, let’s say our hypothetical husband enters his home, after seeing the parked van, to find his wife and the much younger pool guy emerge from upstairs with nervous glances and quick breath. They’re surprised, but quick on their feet, with a cover story ready, to boot. “Bob, have you met Pool Guy Jim? He’s an old friend, and was going doorto-door offering his services when he serendipitously came to our door! We were just catching up.”

What a relief! Gone are the slight recollections of manly fragrances (that’s selection of premises), now but wisps in the air of the husband’s comforted mental landscape.

Ignored is the fact that they emerged from what was undoubtedly the bedroom upstairs, an odd place to catch up with a casual acquaintance. It’s a plausible story after all, especially in their neighborhood, and Sue was

Continued From Previous Page always popular. And, most importantly, it’s much more comfortable to believe than the alternative.

The cover story was a success, and the conclusion (she’s not cheating) was made possible thanks to the bogus data his wife provided, backed up by Bob’s own spurious thinking processes. That’s substitution of premises, the most complex process of the bunch, or as Schumaker puts it (e) selectively replacing dissociated data with more “userfriendly” data. Lobaczewski notes that substitution is actually a semi-conscious process, most often helped along collectively, in conversation. It may even occur in one’s mental dialogue, “What? Is she cheating? That might explain that cologne... What’s that?

An old friend? What a relief!” And practiced with enough dedication to cheap imitations of truth, it can become a nasty habit.

And by this vicious cycle of deception we are led back to our main point. When a society develops the habit of twisting the truth, malicious abuse of the truth becomes easy and prevalent. Western culture is asphyxiated by it. What starts as an evolutionarily adaptive brain mechanism becomes a shortcut by which we avoid facing uncomfortable views of ourselves and others. And as the process moves from more automatic and unconscious (denial) to more increasingly conscious (substitution), our thinking becomes increasingly pathological and downright wrong, making us vulnerable to those who take advantage of this face-saving tendency.

Lobaczewski writes: Those people who use conversive operations too often for the purpose of finding convenient conclusions, or constructing some cunning paralogistic or paramoralistic statements, eventually begin to undertake such behavior for ever more trivial reasons, losing the capacity for conscious control over their thought process altogether. This necessarily leads to behavior errors which must be paid for by others as well as themselves.

People who have lost their psychological hygiene and capacity of proper thought along this road also lose their natural critical faculties with regard to the statements and behavior of individuals whose abnormal thought processes were formed on a substratum of pathological anomalies, whether inherited or acquired. Hypocrites stop differentiating between pathological and normal individuals, thus opening an “infection entry” for the ponerologic role of pathological factors.[4] In other words, when we lie to ourselves, we’re easy prey for psychopaths who lie to us. We may identify with our nationality to the extent that we filter out negative thoughts about our leaders and our conduct with other countries. We may ignore the atrocities committed in our names. Even worse, we may take the bait offered by our leaders and substitute important data, reaching pseudological and pseudo-moral opinions. “They deserve it, because they hate us.” “That massacre wasn’t actually a massacre. They fired first after all, and we were only defending ourselves.” “The guy had weapons of mass destruction.” “They’re the ones that want to kill us; we’re just making sure they’ll never get the chance.”

We buy the cover story, hook, line, and sinker. On a cultural level, the process is called myth-making. We create grand histories, semi-mythical founders of nations, charter documents that sustain the false belief that

march 2010 we are something we are not. The process is described at length in several books. Burton Mack’s latest, Myth and the Christian Nation [5], is a good start and Shlomo Sand’s bestseller The Invention of the Jewish People [6], is a great case study of these processes in action. It is by the cultural substitution of data that we come to see ourselves as a people at odds with another people. We twist the facts available to come to mistaken conclusions about who the real enemy of humanity is, and who is responsible for the propagation and manipulation of myths in the first place: psychopaths.

Take the “Underwear Bomber” incident this past Christmas. The available facts make it screamingly clear that Farouk Abdulmutallab was a patsy of Western Intelligence Agencies, Israeli Mossad in particular, but even with most of the pertinent facts and clues published in the mainstream news, it is only the alternative news websites, like sott.net, who come to the logical conclusion.[7] Everyone else blindly promotes the ludicrous cover story. As the Detroit News reported: Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one

soldier in that effort.”[8] Oh, really. And Mossad just happened to have unchecked access and control over security at the airport in question. And the well dressed man with the American accent who got the young Nigerian on the plane without a passport and who the FBI denied existed for weeks, was just a rich uncle! A quote from Dr. Sidney MacDonald Baker is fitting here: Empiricists are those of us who believe what we see and rationalists are those who see what we believe.[9] An empiricist looks at the data and sees that Abdulmutallab had help, most likely from the very intelligence agencies tasked with “preventing” terrorism. A rationalist operates with several beliefs that distort logical thought processes. “This must be because of this.” Or “This must be the explanation.” Once this limited thinking becomes habitual, it’s common to hear, “I simply don’t believe it.” “I just can’t believe that our government and military would do something like that.” But with the proper framework, with accurate data about psychopathology and human psychology, harsh realities are not rejected offhand.

Last year’s critically acclaimed movie about the Iraq war, The Hurt Locker, provides good material for testing these thought processes. The film follows the operations

of an elite U.S. army bomb squad as they handle IEDs, car bombs, “body bombs”, and investigate the scenes of exploded materials. Its fairly realistic look and narrative (no mention of Blackwater or its antics, however) is probably because it was written and produced by Mark Boal, who spent time embedded with a real bomb squad in Iraq.

The script reveals only what the characters see and experience and for those who are paying attention, the absence of any real explanation for the violence throughout the film is telling. Bombs are discovered, but never their creators. Stashes are found, but never their owners.

A young boy is found murdered, a bomb sewn into his abdomen. In fact, except for a sole sniper and his companions, the so-called “enemy” is never seen, only assumed to be real.

This is understandable, given the fact that armed resistance is a given in any occupied territory. In fact, the only villains seen in the film are Americans, like the commander who suggestively orders the murder of an Iraqi man with a survivable wound, or the British (SAS?) bounty hunters dressed in Arab clothing who the main characters encounter in the desert.

National

27

patterns concerning the war in Iraq, whether of the soldiers themselves or the American and world public, are built on the false premise that there is an enemy. We naturally “fill in the blanks”, but only after the key pieces of data have been provided to complete our collective substitution of data. As a result, the

absence of a real enemy isn’t noticed.

For those readers used to being fed on the unwholesome chaff of the mainstream media rags, these statements may come as a shock. Scoffs of disbelief and the occasional outburst of “Ridiculous!” accompanied by frantic gesticulations are to be expected. But in a society where entire professions rely on people deliberately manipulating the truth in order to “win” an argument, where policing serves politics and quotas, not care and protection of citizens, where people are so used to lying that it is considered normal and perfectly acceptable, is such a reality really so hard to believe?

When we consider some facts that, taken separately, are relatively easy to believe, the situation becomes clearer. Psychopaths thrive in corporations and politics (witness Madoff and Blagojevich), and the violent ones are considered the worst of the worst criminals (most serial killers are psychopaths). And with unlimited black budgets, cannon fodder soldiers, crafty intelligence agencies with generations of experience in making murder look like an accident, political psychopaths, simply by virtue of the scope of their influence, are potentially the most dangerous. When you combine these facts with the existence of a public that has lost its ability to think, patently false cover stories find fertile The noticeable absence of any real “terground in the whitewashed pastures of the rorist network” is particularly evident in Western mind, where truth is buried and artitwo scenes. In the first, the bomb squad is fice taken for authenticity. called to investigate a suicide bombing in the Green Zone. The team Sergeant is the only one to point out that it was probably a remote detonation. In the second scene, some soldiers encounter a “suicide bomber” with a bomb vest.

While a majority of the near-hysterical soldiers want to shoot the man, it’s revealed that he was forced against his will, by parties unknown, to wear the vest and approach the soldiers.

In fact, while the film doesn’t reveal it, the truth Psychopaths in positions of power are 'creating a new reality', is that the vast majority, manipulating the whole of humanity for their own benefit, if not all, of the “suicide September 11th 2001 was only the tipping point. bombings” in Iraq are orTwo editions from Red Pill Press that will shake your world view. chestrated and engineered Available online at www.redpillpress.com

by U.S., U.K., and Israeli Call toll free for a mail order catalogue 866-706-7455 intelligence to give the il9/11 THE ULTIMATE TRUTH POLITICAL PONEROLOGY lusion of a real enemy, thus Laura Knight-Jadczyk & Joe Quinn Andrew M. Lobaczewski justifying an extended oc$24.95 ISBN13: 978-1897244223 $20.95 ISBN13: 978-1897244258 cupation and a profitable War Without End against a A small publisher of big ideas fabled enemy. The thought

28

World

march 2010

~News Atlas~ || World Headlines Of The Month || 2 Ex-Workers Accuse Blackwater Security Company of Defrauding the U.S. for Years The New York Times reports: Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security company of defrauding the government for years by filing bogus receipts, double billing for the same services and charging government agencies for strippers and prostitutes, according to court documents unsealed this week.

Wikileaks and Iceland MPs propose ‘journalism haven’

Bayer pesticide banned over threat to honeybees Ethan Huff A U.S. District Judge from Manhattan has banned the sale of spirotetramat, a pesticide produced by Bayer CropScience. Citing allegations by environmental groups and commercial beekeepers that the pesticide is toxic and is killing off the nation’s honeybee population, Judge Denise Cote has declared that sales of spirotetramat must cease after January 15.

Long-term cannabis use linked to psychosis, Study Finds Physorg.com reports February 27 The longer people use cannabis or marijuana, the more likely they are to experience hallucinations or delusions or to suffer psychosis, according to a study released Saturday by the University of Queensland in Australia.

Rev. James Manning Claims Obama Worked for CIA

Texas ordered to destroy five million blood samples illegally taken from babies BBC reports: without consent The Manning Report reports: February 12, 2010 February 22 Ethan Huff “Iceland could become a “journalism “Hon. James David Manning says Obama haven” if a proposal put forward by some The subject of a recent federal lawsuit, was CIA operative who used Columbia Icelandic MPs aided by whistle-blowing routine blood samples legally taken from University as a cover up to go to Pakistan website Wikileaks succeeds.”

Texas newborns to screen for disorders and in 1981 when the United States and the diseases were illegally being kept by the Taliban worked together against Russia.”

The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative Texas Department of State Health Services (IMMI), calls on the country’s government without parental consent. Found to have to adopt laws protecting journalists and their begun holding and retaining such blood Argentina set to win new backing in sources. samples since 2002, the agency is being Falklands row sued on behalf of the children’s parents by the Texas Civil Rights Project.

AFP reports Study proves conclusively that violent video February 13 game play makes more aggressive kids U.S. government wants farmers to spread toxic powder from coal plant “Argentina was anticipating Monday to Iowa State University Professor Craig scrubbers on their food crop fields broaden regional support in its escalating Anderson says a new study he led, analyzing row with Britain over the disputed Falkland 130 research reports on more than 130,000 Ethan Huff Islands after winning immediate backing subjects worldwide, proves conclusively from Venezuela and Nicaragua.” that exposure to violent video games makes The federal government is pushing farmers more aggressive, less caring kids -- regardto use a toxic byproduct of the coal burning Obama proposes $950 billion health bill less of their age, sex or culture. industry to fertilize and loosen the soil in their crop fields. Initiated under the Bush John Whitesides and Patricia Zengerle Rothschild names first non-family chief administration as a beneficial use for the report: executive substance, efforts by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in “President Barack Obama made a last-ditch Reuters reports: conjunction with the Environmental Protec- bid to revive his stalled healthcare overhaul February 12 tion Agency (EPA) continue to advocate for on Monday with a plan to make insurance the widespread use of synthetic gypsum in more affordable and to bolster government “Investment bank Rothschild said Nigel agriculture. authority to regulate premium hikes.”

