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VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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PHOTOS HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MAURICE ON HIS 90TH, MAR. 25TH – AND TO EVERYONE RECENTLY OR SOON CELEBRATING A BIRTHDAY
Have I got an 'O' for you! Recently it came to me that Ottawa should have its own municipal anthem, especially for Canada's sesquicentenary year (2017). And that the text and melody include a nod to Canada's national anthem. You can hear the tune on my YouTube piano channel (under the penname "Ottaworth" at https://youtu.be/4EysrzD8QZ8
You have shown and proved your worth, From Canal Rideau to the Gatineau You have made your mark on the Earth! Great Tower of Peace! Proudly you stand! Welcoming humanity with chime so grand! O, Ottawa, ring out across this land! I have submitted this to the Ottawa 2017 committee but I have not yet received confirmation or rejection. Letters of support addressed to guy.laflamme@ottawa2017.ca are welcome. John Woodsworth, Ottawa jw@woodsworth-ott.ca
Here are the words: O Ottawa! Our capital sublime! Down through the years you've stood the test of time. From Bytown to a city strong
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A word from the publisher and editor… Dear Reader, After the lightness, poetry and stories of the Winter edition, this Spring issue may seem more of a challenge… As we endeavour to reconcile the range of perspectives, perhaps we’ll be guided by the proverbial wisdom and patience of the Owl – and the wisdom and strength of the Oak (p.59) – in deciphering the sometimes-conflicting ‘truths’ and clues to underMaurice, Janet standing this perplexing time. We can pretty much And Penny guarantee that you will encounter some views that seem at odds with your own – and with each other! As might be expected, you will find several attempts to come to terms with the phenomenon of Donald Trump and to reconcile the “outsider” populist persona that got him elected with the apparent “radical right” cabinet and agenda that are taking shape (pp.30-34). And you will find much in the way of Canadian political critiques and exposés, including Robin Mathews on the RCMP (p.9); Grace Joubarne on the new political party in Ontario (p.6); Erik Andersen and Rafe Mair on BC provincial election issues (p.19-20); Leanne Salter on Agenda 21 and Official Community Plans (p.21); the Conservative leadership race (pp.33-34) – including Wilf Cude’s discourse on the Trump-Leary Perplex (p.34); and various political-philosophical debates throughout, including an update on Degrowing Capitalism from John Olsen (p.13) and the conclusion of Norm Zigarlick’s eye-opening series on Justice and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada (p.14); and Marie Gaudet’s 49th Article in Dialogue: Adding a Future to our History (on p.49). And on a wide range of other topics: Derrick Lonsdale on Omega Fatty Acids (p.16); other health issues (pp.17,18,40); Susan McCaslin on her love of reading (p.41); and welcome to a new writer Margaret Miller, who shares her and her centenarian aunt’s adventures with DNA testing (p.44). And don’t miss Denny Petrik’s charming ‘Reminiscences of 1950s London’ (p.47); and lots more stories… (pp.43-57) If you enjoy Dialogue, please consider ordering a Gift Subscription for a friend or local library, or a waiting room/café? [p.58.] And Thank You if you are able to help with a donation at this time, so we can meet expenses while keeping our subscription rate affordable for everyone.
Maurice
volunteer publisher
Janet
volunteer editor
…an independent, Canadian volunteer-produced, not-for-profit quarterly, written and supported by its readers – empowering their voices and the sharing of ideas. Now in its 30th year, dialogue provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and an antidote to political correctness. We encourage readers to share with others the ideas and insights gleaned from these pages. If this is your first issue, please let us know what you think of it.
If you would like to share your ideas and become a writer/artist in our magazine, please consider this your personal invitation to participate! We also need your support as a subscriber, to help us continue (See P. 58 for details) We receive NO government funding and no advertising revenue. We rely totally on the generous support of our readers & subscribers.
dialogue
was founded in 1987 and is now published quarterly. Maurice J. King, Volunteer Publisher Janet K. Hicks, Volunteer Editor Date of Issue: March 5, 2016
Annual subscription: $20.00 [including GST, # 89355-1739] Canada Post Agreement No. 40069647 Registration No. 08915 ISSN: 1184-7042 Legal Deposit: National Library of Canada (409731)
The views expressed in this publication are those of their individual authors. Reprints of published articles are included for their educational value. 6227 Groveland Drive Nanaimo, BC, Canada V9V 1B1
…& Penny & Lucky!
P.S. Janet, Penny & Lucky wish “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” to Maurice, who celebrates his 90th birthday on March 25th – and we all wish A Happy Year! to everyone recently or soon to be celebrating a birthday or anniversary! IMPORTANT: If you wish to continue receiving the magazine, please ensure your subscription is paid up! PLEASE LOOK AT YOUR ADDRESS LABEL ON THE BACK COVER of this issue to find your RENEWAL DATE. If your subscription is
due, you should find a renewal slip enclosed in this copy of Dialogue (See p.58). www.dialogue.ca
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Deadlines: Sep. 1st - Dec. 1st March 1st - June 1st
VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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From Near and Far
A very strong majority of Canadians believe that the Palestinians' call for a boycott of Israel is reasonable A Canadian EKOS national opinion survey conducted (Jan 25 to Feb 2, 2017) – commissioned jointly by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and Independent Jewish Voices and Dimitri Lascaris, and Murray Dobbin – shows that Canadians are very open to economic sanctions on Israel – and that Trudeau and Canada's other political leaders are totally out-of-touch when it comes to policy on IsraelPalestine. [Report from CJPME:] • First, 91% of all Canadians believe that sanctions are a reasonable way for Canada to censure countries violating international law and human rights
• Second, 66% of all Canadians believe that sanctions on ISRAEL are reasonable, given its violations of international law • Third, 78% of all Canadians also believe that the Palestinians’ call for a boycott of Israel IS reasonable See full report at: www.cjpme.org/survey CJPME and its partners worked hard to commission this EKOS survey, present the results, and push them out to the Canadian public. I From: Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) 10090 Saint-Laurent, Suite 201B, Montreal QC♣
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“Beyond Banksters” Goes to Parliament Forwarded by June Ross, jross12@telus.net From: Delores Broten, www.WatershedSentinel.ca
Comox, B.C., Feb 13, 2017: Watershed Sentinel Books is pleased to report that an Ontario financial adviser, Dr. Jerry Ackerman has mailed copies of Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism to every Senator and Member of Parliament in Ottawa. Dr. Ackerman, a financial adviser who has decades of experience in the financial industry, is taking this action to provide a “toolkit” for legislators in advance of Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s Spring Budget (Mar 22). Morneau is expected to announce the creation of a Canada Infrastructure Bank (designed by an adviser from Bank of America Merrill Lynch) to bypass the functions of the Bank of Canada in funding infrastructure. Beyond Banksters, written by Joyce Nelson and published by Watershed Sentinel Books, Nov. 2016, provides an incisive critique of the financial players involved in such a move, which will increase the debt and deficits by many billions of dollars annually through borrowing from the private sector, while contributing to the privatization of public assets. Instead, the publiclyowned Bank of Canada could provide infrastructure funding interest-free, as it did from 1938 to 1974. In his cover-letter to Parliamentarians, Dr. Ackerman quotes from a speech by Canadian Victoria Grant given at the Public Banking Conference in Philadelphia four years ago. Merely 12 years old at the time, 4 dialogue
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Ms. Grant said: “If the government wants to spend money, it should borrow it from its own bank, and not have to pay interest.” In addition to Beyond Banksters, every Senator and MP is receiving several inserts: 1) an excerpt from the Hon. Paul T. Hellyer’s book The Money Mafia: A World In Crisis; 2) two excerpts from Dr. Ackerman’s financial blog: “Interesting Times” and “Calling Canada’s Minister of Finance;” 3) an excerpt from Ellen Brown’s book The Public Bank Solution; and 4) background information on the history of the Bank of Canada. By sending this “toolkit,” Dr. Ackerman is intent on educating Parliamentarians about the Bank of Canada before they consider Morneau’s budget and controversial infrastructure bank plans. Reminding Parliamentarians that Canada’s national debt is “now $630 billion” and “increasing with every deficit,” Dr. Ackerman adds: “For our country’s 150th year and going forward, we insist that you act on behalf of every Canadian’s future.” Beyond Banksters is already in its second printing. Author Joyce Nelson says, “I am thrilled that Beyond Banksters is going to Parliamentarians. I hope they read it, and read the other materials too, before they vote on the Spring Budget. This action by Dr. Jerry Ackerman is just amazing.” For More Information or to offer support: Dr. Jerry Ackerman, Box 28, Tamworth, Ont. K0K 3G0 jerry.ackerman31@gmail.com Watershed Sentinel Books: 250-339-6117 ♣ www.dialogue.ca
“Fake News” – the pot and the kettle… Gerry Masuda, Duncan BC
My question is what effect this avalanche of articles on fake news and all our news sources which are involved have on the public? What and who can we believe? Nothing, no one. What about information on the Internet? It too is known to have false information which has been deliberately planted I find this disturbing. What do I really 'know'? What can I 'believe'? I find it unsettling that, in addition to trying keeping up on the news, I have to identify the crucial facts and relationships and try to validate them in a mass media which is controlled by a handful of powerful media barons. This would be beyond my time constraints and even ability to do so. Those who made an effort to keep up 'in the news'
using just the mass media must be confused and disoriented – but not angry. (The public is too passive to get angry even when they have been deliberately misled.) What can we do but become more alienated from our society? In this regard, I think of the little boy who called "wolf" once too often. Who gains by creating this situation where deliberate lies are commonplace? The lie “weapons of mass destruction (WMD)” had profound impact on Iraqis and those involved in the Iraq War. I suspect that the ruling elites have deliberately planned this situation. It makes it much more difficult for activists to mobilize a skeptical public. gerry.masuda@gmail.com ♣
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Re: Liberals’ drive to privatize Canadian airports Larry Kazdan, Vancouver
Classical economists wanted to free industrial capitalism from surviving feudal privileges that obstructed commerce and let absentee landlords grow rich in their sleep. As a way to prevent price gouging, European governments kept the most important natural monopolies in the public domain and provided basic infrastructure either at cost, at subsidized prices, or freely in the case of roads. The guiding principle was to keep household and business expenses low. Unfortunately the Liberals are proposing to turn airports over to private hands, and to use the new Canadian Infrastructure Bank not to keep user fees down, but to provide attractive profits for private and foreign capital. Under the Liberal neo-feudal plan, toll-booths will spring up everywhere. Business barons will exact a steady stream of charges which we the mere peasants and tradespeople will pay every time we budge. Footnotes: 1. Michael Hudson is Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author The Bubble and Beyond (2012): "The objective of the classical economists was to bring prices in line with value to prevent a free ride, to prevent monopolies, to prevent an absentee landlord class so as
to free society from the legacy of feudalism [...] To prevent such price gouging...., Europeans kept the most important natural monopolies in the public domain: the post office, the BBC and other state broadcasting companies, roads and basic transportation, as well as early national airlines. European governments prevented monopoly rent by providing basic infrastructure services at cost, or even at subsidized prices or freely in the case of roads. The guiding idea is for public infrastructure – which you should think of as a factor of production along with labor and capital – was to lower the cost of living and doing business." LINK: http://tinyurl.com/cp-MH-10-15 2. William Mitchell, Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia: "Privatisation, franchising, outsourcing, PPPs, PFIs, and all the rest of the devious transfers of public wealth and funds to the private sector have systematically failed to deliver on the promises made by the consultants. The stockbroking and legal companies and economists who advised governments in these public robberies have all done very well. Many private firms have done very well - enjoying the best of both worlds - a captive infrastructure, ability to gouge consumers via excessive fares, no real need to keep the quality of service up to acceptable standards, and increasing public subsidies." LINK: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=29872 ♣
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Wishing John McCullough all the best…
Long-time Dialogue friend, John McCullough of Richmond, Ont., is recovering after triple bypass surgery in February. John, your friends all wish www.dialogue.ca
you a full recovery, so you can enjoy Spring when it arrives. God Bless. – Maurice & Janet, and Penny too. ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Meet the New Ontario Provincial Party that Can! Grace Joubarne, leader, United Party of Ontario
Our democracy is being torn to shreds by relentless swindles and outright thefts of our freedoms and properties. On every level, and in every industry, Ontarians are in deep danger. A number of us are mustering our resources and courage to harness the momentum of a world-wide political revolution that started in Iceland just a few years ago. The next provincial election in Ontario (June 7th, 2018) is the citizenry’s ‘last stand’. The ultimate aim of the government is hydro poverty, water poverty, an end to private property ownership, an end to small and medium-sized business, immobilization of the population, and the forced implementation of one healthcare model dictated by international pharmaceuticals. The goal of the government and its international masters is 100% dependence of the citizenry on government/corporations. These attacks on our well being, lives, businesses and private properties are executed under the Sustainable Development Agenda 21 Plan, by ICLEI [founded in 1990 as the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, headquartered in Bonn, www.iclei.org/]
Then-PM Mulroney signed Canada onto this globalist plan in Rio in 1992 without a mandate. The Province of Ontario and many municipalities signed on, also without the electorate’s input or knowledge. While hiding behind a façade of benign environmentalism, ICLEI is openly promoting the implementation of a radical political agenda called UN Agenda 21 that seeks to establish big central planning in local governments, effect behavior change through local Codes and Ordinances, eradicate individual liberty, and destroy private property rights and independent businesses. ICLEI has now completely infiltrated most major municipalities in Ontario and all Ministries of the provincial government. Ontario is bankrupt – standing as the world’s most indebted sub-sovereign state in the world; and it all happened since Mulroney invited the UN into Canada in 1992. The College of Trades, the 26 Healthcare regulatory Colleges, the Clean Energy Act and the Carbon Tax are only a small sample of ICLEI impositions. The damage is so severe in the USA that the citizens are 6 dialogue