Higgins will take over as its chief executive next month, the first person outside the famRussia warns West against “crippling” ily to lead the banking dynasty as it reshapes Aspartame has been renamed and is now Iran sanctions its structure to pursue growth.” being marketed as a natural sweetener Reuters reports: Monsanto faked data for approvals claims Ethan Huff February 24 its ex-chief In response to growing awareness about “A senior Russian diplomat warned the Dinesh C. Sharma reports: the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what West on Wednesday against trying to New Delhi, February 9 does the manufacturer of one of the world’s paralyze Iran by targeting the Islamic most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, Republic’s energy and banking sectors with “Tiruvadi Jagadisan on monday stated the rename it and begin marketing it as natural, crippling sanctions.” company “used to fake scientific data” subof course. This is precisely the strategy of mitted to government regulatory agencies to Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which Top Bush adviser defends using nuclear get commercial approvals for its products in hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the weapons on civilians India.” public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called “AminoSweet”.

Infowars reports: Serious birth defects linked to the agricultural chemical atrazine The senior Justice Department legal adviser Cannabis Beneficial for Multiple Sclero- to President Bush who made the legal case NaturalNews, February 22 sis Patients, Study Finds for the Bush Administration’s use of torture tactics on terror suspects defended comGastroschisis is a birth defect in which the Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews ments that the president could unilaterally intestines, and sometimes other organs, “massacre” civilians in wartime in a newly develop outside the fetal abdomen and poke A systematic review conducted by The released interview. out through an opening in the abdominal Global Neuroscience Initiative Founda“You did argue that the president can wall. Long considered a rare occurrence, tion found that five of six controlled trials legally order a village of civilians massagastroschisis has mysteriously been on the reported a reduction in spasticity and an cred,” a KQED radio host asked John Yoo, rise over the last three decades. In fact, the improvement in mobility amongst multiple now a professor at Berkeley. “Do you stand incidence of the defect has soared, increassclerosis patients using cannabis extracts. by that?” ing two to four times in the last 30 years.

“If, I thought it was militarily necessary,” But why? Researchers think they’ve found Yoo replied. the answer.

Yoo was asked about the testicles scenario during a 2006 debate with International Human Rights expert Doug Cassel.

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?

Yoo: No treaty.

Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.

Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

Son of Hamas founder spied for Israel for more than a decade Times Online reports: February 24 “The son of one of Hamas’s founding members was a spy in the service of Israel for more than a decade, helping prevent dozens of Islamist suicide bombers from finding their targets, it emerged today.

Codenamed the Green Prince by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, supplied key intelligence on an almost daily basis from 1996 onwards and tracked down suicide bombers and their handlers from his father’s organization, the daily Haaretz said.”

Clashes in Greece strike against austerity plan BBC reports: February 24 “Police in Greece have clashed with protesters striking over austerity measures designed to save the economy.”

“It is the second general strike in two weeks and coincides with growing anger at the EU’s response to the crisis.”

“Greece has closed airspace to all flights, trains and ferries are standing idle, and archaeological sites have been shut.”

The $100 Trillion Problem: Can America Learn From Chile Before It’s Too Late?

Zero Hedge reports: February 24, 2020 “$100 trillion is the present value of what Americans will have one way or another to pay, unless they default on their obligation to their citizens. And that is the future, and I am extremely worried because you are like passengers in the Titanic. You see the Titanic is going toward the iceberg of aging populations but populations the feel entitled to all these huge benefits that the politicans have promised the people, but they have not funded the benefits for the future.

So how are you going to pay them? That is the big issue, the big domestic problem facing America.”

“The problem is the entitlement state.

The problem is that there is a gigantic disconnect between what the people want the government to pay them in the future, in health, pension, and what the people want to pay in tax. And because the entitlement state is based on promises for the future, you don’t have to pay it today, this is growing, because to win elections politicians offer benefits to people that would be paid to people in the future. So this big hole is not only a problem in America, it’s exactly the same problem in Greece today, in Southern Europen, in France, in Germany. The west will go bankrupt unless you reform deeply

march 2010 the entitlement state. You are all prisoners of the Bismark unfunded entitlement system…

With the aging of population, the extended life, you have been accumulating these huge liabilities that eventually will bankrupt the government. A huge fiscal crisis is coming to the west unless you face it and confront it directly…You either will have to raise taxes big time in America, or you will have to cut benefits. But it is extremely difficult to do that, in a system in which you have people entitled to all this things.”

Brit Panel: ‘UK economy must face new world order’

This is Money reports: February 24 “The British economy will never be the same again and boardrooms are refusing to accept the reality: that is the stark warning that came from a panel of experts today.

The environment for business will ‘never return to pre-recession normality’ argues the hard-hitting report from a panel of academics convened by BDO LLP.” Australia to use face-scanning and fingerprints to combat terrorism Australia plans to fingerprint and face-scan visitors from 10 high-risk countries in an attempt to combat terrorism, which has become a “permanent” threat to the country.

Pope sounds warning over airport body scans CBC reports: “Benedict XVI cites need to protect ‘the human person in their integrity.’”

Budget Increases for Nuclear Weapons Production at the Expense of Social Programs Global Research reports: “In the new budget request for 2011 the Obama Administration proposes to freeze discretionary domestic spending for social programs while dramatically increasing funding for new US nuclear weapons production facilities.”

H1N1 shot blamed for Calgary woman’s rare disorder CBC reports: “ A Calgary woman regrets getting the H1N1 shot after her doctor told her it likely caused a rare and painful disorder.”

‘Influenza vaccine has no effect’: study The Local reports: “There is no evidence to support the contention that the influenza vaccine administered to the over 65s is of any more use than opening the windows and washing hands, a new study from the Cochrane Collaboration claims.”

EPA Prepares to Take the Lead on Regulating CO2 Time reports: “The Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases like CO2 could be considered pollutants and gave the EPA the power to regulate them under the Clean Air Act.”

GlaxoSmithKline deliberately hid evidence of Avandia harm, says Senate report Natural News GlaxoSmithKline, maker of the diabetes drug Avandia, knew the drug was linked to tens of thousands of heart attacks but went out of its way to hide this information from the public.

Iraqi vice president warns “militarization” of society risks coups Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports: “‘There is a historical precedent in this case. The country is set for military coups,’ the vice president said.”

Understanding the Nature of the Global Economic Crisis Andrew Marshall of GlobalResearch.ca reports:

“The people have been lulled into a false sense of safety under the ruse of a perceived “economic recovery.” Unfortunately, what the majority of people think does not make it so, especially when the people making the key decisions think and act to the contrary. The sovereign debt crises that have been unfolding in the past couple years and more recently in Greece, are canaries in the coal mine for the rest of Western “civilization.” The crisis threatens to spread to Spain, Portugal and Ireland; like dominoes, one country after another will collapse into a debt and currency crisis, all the way to America.”

“In October 2008, the mainstream media and politicians of the Western world were warning of an impending depression if actions were not taken to quickly prevent this.

The problem was that this crisis had been a long-time coming, and what’s worse, is that the actions governments took did not address any of the core, systemic issues and problems with the global economy; they merely set out to save the banking industry from collapse. To do this, governments around the world implemented massive “stimulus” and “bailout” packages, plunging their countries deeper into debt to save the banks from themselves, while charging it to people of the world.”

Read the rest at GlobalResearch.ca China Circled by Chain of US AntiMissile Systems China Daily reports: “Washington appears determined to surround China with US-built anti-missile systems, military scholars have observed.”

“According to US-based Defense News, Taiwan became the fifth global buyer of the Patriot missile defense system last year following Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Germany.”

“Air force colonel Dai Xu, a renowned military strategist, wrote in an article released this month that “China is in a crescent-shaped ring of encirclement. The ring begins in Japan, stretches through nations in the South China Sea to India, and ends in Afghanistan. Washington’s deployment of anti-missile systems around China’s periphery forms a crescent-shaped encirclement”.”

World

29

The New McCarthyism in Israel: Human Rights Groups Face Crackdown

“Parliament is also considering outlawing psychological violence in the home,

Global Research reports:

because it is seen by many as a precursor to physical violence.”

“The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that has followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say.”

“In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country’s peace-related organisations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions.”

Americas bloc excluding US and Canada agreed BBC reports: February 25 “Latin American and Caribbean nations have agreed to set up a new regional body without the US and Canada.

The new bloc would be an alternative to the Organisation of American States (OAS), the main forum for regional affairs in the past 50 years.”

‘Netanyahu Authorized Dubai Assassination’ IMF Boss Proposes Globalist World Reserve Currency Global Research reports: The New York Times reports: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NetanFebruary 27 yahu has reportedly authorized the assassination of senior Hamas official Mahmoud “The chief of the International Monetary al-Mabhouh early January in Tel Aviv.”

Fund said Friday that the organization should reorient itself to better detect systemDubai now seeking 26 suspects in Hamas ic risks to the global economy and quickly killing step in with emergency loans when financial crises emerge.”

Reuters reports: Massive Earthquake Hits Chile “Dubai is hunting for at least 26 people over the killing of a Hamas commander in The New York Times reports: a Dubai hotel in a suspected Israeli operaFebruary 27 tion that has caused a diplomatic furor.”

“A massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck Karzai criticized over Afghan poll Chile early Saturday, shaking the capital of watchdog move Santiago for 90 seconds and sending tsunami warnings and advisories along much of Reuters reports: the Pacific basin.”

“Afghanistan’s main opposition on Wednesday criticized President Hamid Karzai’s removal of foreign observers from a U.N.-backed electoral watchdog as “autocratic” and urged international pressure to ensure impartial elections.”

Massive Bank Failures Due, Says Oversight Panel

Epoch Times reports: February 26

Latvian ‘Robin Hood’ hacker leaks bank “Close to 3,000 banks are currently clasdetails to TV sified as having a risky concentration of commercial real estate loans, according to a BBC reports: recent report by the Congressional OverFebruary 25 sight Panel (COP). All of them are small to mid-sized banks, already weakened by the “An alleged hacker has been hailed as a lat- financial crisis.” ter-day Robin Hood for leaking data about the finances of banks and state-owned firms Senate Bill Allows Obama to Declare to Latvian TV.” “Cybersecurity Emergency” “Using the alias “Neo” – a reference to The Matrix films – the hacker claims he wants to expose those cashing in on the recession in Latvia.”

“He is slowly passing details of leading Latvian firms via Twitter to the TV station and has its audiences hooked.”

French husbands ‘may be tagged’ BBC reports: February 25 “Editor’s note: Not men convicted of violence against their wives, but husbands who might be violent.”

“Men seen as likely to be violent towards their wives could be forced to wear an electronic tag under a law being debated by the French parliament.”

“The tag would have to be worn by men who have received a court order to stay away from their partner.”

The law has cross party support and is expected to pass easily.