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fighting back and forcing their elected municipal officials to withdraw from ICLEI. ICLEI has literally bankrupted several states. In every case and in every industry, international lawyers are positioned to write Reports, then hired to implement their ideas (all directed by ICLEI and Agenda 21), using various misleading terms such as ‘protection of the public’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘in the public interest’, ‘transparency’ and of course ‘College’, which implies training, expertise, etc. Never is there conflictfree supporting data. Ontario is ICLEI’s main focus in Canada. According to the Agenda 21, in order to bring sovereign nations under the control of the globalist One World Government by 2021, dismantling must be done at the local level. The strongest province or state of a sovereign country must be weakened first. To that end, much of the implementation has succeeded as PM Trudeau reported to the UN at a recent conference that Canada is a post-national state with no common core or identity. In every case of the many regulatory Colleges and agencies set up across Ontario, the administrators are trained by CLEAR, an international training centre that is actually a front corporation for the One World Government. It teaches administrators how to undermine domestic laws and the Constitution of sovereign nations and to impose international regulations in keeping with the requirement of trade deals like TISA, CETA and the TPP through outright lying, obfuscation and overt violation of the Constitution. In healthcare as an example, 23 unaccountable private pharma-front ‘Colleges’ were set up to dilute and eliminate all non-drug healthcare professions. Their regulations are designed to eliminate the entire natural, traditional, energy and spiritual care healthcare industry in Ontario (over 10,000 professionals). www.StopPsychotherapyTakeover.ca We are all tired of fighting the UN/ICLEI shadow government and its globalist puppet masters on one issue after another…and getting nowhere, as successive governments have simply paid lip service or no service at all to our concerns and suffering. The status quo of the existing Ontario political structure no longer remotely represents the Will of the People; it is demonstrably dangerous to our wellbeing and very lives. They switch seats in the legislature every few www.dialogue.ca
years and NOTHING changes, except for the worse. The numbers of those actively involved politically are dropping precipitously over successive elections. Out of 9 million eligible voters in the last Ontario election, 7.5 million people DID NOT VOTE. They will not vote again if presented with the same options. And all of us will lose yet again, though this time we feel it will be forever. We are facing a threat that does not respond to the tactics of the past (referendums, elections, protests, letter-writing). This is no longer a clash between liberal vs. conservative vs. NDP ideologies. Everyone can see that they are all adherents to the Agenda 21. Oft we hear the old standard ‘a vote for a new Party is a wasted vote’, when in fact, voting for a mainstream Party has proven over time to condone creeping dictatorship by mainstream parties who take care of themselves first and only. People want a dramatic change, but it can never happen as long as we discourage viable options. We have refused to be paralyzed by propaganda that only the Liberals and so-called Conservatives have the right to rule over us. UPOntario is working with people all across North America to bring facts, evidence and the researchbased solutions required to fix the many crises facing Ontarians. We will make certain to alter the destructive course facing the people of this once great and proud Province. Increasingly more groups and individuals are aligning with our new vision. We are a viable option and disgruntled Ontario MPPs–and there are many--should look to us as a new party devoid of the old lines that separate us as liberal or conservative, but instead, that embraces Ontarians working together to provide SOLUTIONS! If readers are interested in making a difference in Ontario, whether as a candidate, organizer or in other ways, contact us at info@UPOntario.com as soon as possible. Even non-Ontarians can help by purchasing a $10 associate membership as soon as possible to help us build a war chest. We have already uncovered some evidence that will shock the people of this Province and that information will be presented when the time is right. Our Facebook page should be up and running by the time this goes to print. If you want info sooner… just email us at: info@UPOntario.com. Our approach will inspire and create hope. We are www.dialogue.ca
building upon a coalition of existing organizations that are also fed up with having to spend their precious time away from families just to protest what is obviously unjust and wrongful behavior by the government--impositions of wind turbines, fluoridation, mandatory vaccinations, hydro and water poverty, unremitting taxation scams and now legislation that permits the state to remove a child whose desires to be LGBTQ are resisted by their parents/guardians! We have increasingly had experts in various fields weigh in with viable solutions to urgent crises such as the hydro rate swindle. Our moto is to put our solutions out to the public in black and white…no clever, misleading, slick, polished language. And especially we will avoid mainstream media…the ‘seek and destroy’ propaganda arm of the mainstream parties. Our group of dedicated professionals has courage, heart and an unmatched determination to prevail, despite tremendous roadblocks put in place by the ruling Ontario Liberals and their mainstream party allies, the Conservatives and NDP. UPOntario belongs to the 14 million Ontarians wholly distressed by the corruption and moral and ethical bankruptcy of these successive governments that pass the baton and never make waves while in opposition. So we need everyone’s help to share the burden of ending government corruption and theft. The new United Party of Ontario (UPOntario) would like to thank the Canadian Action Party (CAP) executive for their support and inspiration, as we in Ontario build a Party whose goal is to return control of the Province to the people. Should you be a resident of Ontario contact us at info@UPOntario.com for (a) ways to help asap as there are only 15 months to election day, (b) a copy of the Petition Endorsement Form (we need to collect 1000 signatures of eligible voters in Ontario asap (no fee, no commitment), and (c) our Membership Form, which represents what is presently our only way of raising funds until Elections Ontario permits solicitation of contributions. How Ontario goes, so goes Canada… so this is everyone’s fight. Grace Joubarne, Leader for the Executive Board, United Party of Ontario c/o 279 Columbus Avenue, Ottawa, ON K1K 1P3 Tel: 613-422-7027 -- Email: info@UPOntario.com ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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“Have Computer Will Write”~ Jeremy Arney
PRESS RELEASE ON ELECTORAL REFORM FROM THE CANADIAN ACTION PARTY By Jeremy Arney, Sydney BC 1st February 2017 is a day that should go down as one of infamy in the History of Canada. There is a constant bleat among members of the House of Commons about democracy, and the new Minister of Reform even went so far as to tell Peter Van Dussen on CPAC that Canadians are proud of their democracy. Democracy means that the people have a say in the way their country is run, and that simply does not happen in Canada. Party politics dictate how, when and where our “representatives” to Ottawa behave, not the people who pay them to represent their interests to Ottawa. Those representatives who dare to disobey their party are thrown out of caucus and ignored. As long as we have a majority government we will have this dictatorial position, known in Canada as a Prime Minister.
Let us face the fact that our chance at a faint form of democracy in Canada, so heavily promised in the last election, the speech from the throne and numerous times by today’s Dictator of Canada, was cast aside because his preferred method of selection of MPs was not even remotely popular among Canadians. Democracy vs self-serving politics and democracy lost again. Firstly, this means that the Canadian Dictator is com-
pletely unreliable, and his word means nothing. His father at least had the grace to be charming and smile when he raised his middle finger and said “fuddle duddle”, but not this one. Secondly, it means that integrity in this government is dead. Thirdly, it means that our democracy is on a par with that of North Korea. In this our 150 years since confederation we have sunk to an all-time low. Our First Nations, Inuit and Métis, the real long term residents of this land, along with the sick, seniors, homeless and indeed anyone earning less than $45,ooo per year are basically non people and are treated as such. This has not changed since at least 2006, and shows no signs of doing so now. Without new voices in Ottawa, and that does not mean new faces for the same old tired controlled parties, we will continue to slide further away from democracy and more into corpocracy. We have been lied to enough and it is time for a peaceful, legal revolution. Vivre the small parties, independents and free thinkers of Canada. Give us a voice in Ottawa. Jeremy Arney, Interim Leader of the Canadian Action Party, PO Box 52008, RPO Beacon, Sidney, BC V8L 5V9 / Tel. 250-216-5400 http://actionparty.ca/ Email: iamjema@gmail.com
https://iamjemaletters.wordpress.com/ ♣
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Mystery Salmon Virus Solved Alexandra Morton, Sointula BC
Mystery solved: piscine reovirus causes disease in BC, despite efforts to tell us otherwise. This ongoing work will allow us to restore wild salmon, because we are learning what the fish need from us. However, you will need to protect this work. This is critical! At the bottom of the article (link below) are the emails of those who need to hear from you. You can bet they will be getting an earful and if they don't hear from us, these scientists will be buried by the bureaucracy. This team of scientists need our voice if they are going to keep working for us. The fish farmers are not going to be pleased with this finding because 80% of their fish are infected with this virus and we were told it was harmless. The team, which includes DFO’s Dr. Kristi Miller, renowned for her pioneering work on 8 dialogue
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https://www.voyageforsalmon.ca/
deciphering the immune system of salmon, tracked the amount of piscine reovirus (PRV) in salmon in a farm in the Discovery Islands, off Campbell River. They report that as the virus level increased, the fish developed the signature cell damage caused by the disease HSMI. Scientists in Norway report that PRV causes HSMI and HSMI damages heart and skeletal muscle to the point where salmon become so weak they can barely swim. Today, the highly contagious Atlantic salmon disease HSMI is confirmed in BC. Somehow government scientists and Marine Harvest report in 3 scientific papers that PRV is harmless in BC. […] Thank you all, I know I have been very quiet, but I am still on this 110% – Alex Please read online at: BLOG: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com ♣ www.dialogue.ca
Robin Mathews Uncut
Exposing the deeds and misdeeds of the ‘National Police Force’ Re the alleged entrapment of Amanda Korody/John Nuttall by the RCMP, etc. # Robin Mathews, Vancouver BC, Feb. 26, 2017 Sent to: suzanne.anton.MLA@leg.bc.ca, justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca, Jody.Wilson-Raybould@parl.gc.ca
This communication is being sent also to The Public Prosecution Service of Canada and The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP. It is written as an Open Letter. Its contents are, I believe, important to Canadians, with special relevance to British Columbians in whose province the bold, expensive, complex, and possibly criminal entrapment of persons was undertaken by an apparently elaborate organization within the RCMP in order to create a false Islamic Terrorist Action. The letter written to me in response to mine on the subject - to the Prime Minister and the Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Canada and to the Attorney General and Minister of Justice of British Columbia purports to be a response driven by the copy of my letter received by the Honourable Suzanne Anton, B.C.’s Justice Minister. Ms. Anton didn’t write the letter of reply, but sent it for reply, it would seem, to an irrelevant office - the Criminal Justice Branch which could excuse itself, and does, as irrelevant to the matter … and then refers me to the Public Prosecution Office which would probably write me that it, too, is irrelevant to the matter … and suggest I direct my correspondence to another office…. The letter also suggests I might wish to make a complaint to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP – an office in fact controlled by the RCMP but posing as a wholly independent body. Since the Commission often uses RCMP officers to investigate complaints against the RCMP … nothing more need be said. Nonetheless, I have already complained formally to that organization. It has not acknowledged my complaint. Neither the Prime Minister nor the federal Minister of Justice/Attorney General, nor their offices have acknowledged my letter. Since the reply to me from the B.C. Ministry of Justice, Criminal Justice Branch (at the behest of Suzanne Anton) is the only reply I have received, I conclude it was the agreed upon respondent to my letter. The letter addressed to me is, quite simply, a sham, intended www.dialogue.ca
– I believe – to prevent the matter from going any farther. It may be, moreover, a disguised attempt to defend improper, probably criminal RCMP behaviour. It is a remarkable, confusing, and misleading letter. AND it is sent anonymously. Its anonymous nature assures that no person can be confronted because of the strange inadequacy of the letter … because … no one, apparently, wrote it. The letter takes pains to convey unclearly the idea that Ms. Anton has been wrongly approached on the subject of the Korody/Nuttall entrapment by the RCMP, as if she is only vaguely connected to issues involving the RCMP. The letter seems to suggest she is the wrong person to approach on the many matters involving individual freedom and public safety raised by the alleged RCMP entrapment. But contracts in the Western provinces of Canada with the RCMP are effected by the Attorneys General. And the RCMP in those provinces is answerable to the Attorneys General. On her legislative site, moreover, Ms. Anton is declared to be “responsible for justice issues for the government of British Columbia, and must ensure that the administration of public affairs is in accordance with the law”. The RCMP is a public body engaged in affairs of concern to the public - and responsible to the Attorney General. Ms. Anton has, in fact, power to act forcibly in the Korody/Nuttall matter as, perhaps, the most relevant responder. But… her behaviour, in relation to the RCMP, though not acceptable, is not – historically – unusual. As will become clear, the RCMP in apparent cooperation with B.C. Liberal forces has given strong hints over some years that it may have acted and may act improperly and perhaps criminally. Moreover, governments in Ottawa have used the RCMP for apparently grossly improper purposes. The RCMP did the major investigations upon which the thirty-one criminal charges were laid against Senator Mike Duffy. At his trial in 2015, not one of the thirty-one charges could hold up in fair trial. Crying out for Public Inquiry, the sham case against Mike Duffy has been carefully avoided by the new Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau. Looking historically, the best authorities on the …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Robin Mathews, RCMP Deeds and Misdeeds, contd.
October Crisis of 1970 in Quebec – with its imposition of the War Measures Act – are convinced that Pierre Trudeau and his small cabinet committee on Security and Intelligence employed the RCMP to engage in criminal acts to achieve Liberal political ends at the time. RCMP criminal acts were, in fact, the galvanizing force in the creation of the Quebec Keable Commission, the parallel McDonald Royal Commission Inquiry Into Certain Actions of the RCMP (1977-1981), and the Jean-Francois Duchaine (Quebec) Inquiry. Indeed, the McDonald Commission – created by Order-in-Council (meaning ‘avoiding parliament’) – worked to prevent the effectiveness of the Keable Commission – confronting it in Court more than once in order to curtail its ability to discover RCMP wrongdoing. David Cargill McDonald, chief of three Commissioners was, at a point in the 1960s, head of the Liberal Association of Alberta. Top RCMP officers were alarmed when others in the force began to be confronted in civilian court with charges of serious criminality. They knew the Keable Commission would be unrelenting. And so they proposed a federal Commission. One may conclude that (then PM Pierre) Trudeau's willingness to create the McDonald Commission stemmed from his desire to protect RCMP officers he had led into criminal acts. He may also have foreseen a situation in which many fingers would be pointed at him. John Starnes, Trudeau’s appointee as director general of Intelligence and Security within the RCMP (1969), expressed anger to confidants at the attack on RCMP officers, saying they only ever acted on orders from the highest sources. British Columbia’s history is depressing. In the 1995-97 so-called Gustafsen Lake Standoff, the role, behaviour, conduct, and misuse of power by RCMP actors is judged by many who were present, or observing or later researching, to have been summed up by the RCMP officer caught on a training film at the site claiming that “we” (the RCMP) “are specialists in smear and disinformation". Attorney General at the time was Ujjal Dosanjh. He asked in the Canadian army for support. Many thoughtful British Columbians believe the Gustafsen Lake operation was one of the most barbarous criminal actions taken in modern Canadian history against indigenous people by the RCMP backed by Canadian 10 dialogue
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armed forces. Until his recent death, one of the most pilloried of indigenous leaders, Wolverine, joined with many others to call for a full and impartial Public Inquiry into the incidents at Gustafsen Lake … and the aftermath court cases and convictions. No B.C. Liberal Attorney General has ever supported that just and reasonable request. A major actor in the Gustafsen Lake matter was Sgt. Peter Montague, the official RCMP press spokesman who supported the banning of press representatives in the area and who fed “information” to the outside world. He is alleged to have faked a crisis and gained a CBC broadcast into the area on illegitimate grounds. The Republic (Vol 2, No. 46) reports that in an inquiry following Gustafsen Lake, Peter Montague “blurted out that he was in charge of smear campaigns and that Gustafsen Lake Indians were his target.” A wealth of information is gathered about “the Standoff” in the book by John Boncore Hill (Splitting the Sky) with Sandra Bruderer: From Attica to Gustafsen Lake, 2001.* Following hard upon Gustafsen Lake came the attack upon premier Glen Clark for what proved to be - in the 136 day trial - baseless accusations of wrong-doing. A chief investigator in the case - recorded in the court proceedings as (a) close to the Liberal Party, (b) to major personalities in the Party, and (c) to have been asked twice by Gordon Campbell, Liberal leader, to run for office, was Sergeant Peter Montague of the RCMP. Clark’s lawyer, David Gibbons asked the judge, Justice Elizabeth Bennett, on more than one occasion to close the trial – there being no cause of action in the accusations brought against Glen Clark. Justice Bennett refused … and at the close of the trial declared there was no basis for the accusations against Clark. Justice Bennett alone can say why she permitted the trial to continue for 136 days, during which the press and media of British Columbia (though not all of it) ravaged decency and the character of Glen Clark in a fashion only worthy of a fascist state. (See the book by Judi Tyabji, Daggers Unsheathed, The Political Assassination of Glen Clark, Heritage House, 2002.) IMPORTANT: The behaviour of the RCMP in the Glen Clark matter – giving the appearance of creating a criminal case on an almost wholly false gathering of so-called “evidentiary material” – appears to have become a mode of procedure for that body. Much discussion was in play at the time about apparent irregularities in RCMP investigation techniques. www.dialogue.ca
I asked the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP to review the RCMP practices in the matter. Soon after, RCMP officers closed the review - an action subsequently described by the Commission as “improper”. In their note to me, the officers reported they had gathered twenty-eight volumes of evidentiary material to present to the prosecution. After 136 days of trial, the material was judged to be without merit. In 2015: apparently the same kind of investigation was conducted in the Senator Mike Duffy affair. Enough, we were led to believe, was unearthed to support thirty-one criminal charges against the senator. At the end of a two-month trial, not one of the thirty-one criminal charges based on RCMP “evidentiary material” could stand up in court. Are we witnessing a new means of destroying political enemies in Canada…? Both the Glen Clark case and the Mike Duffy case require full-scale Public Inquiries if Canadian democracy is to be protected. The failure to establish Inquiries casts the integrity of the relevant attorneys general into question. In British Columbia in 2003 – in relation to what is called The BC Rail Scandal (the corrupt transfer of BC Rail from public ownership to the CNR now headquartered in Texas) – the Attorney General and Minister of Justice for B.C., Geoff Plant appointed a Special Crown Prosecutor, William Bernardino, in flagrant violation of the legislation covering the appointment of Special Crown Prosecutors. Bernardino worked until 2010 in the position, helping the RCMP fashion the charges against three Sikh civil servants: Dave Basi, Bob Virk, and Aneal Basi. And he conducted the trial against them. The illegitimate appointment of William Bernardino was based upon his seven years as partner and colleague of Attorney General Plant and his eleven years as partner and colleague of the Deputy Attorney General, Allan Seckel. Gordon Campbell was so pleased with Allan Seckel that, in 2009, he raised him to the highest civil service position in government: head of the BC Public Service. At the time of the Attorney Generalship (2009-10) of Mike de Jong, presently Minister of Finance, I wrote to the Attorney General reporting the illegitimate appointment of the Special Crown Prosecutor which - in effect - made the whole trial and pre-trial conducted by Bernardino utterly illegitimate. The Attorney General refused to reply to me, though I wrote him twice, formally. Instead, I received a letter from the Assistant www.dialogue.ca
Deputy Attorney General informing me that no action could be taken because the matter was sub judice. It wasn’t. William Bernardino was acting (illegitimately) as Special Crown Prosecutor in the case against Basi, Virk, and Basi. But NOTHING relating to his illegitimate appointment was being adjudicated. I responded with that information to the Assistant Deputy Attorney General … receiving no response whatever. When the BC Rail Scandal trial against Basi, Virk, and Basi came to a dramatic end with the BC government offering to pay the six million dollars of the costs facing the accused if they would agree to immediate termination of the trial, British Columbians wanted to know who could “buy off” the accused with that huge sum drawn from the taxpayers of B.C. The situation in court had reached the point at which more than two dozen people, many of whom were believed to have been major in the dark dealings leading to the loss of BC Rail by British Columbians, were lined up to face cross-examination by Defence lawyers. The first two were made to look like incompetent human beings who could hardly remember their own names. Their exposure was devastating…and another two dozen were to follow - any one of whom could make an accidental statement that would blow the trial sky-high. Astounding as it may seem, the prosecution was in very, very deep trouble … and was willing to pay six million dollars (as well as dropping all serious charges against the accused) to get out of court … quickly. That all happened. British Columbians wanted to know whose signature was on the order to pay six million dollars to the accused. No one would tell. Gordon Campbell stepped down as leader. Christie Clark became premier with Shirley Bond on her arm as Attorney General. The Auditor General of B.C. also wanted to know who had permitted six million dollars of taxpayers’ money to be used - in effect - to buy off the accused in the case so it could be shut down. While professing cooperation in every way, Shirley Bond, chief law officer of the Crown, B.C. Attorney General, did everything she could, with Christie Clark, to deny the Auditor General and the people of British Columbia information they had every right to possess. The information was never given up by Shirley Bond or Christie Clark. Ms. Bond was acting in opposition to every value the Attorney General of British Columbia is expected to possess. …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Robin Mathews, RCMP Deeds and Misdeeds, contd.
And now, in the position of Attorney General and Minister of Justice for British Columbia is Suzanne Anton. In reply to my letter to her requesting investigation of prima facie illegal acts by the RCMP, she had an anonymous writer send me a letter containing what I believe to be deliberately misleading information. My letter was straightforward and reasonable. I requested full investigation of the matters set down plainly by Justice Catherine Bruce that point clearly to the strong possibility of improper action by members of the RCMP. Investigation would lead to charges being laid or not laid. And then "the conduct and supervision of any criminal prosecution would fall to the Criminal Justice Branch”. I urged "that a Public Commission of Inquiry be struck to review ALL the offices, All the directions, All the positions held in the Force, and ALL the activities of the RCMP in Canada with a view to a major reconstruction of the Force, making it fully and completely responsible to ALL of parliament through ongoing and revolving parliamentary committees with unimpeded powers to summon, to question, to receive information from RCMP members, and to report regularly and fully to Canadians. I claim that Suzanne Anton is deliberately refusing to fulfill her obligations as Attorney General and Minister of Justice. She has spawned an anonymous letter to me to prevent any identifiable person from being held responsible for statements made there, in fact, on behalf of Suzanne Anton who - for reasons of her own does not want to take responsibility for the statements. Unless significant public action is taken concerning the calculated entrapment of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody by the RCMP – then Canadians may believe the dark and ugly treatment those two were subjected to has the full support of the last and present Prime Ministers of Canada and the federal Minister of Justice under Stephen Harper and now under Justin Trudeau. With the continuing willingness in British Columbia of Attorneys General to support any vicious irregularity engaged in by the RCMP (only some of that history has been repeated here) British Columbians may expect to witness (and perhaps suffer from) an unbridled RCMP engaging in criminal activity in flagrant contradiction of the expectations British Columbians and all other Canadians have of their so-called “National Police Force”. 12 dialogue
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That is the picture in relation to what is almost certainly gross behaviour of the RCMP in pursuit of an insane project to create a terrorist action out of thin air. But the apparent knitting together of politicians in power and the RCMP is damaging on a much larger and much less evident landscape than dealt with above. Just for instance: in the thick of the BC Rail Scandal trial evidence was produced that pointed to what many suspected: active Breach of Trust by a designated section of a major Ministry to weaken, to undercut, to block sustainability, to sell off profitable fragments so that BC Rail could be claimed to be a negative asset, losing more and more money … and so ripe for dumping. I asked the top RCMP officer to investigate the evidence readily available … and he refused to do so. By the same token, right now, the budget making of the Christie Clark government may well contain what will be exposed in coming years as criminal deceptions, discreditable and dishonest accounting practices, sleight-of-hand buryings of what ordinary British Columbians would call “debts” but are kept off the balance sheet by naming them different names that, in effect, hide secret contracts (with Independent Power Producers, for instance) that are skyrocketing “obligations”, future requirements to pay gigantic sums - but kept off what British Columbians would think have absolutely to be reported and absolutely to appear on the balance sheets as DEBT. In addition “forecasting” of power needs in the future (falsely) suggests revenue that will never appear to manage multiple forms of indebtedness - though only some part of future indebtedness is reported. The game of doing what ordinary British Columbians would call “faking the books” goes on all the time in B.C. and with particular intensity with regard to anything that is done in, around, or through BC Hydro (which many informed observers believe is a more sophisticated way than happened with BC Rail to bundle it for “dumping” to, probably, out-of-country sale and a painful, long-term knee-capping of British Columbians and the B.C. economy. ‘Why would the government in power do that?’ you ask. The answer is another question: Why did Gordon Campbell and his circle destroy a profitable railroad that was contributing wealth and stability to the BC economy and dump it in the lap of (now U.S.) CN Rail? When you answer that question, you will have the answer to the on-going, planned, www.dialogue.ca
heart-breaking wreckage of BC Hydro. If the RCMP was what it should be in British Columbia, dependable and informed British Columbians could go to it and say: “We want to talk to a few of your specialists on Corporate Crime”. And after a time the rule of law could be introduced to BC Hydro. I do not believe it is operating there now. But with the RCMP (as it appears to me) tucked in the waistband of Christie Clark’s golfing jacket, there is nowhere for deeply concerned people to go to get some action to check the ever-deepening rot in BC Hydro. If I remember correctly, it was shortly after Christie Clark
became premier that the RCMP was given a renewed twenty year contract to police B.C. Robin Mathews, Vancouver rmathews@telus.net ♣ [#The 2015 conspiracy ruling against John Nuttall and Amanda Korody was halted after a BC Supreme Court judge entered a stay of proceedings in 2016, ruling that they were entrapped by the RCMP. Justice Catherine Bruce said police went too far and used trickery and subterfuge to manipulate Nuttall and Korody into planting pressure cooker bombs in a failed attempt to blow up the B.C. Legislature on Canada Day in 2013.]
* The Autobiography of Dacajeweiah, Splitting the Sky, by John Boncore Hill with Sandra Bruderer ♣
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Degrowing Capitalism: a half-time break John Olsen, Parksville, BC
Some readers may have noticed an unexpected break in the Degrowing Capitalism essay series. That is because I have taken a 1 – 2 punch: a stroke followed 6 months later by a heart attack. I haven't quit however. What I am doing is trying to re-train my semi-fossilized brain to overcome the handicap. In the meantime: What I had started to write before the hits was a couple of chapters on the way out of the trap that corporatism has put society into. I intended to make the case that we can only fight the trend by systematically re-building society into a mode that organizes communities into local economic co-operative and social networks. While the need to so re-structure ourselves in that mode is, to me at least, self-evident, it raises the question of how to do that while corporatism is the current dominant mode of exchange in our global structure. In past publications, I have raised the rhetorical question: what will General Electric be doing while we are preoccupied with building a new localism? The problem I am raising here is manifestly illustrated by the plethora of “free” trade agreements we are visited by currently. Any critical investigation of such agreements reveals that they are in fact, not free trade agreements, but corporate-friendly free investment agreements. The current granddaddy of such agreements is NAFTA. What we got instead of free trade is the right of corporations to seek compensation from governments whenever the investors feel that governments have instituted policies that inhibit their ability to get their way: e.g., local purchasing or local employment restrictions. Canadians have paid millions of dollars for such incidents. www.dialogue.ca
I am not at all confident that I can track a path through that particular jungle but I am somewhat confident that I could suggest a process that might take a lesson from Naomi Klein's warning about the “Shock Doctrine.” She actually lifted the words of Milton Friedman to describe the shock doctrine: “Only a crisis… produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That I believe is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” p7, Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein. Unless we can lay out a democratic formula for revolution, I believe that turning Friedman's recipe on its head – to make his recipe for capitalist opportunism work for us – may be our best chance to pursue the new localism path for survival. I plan to take up this discussion later. In the meantime, if you are interested in exploring the big picture behind this inquiry, you might want to read two of my favorite sources: “Plan C: community survival strategies for peak oil and climate change,” Pat Murphy, 2008; and “The Resilience Imperative,” Michael Lewis and Pat Conaty, 2012. The publisher for both works is New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC. Fates willing, I will be back soon. – John Olsen ♣ ******************************************
The Untouchables: On The Fifth Estate From Murray Dobbin, murraydobbin@shaw.ca
(Mar. 3, 45 min) A tax dodge for Canada's wealthy dreamed up by KPMG… If you missed it… View it here: www.cbc.ca/player/play/889846851694 ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Justice and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada PART 6 – Conclusions Norm Zigarlick, an itinerant senior based in AB/SK [Series began in the Winter 2015-16 issue, Vol. 29, No.2]
In my writing I hope I have been able to convey some sense of what my experiences were like and how my life was impacted by the First Nations people of our country, young and old, that I got to know along the way. My experiences in large part were based in me having the opportunity to live in areas where Aboriginal life was more traditional than what we might expect to see in and around large the population centers in the southern parts of our country. I have over six decades from which I can draw my conclusions. I realize my experiences are unique to me and probably quite in contrast to those collected by others from different circumstances. I can only hope that by telling my stories the information can be blended into the greater discussion and in some small way help change the perception we as a country created regarding our indigenous people. These are not people ill-equipped to deal with the realities of the world, they are exceptionally adept at dealing with the real world, the one where you could drink the water from the stream before adding a poison to kill off whatever else we had previously added. They were the first to sound alarms about how quickly we were killing the natural to create the unnatural. For over a hundred and fifty years our under educated mainstream has worked hard to convince our traditional First Nations that they are wrong in their way of thinking. John A MacDonald, the drunken Scotsman we celebrate as our most important founding father had a stated goal of “training the Indian right out of them”. The concept hasn't changed only the message delivery system has. Assimilation is still the goal, making “them” like “us” will see the problem solved. The bulk of our population still sees climate change as bullshit, environmentalists are a pain in the ass and people with knitted sweaters need to get a job. In short they are no different than 2 pack a day smokers who insists grampa smoked every day in his life and he died when he was 108. 14 dialogue
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Shut the infrastructure down for 5 days in January and see how well things work out in Calgary or Toronto; it will be a quick lesson in how long term cultures survive. As I write this, some ego driven creature in BC has a house for sale for $20 million. Sadly few in our society see this as anything but a measure of success. Fewer still understand how many precious resources were wasted to satisfy the ego of one family, perhaps even just one man. As author Gore Vidal once suggested we “civilized” humans behave just as cancer cells do. We attack the host and if we are truly successful we will kill it. First Nations long ago realized our planet was our host and they have absolutely no intention to kill it. ***
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, where air is very different than it is in Haida Gwaii, a guy has his humble abode for sale at $100 million. In my basic research on Aboriginal history of North America I never came across any reference where “Running Cloud Developments” had a new subdivision with 270 family sized tipis that could be financed if you could simply show you could pay at least one buffalo a year for the next twenty years to the Chief of the Corp who saw a need to have a very large stack of old buffalo hides. In natures terms we humans act very much like a species that grew from a blend of Pack Rats and Squirrels. We want an endless supply of nuts, the shinier the better. So far we just managed to get a lot of nuts. If there is one thing I have learned through my life experience is that we really have only one stark difference between our mainstream societies and those of the traditional Indigenous people that I have become familiar with. The key differential is greed. In a world where there is natural balance, those living in it have no real need to fear the future. Those in a world where destruction of nature is a by-product of success, there are many things to fear in the future. The supposed antidote to that fear is disposable wealth. With money we can buy water filter systems, we can kill food chains ( like insects) that we see as threats, we can insulate ourselves from natures cold or heat and we can build walls to separate the rich from the poor. The more money we have the more protection www.dialogue.ca
from ourselves we can afford to buy. With enough money we can give welfare to the poor so they don't harm or steal from the rich. Even our laws focus on wealth. Did you ever notice that lawyers don't sue poor people? We pay cash fines for our indiscretions; we get angry when we hear somebody went to a healing lodge instead of a prison. We don’t care much about root cause; we like to see punishment of those who don’t fit our model. We consider “Indians” to be good ones if they achieve financial success but then create circumstances where they must prove they didn’t steal it. We laugh at their spiritual concepts and sometimes even invent mythical places for them. For example, in every place I have visited and every bit of history I have researched I have never found one credible source that suggests that any First Nations culture ever counted on going to a “happy hunting ground.” Hollywood or some dime novel writer invented it long ago and it became accepted by we civilized folk as Indian Heaven. We scoff at their explanations that life is a circle and that we all are just a normal part of nature and there is nothing anymore special about us than there is a moose. Interestingly, they can be proven correct if we think Al Einstein or Steve Hawking had anything interesting to stay. Science shows that we have around 54 different elements that contribute to us being a physical human form. When nature gets around to recycling us, each of those elements simply becomes part of nature again and in all likelihood what used to be us becomes part of something or someone else. In a weird calculation, a guy with nothing better to do came up with a measurement that says a 175 pound male is worth about $160.00 (usd) in the sale of elements that make us. I suppose a 350 pound one would be close to $320.00 so apparently inflation works. However if we chopped up the same 175 pounder where he could be sold off in working transplant parts he is worth millions. The 350 pounder not so much as a few of the parts may not be reuseable and already off warranty. We only need to look at the history of our own civilized culture to see what direction that value judgement is going to eventually take. But in doing that will anybody consider how many resources must be extracted, marketed and consumed in order to pay for one guy to hang on to life just a little bit longer? www.dialogue.ca
That is why we can’t possibly find a balance when greed is the standard of success. We love the preachings that say our God helps those who help themselves; we were taught from an early age to help ourselves to whatever we thought we needed or wanted. And that is exactly what we do – and to the extreme. We are selfish and can rationalize damn near anything that serves us no matter the cost to anyone or anything else. In the end it doesn’t matter. The death rate continues to hold at a steady 100% , all the glitzy things and all of the purchased protection in the world only changes the timeline by a little bit. Most traditional First Nations people aren’t as enthusiastic about economic development as we are. We complain that they get welfare and land claims and free education. We do that while considering that it was also We that created all of the above and now We are angry that somebody is using them. I’ve not heard any of our leaders of note ever consider that moose hunting is, in fact, an economic activity – but grocery stores are, as is ranching. Perhaps it is because we have a whole hoard of employed, responsible citizens who, every September, suit up in their best John Rambo/Davey Crockett outdoor gear and head out to shoot moose for fun. Obviously Indians just go hunting ‘for fun’ and to kill time because they don’t have jobs. If they would just get work, Safeway could do their hunting for them. Did I mention that governments haven’t found a way to tax harvested moose meat yet and of course the harvesting doesn’t get measured in GDP; therefore it is of no real value. A couple of years ago an elder in Yellowknife was charged with cutting firewood without a permit. It wasn’t because there was a lack of trees; it was because he didn’t have a permit. An insane government chose to ticket him and then to supply him with even more insanely priced stove oil as a substitute. There is no natural source of stove oil within several hundreds of kilometers of Yellowknife, so what was the natural cost of that systemic decision? I have heard hundreds of people say some version of this “ours is the modern system we live in and ours IS the dominate culture.” I think Gore Vidal, if he were still alive, might make the case that cancer is the dominate disease but would fight the idea we should all embrace it. Perhaps we can find a way to cross the …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Norm Zigarlick, conclusions, contd.