The Hill reports: February 27 “The president would have the power to safeguard essential federal and private Web resources under draft Senate cybersecurity legislation.”

Google Launches Chile Earthquake Person Finder Mashable.com reports: “Google today launched a person finder to quickly connect those looking for missing people in Chile and those who have information.”

“The simple interface lets you choose between two options — “I’m looking for someone” and “I have information about someone,” then either query the database or enter new information. At the time of writing, the Person Finder app has 3,100 records.”

“The Person Finder is the same app used following the Haiti earthquake. We hope to see other tech companies stepping up to provide tools to assist people in Chile.”

30

World

march 2010

An angry voter is an ignorant voter

Association For Psychological Science

Imagine this scenario: You lost your job at the lumber yard early in 2009. Nobody is building new homes these days, and this slowdown has trickled down to suppliers all over the country. What’s worse, you’re dipping into savings just to make your own mortgage payments—on a house that has lost a big chunk of its value. In short, your Canadian dream is in shambles.

It’s a dreary but all too familiar scenario. Now imagine further how you feel about this. Is worry your primary emotion? Are you anxious about your wife’s health, and the possibility of an expensive hospitaliza-

The Future of Facts

B

Esther Dyson

tion? Are you fearful about depleting your kids’ college funds? Where will you all live if you lose the house?

Or are you mostly angry? After all, this situation is totally unfair, given how hard you have worked all these years. Who’s to blame? Those fat cat bankers are still drawing their obscene bonuses, while working guys like you are barely eking out a living.

Someone’s got to pay for this mess.

Both fear and anger are understandable under these dire circumstances. But what are you going to do? Well, there‘s an election coming up later this year. Here’s your chance to at least take some action, to raise your citizen’s voice and be heard. How will you exercise this civic responsibility when you go to the polls in November?

We like to think that our democracy is rational, that as voters we educate ourselves on the issues and choose the candidate who best represents our views. Emotions, while natural, would seem to undermine this civic ideal, leading to cynicism and confused thinking and wrongheaded choices. But is it so simple? New research suggests that emotions can indeed skew voting behavior—but in surprising and nuanced ways.

University of Massachusetts scientists Michael Parker and Linda Isbell rigged an election to explore the interplay of specific emotions and voting. Not a real election, of course, but a hypothetical Democratic primary election for the Massachusetts state

senate. They created two candidates, John Clarkson and Tom Richards, each with detailed positions on a dozen important public issues. The candidates’ positions are spelled out on the candidates’ Web sites, along with general information on each aspiring senator.

The researchers recruited a large number of volunteers, all Massachusetts residents, to act as voters in this election.

They were directed to the Web sites, and told to peruse as much information as they liked, in any manner they wanted—and to consider whatever they needed to make an informed voting decision. Clarkson and Richards actually agreed on most of the issues, though they stated their views differently. The general information was vague, but made clear that each candidate was well qualified.

But here’s the rub: Before the voters started researching the issues and candidates, some were primed for fear and others for anger—much like the scenarios above.

The idea was to see if these two basic human emotions shaped civic behavior in different ways. That is, did angry citizens size up candidates one way, and anxious voters a different way? And did these thinking styles translate into different behavior at the polls?

The answer is a resounding yea. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, the worried voters were

mostly dusty papers in the years before the Internet, or strangers on the telephone – to clarify questions of fact: Was this really the first such product? Was Mr. Smith 42 or already 43? Was his claim that revenues had grown for the last five years true merely because of acquisitions that his company had made? And so on.

My life was ruled by tk – which stands for “to kum,” or “to come,” in the jargon of reporters. We fact-checkers would joke about the lazy reporters who would hand us copy such as, “Juan Tigar, tk years old, grew up in tk before studying at tk. Now tk title at Widgets Corp., he…” Our job was to fill in the tk’s.

But we learned an enormous amount.

We learned not just thousands of facts that I have since forgotten, but an attitude of skepticism coupled with reverence for the truth.

That attitude contrasts with the skepticism I once heard from a Russian reporter

da, the motivation behind the assertion.

The actual truth was irrelevant.

Of course, spin, propaganda, and censorship persist in journalism, but with one big difference: Almost anyone can now operate as a reporter. How can we ensure that these self-nominated reporters respect the truth?

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has announced plans to require bloggers and celebrity endorsers to disclose gifts or payments from vendors and others seeking the bloggers’ positive comments online. But what about other kinds of bias?

As the journalistic priesthood erodes and everyone can become a citizen reporter or commentator, regulating or training all would-be journalists is not the answer.

In line with the bottom-up, do-it-yourself ethos of the Internet, where people book their own flights, publish their own photos, and sell their own second-hand goods, it should be the users’ responsibility to do their own fact-checking. curious.

This is not to say that journalists should not check their own facts (or that priests should not observe the tenets of their own religion). But in the end, everyone has to become a better reader – more skeptical and more curious. Why is this story getting so much attention? Does this blogger ever say anything negative, or is she always

UDAPEST – At a recent conference of newspaper editors in which I took part, a small crowd gathered to talk about journalism and new media. When I told the group that I had begun my career as a magazine fact-checker, several of them grew misty-eyed, as if someone had told a group of priests about his childhood as an altar boy.

I brought up my past because I think that fact-checking is the single best training not just for journalism, but for life in general. It teaches you to think skeptically. It is easy to believe something when someone who appears knowledgeable asserts it. But if you have a responsibility for checking facts, you listen But in the end, everyone has to become a more carefully. better reader – more skeptical and more On what sources does the speaker base his facts?

Is there something in it for him – a higher about her early days on the job. “Whenever stock price, an advertising fee, or someone we read an article about the health dangers else’s gratitude? Or is he simply biased be- of butter, we would immediately run out cause of the people he knows, the company and buy as much butter as we could find,” he works for, or the attitudes he picked up she told me. “We knew it meant there was about to be a butter shortage.” In other at home?

I spent hours picking through sources – words, Russians looked only for the agen-

“

”

much more deliberate and organized in their thinking than were the angry voters, spending significantly more time exploring the candidates’ Web sites. What’s more, the anxious citizens actually voted for the candidates whose positions they agreed with; in other words, democracy worked the way it’s supposed to work. This may seem obvious, but it wasn’t to the angry citizens, for whom there was no apparent connection among issues and positions and ballot-box choices.

So what was influencing the angry voters, if not the issues of the day and the candidates promises? Apparently it was the vague general information that guided their choices. In the real world, that means things like basic name recognition, party loyalty, and simplistic political labels. The angry voters didn’t take the time to really concentrate on the issues and positions, and instead let these skimpy generalities guide them. It appears their anger was switching their brain from deliberate mode to automatic mode— to gut feelings more than rational analysis.

The worried citizens had too much at stake to trust their gut.

For more insights into the quirks of human nature, visit the “Full Frontal Psychology” blog at True/Slant. Excerpts from “We’re Only Human” appear regularly in the magazine Scientific American Mind. Wray Herbert’s book, On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits, will be published

by Crown in September.

talking about the great products she uses?

Does she have any kind of disclosures on her blog? Why is this politician saying nice things about that politician? What company does the product reviewer work for?

Governments can impose regulations, but in the end we will get the kind of journalism for which we ask. If we ask for it, Web sites will offer not just content but reputation systems, so that contributors will have reputations as reliable sources (or not).

We should not outlaw anonymity (which has its uses), but we can ask for details about the people whose words we are reading. Someone may legitimately want to remain anonymous, but we can draw our own conclusions about their reasons.

That much thinking may sound like a lot of work, but it is what is required of a responsible adult these days. Compared to a century ago, more people spend less time laboring to ensure their physical existence.

But, in this increasingly confusing world, we need to spend a little more time laboring to ensure our own intellectual integrity – a task that we cannot outsource to governments or even to media. Facts are holy, but not all media that claim to report them, “new” or old, can be trusted.

Esther Dyson, chairman of EDventure Holdings, is an active investor in a variety of start-ups around the world. Her interests include information technology, health care, private aviation, and space travel.

march 2010

World

31

Renewing the News

by Naomi Wolf Naomi Wolf is a political activist and social critic whose most recent book is Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.

N

EW YORK – Last week, rumors from the world of print media were rife: a hundred reporters from The New York Times news desk to be bought out – or to lose their jobs if they refuse; steep cutbacks at British newspapers; staffs slashed at Condé Nast – eight respected editors axed at Glamour magazine. In the United States and elsewhere, there is a sense that the long-foreseen implosion of news publishing is accelerating, having reached a kind of critical mass.

The head of a famous journalism school, echoing sentiments common among her peers, told me recently, “We are preparing students to enter a profession that won’t exist as we know it by the time they graduate.”

There is no way to disguise the reality: newspaper readers, in the West at least, are getting older; younger readers prefer to get their information online, where readers spend far less time actually reading news than print readers do; and, most agonizingly of all for the industry, people who were willing to pay for newspapers are unwilling to pay for the same content on a screen.

But does this mean the death of news, or its evolution? I think we are witnessing something new being born.

There is a great deal to mourn about the

passing of the older news model. I had the honor of attending the premiere of The Most Dangerous Man in America, the new documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and his daring release of the Pentagon Papers – against the will of the US government – to The New York Times back in 1971. At that time, newspapers held the public’s focus and could be a powerful gadfly. If you were President Richard Nixon, there was no ignoring what appeared on the front page of The New York Times.

The blessings of the Internet are many, but one casualty of our segmentation into

online subcultures is the loss of a common focal point. It is easy for a president or prime minister to ignore a thousand Web sites; the multiplicity of outlets and voices online, paradoxically, has weakened the media’s

power to force accountability from leaders.

But the passing of the old news model has also had a salutary effect. People’s relationship to authority figures – doctors, politicians, religious leaders, or, indeed, journalists – is no longer slavishly deferential. But this means that newspapers, in order to survive, will have to abandon their top-down tone, their “we decide what’s important” sense of hierarchy, and create more collaborative kinds of documentation and feedback with citizens.

This does not mean merely permitting comments on an article that is published online; it means creating more opportunities for citizens to document, record, curate, and edit news from their own communities. A new form could evolve from this changed power relationship between editors and citizens, potentially becoming as powerful as traditional journalism, if not more so.

First, online news outlets will have to link not just to sources, but to live footage, ideally shot by citizens. I have created op-eds in partnership with a citizens’ video news collective, The Glass Bead collective.

There is a potent immediacy to documents that have hyperlinks to footage of veterans being trodden underfoot by mounted police at a demonstration at the US presidential debates, or students being gassed in

A New Generation of North American Citizens

By Dana Gabriel http://beyourownleader.blogspot.com

T

he North American Forum on Integration (NAFI) was created in 2002, and is one of many think tanks pushing for closer continental ties. In 2005, NAFI organized the Triumvirate, a North American model parliament which meets once a year. The exercise brings together university students from the U.S., Mexico and Canada with participants assigned the roles of legislators, journalists or lobbyists. Over the years, the mock parliament has debated and drafted resolutions on such key issues as trade corridors, immigration, NAFTA’s Chapter 11, along with the creation of a North American investment fund and a customs union. Infowars reported that last year’s Triumvirate gathering was cancelled due to the swine flu pandemic scare.