Greed Divide and open a pathway that can allow Indigenous people to protect the world they so fiercely believe in, while living a life that does not punish them for trying to do so. Unfortunately, there is little indication that we over on the mainstream, dominant side are willing to even explore the concept let alone try and live it. We are far more focused on creating greed than reducing it. I don’t pretend to be a spokesperson for Indigenous people, I don’t even pretend to be an insider who did a culture swap. I am someone who had an opportunity to witness the day to day lives of these people close up. I was welcomed into their homes and treated with respect every time. I met people who were intelligent, funny thoughtful, considerate and clearly understood
atomic theory better than most of our popular religions. These are not ‘throw away’ cultures that need to be disposed of. When it comes to long term survival on this granite planet, we can learn far more from them than they can from us. I hope that during my last six Dialogue attempts at changing our perception of First Nations people I`ve had at least some little measure of success. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to be given the opportunity to express my views. I sincerely thank Dialogue, its founders and its contributors for letting me do this. Norm Zigarlick (normzig56@gmail.com) ♣ Norm, it is we, the readers of Dialogue, who are thankful for the insights and stories that you have shared – and perhaps will continue to share. – Janet and Maurice
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“Your Health Matters”
Omega fatty acids
Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, M.D.
The word Omega comes from the original Greek language. It was the 24th letter in the alphabet and is used here to indicate a terminal double carbon bond in these fatty acids, more the concern of the biochemist but can be used to differentiate between them when they are discussed. We hear a lot about these fatty acids in health news and I want to make it clear about how they should be used. As most people now know, there are Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids and their metabolisms are intricately linked in a cascade of chemical changes that build up important molecules referred to as prostaglandins or eicosanoids. One of the actions of the Omega-3 cascade is to modify the actions of the Omega-6 cascade; they work closely together. I have seen articles that tell inquirers that omega-3 is helpful in certain diseases and it is imperative that we think differently about the use of these nutrients. We have been taught that a constellation of symptoms, together with physical changes in the body and laboratory changes to match, represent a particular disease which then is given a name, e.g. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s etc. Research is aimed at finding a cure for each one of these specific diseases. So we tend to ask whether Omega-3 “is good for such and such a 16 dialogue
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disease” and whether Omega-6 is “good for another disease.” Although this works for some conditions in the use of these fatty acids, it is largely a false model for we need to understand the basic principles of their use in biochemical and physiological terms. Although both are referred to as essential, this is only partially true because they are synthesized in the body and are derived from dietary substances that are truly the essential components. Omega-6 is derived from an oil known as linoleic acid (LA) and the Omega-3 is derived from alpha linolenic acid (ALA). Both of these occur naturally in vegetables and are the active ingredients of Canola oil. Each of them is acted on by a genetically determined enzyme in the body that is common to both Omega-6 and Omega-3, converting them to their respective metabolites, gamma linolenic acid (GLA) from Omega-6 and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) from Omega-3. GLA is the active principle in evening primrose oil and EPA, sometimes referred to as fish oil, is present in fish. Although they are used in therapy, it is important to be aware that GLA and EPA are derived from LA and ALA as the essential nutrients and that each is a metabolite in a cascade of chemical changes, leading to the formation of the substances referred to above as eicosanoids. These complex substances are responsible for some aspects of inflammation and anti-inflammation. They are www.dialogue.ca
released from cells by signals from the automatic part of the brain, providing a balance between inflammation and its suppression. A great deal of research has been put into the study of these exquisitely important substances and how they modify and control bodily defenses against the effects of harmful environmental stress. Hence, the control of inflammation is part of the complex nature of bodily defense. If nutrition supplies LA and ALA, you would expect that the kind of defense that I’m describing here would be automated successfully. There is however a catch. The enzyme that converts LA and ALA into GLA and EPA respectively is heavily dependent on several vitamins that act as cofactors. If these are not present, the enzyme becomes dysfunctional and GLA and EPA then become essential since LA and ALA cannot be processed. It is nutritional failure that makes the enzyme dysfunctional because of its insufficient vitamin support. The late David Horrobin edited a book in which 11 chapters were written by essential fatty acid researchers. In every chapter, it was emphasized that if GLA and EPA were to be used therapeutically, both should be used together, never singly. The only bone of contention was the ratio of GLA to EPA. While I was in practice, many mistakes occurred as knowledge increased in the use of these important substances. For example, at least one article emphasized the use of blackcurrant oil, which contains a large quantity of GLA. It was disastrous in my experience and the same is true for the use of EPA on its own. They should be used under medical care by a physician that has studied the biochemistry rather than using a kind of hit
or miss approach. They are extremely powerful when used appropriately and are responsible for miscellaneous symptoms when used inappropriately. In closing, I will give you an example of the clinical use. A common disease in children is known as atopic dermatitis. Because of malnutrition, the enzyme that converts LA and ALA to their respective GLA and EPA can be dysfunctional. If the malnutrition is corrected the dermatitis responds to administration of LA and ALA. On the other hand, the enzyme can be dysfunctional from genetic reasons. It is then necessary to bypass the enzyme and the skin disease responds to a combination of one part GLA to 4 parts of EPA given in a combination capsule. I understand that this is highly technical and it is extremely difficult to simplify it. If anybody reading this has a child with atopic dermatitis, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest. It may save a lot of pediatric heart-ache. – Derrick Lonsdale, M.D., Strongsville OH “Everything is connected to everything else.” Dr. Lonsdale retired in 2012 at the age of 88 years; he is a retired Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a Certified Nutrition Specialist. Website: www.prevmed.com/ Blog: http://o2thesparkoflife.blogspot.com/
Dr. Lonsdale is author of: “A Nutritional Approach to a Revised Model for Medicine – Is Modern Medicine Helping You?” [ISBN: 978-1-61897-092-3]; and also “Why I Left Orthodox Medicine” ISBN: 1-878901-98-2, 1994, Hampton Roads Publishing Co.
“I believe nutritional medicine to be the mandatory medicine of the (21st) century. It is extremely effective, particularly in the early stages of disease, where modern orthodoxy fails miserably…” – Derrick Lonsdale. M.D. See also: http://sbpra.com/DerrickLonsdale
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Fear for future generations if vaccine assault on infants continues From CDSAPI – Citizens Demand Academic, Scientific, Political (and Media) INTEGRITY Inge Hanle, Vancouver, cdsapi@telus.net instances of “Science Consensus” proven to be wrong, Inge's comment: (link follows) There is no area of
medicine and public policy that has been more politicized and propagandized than “Public Health Policies” - with the Vaccination Schedule for Infants and Children in the forefront as medical MANDATES. As the voluminous records of EFFECTS/CONSEQUENCES of this flawed science continue to escalate with a cascade of neurologically damaged children filling our hospitals and classrooms, this travesty can no longer be shoved under the rug. It is imperative to question, re-evaluate and challenge these practices. NOW. As in many past www.dialogue.ca
it is time to admit that a horrendous mistake has been made - and that it has to be stopped and reversed. This is especially important since we now have valid science that gives us effective alternatives for preventing infectious diseases. What is being so dogmatically and vociferously protected by the “Vaccine Industry” is not “the presumed health benefits” - but the “Economic Structure of Guaranteed Profits” …/ that has made mandatory vaccinations “the goose that lays the golden egg”. What a magnificent program to transfer tax dollars into the coffers of Big Pharma …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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without any accountability or liability. The protection of our children must be our highest priority. It is more than just saving individual children from having their lives destroyed - it is matter of not sacrificing the generations that are the foundation of our civilization - to “a 'privatized' industry”.
When some scientists forecast that in less than twenty years one in two children will become autistic (supposedly from unidentified causes), the societal structure of a civilization collapses. Inge Hanle, Vancouver LINK: http://www.vaccinesrevealed.com/ ♣
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“The Fifth Columnist”
Thought for food…
Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON
Denial. I am looking down on the scale and can’t believe my eyes. 205 pounds. The heaviest I’ve ever been. We dust off the old book on food combining. Basically the rule is not to mix proteins and starches. Think meat and potatoes. In any case, the science eludes me. We tried the diet in 1995 and couldn’t stick to it. It was just too easy to order a baked potato or french fries with my steak, sushi was popular and I could never say no to a baguette. That was 20 years ago. 20 years later. Chronic indigestion and arthritis. I figure I’ve added about two pounds a year. I blame the danish for breakfast! So here I am one and a half months into this diet. My indigestion, which has stalked me relentlessly and made Diovol and Zantac 150 my friends, has gone. The arthritic pains (at least I hope that’s what they were) in my hips and shoulder blades have subsided. One of the remarkable claims for the diet is that you will think more clearly. Sorry, but this clearly has not happened. On the minus side, that glorious stuffed feeling I once felt has been replaced with a nagging,
perpetual hunger. Going to a restaurant and ordering off the menu is virtually impossible. Meat and salad. Meat and eggs and salad. You can only eat so much salad. At the other end of the food spectrum, there aren’t many appealing dishes that are starch only. Potatoes with rice? Suzanne Somers wrote several books based on food combining. Later she concluded that mixing proteins and starches was okay once in a while. Too much rigour? In any case, a consequence of food combining is that I’m not snacking – the cravings have disappeared, and my sugar intake is way down. Because eating a starch only meal is very limited – spaghetti with no tomato sauce – my starch intake is also down. I’m beginning to suspect that it was the sugar that was a factor in the arthritis, that all those starches that easily convert to sugar were likewise were a factor. It’s a funny thing that vanity started me on this adventure. My weight. That I was willing to accept that arthritis and indigestion were a consequence of aging and not a bad diet – that too says something. I look forward to touching my toes without groaning. Time will tell. ♣
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Train wrecks and the GDP! David Boese, St. Catharines ON
Another train wreck last week. Oh well! Ho Hum! About 40 years ago I got interested in train wrecks. Mississauga comes to mind. The whole town was evacuated. I began to start taking notes and found that there was at least one train wreck, every week, somewhere in the world. I thought there had to be a better way of avoiding these calamities, so I came up with two ideas of how train wrecks could be eliminated or at least greatly reduced in number. In order to get these ideas across to powers that be, I contacted my MP, the Transportation Safety Board 18 dialogue
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and companies who could build these devices. Unfortunately, I got absolutely no response from any of them. My only conclusion was that there wasn't any interest in reducing railway accidents, because, in actual fact these accidents were beneficial to our economy, increasing the GDP. We don't often think of this, but even the death of people increases the GDP. So much for what a life is worth! [dash@vaxxine.com] ♣ “While there is much talk these days about “fake news,” omitting important news is perhaps as widespread and egregiously harmful to an informed public.” – Edward Curtin www.dialogue.ca
“Prévoyance”
Thoughts on the pre-election BC budget By Erik Andersen, Gabriola Island
It is unfortunate that the government exploits the public's ignorance of finances. We know that BC hydro abuses the privilege of using regulatory accounting. Carrying $6 billion of uncollected expenses as an asset is an insult; and the former Auditor General more or less told them so. Prior to 2003, the NDP had BC Hydro clear off all unpaid/collected expenses each year with rate changes. Back in 2005 I had occasion to talk with a BC Finance Ministry retiree. She confirmed my suspicion that they were under heavy orders to capitalize as much as was possible. That order must have kept hundreds of millions out of the current year accounting records and now shows up as long-term liabilities and "Contingencies & contractual obligations." The so-called balanced budget has only been achieved by delay, spending suppression or hiding contractual
liabilities. This is a form of Enron off-balance sheet accounting that, for the first time ever, caused the independent auditor to title their opinion with a new term. BC Hydro did not deliver an annual "audited" report. KPMG must be getting uncomfortable having to not require BC Hydro to report IPP contracts as long-term liabilities, even though John Doyle wrote to me that these contracts did not comply with the definition of "debt." My view about Site C is that it will come to a whimpering halt simply because the Liberals have flown BC into a financial "Coffin Corner" (see below). If the NDP win the election this year, Moody’s will have the opportunity to hit the BC Credit rating down-grade button, thereby making the NDP the goat. Yes it is a joyful time – i.e. Spring! – but as Pres. Trump's PR guy says, there can be alternative facts and some folks deal in them all the time. [Email: twolabradors@shaw.ca ] ♣
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Provincial Govt. flies British Columbians into a financial ‘Coffin Corner’ By Erik Andersen, Feb 2017
What is a “coffin corner”? It is an aviation term used to describe a condition where a pilot has flown the airplane into a space where he/she has no altitude left and a flying speed insufficient to avoid a crash and burn. A financial coffin corner is where a person has used up his/her credit and has insufficient cash income to avoid forced sell-off or trade-off of assets in a vain attempt to avoid bankruptcy; sort of a financial crash and burn akin to what happened to Greece and Ontario. Total financial liabilities are a starting point for this illustration of the B.C. predicament. Since about 2004/05 the province and its Crown corporations have been on a spending spree to build bridges, buildings, highways and new electricity generation capacity. Due to arcane accounting rules many of these new contractual commitments have not been reported by the Comptroller General and only show up in an obscure footnote to the annual reports prepared by the Auditor General. These less than fulsome disclosures come under the heading of “Contingencies & Contractual Liabilities.” Former Auditor General, John Doyle, did confirm there was no double counting. This rendered the www.dialogue.ca
Comptroller General’s presentation of the province’s total liabilities only partly correct. Following are B.C.’s annual total liability values for fiscal years 2011 through 2016. Per capita total provincial revenues are also presented for comparison. [Chart, next] So while the provincial government has not reported significant increases in total per capita income, it went on a 10-year borrowing, contracting, spending rampage. Between 2010 and 2016, total liabilities increased by nearly 50 per cent and, judging from media reports, there is to be no slowing down. This trend to rapidly increase liabilities when revenues remain relatively flat, creates the financial “coffin corner.” Perhaps another way of looking at what your BC government has been doing in the borrowing and spending department will help confirm the irresponsibility of our provincial politicians. Prior to the global financial collapse of 2008, financial statements for the province were bullish. In the years 2005-2007, royalty revenues from the production and sale of natural resources were about $4 billion per year. In 2016, revenues from the natural resource sector (royalties and rents) were much less, at …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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$2.57 billion. In that same period, total liabilities were running at about $105 billion. Along comes the great wakeup call of 2008/09 that everyone should have noticed but went apparently unheard in Victoria. It is vitally important that British Columbians are given the financial dimension of the squeeze between revenues and total liabilities since 2007 – a mere 10
years. Total provincial revenues have increased from $38.5 billion in 2007 to $47.6 billion by 2016. In simple terms, that is a rate of change of a little less than $1 billion/year. Alongside that, the Province’s total liabilities increased from $105 billion in 2007 to $186 billion by 2016. Again, in simple terms, the rate of liability increase was about $8 billion/year. To summarize, the rate of liabilities inBC Provincial Total Liabilities and Revenues; 2011 through 2016 crease is approximately eight times faster $ per Capita than income growth. It is unlikely that the Year CompG AudG $T.Liability $T.Revenue cost of servicing all these liabilities will Mill$ Mill$ per Capita per Capita stay low enough to allow the provincial government to meet its contractual obliga2011 64,778 53,041 26,722 9,228 tions to lenders from outside the province 2012 70,532 80,171 33,151 9,186 unless it cuts back on domestic service levels to the public. 2013 75,532 96,374 37,537 9,160 The U.S. central bank has recently used the 2014 78,884 99,812 38,456 9,414 notion of higher interest rates and as goes the U.S. so goes Canada. So we should 2015 81,279 101,699 38,989 9,828 prepare for sale of public assets and cut2016 84,332 101,438 38,434 9,844 backs in service standards, simply because these are the only options. Sources: Comptroller General’s Annual Reports and BC Govt. census data. Erik Andersen ♣
The worst BC scandal of all time! From Rafe Mair, rafe@rafeonline.com Harry Swain, in 5 minutes of plain, uncomplicated, unadorned, English explains how BC HYDRO and Christy Clark are cheating us all, big time and that BC HYDRO is actually $5 BILLION worse off than it says and will get much worse, not even counting for $ 10 BILLION for Site C! Folks, I ask again. Where the hell is Attorney-General
Suzanne Anton? When is she going to end her coverup of Liberal Party and BC HYDRO shenanigans going back to 2002? When will she stop running interference for Christy and let the law take over? When, in short, will she do her sworn duty? In my opinion, this is far and away the biggest BC scandal of all time! https://tinyurl.com/BC-hydo-accounting ♣
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Proposed LNG terminal in Mill Bay, Strait of Georgia Pipeline From Bill Woollam, Duncan BC [See map, p.2]
So, here is what I found out from a researcher named Owen (Eoin) Finn regarding the proposed LNG terminal in Brentwood Bay. This Steelhead plant would be the first floating LNG terminal in the world (meaning this has never been done before) — that should worry southern Vancouver Island residents, we must also consider the huge tanker ships, about the length of three football fields, that would pick up the liquified fracked gas in Brentwood Bay. The process to cool the gas into a liquid would suck in 30,000 gallons of seawater every hour... which means 20 dialogue
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phytoplankton and small fish are also sucked in...then they release that heated seawater and, because they don’t want anything fouling the pipes of their very expensive ships they add a little biocide into it. This 30 thousand gallons of seawater being poured back into the inlet every hour is heated in the process, by 10 degrees. That is like filling 10 Olympic-size swimming pools every week with warm, toxic (biocided) seawater (a half million gallons per week). “This amount of hypochlorited hot water, poured into the Inlet every year, will turn it into a marine desert,” Finn told us. Saanich Inlet is home to shellfish, herring, and large salmon runs up the Goldstream Creek. …/ www.dialogue.ca
It also houses the Victoria Experimental cabled Undersea Laboratory. And this is only one downside to the 4-foot diameter gas pipeline to come into Brentwood Bay. It cools the fracked gas into liquid to feed the tanker ships and then pipes more fracked gas forward along another route past Duncan, west to Lake Cowichan, and on to the West Coast where another cooling facility and shipping facility is to be housed. [See Map, p.2] The entire sea route of LNG tanker traffic, and the
fracked gas pipeline route itself, is fraught with potential disaster points. This threatens hundreds, even thousands, of lives depending on where those disasters occur. And we know disasters eventually do occur. Just search on Youtube: "Tanker carrying natural gas exploded in China" ....and see for yourself. Concerned adults need to start demanding answers. We need to weed through the sales pitch of well-paid corporate executives who are selling us a barrel of rotten fish. Bill Woollam, templelife@hotmail.com ♣
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Why is your Official Community Plan rapidly amended to comply with Global Agendas? The Hidden Role of the UN in Land Planning and Community Policy Implementation Leanne Salter, Errington BC
Regional Districts and municipalities across Canada – and the world – are being legislated to prepare Official Community Plans (OCPs) which conform to the United Nations Agenda 21 Sustainable Development principles through Smart Growth Strategies that restrict community autonomy with respect to land, water, agriculture, parklands, public works, housing, natural resources, transportation and human settlements, etc. Smart Growth is Agenda 21 which includes direction to local government and municipalities on land policy, building specifications (LEEDS) and population distribution. The intent of the UN through Agenda 21, is to align cities and local governments with the United Nations whose strategies nullify community based initiatives including OCP’s. In effect, our municipal councils, regional districts, provincial and federal representatives are directed by Agenda 21 – which permeates our international trade agreements. The architects of Agenda 21 have developed policy that is convoluted with legalese that beguiles our elected representatives thus, passing Agenda 21 into law at alarming speed. Agenda 21 has supplanted our legislative foundation which once supported our democratic principles. The land policy of the United Nations was officially revealed at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), in 1976 at Vancouver, BC. Agenda Item number 10 of the Conference Report endorsed the UN's official policy on land as follows: "Land... cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to the pressures and www.dialogue.ca
inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice; if unchecked, it may become a major obstacle in the planning and implementation of development schemes. The provision of decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole. Public control of land use is therefore indispensable...." (United Nations Conference Report 1976)
This policy was later entrenched in the United Nations Agenda 21, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. In 1992, after numerous UN conferences around the world, UN Agenda 21 was announced at the Earth Summit through the UN Programme of Action from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Agenda 21 was one of three documents presented at the Rio conference. Agenda 21 is considered a “soft law” because it has not been officially passed or ratified by any elected council or board. Agenda 21 was created by many powerful elitists including Maurice Strong, Gro Harlem Bruntland (the Bruntland commission), Harvey Rubin and others who attended Rio de Janeiro. The fabricators of Agenda 21, although unelected, decided to create a plan which is to be followed by countries, cities, and therefore, citizens throughout the world. In fact, President HW Bush signed onto the Agenda – without public debate or consultation, as did 178 other countries. The fact that the document was never debated nor voted on in Washington, Ottawa or any other State or Province, did not hamper the progress of the plan. …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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In fact, the BC Growth Strategies Statutes Amendment Act, which received 3rd reading in 1995, provided amicable entry for the calculating proponents of Agenda 21. The Agenda was to be driven through local councils and regional districts, which would force the ‘soft law’ into true law. 1. “Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions." – Maurice Strong The term “sustainable development” was created by Gro Harlem Bruntland of the World Socialist Party and is included in the UN Sustainable Development Agenda 21, unveiled in 1992 at the UN Earth Summit. Sustainable development would be trumpeted as the saviour of the human race. This is exactly what has transpired. Unfortunately, the intent of Agenda 21 gets lost on the population, including those who pass the bylaws to implement it. The limits or end game of the document cast a wide net and include: population redistribution; expansive government control of land use; government control of zoning and planning; urban and rural land control though public land ownership; control of energy production, distribution and consumption through smart grids, smart meters and renewable resources; It also includes, control over food growth, management and production, as well as education and curriculum control. Control of water management has received significant attention with the end goal of providing all water management to be controlled by government. (As an aside, a review of Nestlé company and BC water management may be worth your time and help you recognize the implications.) In addition, private land is heavily managed through Regional Districts, Municipalities and the Province. Aggressive regulatory bylaws on rural properties impact the ability for extended families to live and retire together, as restrictions and high taxes drive average families out of the rural areas and into urban warehousing. This practice eventually leaves the rural lands in the possession of the wealthy, as artificial inflation continues to inch upwards, leaving those who earn an average wage searching for affordable highdensity housing units. The Regional Growth Strategy (RGS) was legitimized through the BC Parliament in 2008. Regional Districts and Municipal Councils throughout BC 22 dialogue