The Triumvirate 2010 will be held in Querétaro, Mexico. A description on its website states that, “This 5th edition will gather a hundred university students from Mexico, the United States and Canada to participate, from May 30th to June 4th, 2010, in an international negotiation exercise in which they will simulate a parliamentary meeting.” Some of the main objectives of the Triumvirate event include, “To allow participants to familiarize themselves with the functioning of democratic institutions as well as North American political, economic, environmental and social realities; to develop the participants’ sense of belonging to North America (and) to increase intercultural exchanges and promote the creation of academia networks.” This year’s delegates will address such topics as making smart borders more efficient, managing transboundary water in North America, as well as countering human trafficking and consolidat-

ing North American governance. While the model legislature is seen as an opportunity for students to better understand the political process and the challenges facing the continent, in many ways it mirrors actual efforts to further integrate the three countries. This includes the vision of a real functioning North American parliament similar to the European Union (EU) model.

In a 2008 article, journalist Steve Watson described the mock parliament as, “another example of an overarching movement on behalf of globalist business leaders and politicians to merge the three nations of North America into an EU like federation.” He added that, “Integration meetings such as the NAFI Triumvirate are simulations of the exact practices currently being undertaken by the SPP and its offshoot organizations. The NAFI Triumvirate is designed to familiarize ‘future Canadian, American and Mexican leaders’ with the processes involved in such practices.” Watson also pointed out that missing from the whole activity is any simulated opposition to the agenda being presented. The reality is that not all issues need to be addressed in a bilateral, trilateral or global fashion as some are best solved at a local, state and national level. It is important to learn about other countries and instill a sense of cooperation, but the Triumvirate exercise appears to be aimed at indoctrinating students to view themselves as North American citizens as opposed to Americans, Canadians or Mexicans.

Many of the recommendations from the 2005 report, Building a North American Community became part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) agenda and the

push for deep integration. The policy paper advocated the creation of a network of centers for North American studies. It recommended that, “the three governments open a competition and provide grants to universities in each of the three countries to promote courses, education and research on North

their rooms during the recent G-20 summit.

As more citizens become documentarians, online newspapers will have to curate their work to reflect reality on a level of visual urgency that new readers take for granted.

Second, news outlets will have to be interactive: they should regularly teach citizens op-ed writing, for example, so that editors can receive a truly diverse set of submissions – well sourced, well written, and well argued – from people from all walks of life.

Finally, citizens should be able to continue to curate a news story. On Facebook, of all places, I experienced the amazing potential of posting an item and then inviting my “community” to continue the research as well as the debate. To be sure, I have been exposed to flimsy sources, and newspapers of the future should help readers learn what a good source is, and what good citizen journalism requires. But I have also had many eye-opening experiences as people from around the world and from every background deepen my understanding and sourcing about issues as far-ranging as military law, religious practices, and swine flu.

With every shift in medium, there is a period of mourning for the old one. I don’t pretend to possess journalism’s Holy Grail: a sustainable business plan for the newspaper of the future. But I do know that that goal is far more likely to be achieved if newspapers take their readers seriously and train them as documentarians of their own communities and of their own moments. If newspaper publishers continue merely to rearrange the deck chairs, their elegant, elitist – and currently sinking – ship will deserve its fate.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009. w w w. p ro j e c t - s y n d i c a t e . o r g

at American University in Washington, D.C., “was established to educate a new generation of students, to promote policy debate among the governments and the public, and to undertake research on ideas for a continental future.”

Arizona State University has also created the North American Center for Transborder Studies whose mission, “is to advance greater understanding of border and trilateral issues in North America by supporting scholars who contribute to the development of innovative theory and actionable policy analysis regarding these issues.” The North American Integration and Development Center based at the University of California, Los Angeles, “seeks to build linkages among a wide variety of institutions, organizations, and community groups in order to promote North American integration.”

These various centers, along with America and assist elementary and second- other initiatives are part of the ongoing efforts ary schools in teaching about North Amer- to further condition and train a new generation ica.” The report also recommended devel- into accepting a North American consciousoping, “teacher exchange training programs ness. for elementary and secondary school teachThe ideology of globalization is deeply ers. This would assist in removing language embedded in the corporate structure, mass barriers and give some students a greater media, government, as well as in the whole sense of a North American identity.” In his educational system. Together they are workarticle The Future of North America, Rob- ing to shape the minds of the next generation. ert Pastor, one of the leading proponents of Students at all levels are being indoctrinated continental integration proclaimed, “To ed- to conform to universal values and standards. ucate a new generation of students to think Under a new global order, there is no room for North American, each country should begin nationalism or individuality. Increasingly, it is by supporting a dozen centers for North special interest groups, multinational corporaAmerican studies. Each center should edu- tions, think tanks, and other nongovernmental cate students, undertake research, and foster organizations who are pulling the strings of exchanges with other North American uni- power. National sovereignty remains one of the versities for both students and faculty.” last obstacles to the full implementation of a The Center for North American Studies North American Union and global government.

32

World

march 2010

Pesticides are killing birds, bees, and bats by the millions

E

by Ethan Huff, citizen journalist stimates from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicate that millions of birds and fish die every year from pesticide exposure. Scientists are now discovering that even low level exposure is disrupting the animal kingdom and causing new diseases to develop, threatening many species with extinction.

Roughly 90 percent of the nation’s rivers and streams are contaminated with pesticides, affecting more than 80 percent of fish. More than 30 percent of the nation’s aquifers are contaminated as well, affecting the drinking water of millions of people.

In recent years, scientists have been observing the decimation of many species of bees, amphibians, and bats due to pesticides.

In just a few years, over one million bats in the northeastern United States have died from diseases caused by pesticide exposure. More than 1,800 species of sea creatures face extinction from exposure and many researchers suspect that colony collapse disorder (CCD) among bees is being caused by pesticides as

well.

Some of the smallest sea creatures being affected are spreading disease all the way up the food chain. Seals that eat contaminated herring are dying by the thousands, illustrating how even limited exposure can have widespread consequences.

Carlos Davidson, a conservation biologist from San Francisco State University, believes that pesticides directly inhibit immune function in animals exposed to them, causing them to act as hosts for diseases. Novel diseases that have left scientists at a loss for an explanation are likely developing in part from the overuse of antibiotics in the general population. Together, a deadly combination is formed that threatens both animal and human life.

Back in the 1970s, scientists discovered that insecticides were being carried by the wind from crops in the San Joaquin Valley of California up to the Sierra Nevada Mountains where they contaminated air, water, and snow in this otherwise pristine area. Eventually, researchers found that amphibians living in lakes and streams were wrought with the same pesticides. Because the amphibian population declined heavily between the 1970s and the 1990s, the same time that those pesticides were used in the valley, Davidson believes that pesticides were the culprit in those deaths.

Many see the obvious connection between pesticide exposure and vulnerability to disease; however, proving it without a doubt is a difficult task. Many concerned scientists recognize the problem but do not know what to do about it. Unless something is done to greatly reduce pesticide use, the entire existence of the animal kingdom is at stake.

It is Time to Stop Consuming Soy [OPINION]

by Dr. Jay Davidson, citizen journalist

S

oy burgers, soy cheese, soy ice cream, soy baby formula, soybean oil, tofu, all the way to soy milk - soy has taken over in America with a reputation for being all natural and good for you. About 74 percent of U.S. consumers now believe soy products are healthy. Although soybeans are considered a vegetable, that alone does not make it necessarily healthy. It is interesting to note that soybeans were not listed as a food in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) handbook in 1913, but as an industrial product.

In 2009, the soybean industry was a $6.8 billion dollar industry! The marketing for soy has been aimed primarily at the health benefits of the isoflavones it contains, which is one of the phytochemicals in soybeans. Isoflavones are the compounds which are being studied in relation to the relief of certain menopausal symptoms, cancer prevention, slowing or reversing osteoporosis and reducing the risk of heart disease. The marketing and research has helped soymilk alone go from a $2 million dollar product in 1980 to $300 million dollar product in 2001! (2) However, new research and studies have raised very important questions over the health benefits of soy. The core of their concerns rests with the chemical makeup of the soybean. Soybeans contain a natural chemical that mimics estrogen, the female hormone.

Studies have shown that this chemical might increase the risk of breast cancer in some women, affect brain function in men and lead to hidden developmental ab-normalities in infants.

Jill Schneider is an associate professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Through her extensive research she has discovered that a component of soybeans - isoflavones - significantly accelerated the onset of puberty in the rodents. (3) She points out that many babies who are

Computer Games may Increase Brain Power and Cure PTSD

by Melanie Grimes, citizen journalist

A

recent study by Oxford University demonstrated that computer games could help treat traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and help remove the memory of trauma, if the same is played immediately after a stressful event. Previous research determined that video games can increase brain activity and create structural changes in the brain. Many online sites offer free versions of various video games that can be accessed easily and for free, for those needing relief from stress.

The PTSD research was conducted on 40 subjects. They were shown a movie containing stressful images, which was called a Trauma Film. This film included images of injury and death, for instance advertisements showing car accidents and the dangers of drunk driving. Researchers decided to see if video games were effective to treat PTDS because they use a large portion of the brain. It is known by neurobiologists that it takes six hours for memories to consolidate and become stored in the brain. Playing video games for thirty minutes disrupted this cycle and prevented the brain from storing the painful memories. The researchers showed that gaming prevented flashbacks to the traumatic memories, but the video play has to be

conducted immediately after a stressful event.

Video games have previously been shown to increase brain activity when the games involve an aspect of mental shape jug gling or other strong graphic images, such as bubble bursting. Research on shape juggling games has been shown to increase the gray matter in the motor area of the brain. The research demonstrated that the cortical thickness of the brain increased with regular play. The amount of time used in the study was thirty minutes for three months. The research was conducted on teenage girls and published in the journal BMC Research Notes. The brain activity increases sugar consumption rates in the brain, or GMRs, and increases brain performance by seven times, according to a study in Wired Magazine as far back as 1994.

Video games are available for every computer and game console. Games that use puzzle skills and geometric problem solving have been shown to be the best to aid memory retention. This research should bring relief to video game players, who can now justify the claim that their gaming is not play but is building brain cells and reducing stress.

allergic to cow`s milk are fed soy-based formulas, which contain isoflavones. Isoflavones, she says, can act like estrogen, a natural hormone important in the development of both male and female humans and a baby fed soy will receive, through the phytoestrogens, the equivalent of approximately 5 birth control pills per day! (4) Besides soy mimicking estrogen in the body it also contains a dangerous substance called phytic acid (or also referred to as phytates). This substance is present in the bran or hulls of all seeds and legumes, but none have the high level of phytates which soybeans do.

Phytic acid blocks the body`s uptake of essential minerals like magnesium, calcium, iron and especially zinc. Additionally, soybeans are highly resistant to phytate-reducing techniques, such as long, slow cooking.

In addition, soybeans also contain potent enzyme-inhibitors. These inhibitors specifically block uptake of trypsin and other enzymes.

Trypsin and the other enzymes are needed for protein digestion. Without them it can lead to serious gastric distress and to chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake.

Soybeans also contain hemagglutinin, a clot-promoting substance which causes red blood cells to clump together and inhibits oxygen take-up and growth. Hemagglutinin and trypsin inhibitors are both “growth depressant” substances. Although the act of fermenting soybeans does de-activate both hemagglutinin and trypsin inhibitors, cooking and precipitation do not. (5) It is clear that soy is not suitable for human consumption unless it has gone through a rigorous fermentation process to reduce the anti-nutrient and phytate levels. Examples of fermented soybeans are the following: tempeh, miso and natto and soybean sprouts.

If that’s not enough a very large percentage of soy - over 90% - is genetically modified and it also has one of the highest percentages of contamination by pesticides of any of the foods we eat.

Man, Machine, and in Between

by Jens Clausen

T

ÜBINGEN, GERMANY ­– We are so surrounded by gadgetry nowadays that it is sometimes hard to tell where devices end and people begin. From computers and scanners to mobile devices, an increasing number of humans spend much of their conscious lives interacting with the world through electronics, the only barrier between brain and machine being the senses — sight, sound, and touch — through which humans and devices interface. But remove those senses from the equation, and electronic devices can become our eyes, ears and even arms and legs, taking in the world around us and interacting with it through software and hardware.

This is no mere prediction. Brain-machine interfaces are already clinically well established – for example, in restoring hearing through cochlear implants. And patients with end-stage Parkinson’s disease can be treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). Current experiments on neural prosthetics point to the enormous future potential of similar interventions, whether retinal or brain-stem implants for the blind or brain-recording devices for controlling prostheses.

Non-invasive brain-machine interfaces based on electroencephalogram recordings have restored the communication skills of paralyzed patients. Animal research and some human studies suggest that full control of artificial limbs in real time could further offer the paralyzed an opportunity to grasp or even to stand and walk on brain-controlled, artificial legs, albeit likely through invasive means, with electrodes implanted directly in the brain.

Future advances in neurosciences, together with miniaturization of microelectronic devices, will enable more widespread application of brain-machine interfaces. This could be seen to challenge our notions of personhood and moral agency. And the question will certainly loom that if functions can be restored for those in need, is it right to use these technologies to enhance the abilities of healthy individuals?

But the ethical problems that these technologies pose are conceptually similar to those presented by existing therapies, such as antidepressants. Although the technologies and situations that brain-machine interfacing devices present might seem new and unfamiliar, they pose few new ethical challenges.

In brain-controlled prosthetic devices, a computer that sits in the device decodes signals from the brain. These signals are then used to predict what a user intends to do.

Invariably, predictions will sometimes fail, which could lead to dangerous, or at least embarrassing, situations. Who is responsible for involuntary acts? Is it the fault of the computer or the user? Will a user need some kind of license and obligatory insurance to operate a prosthesis?

Fortunately, there are precedents for dealing with liability when biology and technology fail. Increasing knowledge of human genetics, for example, led to attempts to reject criminal responsibility, based on the inappropriate belief that genes predetermine actions. These attempts failed, and neuroscientific pursuits seem similarly unlikely to overturn our views on human free will and responsibility.

Moreover, humans often control dangerous and unpredictable tools, such as cars and guns. Brain-machine interfaces represent a highly sophisticated case of tool use, but they are still just that. Legal responsibility should

not be much harder to disentangle.

But what if machines change the brain?

Evidence from early brain stimulation experiments a half-century ago suggests that sending a current into the brain may cause shifts in personality and alter behavior. And, while many Parkinson’s patients report significant benefits from DBS, it has shown a greater incidence of serious adverse effects, such as nervous system and psychiatric disorders and a higher suicide rate. Case studies revealed hypomania and personality changes of which patients were unaware, and which disrupted family relationships before the stimulation parameters were readjusted.

Such examples illustrate the possible dramatic side-effects of DBS, but subtler effects are also possible. Even without stimulation, mere recording devices such as brain-controlled motor prostheses may alter the patient’s personality. Patients will need to be trained in generating the appropriate neural signals to direct the prosthetic limb.

march 2010

Doing so might have slight effects on mood or memory function or impair speech control.

Nevertheless, this does not raise a new ethical problem. Side-effects are common in most medical interventions, including treatment with psychoactive drugs. In 2004, for example, the United States Food and Drug Administration told drug manufacturers to print warnings on certain antidepressants about the increased short-term risk of suicide in adolescents using them, and required increased monitoring of young people as they started medication.

Similar safeguards will be needed for neuroprostheses, including in research. The classic approach of biomedical ethics is to weigh the benefits for the patient against the risk of the intervention, and to respect the patient’s autonomous decisions. None of the new technologies warrants changing that approach.

Nevertheless, the availability of such technologies has already begun to cause friction. For example, many in the deaf community have rejected cochlear implants, because they do not regard deafness as a disability that needs to be corrected, but as a part of their life and cultural identity. To them, cochlear implants are an enhancement

World

33

beyond normal functioning.

Distinguishing between enhancement and treatment requires defining normality and disease, which is notoriously difficult.

For example, Christopher Boorse, a philosopher at the University of Delaware, defines disease as a statistical deviation from “species-typical functioning.”

From this perspective, cochlear implants seem ethically unproblematic. Nevertheless, Anita Silvers, a philosopher at San Francisco State University and a disability scholar and activist, has described such treatments as “tyranny of the normal,” aimed at adjusting the deaf to a world designed by the hearing, ultimately implying the inferiority of deafness.

We should take such concerns seriously, but they should not prevent further research on brain-machine interfaces. Brain technologies should be presented as one option, but not the only solution, for, say, paralysis or deafness. In this and other medical applications, we are well prepared to deal with ethical questions in parallel to and in cooperation with neuroscientific research.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009. www.project-syndicate.org Eran Cantr ell http://pyxel ated. deviantart .co m

Eran Cantrell is an Illustrator currently residing in Alberta, Canada. She is a BDES graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design, as of May 2010. Her practice is heavily involved with narrative, concept and story development. From a young age, stories and the images they evoked were a source of learning and wonder for her, and as an illustrator she hopes to become a part of that storytelling tradition.

34

World

march 2010

Big Pharma researcher admits to faking dozens of research studies for Pfizer,

by Mike Adams, NaturalNews.com Merck (opinion)

I

t’s being called the largest research fraud in medical history. Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer’s speakers’ bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to faking dozens of research studies that were published in medical journals.

Now being reported across the mainstream media is the fact that Dr. Reuben accepted a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to study Celebrex in 2005. His research, which was published in a medical journal, has since been quoted by hundreds of other doctors and researchers as “proof” that Celebrex helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery.

There’s only one problem with all this: No patients were ever enrolled in the study!

Dr. Scott Reuben, it turns out, faked the entire study and got it published anyway.

It wasn’t the first study faked by Dr. Reuben: He also faked study data on Bextra and Vioxx drugs, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As a result of Dr. Reuben’s faked studies, the peer-reviewed medical journal Anesthesia & Analgesia was forced to retract 10 “scientific” papers authored by Reuben. The Day of London reports that 21 articles written by Dr. Reuben that appear in medical journals have apparently been fabricated, too, and must be retracted.

After being caught fabricating research for Big Pharma, Dr. Reuben has reportedly signed a plea agreement that will require him to return $420,000 that he received from drug companies. He also faces up to a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

He was also fired from his job at the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. after an internal audit there found that Dr. Reuben had been faking research data for 13 years. (http://www.theday.com/article/20100...)

Business as usual in Big Pharma What’s notable about this story is not the fact that a medical researcher faked clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not the fact that so-called “scientific” medical journals published his fabricated studies. It’s not even the fact that the drug companies paid this quack close to half a million dollars while he kept on pumping out fabricated research.

The real story here is that this is business as usual in the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Reuben’s actions really aren’t that extraordinary. Drug companies bribe researchers and doctors as a routine matter. Medical journals routinely publish false, fraudulent studies. FDA panel members regularly rely on falsified research in making their drug approval decisions, and the mainstream media regularly quotes falsified research in reporting the news.

Fraudulent research, in other words, is widespread in modern medicine. The pharmaceutical industry couldn’t operate without it, actually. It is falsified research that gives the industry its best marketing claims and strongest FDA approvals. Quacks like Dr Scott Reuben are an important part of the pharmaceutical profit machine because without falsified research, bribery and corruption, the industry would have very little research at all.

Pay special attention to the fact that the Anesthesia & Analgesia medical journal gladly published Dr. Reuben’s faked studies even though this journal claims to be a “scientific” medical journal based on peer review. Funny, isn’t it, how such a scientific medical journal gladly publishes fraudulent research with data that was simply invented by the study author. Perhaps these medical journals should

be moved out of the non-fiction section of university libraries and placed under science fiction.

Remember, too, that all the proponents of pharmaceuticals, vaccines and mammograms ignorantly claim that their conventional medicine is all based on “good science.”

It’s all scientific and trustworthy, they claim, while accusing alternative medicine of being “woo woo” wishful thinking and nonscientific hype. Perhaps they should have a quick look in the mirror and realize it is their own system of quack medicine that’s based largely on fraudulent research, bribery and corruption.

You just have to laugh, actually, when you hear pushers of vaccines and pharmaceuticals claim their medicine is “scientific” while natural medicine is “unproven.” Sure it’s scientific -- about as scientific as the storyline in a Scooby Doo cartoon, or as credible as the medical license of a six-year-old kid who just received a “let’s play doctor” gift set for Christmas. Many pharmaceutical researchers would have better careers as writers of fiction novels rather than scientific papers.

For all those people who ignorantly claim that modern pharmaceutical science is based on “scientific evidence,” just give them these three words: Doctor Scott Reuben.

Drug companies support fraudulent research Don’t forget that the drug companies openly supported Dr. Scott Reuben’s research. They paid him, in fact, to keep on fabricating studies.

The drug companies claim to be innocent in all this, but behind the scenes they had to have known what was going on. Dr. Reuben’s research was just too consistently favorable to drug company interests to be scientifically legitimate. If a drug company wanted to “prove” that their drug was good for some new application, all they had to do was ask Dr. Reuben to come up with the research (wink wink). “Here’s another fifty thousand dollars to study whether our drug is good for post-surgical pain (wink).”

And before long, Dr. Reuben would magically materialize a brand new study that just happened to “prove” exactly what the sponsoring drug company wanted to prove.

Advocates of western medicine claim they don’t believe in magic, but when it comes to clinical trials, they actually do: All the results they wish to see just magically appear as long as the right researcher gets paid to materialize the results out of thin air, much like waving a magician’s wand and chanting, “Abra cadabra... let there be RESEARCH DATA!” Shazam! The research data materializes just like that. It all gets written up into a “scientific” paper that also magically gets published in medical journals that fail to ask a single question that might exposed the research fraud.

I guess these people believe in magic after all, huh? Where science is lacking, a little “research magic” conveniently fills the void.

The whole system makes a mockery of real science. It is a system operated by criminals who fabricate whatever “scientific evidence” they need in order to get published in medical journals and win FDA approval for drugs that they fully realize are killing people.

Health Doesn’t Come Through a Needle

F

rom Maine to Maui, Vancouver to Miami, autism rates across North America are soaring. As of February, 2010, there are an estimated 300,000 severely autistic children in this country -- requiring nearly $9billion per year in services. Then numbers in Canada are equally staggering. Considering the country’s much smaller population, autism affects an estimated 190,000 children in Canada. And these numbers don’t reflect the millions of children “on the spectrum” in both countries.

Parents include OT, PT and speech therapy into their routine, approaching these activities as though they are a normal part of child development, like soccer and piano lessons. Doctors have started to say, “Well, two years is when kids get asthma”, as though becoming asthmatic is a growth milestone.