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embraced the Growth Strategy legislation and adopted bylaws which included reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, zoning and promotion of high density housing, transportation, parks and natural spaces and economic development. The RGS is to be initiated by local governments through “Voluntary participation – most of the time” –“except Cabinet should have the ability to step in where Municipalities are slow to react.” Regional growth strategies – an explanatory guide. Pp 5. This sentence is explanatory in itself. The Local Government Act (LGA), provides the guidelines and expectations of all Regional Growth Strategies. The Act includes an itemized list of requirements. These requirements coincidentally, reflect the direction of the Rio Summit and Agenda 21. The following excerpt from the Regional Growth Strategies Act provides insight into the ability of Agenda 21 to be easily adopted by governments; Purpose of regional growth strategy 849 (1) The purpose of a regional growth strategy is to promote human settlement that is socially, economically and environmentally healthy and that makes efficient use of public facilities and services, land and other resources. (2) Without limiting subsection (1), to the extent that a regional growth strategy deals with these matters, it should work towards but not be limited to the following: (a) avoiding urban sprawl and ensuring that development takes place where adequate facilities exist or can be provided in a timely, economic and efficient manner; (b) settlement patterns that minimize the use of automobiles and encourage walking, bicycling and the efficient use of public transit; (c) the efficient movement of goods and people while making effective use of transportation and utility corridors; …( RGS ct, 996). The LOCAL Government Act (LGA), continues to provide direction. “Once an RGS has been adopted, all subsequent regional district bylaws and all works and services undertaken by the regional district must be consistent with the strategy. The Local Government Act recognizes that a regional district cannot implement an RGS on its own and requires the cooperation and assistance of municipalities, the provincial government and other organizations. It gives local www.dialogue.ca
governments the authority to enter into "implementation agreements" with other local governments, levels of government and agencies to implement the actions and policies of the RGS.” In addition, the LGA contends that “The legislation also requires that all municipal official community plans be updated within two years to include a "regional context statement." The Regional Context Statement sets out the relationship between the RGS and the official community plan and how they will be made compatible over time. The context statement is subject to acceptance by the regional district, to ensure the municipality and the regions agree that the two documents are compatible. Once again, dispute resolution processes are available to resolve disagreements if they arise.” “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it”. - Thomas Paine Chapter 5 of Agenda 21: Demographic Dynamics And Sustainability, the “Basis for Action” and “Objectives” provides insight into the plan of action – in quotation below: “The growth of world population and production combined with unsustainable consumption patterns places increasingly severe stress on the life-supporting capacities of our planet. These interactive processes affect the use of land, water, air, energy and other resources. Rapidly growing cities, unless wellmanaged, face major environmental problems. The increase in both the number and size of cities calls for greater attention to issues of local government and municipal management. “The human dimensions are key elements to consider in this intricate set of relationships and they should be adequately taken into consideration in comprehensive policies for sustainable development....” [And this one, from Maurice Strong:] What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group's conclusion is 'no'. The rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our www.dialogue.ca
responsibility to bring that about? – Maurice Strong, Interview 1992, concerning the plot of a book he would like to write
This is a new social ethos that allows Government to intrude on our freedom This is a silent war, as our senior elected officials sign onto agreements that remove our freedom to buy, sell, eat, live where we choose, speak freely, work, and live in the realm of self-actualization without harassment. Our freedoms and liberty are incrementally diminished .The fabric of our society is being shredded in order to provide the portal for Agenda 21. This is the intent of the creation of One World Government, The World Bank and One World Order by creating laws and regulations for all people, worldwide. The following is a quote from Bill Gates: "The world today has 6.8 billion people... that's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent." How do unelected groups of elite manage to implement their Agenda onto a democratic society? The Agenda has insidiously permeated our legislative system by getting passed though elected community councils, regional districts and commissions who are provided with grant dollars which entice our representatives to take on the “green” initiatives. A group of powerful, wealthy and unelected elitists have overtaken our democratic process by stealth and capital. Governments demand compliance and critical political thinkers are relegated to the isolation of a back bench to keep them quiet. To disagree is rebellion and to oppose is a thought crime. Our representatives cannot turn down the bait of a few grant dollars which mandate that our councils take on “green” initiatives. Once in the web, Agenda 21 is implemented through the councils. New language is added to your officials’ repertoire such as, Growth containment Boundaries (anything beyond the boundary is considered sprawl), Sustainable Human Settlement/ Development, Sustainable Urban Development, High density Urban development, Walkable neighbourhoods, liveable communities. Smart Growth (relating to population control), Smart Meters, Smart Cars (everything except Smart People). “LEED” building and energy code standards, Earth Charter, Sierra Club’s Cool Cities Initiative, Climate protection agreements, …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Visioning Meetings, Urbanism, Resilient Communities and, of course, the Official Community Plan. In addition, you see recycling programs being exposed as the financial menaces they really are rather than innocuous green initiatives. The recent Multi Materials BC is worth a closer look. The consumer will pay the triplicate costs of this deceptive “recycling” program – what really gets recycled is the money out of your pockets. If you notice more and more restrictions and regulations being placed on land use, be it farm, residential and commercial, it is because your elected officials are following the constructs of Agenda 21. This is the solution to our (according to them) worldwide over population problems. Furthermore, they engage us with their promise to preserve our wild life corridors and create biospheres that actually transfer sovereign ownership of the local area to a global entity backed by the UN. Your community charter is located within the pages of Agenda 21. Is this what you voted for? “Agenda 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by EVERY person on Earth... It calls for specific changes in the activities of ALL people... Effective execution of Agenda 21 will REQUIRE a profound reorientation of ALL humans, unlike anything the world has ever experienced...” – Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy Save Our Planet (Earthpress, 1993). Maurice Strong stated that: “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, home and work air conditioning and suburban housing are not sustainable (UN Earth Summit 1992). The Official Community Plan or OCP is one vehicle utilized to drive Agenda 21 through council who then pass it into law and force it onto the population. The public are invited to participate in the development of the OCP; however, citizens note with disdain that this mutually agreed plan is amended at the council level (without public discussion), over the next 3 years. It is probable that your local councillors are not aware that they are promoting Agenda 21. The Official Community Plan (OCP) must meet the requirements of the RGS. If communities do not provide “buy in” – the OCP will simply be amended to meet the RGS 24 dialogue
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requirements. You can find the RGS statute on line. The point is, that the OCP must meet the dictates of the Provincial RGS in order to meet with Provincial approval. As quoted in the Local Government Act with regard to RGS and OCP’s: “The most effective plans are those where there is "buy-in" to the process, ongoing involvement and commitment from all affected agencies. The legislation provides two mechanisms to achieve consensus and positive working relationships.” Nanaimo City Council is signatory to ICLEI – the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, in which Harvey Rubin – vice chair of ICLEI has stated that
“Individual rights must take a backseat to the collective.” Interestingly, while western nations allow themselves to be economically undermined by this ideology, China pays it a scant verbal pretense, while allowing the west to destroy themselves and their vast resource-based economies. In the meantime, China continues to expand and increase its economy and world dominance. (China holds the massive debt on behalf of the US). Ironically, a primary author of Agenda 21 (Maurice Strong) has now retreated to China where he is beyond access by the FBI and Canada. The authorities would like to interrogate Mr. Strong regarding the whereabouts of one million dollars which found its way into his pocket when one of Saddam Hussein’s middleman (Tongsun) diverted money to Maurice Strong from the UN “Oil For Food Program” (that he tried to shelter in his son’s nuclear power company) Pittsburgh Tribune Review, July 30 2006. It is not much of a stretch to recognize that Mr. Strong is nothing more than a green impostor, considering his own actions with regard to sustainability. I believe that Agenda 21 is a complex document, of over 300 pages, in which the plan and role of the Agenda are known by relatively few people. It is understood by fewer still. This is precisely what the authors of Agenda 21 hoped for. Agenda 21 needs to be understood by those of us who value what is left of our freedoms. I hope that this article will provide you with enough curiosity to research the document for yourselves. – Leanne Salter, Errington BC leannesalter@shaw.ca ♣ www.dialogue.ca
Is the entire development sector false or fraudulent? From Herb Spencer, Surrey BC [spsi99@telus.net] (forwarded from his son:)
Mike Spencer, Jan. 23, 2017
Subject: In response to news items claiming that the company Leapfrog makes globalisation and capitalism work for the world’s poorest people. Sadly this company Leapfrog is just another case of self-promoting bullshit instead of meaningful improvement in the lives of impoverished rural people. If you look closely at their portfolio of companies you will see that BIMA* is one of their early investments. BIMA is a total scam. They have backing from a lot of heavy hitters and they claim to be offering insurance to millions of rural people. But I met with these people in Uganda who wanted to work with us to offer insurance to our customers. I asked them some probing questions about how they will educate our customers about what is life insurance and how does it work and they had zero answers. Then I asked them how insured people file claims and how their insurance adjusters distinguish legitimate claims from fraudulent claims in a place where fraud is rampant and there are no police reports or anything else to substantiate what happened. Again, no answers. So what these jokers do is partner with large telecom companies who have millions of mobile money subscribers (90% of whom have dormant accounts) and claim that all of the
telecom's mobile money subscribers are receiving their insurance product. What they mean is that theoretically all of the subscribers could receive the product but none of them are educated about the product so probably none of them are actually using it. But BIMA gets to report big impact and now BIMA's investor LeapFrog gets to report big impact. It's all a joke. Unfortunately my experience is that almost the entire development sector is false. From government organizations like USAID and the UN to private foundations like the Gates Foundation and MasterCard Foundation, they are all the same. Their websites and press releases are filled with shining examples of successful interventions in health, education, finance, agriculture, renewable energy. But almost all of it is pure bullshit. Any serious intervention requires behavioral change and behavioral change requires education. And considering that none of these development organizations have discovered how to bring meaningful education to the masses in remote rural areas it is impossible to conceive that any of these interventions are real. And yes, the media just promotes the illusion to western readers that all of the problems are being solved when none of them are. It's a crime on many levels. [*BIMA (acronym unidentified): “Reaching the unreachable” – www.leapfroginvest.com/bima/ ] ♣
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Grist for the Mill
The Great Divides: Values, Culture, Ideology, Beliefs Ed Goertzen, Oshawa ON
Is the 21st Century going to be when we finally figure out what divides and what joins us as human beings? Where do we stand on the “Clash of Civilizations”? While the Conservatives are agonizing about being ‘true believers’ and believers of truth, the rest of us are probably gazing around looking for the philosophers to help us prove that, in our multicultural society, our Western civilization definitions are the only ‘true’ ones. Historically, most immigrants to Canada arrived from countries (and to a country) that obtained their values, culture and ideology from the King James Bible, www.dialogue.ca
Greek mythology, and writers like Shakespeare; the most recent ‘modernization’ having taken place at the time of the Protestant-Democratic Reformation. The majority of the most recent immigrants come from a different civilization, with different values, culture, ideologies. The huge difference is that ‘western’ civilization experienced a separation of Church and State during England’s Civil Wars (1638 -1660). Less recognised is that those same Reformation and civil wars also gave birth to the modern definition of ‘Constitutional and Representative Government by Laws, where the people’s representatives are supposed to trump the rulers: the foundation of modern democracy. The followers of Islam are still mired in being …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Ed Goertzen, The Great Divides, contd.
ruled by religion, and too many populations have not learned the biblically-based (Protestant) lessons of individual ‘self government’ according to the laws of both state and religion. Where do ‘values’ come from anyway, whence culture, ideology? It seems that we humans are hung up on laws and we seek to find the laws around which everything revolves; the question becomes: where to find those first laws? And what is the purpose of law anyway? Not pretending to be an intellectual, and posing as octogenarian student, my purpose in this essay is to clarify my own thinking by setting out where I think laws originated and how we are governed by them. The god-kings of Mesopotamia ruled state, religion and money by dictating laws; and the first written record of them resides in the stelae* of Hammurabi (1792 – 1750 BCE), comprising more than 300 laws. The next grouping of laws that had a direct influence on humanity was the 613 laws of Israel which came after the Dark Ages (about 1200-900 BC) faded. After the Dark Ages and beginning at about 900 BC, the Ancient Greeks had no official laws or punishments. Around 620 B.C.E., Draco, (origin of ‘draconian) the lawgiver, set down the first known written law of Ancient Greece. Natural law is a philosophy that certain rights or values are inherent by virtue of human nature and can be universally understood through human reason [Wikipedia]. Historically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze both social and personal human nature to deduce binding rules of moral behavior. There can be no question that we live by laws. Laws demanded by and confirmed by reason, dictated to or by us for our particular circumstances. Laws affect every aspect of our lives, eating, drinking, wars, love making, peacemaking. An aboriginal once said that ‘white man’s problem was that, while they knew how to make laws they did not know how to get rid of laws that had outlived their usefulness. A prime example, and there are many others, is the Middle Eastern prohibition against eating the flesh of hogs, predating the invention of refrigeration. While police- and army-enforced laws are proscribed by the State, religious laws, as beliefs, are inculcated by parents, schools and churches, mosques, and synagogues and concerned with the principles or rules 26 dialogue
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of right conduct or the distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ [Google], i.e. ethical ... founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom, conforming to the rules of right conduct.** Behaviour is also determined by the ‘copy-cat’ behaviour of infants, children and even adults. Behaviour also sets us apart from those whose behaviour differs. There are also many “markers” that set us apart. Many of those markers are visible in features, colour, dress, etc. Much of what is called racism is merely recognition of differences in the aforementioned cultural beliefs that guide our behaviour. Those who take exception to LGBTQ behaviours may cite the elder Trudeau, when he said that “the State has no business in the nation’s bedrooms.” Little did he anticipate that the bedrooms would migrate to our main streets and form part of our entertainment? Those from other countries, mainly authoritarian and dictatorial (by state or religion) who have never experienced or learned the concept of self-government behave by different laws. When a people’s laws are made with their participation, they are more likely to obey them if they are in their best interest. If, on the other hand, (unreasonable) laws are imposed, then the ‘modus operandi’ becomes “don’t get caught” and explains the degree of corruption in many parts of the world. Aldous Huxley, after visiting the Middle and far East, wrote in his book, “Perennial Philosophy” that the great religions of the world were about 80% essentially the same; 15% of the difference could be attributed to the weather, geography, flora and fauna, and the final 5% determined by the particular interpretations provided by the local leaders. Enough about laws, what do we do in the present time, where racism and negative discrimination are front and center. It seems that, as we become more aware of the behaviours prompted by different cultures, we become more sensitive to the protection of our own. That is what seems to be happening with the popularity of (Conservative Party leadership candidate) Kellie Leitch’s political position of vetting immigrants on the basis of their subscription to “Canadian values.” President Trump also tapped into the perceived threat to values held by a large number of those who voted for him. The question facing us as we choose the next leader of the conservatives is the extent to which our ‘multicultural’ www.dialogue.ca
society is to include all cultures or only those that are willing to assimilate to the Western dominated culture. (It is disturbing that a developer in Quebec had the intention of creating a Muslim housing community.) In light of the above, “carding” is not racist but cultural; it is an attempt by our police to determine if the person being carded is ‘civilized’ - i.e. living by the laws of state and religion common to the location in which they are being carded. There is a standard rule by which all persons live, that is ‘if you cannot control yourself according the laws of state, religion, and cultural, then you will be controlled.’ A people or nation that has lived generations, centuries, or even millennia under authoritarian rule cannot easily assimilate into a culture that has as its foundation that we must first of all learn to self-govern. If we are to live in a multi-cultural environment, we must all conduct ourselves in a manner that does not offend the sensibilities of other cultures. Tolerance can only take us so far. When we begin to tolerate beliefs that were once a religious evil, we are left with having the state pass laws that govern those beliefs.