There is one unifying factor affecting children, from sea to shining sea. It’s not genetics; genetics between families are different. It’s not environmental exposures; some kids live in the Projects, some live in Gated Communities. It’s not food; some kids eat only organic, some eat mostly McDonalds.

It’s not exercise; some kids are athletes; others are couch potatoes.

What touches almost all children and is the most likely ‘smoking gun’ for the epidemic of chronic illness and autism across North America (and beyond), are childhood vaccinations.

Vaccine makers and undereducated medical professionals claim vaccines eradicated diseases, but official statistics clearly document that the so called “vaccine-preventable diseases” were nearly eliminated prior to the release of the vaccines designed to prevent the illnesses. Vaccines arrived at the eleventh hour in nearly every case, and were undeservedly credited as the hero.

Infectious diseases come and go. They are part of life, just as childhood illnesses, such as chickenpox and measles, were a normal part of growing up merely a generation ago. With an immune system supported by clean water, adequate sleep, decent living conditions, reasonably good food, and a 25OH vitamin D level >60ng/mL, few will be at risk of dying from an infection. In fact, few will even become infected.

Medicine and healthcare have become emotionally sterile. We have separated the soma from the soul, removing the spiritual lessons that can come from experiencing illness and knowing death. We cling to life using all methods and endless expense. Western medicine conveniently sweeps deaths from vaccines under the rug as if vaccinating were a civic duty and adverse outcomes are an acceptable, if untoward, part of good citizen

By Dr Sherri Tenpenny

ship. If we truly come to this planet to learn lessons, then perhaps death -- even the tragic and untimely death of a child -- is an opportunity for us to learn and grow. But I digress...

We inject animal cells, heavy metals, toxic chemicals and viruses into our bodies, and call it “prevention”, expecting shots to keep us from getting sick. Why have we allowed fear of illness to over-ride our common sense?

Do we expect to always be happy, always be sniffle-free? Have we lost our minds, believing for more than 200 years that an injection can actually keep us well?

We have exchanged chicken pox for autism, flu for asthma, ear infections for diabetes...and the list goes on and on. In the zeal to eliminate relatively benign microbes, we have traded temporary illnesses for pervasive, life-long diseases, disorders, dysfunctions and disabilities.

High vaccination rates and low infection rates must not be the only measure of health. Indeed, North American, highly vaccinated children are the most chronically ill, most heavily medicated persons in the world.

True health, no matter how it is packaged and sold, cannot come through a needle. Always remember: The only safe vaccine is one that remains in the vial. Just Say No. Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is the President and CEO of Osteomed II, a multi-discipline specialized medical clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

Her expertise includes women’s health, chronic pain relief and a unique method for asthma and allergy relief. Patients from 38 states and 9 countries have regained their health through integrative medicine and methods applied at her clinic.

Dr. Tenpenny was board certified in Emergency Medicine through 2005 and is currently board certified in Osteopathic Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine. Her many skills include being an entrepreneur, an international business consultant, a published author, and a professional speaker.

She is a member of many advisory boards, including the global Medical Tourism Association. She is also a polished and experienced spokesperson on national radio and television.

As one of the most knowledgeable and outspoken physicians on the complexities of vaccination, she is known for her ability to present scientifically researched, complex information to audiences of all back-grounds.

Her websites are www.DrTenpenny.com , www.PandemicFluOnline.com and her clinic at www.OsteoMed2.com

Continued next page

march 2010

World

35

Excerpt from:

Slave Revolt: The Culture of Make Believe

Steady Stream of Drug Money Departs Afghanistan, U.S. Officials Flummoxed

A

by Kurt Nimmo

ccording to the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post, a lot of money is leaving Afghanistan and it is confounding U.S. officials. “The cash, estimated to total well over $1 billion a year, flows mostly to the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai,” reports the newspaper.

“The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, for its part, is trying to figure out whether some of the money comes from Afghanistan’s thriving opium trade.”

Some of the money?

Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium in the world. A whopping 93% of all the opiates in the world originate in Afghanistan.

The Taliban banned opium cultivation after they were installed by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service. Since the defeat of the Taliban in response to their intransigence and lack of business savvy, opium production has skyrocketed.

Before the CIA’s covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the country produced zero percent of the world’s opium. During this covert war instigated at the highest levels of the U.S. government, the CIA-supported Mujahedeen rebels (later known popularly known as al-Qaeda) engaged heavily in drug trafficking. “The Agency’s principal client

catastrophic consequences — the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favorite business,” the official said.

Former Managing Director and board member of Wall Street investment bank Dillon Read, Catherine Austin Fitts, has long alleged that the banksters launder imponderable amounts of drug money. “According to the Department of Justice, the US launders between $500 billion – $1 trillion annually.

I have little idea what percentage of that is narco dollars, but it is probably safe to assume that at least $100-200 billion relates to US drug import-exports and retail trade,” writes Fitts.

Fitts’ assertion was underscored by Antonio Maria Costa, director of the Viennabased UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), who said in January of 2009 that the illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat during the global financial crisis. “In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital,” Costa said. “In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.”

Before the CIA’s covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the country produced zero percent of the world’s opium. was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and a leading heroin refiner,” writes author William Blum.

Back in October of 2009, The New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the installed president of Afghanistan (a former CIA-ISI operative and Unocal employee), is on the CIA payroll.

“Officials quoted by The Times described Karzai as a Mafia-like figure who expanded his influence over the drug trade with the aid of U.S. efforts to eliminate his competitors,” writes Paul Joseph Watson.

“The New York Times exposé pins the blame on Karzai, but fails to explain that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the United States’ agenda to restore, not eradicate, the drug trade.”

In 2002, a U.S. foreign intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told NewsMax.com about the CIA’s involvement in the international illegal drug business. “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had

The CIA “is the active force that puts the plans and schemes of the most powerful Wall Street, armaments and oil interests into operation. Within the CIA the lines between the state and private, corporate power are totally blurred, in fact have melded into one,” writes Max Kolskegg (9/11 In Context: Plans and Counterplans).

U.S. officials, according to The Washington Post, claim “this money magically appears from nowhere” and ends up in Dubai banks. In predictable fashion (since the Post is the CIA’s crown jewel of Operation Mockingbird propaganda), the newspaper fingers the Ansari Exchange, an Islamic hawala, for the tremendous amount of money departing the country.

Once again, Muslims play the fall guy.

As noted above, there is a long and sordid history of the CIA and Wall Street dominating the illegal drug addiction and death business. Muslims, at best, play an insignificant and peripheral role in Wall Street’s international drug business.

L

by Derrick Jensen

et me put this another way. Pretend that you were raised to believe that blacks—n______ would be more precise in this formulation— really are like children, but strong, and pretend that n______ working for whites is simply part of your day-to-day experience of living. You do not question it any more than you question breathing, eating, or sleeping.

It is simply a fact of life: whites own n_____, n______ work for whites.

Life works.

Now pretend that someone from the outside begins to tell you that what you are doing is wrong. This outsider knows nothing of the life you live, that your father and his father lived.

To your knowledge this outsider has never walked the fields and actually watched the slaves work, has never gone over the figures to see that your farm wouldn’t be viable without these slaves, and doesn’t know the slaves well enough to know that they, too, could not thrive without the gifts you bring to them. Pretend that your slaves begin to listen to this outsider, and because of this, your relationship with them begins to deteriorate, even to the point that you begin to lose money.

If it were me—had I been raised under these circumstances and with those beliefs— I think it possible that once I got over my initial shock at the temerity of this outsider who is meddling in something that is none of his or her business, I would have started to become angry, and perhaps eventually outraged at this interloper who is ruining my livelihood and my way of life. Raised in those circumstances, it would have taken more courage than most of us have, I think, to admit that one’s way of life is based on exploitation, and to gracefully begin to live a different way.

It’s easy enough at this remove to simply say that slaveholders were immoral, and that members of the KKK and other hate groups were a bunch of stupid bigots with whom we have nothing in common. “I, for one,” we can say all-too-easily, “would never have done anything like that.”

But are you sure? Try this. What if instead of owning people we’re talking about owning land. Someone tells you that no matter how much you paid to purchase title to some piece of land, the land itself does not belong to you. No longer may you do whatever you wish with it. You may not cut the trees on it. You may not build on it. You may not run a bulldozer over it to put in a driveway. All of those activities are immoral, because they’re based on your exploitation of a living thing: in this case the land. Did you ask the land if it wants you to build on it? Do you care what the land thinks? But the land can’t think, you say.

Ah, but that’s just what you think. It is how you were taught to think. Let’s say further that your livelihood and your way of life are based on working this land—the outsiders call it exploiting—and that if the outsiders have their way you’ll be out of business.

Again and again they tell you that you are a bad person, a stupid bigot, because you refuse to see that your way of life is based on the exploitation of something you don’t perceive as having any rights—or sentience—

to begin with. Angry yet?

Then how about this? Outsiders take away your computer because the manufacture of the hard drive killed women in Thailand. They take your clothes because they were made in sweatshops, your meat because it was factory farmed, your cheap vegetables because the agricorporations that provided them drove family farmers out of business (or maybe because lettuce doesn’t like to be factory farmed: “lettuce prefers diversity,” say the outsiders), and your coffee because its production destroys rainforests, decimates migratory songbird populations, and drives African, Asian, and South and Central American subsistence farmers off their land. They take your car because of global warming, and your wedding ring because mining exploits workers and destroys landscapes and communities. They take your tv, microwave, and refrigerator because, hell, they take the whole damn electrical grid because the generation of electricity is, they say, so environmentally expensive (dams kill salmon, coal plants strip the tops off mountains and generate acid rain, wind generators kill birds, and let’s not even talk about nukes). Imagine if outsiders wanted to take away all these things—without your consent—because these outsiders had determined—without your input—that all of these things are exploitative and immoral. Imagine that these outsiders actually began to succeed in taking away these parts of your life you see as so fundamental. I’d imagine you’d be pretty pissed. Maybe you’d start to hate the assholes doing this to you, and maybe if enough other people who were pissed off had already formed an organization to fight back against these people who were trying to destroy your life—I could easily see you asking, “What do these people have against me anyway?”—maybe you’d even put on white robes and funny hats, and maybe you’d even get a little rough with a few of them, if that was what it took to stop them from destroying your life.

What if, even without outside agitation, the slaves began to revolt? They began to upset—to violate—the natural order of things.

Would you find it incomprehensible that slaves could be so ungrateful as to not appreciate your providing them food, clothing, and shelter? Would you try to teach them, at first with words, and then through other means, that their thinking was in error? Would you try to put your life back in order through any means possible? Would you find it hard to hear what the slaves—or rather (though not from your perspective) the people whom you had enslaved—were trying to tell you?

Now what if the land itself were speaking to you? What if creatures were going extinct rather than submit to the type of world you’re trying to order around you? What if the planet were changing its climate in an attempt to get you to stop enslaving it? What if the planet and its inhabitants were doing everything they could to tell you that they do not like what you’re doing, that they do not want to live this way? Would you be able to hear them?

I didn’t think so.

36

World

march 2010

The Year of Ubuntu

by hellaD

Blog, Stories & News

W

e welcomed the new year in bed watching Monk with our noses running and throats sore, snacking on rose-hip jam for vitamin C and drinking ginger and pau d’ arco tea to boost our immune systems. According to the once renowned but now forgotten Antoine Bechamp this process is a cleansing that occurs cyclically and is necessary to remove toxins that cause our tissues to rot or oxidize.

The well known Pasteur set our world on the germ theory course, which has led us to the current terror of micro-organisms which has given the pharmaceutical industry it’s hold on our state of health and our belief that we are being ‘attacked’ by nature. We become victims with no control over our own health. This is absolutely not true.

Just before we got the flu, we had been cleaning our apartment, getting rid of old and making room for the new. Over the New Year our bodies did the same thing and we are currently feeling more energetic than we have in a while. I also got a new hard-drive for my computer finally so I can start to really make use of the open-source applications that are available through Ubuntu. What with the body cleansing, house cleaning and new hard drive (named Tiamat), 2010 is a year that is begun with the ritual of cleaning and renewing that was traditionally associated with this time of year.

I recently noticed a wise woman call 2010 the Year of Ubuntu on facebook and this really struck me. As wikipedia mentions, Archbishop Desmond Tutu explains Ubuntu (2008) philosophy:

functional and practical standpoint (i.e to 1. What is the history of Ubuntu? What does it do? know what a program does), there is nothing inherently great about that property. (An inUbuntu is a complete computing system depth exploration of the topic can be found (i.e. all the software that runs on your com- here: http://www.gnu.org/ph...) puter). The Ubuntu project was created by Mark Shuttleworth, a South African entre- Ubuntu of course incorporates the concept preneur and was first released in October of “Open Source” but then goes way beyond 2004. Ubuntu includes all the programs you that. It adds freedom, community, and huneed to be productive, to be entertained, manity. to learn, and to communicate using your computer. It’s unfair to call Ubuntu an “op- How does Ubuntu add freedom, commuerating system” as commercial proprietary nity, and humanity? operating systems really don’t provide as much functionality out of the box as Ubun- Starting with humanity, Ubuntu is an African tu. Their goal is of course to provide you word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am with the bare minimum, and to charge you what I am because of who we all are’. The for the functionality you need, and to lock Ubuntu distribution brings this spirit to the you into their platforms. Ubuntu’s goal is to software world. provide you with a complete, free, and easyto-use system. Ubuntu’s goal is to respect The Ubuntu officially embraces these core your freedom and your humanity. philosophical ideals as a clear indicator of its focus on “putting humans first”: 2. Why Ubuntu and not simply Linux?

What makes it better?

1. Every computer user should have the freedom to download, run, copy, distribute, That’s an “apples to oranges” comparison. study, share, change and improve their softIn computer jargon, Linux is a kernel, the ware for any purpose, without paying licenscore of a computer operating system that in- ing fees.

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity.

We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

The reason that this freely available operating system was named Ubuntu was for this very philosophy of community and interconnectedness and how we support each other. Along with my new hard-drive I also upgraded my operating system to the newest Ubuntu release 9.10 called Karmic Koala (cool name eh?) For anyone who doesn’t know Ubuntu is free and has tons of free software for programs such as word-processing, photo editing and video editing (and many more). I have been using it for about a year now and over the past year it has gotten more and more easy to use for the average computer user (like me).

The concept behind Ubuntu and open-source is revolutionary, but it also expects you to take some responsibility for learning how to interact with the tools you are using. In this case if you find a bug or a problem it is your responsibility to let the developers know so that it can be fixed. In this way there is a two way communication going so that this communal tool can be continuously improved and adjusted to our changing needs. Also, given these parameters, mistakes are treated as opportunities to improve, not as something to be hidden and covered up as is so often the case in our current culture.

This is a different way of interacting with your computer and could perhaps be termed slow computing, but instead should be called aware computing or interactive computing. So far I still have to get my mind and habits changed to fully make use of this system, but we are fortunate living in Vancouver because there is a really active Ubuntu group here that meets every month (and more) to get the word out about Ubuntu to everyone and to help teach and train people in how to use this tool. Last October, when Karmic Koala was released, I finally got down to one of the monthly Ubuntu meetings, which was held in a yoga studio down on Pandora a couple houses down from the FreeGeek centre. It was a casual environment and there were several 15 minute lightning talks from various members of the community. In the couple of hours that I was there I got a much better idea of how to use Ubuntu. There was even snacks and a raffle held and at the end we won a Ubuntu t-shirt and a cute bag! I also got some stickers and fliers so that I could help spread the good word about the freedom of open-source computing.

It is very exciting to see movements like this growing and expanding, it is also related to the community commons movement and the current push for community gardens. It is truly built on the philosophy of community organization working together and opensupport. With this current shift of awareness and integration the year 2010 is lined up to be an inspiring year of Ubuntu for all of us. As we can see the global mind-shift is already in full swing!

What follows is an interview conducted with Ubuntu officianado and community organizer Randall Ross.------------------------------------------------------------------------>

teracts with the hardware and provides basic services to the rest of the operating system and to programs that run on top of it. Think of Linux as a seed of a system, or maybe more simply as an engine of a car. You can’t sit on your car’s engine and drive somewhere, unless of course you like wrenches, grease, and heat. Unfortunately, the term “Linux” is often misunderstood and misused to mean something bigger than it is.

Ubuntu is a complete computing system. To model it simply: It consists of an “engine” (the Linux kernel), thousands of operating system components, and thousands of applications (programs). With Ubuntu, all of these pieces fit together in a nice package to provide compelling capabilities to anyone who uses a computer, from novices to pros.

2. Every computer user should be able to use their software in the language of their choice.

3. Every computer user should be given every opportunity to use software, even if they work under a disability.

(Source: http://www.ubuntu.com) One concrete way that Ubuntu adds freedom is by its choice of license. The project has adopted the GNU Public License (GPL). The most important part of this license is that it gives specific rights of software freedom to the people who install and use its software.

This enables the Ubuntu community to grow, to thrive, and to improve the Ubuntu system.

Quoting the Free Software Foundation (creator of the GPL), the core principles are:

* The freedom to run the program, for any This type of question (Linux to Ubuntu) is purpose. * The freedom to study how the program an example of a “non-comparison compariworks and adapt it to your needs. son.” * The freedom to redistribute copies so you 3. Are the comments you make specific can help others. to Ubuntu or do they apply to Open * The freedom to improve the program and Source in general? If the latter, could you release your improvements to the public, so give more examples of the value of open that everyone benefits. source?

Ubuntu embraces these principles.

The comments made are specific to Ubuntu.

“Open Source” is another frequently mis- Additionally, Ubuntu has a very strong comused term which some seem to think equals munity focus. New users are encouraged to something bigger than it really is. Taken get involved and to become part of the comliterally, the term “Open Source” simply munity. There are local community teams, means that one can inspect the source code a Code of Conduct, transparent governance of a program. Though important from a processes, and plenty of ways to contribute.

march 2010 Notably, all of the software, artwork and documentation in Ubuntu has been created, tested, used and discussed openly by people around the world participating in the community.

In the Ubuntu Vancouver case, a large group of Ubuntu enthusiasts, developers, artists, and everyday users have come together to form a vibrant and lively community. We host frequent public support events (SupportSaturday), public social events (TreatTuesday), theme nights that cover a diverse range of Ubuntu topics, parties, and general meetings. We encourage our members to help improve Ubuntu and in the process enrich the community. We focus on giving Vancouver the best Ubuntu experience possible.

folder to keep your personal files safe from prying eyes. For people desiring even stron ger protection from surveillance, Ubuntu offers privacy enhancing tools such as OTR (Off-the-Record messaging), GPG (GNU Privacy Guard cryptographic software), and Tor (The Onion Router). It should also be noted that all of the Ubuntu system code is cryptographically signed, and can be scrutinized if desired.

What kinds of programs are available for operation in Ubuntu?

The short answer: Pretty much anything that one can imagine! The longer answer: A quick count of end-user programs in the latest Ubuntu release (Ubuntu 9.10) numbers over two-thousand! This includes games, No other computing ecosystem has come office productivity, internet, graphics, sound close to matching Ubuntu’s community. and video, education, and science applicaTry Googling your favourite operating sys- tions. tem and look for active community groups in your neighbourhood that meet regularly. A person new to Ubuntu will typically want Community is a foreign word in the propri- to do similar tasks. These include: webbrowsing, watching video, listening to muetary software world. sic, communicating with friends, writing, managing photos, etc. These are all covered How does Ubuntu compare to more superbly by a rich set of programs that have mainstream operating systems in terms of been chosen for their overall quality. The most popular programs are installed by desecurity? fault and all others can be installed directComputer security has many facets. Most ly with only a few mouse clicks using the people think of viruses (and sometimes “Ubuntu Software Centre”. worms and trojans too) on their personal desktop or laptop. That will be the focus of Do you see Ubuntu as part of any kind my response. of broader, more overarching systems Ubuntu, unlike mainstream operating sys- movement? tems, has at its core the Linux kernel which has a proven track record of security and ro- The overarching concept or “movement” bustness. Linux kernel attack vectors are few is one of participatory design and culture and far-between. The Linux kernel is legend- facilitated by the Internet. Ubuntu encourary in the amount of scrutiny and attention ages participation from everyone that uses to detail that it receives from a large and de- it. There are easy mechanisms in place to voted global team of developers. In security become involved. As an Ubuntu user, you can easily help define it, design it, write it, terms, it is a hard target. translate it, and become an active member Let’s assume though that someone has the of the community. The closest comparison skills to outsmart the developers. Now what? would be Wikipedia. I am fond of delivering Truly destructive processes and programs this speech at our meetings: “Ubuntu is to usually require ‘root’ privileges to cause sig- proprietary computer software what Wikinificant damage. These privileges are quite pedia is to the encyclopedia. It changes the difficult to gain on Ubuntu. By default, there whole game.” is no ‘root’ account on an Ubuntu system.

No virus attack is purely technical. So putting technical reasons aside, there is an important social consideration. There is little to no motive in the Ubuntu ecosystem for a would-be virus writer/attacker. The Ubuntu project is founded on the principle of “Humanity to others” and this ethos makes attack unlikely, at least from within the community, which is where the most talented Ubuntu coders live.

The Ubuntu community maintains a list of Linux kernel compatible viruses and worms which at time of writing numbers 30 in total.

This number is miniscule when compared to the 140,000 estimated viruses for Windows.

Out of this list of 30, none are Ubuntu-specific and none have been reported “in the wild.”

Most are obsolete. (Source: https://help. ubuntu.com/community/Linuxvirus)

Where can people go to get more involved in Ubuntu in their communities?

A great starting point is the Ubuntu web site.

Check there to see if a local team in your area has already been established. The list is located at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeamList Even if no Ubuntu local team is listed for your area, don’t fret. Sometimes a quick Google search can discover people in your town or city that are Ubuntu enthusiasts.

Meet them for a coffee and talk about Ubuntu. Gather a few people who love the project and you’ll very soon have the beginnings of an Ubuntu community.

What does the future of open source or What about security in terms of protec- Ubuntu-esque computing look like? tion from unlawful or unauthorized surveillance?