The US has had a policy, by which they allow immigration to proceed at the same rate as the new immigrants are assimilated, There can be no doubt but that we will be living in the proverbial “interesting times” The brain has the ability to store, as intergenerational instinct, (RNA). What is needed is the added function of the mind’s recallable memory and conscious reason. It is what is remembered that sets us apart as humans. What distinguishes us from animals is that animals have 5 senses and a brain. Humans have 5 senses a brain and a mind. Ed Goertzen, egoert@interlinks.net ♣ * A stele (/ˈstili/, STEE-lee) is a stone (or wooden) slab… Stelae (pl.) as slabs of stone were used for ancient Greek and Latin government notices… [Wikipedia extract] ** Religious law refers to ethical and moral codes taught by religious traditions. Eg: Christian canon law, Islamic sharia, Jewish halakha, and Hindu law. The two most prominent systems, canon law and sharia, differ from other religious laws in that canon law is the codification of Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox law as in civil law, while sharia derives many of its laws from juristic precedent and reasoning by analogy (as in a common law tradition) [Wikipedia] ♣
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War and Peace
“Ideas”
David Foster, Port Perry ON
11 Feb, 2017: The most necessary thing a war leader must do is to have his successor already trained and in the wings, usually a younger man. Protocols and precedent have defined how that should be done in the British sphere. War since the 1800s can go on 24 hours a day, for weeks, months, even years. And when war is over, both the war leader and the man who next would lead, must retire gracefully and without regret. The Nation must look after Old soldiers in their declining years (and see that they don’t get into mischief). The ‘Nation’ is personified in the person and family of the Monarch. The big accomplishment was upon the death of a Monarch, to change kings gracefully without the family lusting after the role. Over long bitter experience, the British had learned that a nation can be torn apart by ambitious war leaders exceeding their mandate, and by candidates for kingship competing. www.dialogue.ca
david.foster2@powergate.ca
But then comes the peace, not orderly peace but disorderly, rife with former soldiers who apply the protocols of war to the competition of peace. What is missing and dangerously so, is that sense of honour to step down when the Public Good is no longer being served. Wholesale copying of Military techniques are rushed into service as ‘peace’ is seen as a window of opportunity to satisfy personal and corporate ambition with no holds barred. And so we go to war in a different sphere without loyalty to the Monarch and the Constitution that placed him or her there, (the immorality of the modern Corporation and their innovations beyond the experience of time or the control of law). The first thing local Councils do is ask other Councils how to do the job. Who of course have asked other Councils, and so on. None has any real idea and have lost the skills as to how to solve their problems without relying on some other jurisdiction’s precedent. There is no tested protocol. In war, the winner takes all and gives it to the Crown. The Crown in our …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
dialogue 27
system gives it back to the people honourably. And therein is the weakness... how to do that where there is freedom without honour, knowledge, or discipline. Lawyers claiming they know what the Queen would prefer in the great conflict we now call Global Trade and Commerce. And so techniques that were developed for war are adapted to peace, and never subject to voluntary destruction. So there the innovations sit, whining like dogs of war for a new master. And local councils, parliaments, citizen assemblies ask each other how to manage it, as if it was both voluntary and disciplined. Their own first duty is to choose their own War Leader and immediately have a trained successor in place. But it is done without honour. We have no idea
how to train politicians or civil servants. History knows... (but who wrote the history? ... the winners of wars). It becomes both a Kaleidoscope and a Mobius Loop. The one a tube of fractured parts in a tube seen against a light, (parts that change their position as we pass the viewer from person to person), and the Mobius Loop of surprise where each journey along a simple loop of precedent mysteriously becomes totally unfamiliar, leading to an upside down unexpected new journey into the unknown. Welcome to the world of Republican Capitalism, the great pyramid scheme that even the Chinese ‘communists’ have embraced. To America’s regret. And our bewilderment. – David Foster ♣
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Re Edward Curtin on Remembering Albert Camus… (below) Forwarded by Stephanie Mc Dowall, Nanaimo with her comment: I do not feel any better having
read this, but I find this article such a clear diagnosis of where we are at. Can't say I hope you enjoy the article but in sending it to you I think you will find that it sets forth the present situation and where we must go. Comment from Bob Hansen:
I 'like' this article very much. We are our own enemies, if we allow murderous corporations to harm other people and or Earth. Soon it will be our turn. My grade 9 French teacher was the first person to
bring Camus to my attention. He himself was from France, and when he described the death of Camus he almost cried openly in class. I was confused. Not until the murder of John Lennon did I understand the feelings of my French instructor, 15 years earlier. In a material world it's unique to place so much value on thought, passion and love of humanity, perhaps, even dangerous. Certainly, revolutionary. Bob - The Corporation IS the Enemy. Altered Egos Radio News Magazine, CHLY 101.7 FM hansen.bob5@gmail.com ♣
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Remembering Albert Camus’ “The Plague” – The World as a Prison, It is the U.S….? By Edward Curtin, Global Research, Jan 4, 2017 Reprinted with the kind permission of the author LINK: http://tinyurl.com/CRG-66393
On this date, January 4, in 1960, Albert Camus died in a car crash at a point when he thought his true work had not even begun. He was 46 years old. He had already written The Stranger, The Fall, and The Plague, among other Edward Curtin works. He had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Yet he felt that in his writing he had to hide behind a mask that stifled him. After all these successes, as well as criticism from the left and right French intelligentsia, he was looking forward to a time when he would be able to speak his own truth without the mask of depersonalization – to enter a 28 dialogue
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period of création en liberté. He was finding a new voice beyond the prison of a classical form he felt he needed to escape. In his briefcase was the uncompleted manuscript of that effort, the autobiographical and posthumously published novel, The First Man, written in a new lyrical and powerfully emotional style. It is a beautiful book. A true artist, Camus tried to serve both beauty and suffering. Quintessentially a man of his era, he was haunted by the image of the world as a prison, exemplified in his novel, The Plague, the tale of a town cut off from the world by a pestilence, whose residents lack the imagination to foresee. Even as it happens, they remain oblivious, for they “work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich.” Bored by their habits, heavily drugging themselves with drink, and watching www.dialogue.ca
many movies to distract themselves, they fail to grasp the significance of “the squelchy roundness of a stillwarm body” of the plague-bearing rats that emerge from their underworld to die in their streets. “It was if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of their secret humors; thrusting up to the surface the abscesses and pus-clots that had been forming in its entrails.” To them the plague is “unthinkable,” an abstraction, until all their denials are swept aside as the truth emerges from the sewers and their neighbors and families die from the disease. “Stupidity has a way of getting its way;” the narrator, Dr. Rieux tells us, “as we should see if we were not always so wrapped up in ourselves …. plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.” The Plague is often read as a metaphorical depiction of the German occupation of France during World War II. While this is true to the extent that Camus had lived through that experience as a member of the French Resistance and writer and editor of the underground newspaper Combat, his artistry makes it a revelatory read for today, especially for citizens of the United States, the greatest purveyor of the plague of violence in the world. We are all infected with the soul-destroying evil that our leaders have loosed upon the world. For we live in plague time, and the plague lives in us. Like the inhabitants of the novel’s French-Algerian city of Oran, the United States is “peopled with sleep walkers,” pseudo-innocents, who are “chiefly aware of what ruffled the normal tenor of their lives or affected their interests.” That their own government, no matter what political party is in power (both working for deep-state, elite interests led by the organized criminals of the CIA), is the disseminator of a worldwide plague of virulent violence, must be denied and divorced from consensus reality. These plaguestricken deaths visited on millions around the world – by Clinton, by the Bushes, by Obama, and potentially by Trump – must be denied by diverting attention to partisan politics that elicit outrage after outrage by the various factions and their minions. The true plague, the bedrock of a nation continually waging wars against the world, is avoided. Presently, it is the liberals that are “shocked” that Trump was elected President. These are the same people who went silent for the last eight years as Obama ravaged the world and lied about his cruel policies. Their shock over the Trump victory reeks of bad faith, with most of them supporting Hillary www.dialogue.ca
Clinton, Obama’s presumed heir apparent and a neoliberal war-monger par excellence. Further “shocks” will follow when Trump leaves office and the latest neo-liberal avatar succeeds him; conservatives will resume their harangues and protestations, just as they have done during Obama’s reign. The two war parties will exchange insults as their followers are outraged and the American Empire, built on the disease of violence, will roll along. The plague will rage on and the main stream corporate media will play along. For “decent folks must be allowed to sleep at night,” says the character Tarrou sarcastically; he is a man who has lost his ability to “sleep well” since he witnessed a man’s execution where the “bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist.” He awakens to the realization that he “had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people.” He loses any peace he had and vows to resist the plague in every way he can. “For many years I’ve been ashamed,” he says, “mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn.” The rats are dying in the streets. They are our rats, diseased by us. They have emerged from the underworld of a nation plagued by its denial. Unconscious evil bubbles up. We are an infected people. Worry and irritation – “these are not feelings with which to confront plague.” But we don’t seem ashamed of our complicity in our government’s crimes around the world. Camus knew better. He warned us, “It’s a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it’s still more wearying to refuse to be it. That’s why everybody in the world looks so tired; everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is why some of us, those who want to get the plague out of their systems, feel such desperate weariness.” Yet the fight against the plague must go on. Tarrou puts it thus, “All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, as far possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can’t judge if it’s simple, but I know it’s true. You see, I’d heard such quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people’s heads enough to make them approve of murder; and I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language. So I resolved always to speak – and to act – quite clearly, as this was the only …/ way of setting myself on the right track.” VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Edward Curtin, Remembering Albert Camus,contd.
See also, by Edward Curtin:
Camus, although his life and work were cut short by an absurd automobile accident with an unused train ticket in his pocket, stood with the victims. He was on the right track. He left us a living lesson in integrity in the face of violence. Refuse it always. If not, you will be destroyed by your own complicity in evil. You will be plagued by your own hand, was his message to us. On this date of his death, I wish to celebrate such a man, a great artist who tried to heal and “bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.” That is surely true of the victims. Let us hope the supporters of the executioners cure themselves.
The Deep State Goes Shallow
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com The original source of this article is Global Research. Copyright © Edward Curtin, 2017 READ ON LINE at: http://www.globalresearch.ca/remembering-albert-camus-the-plague-the-world-as-a-prison-it-is-the-us/5566393 ♣
Feb. 21, 2017 [QUOTE & LINK]: “It is well known that the
United States is infamous for engineering coups against democratically elected governments worldwide. Voters’ preferences are considered beside the point. Iran and Mosaddegh in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Indonesia and Sukarno in 1965-7, Allende in Chile in 1973, to name a few from the relatively distant past. Recently the Obama administration worked their handiwork in Honduras and Ukraine. It would not be hyperbolic to say that overthrowing democratic governments is as American as apple pie. It’s our “democratic” tradition – like waging war. “What is less well known is that elements within the U.S. ruling power elites have also overthrown democratically elected governments in the United States. One U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated because he had turned toward peace and opposed the forces of war within his own government. He is the lone example of a president who therefore was opposed by all the forces of imperial conquest within the ruling elites. ... and now we have Trump, who is suffering the same fate – albeit at an exponentially faster rate – as his predecessors that failed to follow the complete script. […]” CONTINUE READING AT http://edwardcurtin.com/the-deep-state-goes-shallow/ ♣
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Thoughts and concerns about U.S. President Trump… Jack Etkin, Victoria BC jetkin@hotmail.com
My comment below was written in January ... just as Mr. Trump became President Trump. Now, in March, things look more grim. The American people are extremely divided, and that is not by accident. Corporate America, which has complete control of the country, wants the American people to be as divided as possible and they have succeeded. If the American people are united ... they might focus on their REAL enemy which is the Corporation itself. And that cannot be allowed. I don't know if President Trump is 'an outsider', or just another 'act' in this Corporate Script. Trump's focus on 'the outside enemy' is very scary, but of course that has been 'the story' ever since 9/11 and before. I thought he might actually tell some truth ... that the United States is fighting a war OF terror, not ON terror. But that hope seems gone. He is viciously attacking the Environment and our 30 dialogue
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Planet. His tax breaks for the richest are crazy. The elite of both the Republican and the Democratic Parties make me sick. They are SO pathetic and SO corrupt. The poor people of the United States deserve better, as do we all. But it is what it is. And here in Canada we have the pathetic liar Trudeau who canceled PR, loves Free Trade, has approved more GMOs, and plans to privatize whatever the Corporations want to get their evil hands on. It is a BIG mess for sure... Jan 21, 2017: Today there are demonstrations everywhere against President Trump. But I think 'we' are making a mistake by not looking at the areas where we might 'agree' and work with President Trump and his supporters ... 1. He seems to have stopped the TPP. Maybe. That's great. We wanted that. Yet there has hardly been one word of praise from almost anywhere for what may be a great victory. The wonderful Obama was pushing www.dialogue.ca
the TPP. And Hilary. And Justin. So ??? 2. There are rumors that he has asked Robert Kennedy Jr. to look into the 'Vaccines' issue. [If true this is very good. http://tinyurl.com/reu-DT-vaccines ] 3. NAFTA is a disaster for the people of Mexico, Canada, and the US. We should support the idea of reopening it. The Corporations and some people benefit from NAFTA. The large majority lose. Again, to me this has good possibilities ... except that Canadians have no power to influence our governments. 4. He wants better relations with Russia. This too has to be good. But the elite seem to want War or trouble with Russia. It's nuts. The truth is that Russia is under attack by the lunatics who run the US; maybe because it is 'independent' of them and they don't allow that. The US leadership, Plus Trudeau, but not Trump, seem to want 'trouble' with Russia. I don't. 5. I think Trump also has some pretty good policies on Lobbyists. AND he talked about Term Limits on Senators and Congressmen & women. That would be a huge victory ... I wish we had something like that in Canada.
6. Also, Trump's position on Obamacare seems to be to get rid of it and REPLACE it with something cheaper and better. Even Obama agrees with that. The Republican Party just wants to get rid of it. I think Trump says replace it with something better and cheaper. Again, this is not bad. Also the old saying of keep your friends close and your enemies closer has a bit of relevance here... we should not burn all bridges to the Pres. of the US. But that seems to be the plan, certainly promoted by CNN and MSNBC and CBC, CTV etc. In large part we are following the message the Corporate Media are putting out, which is NEVER a good idea. They are trying to divide people even more than we are already divided - and even though there should be large areas of agreement. I think that's why they all hated Bernie; his message was of inclusion, bringing people together, and dealing with Corporate Power. So the Media ignored him and the Democratic Party Leadership made sure he couldn't win... and then the Media covered all of that up. – Jack Etkin, Victoria BC [long-time, Victoria-based democracy and media activist host]♣
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Odious Ultra-Left Militants Peter Goldring, Edmonton AB [MP: 1997-2015]
Feb 14, 2017: What an amazing display by odious ultra-left militants across the United States and in Canada too, organized under the banner of “Occupy Democrats” political organization. Dam the Constitution! Dam Civil Rights! Dam the Electoral System! Somehow – they don’t know how – but somehow the ‘wrong’ person was elected and they, the righteous apoplectic left liberal arbiters, the informed public, are massively demonstrating their displeasure with the uninformed common masses American voters’ choice. Whew! Shades of third world protestations when their electoral choice for ‘El President’ does not prevail. I have election monitored some 14 times in 7 different countries, and have witnessed the organized post-election attempted throw over of presidential election results first hand many times in far less militant fashion than now taking place in the United States. Odious ultra-left militant Canadian liberal supportive machinations are simply idiotic. How dare for Canadians to protest against another country’s democratically elected leader for legitimately being elected! – This makes Canada a laughing stock when our election monitors dutifully visit foreign countries to give www.dialogue.ca
unbiased accounting and monitoring of their elections. The fact that these odious ultra-left militants rally around the supposed legitimacy of a Democratic Party political identity affiliated with the “Occupy” Movement is particularly scurrilous, as they are simply a very vocal and well organized elitist fringe element that demeans and degrades democracy. The Democratic Party of the United States is further at fault for not distancing themselves from association with the odious ultra-left Occupy Democratic political organization. However, we should be thanking the “Occupy Democrats” ultra-left militants themselves for the populist Trump to win the Presidency. The Occupy Democrats did not support Hillary but scorned her in favour of Bernie Sanders. Democratic support was split by them. By the time Hillary became nominated, the elites, the movie stars, the university agitators were successful in neutering Hillary by highlighting her many faults, real and fabricated, to many, many Democrats and Republicans who were encouraged by Occupy Democrats not to vote for Hillary on election day. FACT – Trump won the Presidency by a wide margin FACT – Republicans elected are the majority in the Congress. …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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FACT – Republicans elected are the majority in the Senate. FACT – NAFTA was not free and fair
Canadians and Americans have lost millions of manufacturing jobs to Mexico. My brother, a life-long GM truck assembly plant worker in Oshawa, and now retired, recently ordered a new GM truck. He was horrified when the truck arrived and was not built in Oshawa but built in Mexico!! Oshawa, that used to employ some 30,000 in the assembly plants, now employs less than 5000. Their jobs went to Mexico! President Trump, a person who unquestionably knows business tactics, wants to keep jobs and bring many more jobs back to Michigan and to Canada where wages and interests are comparable.
Compared with Trump’s business acumen, Hillary – zilch, Obama – zilch, and look what happened to American and Canadian manufacturing jobs over the last 8 years! I, for one, want to see where this refreshingly new populist administration committed to improving the lives of the middle class people leads to. The odious ultra-left militant, ivory tower rappellers, academics, screen stars, elitists, one and all, who disdain democracy, distain the hoi-pol-loi, have illuminated their ilk and now must now slither out of the path of long overdue populist progress. Peter Goldring, Member of Parliament 1997-2015 (Edmonton East) petergoldringmp.retired@shaw.ca ♣
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More Thoughts on Trump . . . From Herb Spencer spsi99@telus.net, with his comment: The following article by Robert Kuttner is an excellent analysis. As Robert the Scot says: ‘Here is a voice of fresh air around the current angst concerning Trump.’