The future of Ubuntu-esque computing is Good question and something that’s on a lot bright: Ubuntu is a shooting star. From a technical perspective, Ubuntu is built on a of people’s minds these days. solid foundation that has a proven track reUbuntu has no serial numbers, no need to cord of stability and performance. Ubuntu register, and no automated “phone home” has taken what was for a long time considmechanisms. This alone offers a level of ered the domain of “geeks” and “techies” to anonymity and resilience to tracking by third an audience that is everyone, without prejuparties that far exceeds proprietary systems. dice. Ubuntu has put specific focus on the A fresh installation of Ubuntu has no open parts of the system that the user (the human) ports, and therefore no easy means of inject- sees. The desktop experience, the ease-ofing remote exploits. Upon installation, you use, the polish. It’s all there. From a social have the option to have an encrypted Home perspective, Ubuntu is unifying a large

number of diverse open source projects. It is inspiring them to continually put humans first. It is respectful of freedom, diversity, and the right of everyone to have a say in how their computers work. This is unprecedented. Add to that, a large community of people willing to share, learn and grow together, and I would say “We have lift-off!”

(Appropriate given the project’s founder Mark Shuttleworth was once a cosmonaut).

World

37

We can expect the Ubuntu project to continue to grow exponentially. Ubuntu is already the number-1 free desktop system. It is steadily eroding the market share of proprietary operating systems and applications.

As a final thought, and as I like to say in Ubuntu Vancouver meetings: “Without community, it’s only software.” This I believe is the best way to grasp Ubuntu’s secret to meteoric success.

38

World World

march 2010

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything by Lin Edwards

S

pray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections.

The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.

The liquid glass spray (technically termed “SiO2 ultra-thin layering”) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated.

There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a longlasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.

Liquid glass was invented in Turkey and the patent is held by Nanopool, a familyowned German company. Research on the product was carried out at the Saarbrücken Institute for New Materials. Nanopool is already in negotiations in the UK with a number of companies and with the National Health Service, with a view to its widespread adoption.

The liquid glass spray produces a waterresistant coating only around 100 nanometers (15-30 molecules) thick. On this nanoscale the glass is highly flexible and breathable.

The coating is environmentally harmless

and non-toxic, and easy to clean using only water or a simple wipe with a damp cloth. It repels bacteria, water and dirt, and resists heat, UV light and even acids.

UK project manager with Nanopool, Neil McClelland, said soon almost every product you purchase will be coated with liquid glass.

Food processing companies in Germany have already carried out trials of the spray, and found sterile surfaces that usually needed to be cleaned with strong bleach to keep them sterile needed only a hot water rinse if they were coated with liquid glass.

The levels of sterility were higher for the glass-coated surfaces, and the surfaces remained sterile for months.

Other organizations, such as a train company and a hotel chain in the UK, and a hamburger chain in Germany, are also testing liquid glass for a wide range of uses. A year-long trial of the spray in a Lancashire hospital also produced “very promising” results for a range of applications including

applications include coating corks with liquid glass to prevent “corking” and contamination of wine. The spray cannot be seen by the naked eye, which means it could also be used to treat clothing and other materials to make them stain-resistant.

McClelland said you can “pour a bottle of wine over an expensive silk shirt and it will come right off”.

In the home, spray-on glass would eliminate the need for scrubbing and make most cleaning products obsolete. Since it is available The fissure was induced in order present an image which shows the characterisin both water-based and tics of the coating. The image shows the alcohol-based solutions, it SiO2 coating on a filament of a microfibre. can be used in the oven, in bathrooms, tiles, sinks, and coatings for equipment, medical implants, almost every other surface in catheters, sutures and bandages. The war the home, and one spray is said to last a year. graves association in the UK is investigating Liquid glass spray is perhaps the most using the spray to treat stone monuments important nanotechnology product to emerge and grave stones, since trials have shown to date. It will be available in DIY stores in the coating protects against weathering and Britain soon, with prices starting at around graffiti. Trials in Turkey are testing the prod- £5 ($8 US). Other outlets, such as many suuct on monuments such as the Ataturk Mau- permarkets, may be unwilling to stock the soleum in Ankara. products because they make enormous profThe liquid glass coating is breathable, its from cleaning products that need to be which means it can be used on plants and replaced regularly, and liquid glass would seeds. Trials in vineyards have found spray- make virtually all of them obsolete. ing vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown (c) 2010 PhysOrg.com. This is a reprint sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster from PhysOrg.com website: http://www.phythan untreated seeds, and coated wood is sorg.com. Republished with permission. not attacked by termites. Other vineyard

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education

-Mark Twain

Corky, The Little Brown Mouse

C

How Corky captures energy. (Image via Inhabitat) ^

orky, the little brown mouse, is self powered.

It requires no batteries like other wireless mouse devices, but makes its own kinetic energy by scrolling, clicking, and rolling around just like any battery-operated mouse. The energy is captured and stored by piezoelectric elements within the mouse.

How Corky captures energy.

(Image via Inhabitat) Adele Peters, Corky’s inventor, designed the little brown mouse to be sustainable, recycla-

ble, and self-powered. But she has also thought through the processes by which these features will be fulfilled. Plans include regional sourcing and assembly, as well as regional take back and disassembly, making the disassembly data easily accessible for the recycling centers, so proprietary information will not stand in the way of making Corky 100 percent green.

If you like Corky, the little brown mouse, you can vote for it in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition.

Think Free, Live Free Axiomatica User driven media

Go Jo’s Little Africa W ith the best traditions of Ethiopian hosp i t a l i t y, h e a r t h e s o u n d s a n d t a s t e t h e e x o t i c d e l i c a c i e s t h a t w i l l t a k e y o u f a r a w a y. S h a r e a truly unforgettable dining experience right here on The Drive without having to travel thousands of miles. “ M e l k a m M e g i b” – B o n A p p e t i t e !

march 2010

Doro Tibs

39

World World

by Go Jo’s (Serves 2) 1⁄2 pound breast chicken, diced in chunks 1⁄2 onion, chopped finely 1⁄2 green bell pepper, chopped 1⁄2 teaspoon ginger, processed 1⁄2 teaspoon garlic, processed 1⁄2 tomato, sliced Black pepper Pinch of rosemary 1 teaspoon butter 1 teaspoon Berber powder (available at the cafe) 1. Heat oil in a large pan and add chicken, garlic, ginger, fresh tomatoes, onion, Berber powder, pepper, rosemary, black pepper, stirring constantly. Add small amounts of water if dry to make a nice sauce.

2. Once the chicken is almost cooked, approximately 10 minutes, add butter and stir.

3. Season to taste and then serve with Ingera bread.

2838 Commercial Drive

(604) 708-5394

“The best part is watching my customers eat! There’s a huge satisfaction for me to see that their plate is empty, and they are licking their fingers. People love my food! “

-Rita Afework, Manager

FACING THE FUTURE with ‘New Age’ philosopher

DAVID SPANGLER CERTIFI

NIC

ORGA ED

NT

IN

S

100% GREDIE

“We can invoke & start living now a future that restores the ancient sense of unity between humanity & nature, a community of mutual support, wholeness & blessing.”

• TALK Fri., Mar. 26 7:30pm $15 Unitarian Church, Oak at 49th

• WORKSHOP Mar. 27 10-5 $85

Banyen Books

&

Sound

our 40th year 1970– 2010

3608 West 4th Ave. tickets: 604-737-8858

Mon-Fri 10-9 Sat 10-8 Sun 11-7

Full events info @ banyen.com

H

ippocrates, the father of modern Many people suffer from fungal infecmedicine, stated “Let food be thy tions. Symptoms such as allergies, yeast inmedicine and medicine be thy fections, thrush, psoriasis, adult acne, bloatfood.” ing, nail fungus, fatigue and many more result If you are tired of medications which ob- from Candida infection. Oregano oil is one of scure symptoms but don’t clear up your health the most powerful antifungals known and is challenge(s), you may want to investigate the very effective in treating Candiasis, athlete’s many uses of Oregano oil. foot and other types of fungal infection.

The essential oil distilled from wild MediOregano oil kills the bacteria that cause terranean Oregano is arguably the most potent plaque and tooth decay. Gums pockets will herbal healer of them all. The primary ingredi- reduce in size with regular application. Put a ent is a phenol called Carvacrol, which has been drop on your toothbrush instead of toothpaste proven by modern lab testing to be a powerful or use as a mouthwash. antibiotic and antiseptic. More importantly, the The antiviral properties of Oregano oil as synergistic action of phenols, esters, alcohols are helpful against diseases such as shingles, and terpenes contained in the oil provides pow- herpes, hepatitis and AIDS. erful immune boosting, antibacterial, antiviral, Upper respiratory complaints respond antifungal, antiparasitic, anti-inflammatory, an- well to Oregano oil. Try it for asthma, brontioxidant and pain killing properties as well. chitis, pleurisy and pneumonia. Take it under Your immune system is your first line of the tongue and inhale vapours straight from defense against disease. Take a few drops of the the bottle. oil daily to keep your immune system strong.

Inflammation is a major component of People with autoimmune disorders can safely many diseases such as arthritis, carpal tuntake Oregano oil. Most people taking Oregano nel syndrome, injuries and much more. When oil daily in the winter experience the season used topically, Oregano oil is able to penetrate free of colds and flu. the skin and reduce swelling. It is also a strong Oregano oil kills bacteria and will not cre- pain reliever. ate mutant strains of antibiotic resistant bacUse it topically to discourage insects, kill teria. The oil may be used both topically and lice, scabies and ticks and reduce redness and internally. itchiness from insect bites.

Banyen Books is especially excited to welcome back one of the foremost thinkers and authors of the ‘New Age’, who has been exploring what it means to live a spiritual life since 1965.

David Spangler will help us Face the Future, as we look at what appear to be scary and uncertain times ahead.

The art of making a healing product starts with the ingredients. Hedd Wyn Essentials cares for you, our customer, and uses only the best quality, certified organic wild Mediterranean Oregano oil containing more than 80% Carvacrol and gourmet quality certified organic cold pressed Greek olive oil in a 1:4 ratio. We lead the industry as the first company to use 100% certified organic ingredients in the production of Oregano oil. We use a unique patented technology which increases bioavailability, absorption and compatibility with friendly bacteria.

Health professionals who muscle test our oil on their patients along with other Oregano oils tell us that Hedd Wyn consistently tests better by a wide margin. Our customers who have tried other brands tell us that Hedd Wyn works best and tastes best.

As a small, family based business, our goal is to provide you with the best product money can buy.

Enjoy better health; pick up a bottle at your local health food store. Please call us toll free to find a store in your area.

From Denman Island with Love From Denman Island with Love 1-866-335-3061 www.wildoiloforegano.com

• How are we to think about and face such a future? • What spiritual resources do we have? • What creative powers are ours to shape what is ahead? • What partnerships may be there with the non-physical worlds of spirit to affect the unfoldment of the future? • What will the future bring?

In this lecture and workshop, David explores these and other questions and looks at tools of creative imagination, collaboration and subtle activism that can make a difference in what tomorrow looks like. Based on David’s soon to be released new book, Facing the Future.

Author, teacher of spirituality and philosopher of the “New Age”, co-founder of the Lorian Association and co-director of the Findhorn Foundation in the ‘70s, David Spangler has interacted with inner realms for over 50 years. He teaches online at www.lorian.org.

His books include the new Subtle Worlds: An Explorer’s Field Notes, Incarnational Spirituality, Crafting Home, Crafting Relationship, World Work and his older works, Manifestation, Blessing: The Art and the Practice, Pilgrim in Aquarius, Everyday Miracles, The Call, and Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent.

For more information on David and his ongoing work and collaborations, see lorian.org and findhorn.org.

Sulfur Piles by Laura Zerebeski