Trump-ism…Orwell, Hitler Hitler was the first to describe the technique of telling a lie so often that people believed it. He called it the Big Lie.
Robert Kuttner, Co-founder and co-editor,
‘The American Prospect’ [EXTRACT] Jan. 22, 2017: Last week, I reached for my Philip Roth – his splendid novel, The Plot Against America. This week, I reached for my George Orwell. In 1946, as Europe was digging out from the ruin of World War II – a genuine case of mass carnage as opposed to Donald Trump’s fantasy carnage – Orwell wrote the classic essay on the seductions of propaganda, “Politics and the English Language.” Much of the essay, widely assigned in English classes, warns how stale writing leads to sloppy thinking. But the most original part is Orwell’s evisceration of propaganda. Combined with his great novel 1984, written in 1949 as a dystopian warning about the way totalitarian practice becomes internalized in totalitarian thinking, these two great works gave us the adjective, Orwellian.
In 1984, we learned the official slogans of the Party: “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength,” only slight parodies of communism and Nazism. “Freedom is Slavery” was not far from the infamous greeting at the gates of Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei. And Ignorance is Strength seems to be Donald Trump’s credo and operating premise – ignorance for both himself and his public. 32 dialogue
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Orwell’s target was the prettified euphemism, used mostly by extreme leftwing and rightwing parties and governments. If people could be persuaded to accept the re-framing, they might well alter their conception of reality. In “Politics and the English Language,” Orwell made great sport of pretentious writing and mixed metaphors, such as “The capitalist octopus has sung its swan song.” But he was dead serious about the political point. He wrote: Defenseless villages are bombed from the air, their inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts sent on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their land and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population… Note that Orwell was writing two full decades before the Vietnam War. Even before the advent of Donald Trump, the misuse of language in our own day has been in many respects more insidious and more corrosive than the plague against which Orwell was warning. Orwell’s examples came from either totalitarian governments or far-left and far-right parties in the democracies. In America, a democracy, both major parties have increasingly used Orwellian language, Republicans far more than Democrats. Trump has taken the maneuver to a whole new low. But the earlier Orwellian efforts softened the ground. […] Continue reading at The Huffington Post: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/hp-RK-oht ♣ www.dialogue.ca
Thoughts on the Conservative Leadership Race Forwarded by Ken Kellington, Devon AB
The Edmonton Leadership Debate Sharon Maclise, skymac@telus.net
Just wanted to share my Facebook Post – a recap of the Edmonton Debate from Tuesday, Feb. 28th. It was by far the best Debate so far. The thing that made it superior was that there was no squelching of the crowd reaction like there was in Halifax and Vancouver. I have no idea why you would want to have a public function like this and tell the audience to shut up. The folks in Edmonton weren’t about to be silenced. It was interesting, entertaining and a lot of fun: If you are sick to death of the blood sucking CBC the only candidate you can vote for is Kellie Leitch. Went to the Leadership Debate last night in Edmonton. For $25.00 it was the best entertainment I have had in a long time - a lot better than the useless Edmonton Oilers who cost us half a BILLION!! I have to say I was mighty proud of the Edmonton crowd. Kellie was cheered loudly every time she doubled down on Canadian values - and best of all, Chong was booed off the stage every time he mentioned "carbon tax" ~ and every time anyone mentioned carbon tax which of course they were ALL soundly against. Aren't you shocked! :) As for CBC, yes, a few of them kinda complained about the CBC - even Maxime Bernier with his 200 word English vocabulary managed to eke out a "I'd revamp the CBC" - that's poli-talk for I'll drop the whole issue the moment you elect me. Thank goodness the crowd had him figured out; the response to Bernier was tepid, at best. I doubt that he'll get much more than a dozen Alberta votes here but the crowd warmed to French Quebecer Steven Blaney; he's genuine, funny and has a truly decent conservative track record in Parliament. At one point he said, with great disgust: Enough with TAXES already! The audience erupted in gleeful applause. But
as endearing as the guy is, I'd walk over coals before I'd vote for anyone from Quebec. O’Leary didn’t show up and, seriously, it was quite a relief. No one missed him a dot. I live by the adage: “Want to be a winner? It starts with showing up.” Clearly O’Leary is under the impression that not showing up is going to win him friends and give him influence over people. I have to say, I am baffled. Anyway, he wasn’t there and so we were relieved to avoid that distraction. They say he’s winning! That just proves how daft the Canadian voter is – as if Trudeau’s election didn’t prove that already. Leitch stuck closely to her talking points about Canadian values but when she criticized Bernier for his support for the last $200 Million handed out to Bombardier in response to his "I'll end corporate welfare" spin she left him with his mouth open. All in all, it was a great performance by many of the candidates - I'd rather liked Andrew Scheer before the Debate but he left me pretty cold last night. Sask candidate Brad Trost gave a very solid performance, and he, and Pierre LeMieux gave an unapologetic, solid defence of their conservative social values - Bravo to them. But the highlight of the night was the virtual pounding poor Michael Chong took for his Carbon Tax cheerleading. When he tried to spin it with the "revenue neutral" nonsense, Scheer gave his best line all night: I've never seen a revenue neutral TAX in my life! The howls that went up from the audience left no one in doubt that Edmonton consumers and taxpayers are done, fed up, seeing red, when it comes to politicians finding these fake and outrageous ways to tax them to death. My top 3 picks today: 1. Kellie Leitch; 2. Brad Trost; 3. Andrew Saxton CBC REPORT : http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/leitch-
conservative-cbc-scrap-1.3866219 ♣
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Trudeau says national unity more important than electoral reform Dear Fellow Canadians: Unity is a major factor on the future or failure of Canada as a Nation. That statement suggests that our P.M. is of the opinion that national unity can be achieved prior to election reform. This has been proven by previous Prime Ministers to be a failure. www.dialogue.ca
Canadian national unity will only be achieved after the elected government resolves other costly ineffective policies; and electoral reform is one that needs to be corrected. Ken Kellington, Devon AB ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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The Sceptical Scholar
The Trump/O’Leary Perplex Wilfred Cude, Cape Breton NS
With a sharp cartoon in the 7 February, 2017 Halifax Chronicle-Herald, Michael de Adder drives home what has largely been perceived as a reversal to Kevin O’Leary’s campaign for the leadership of the Conservative party. A gleeful O’Leary is depicted lounging back in an office chair blazing away with a submachine gun cradled in both arms, the floor at the base of the chair littered with expended cartridges, while exclaiming in delight “LOOK AT THAT THING SMOKING” – just as he has blown several holes in his own extended left foot. The reference, of course, is to the controversial posting on O’Leary’s website of a video featuring the man himself enthusiastically firing various automatic firearms at a Miami gun range – a posting appearing for four hours on the same day funerals were being held in Quebec City for three victims of that city’s mosque massacre. Although the video was hurriedly taken down thereafter, with an apology replacing it, the incident was widely reported and immediately and broadly criticized. Especially vocal was Ontario MP Michael Chong, another candidate for the Conservative leadership, who denounced O’Leary as “Rambo” and castigated him for extreme insensitivity. “He had the audacity to post that video on the very same day we were burying the victims of one of the worst mass shootings in Canadian history,” Chong complained, adding this dire (at least to Conservative listeners) prediction: “that video will cost us the next election.” Something of that same assessment continued to resonate throughout the media, still manifesting itself on occasion in venues such as the Chronicle-Herald’s “Voice of the People” letters column. “In the past year we have seen many disgusting utterances and actions from Donald Trump,” George Lowe of Bridgewater wrote, in the 14 February section of “Voice of the People”: “Kevin O’Leary has topped them all in sharing the video of himself rattling an assault weapon like a maniac while the funeral was being held for three of the six Canadians killed in Quebec City.” The incident “shows very clearly that he has spent too much time with the ‘deplorables’ in the U.S.”, Lowe continues: “Canada has 34 dialogue
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nothing to learn from the likes of The Kevin.” Well, maybe.... And perhaps that perception will prevail, over the time remaining until the Conservative party leadership convention. But perhaps not. After all, the video itself was filmed last fall, well before O’Leary’s official declaration of candidacy: and it was obviously made with his pending declaration in mind, and furthermore with a powerful segment of the Conservative party base in mind. Right across the country significant numbers of intensely-motivated voters, virtually all male and members of the Conservative party, had fought ferociously not so long ago in support of Stephen Harper and his campaign to destroy the long gun registry. They are still out there, and almost to a man would seem intent upon rallying behind O’Leary, mainly as a result of this denunciatory uproar against him. It is pretty apparent that the video was being held in reserve by O’Leary’s people, awaiting an opportune time for release: and arguably that time had rolled around – on the day before the mosque shooting! – when Erin O’Toole, another rival of O’Leary’s for the leadership, publicly criticized his reality-show opponent for an alleged “attack on firearms owners.” For all those who were adamantly negative about the long gun registry, O’Leary’s video was merely a clever riposte to O’Toole’s criticism: and the timing of the posting was nothing more than an unfortunate accident, for which O’Leary posted an appropriate apology. That’s how they saw it, and continue to see it still. Now let’s pause to consider yet another dimension of all this, one totally unexplored to date in the media. Whatever O’Leary’s knowledge of the video release timing, one fact is inescapable: the entire nation is fully aware of the video’s existence, and vastly more people have viewed it on the internet than would otherwise have even been close. While it is true that the video exposure has given great offence to many people, that fact might not be as disconcerting to O’Leary as most commentators have assumed, given that he knows full well that few of those people would ever dream of voting for him – and almost none of them would be qualified to vote in the Conservative leadership race. Moreover, all those firearms enthusiasts in the Conservative party have been alerted to O’Leary’s www.dialogue.ca
similar tastes, and have been further alerted to the animosity towards him from people repelled by ostentatious displays of destructive firepower. From a totally cynical and hard-nosed perspective, therefore, the entire kerfuffle might well be a decided win for O’Leary: his name recognition has been reinforced, and positively so in the immediate context of Conservative values in the upcoming leadership race. Which should take us again to the comparison between the ascendancy of Donald Trump and the attempted ascendancy of Kevin O’Leary, where perhaps the most politically significant point is also least analysed: their extensive and sustained exploitation of their media-saturated schooling in reality television. From there, the hitherto-parallel careers of the hosts of “The Apprentice” and “Shark Tank” now intersect and spin outwards, with far-reaching and potentially devastating consequences. For Trump, media exposure has undeniably been key to his pursuit of political power: key, but not of itself completely determinative. His constant media presence did position him competitively in the Republican nomination race, but only courtesy of the unique circumstances combining during the party’s primary system: first, it was a crowded field of lacklustre competitors who failed to respond to his challenge when he entered; and second, they floundered about in disarray as he ostentatiously turned the media spotlight on himself with his very pompous late entrance, potent name recognition and abrasively unconventional (weird?) theatrics. They couldn’t shift the media’s attention away from him and back to themselves, as he clowned, lied and shocked day after day, each day’s scandal overshadowing the one previous, but never overshadowing him on centre stage. One by one, his competitors fell away, thinning out his opposition as he inexorably advanced, winning state primary after state primary, usually with a minority of the vote cast. A minority of the vote, yes, but still sufficient to surpass everyone else: that was the trick that took him to the presidential nomination of the Republican Party, and it is a trick that Trump’s Canadian apprentice – Kevin O’Leary – intends to exploit with the Conservative leadership race as well. “Voting systems matter,” Bill Black insisted in a shrewd analysis for the 28 January Chronicle Herald: “Donald Trump won all 50 delegates to the Republican convention from South Carolina with 32.5 percent www.dialogue.ca
of the vote, more than any of the other five candidates, and he won all of Florida’s 99 delegates with 46 percent of the vote.” Then Black, a former CEO of Maritime Life and a regular conservative op-ed contributor, proceeded to explain how O’Leary could Trump that overly-clever Conservative leadership selection system currently in place. Black’s motive, it should be noted, is commendably non-partisan. “The choice of Conservative party leader is very important to the country,” he properly insists: “it should be as well-informed as possible.” In our post-truth Trump-fevered world, that appeal to rationality and fair play has to struggle to be heard, so credit Black for making the attempt. He begins by walking us back to an earlier era when the person becoming a party’s leader was selected by long-standing party loyalists sent as delegates from their local riding associations to a convention convened to assess who was best qualified for the job. The central point is that the process itself involved winnowing through a lengthy list of initial candidates, which required several steps: the first would indicate one or more nohope prospects who would withdraw, releasing supporters to vote again in the next step, according to whatever second choice they might prefer. And so on, until a victor emerged. The strength of this approach is its flexibility, allowing a consensus to coalesce about somebody most of the delegates could reasonably accept at the end of the day. Black’s illustration is the 1976 Progressive Conservative leadership convention, where Joe Clark won on the fourth ballot. At the outset, there were 10 candidates: Joe Clark won almost 12 percent of that initial vote, but three other candidates receiving less immediately withdrew, releasing their supporters to vote as they saw fit – and most of them chose Clark. After the second ballot, Flora MacDonald’s support had remained static while Clark’s had grown significantly, so she crossed the convention floor in a public show to join Clark, a signal inciting her supporters to follow suit. “It was great political theatre,” Black concludes: more significantly, it so increased Clark’s level of support after the third ballot that he was running close to Claude Wagner, who had led the first three ballots, but by increasingly diminishing returns. In the end, with the count after the fourth ballot, Joe Clark had gathered 63 more votes than Wagner, out of a total 2309 cast. He had won “because he was the …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Wilf Cude, Trump/O’Leary Perplex, contd.
second or third choice of more people than Wagner,” Black summarizes: “it was all decided on the day of the convention,” with delegates being “informed and influenced” successively on the spot “by the choices of withdrawing candidates.” Fast forward to the upcoming Conservative (no Progressives left here, we might in passing comment) leadership convention to be held on 27 May, where the selection process has been radically modified. And not, in Bill Black’s estimation, for the better. Granted, the new version will be far more inclusive. All interested and qualified members will be eligible to participate; however, they must do so by listing “up to 10 candidates in order of preference,” a list that must be mailed off and received by 26 May. Alternatively, they could vote in this fashion on 27 May at either the convention itself or a centre elsewhere, if a local riding association has provided such a convenience. Nonetheless – and for Black, this is crucial – “voters will make all their choices before seeing any results.” The outcome is a total loss of flexibility, which could yield the mother of all unintended consequences. “Some candidates will be dropped after the result of the first round of voting,” just as under the old system: but Black correctly drives home the implication of everything thereafter, with the ballot count proceeding in lockstep towards a mathematical conclusion. Each ballot supporting every candidate forced to withdraw will automatically “be reassigned to the continuing candidate [italics mine] next highest on their list and a next count will be done,” with the routine grinding forward after each additional tranche of withdrawals until “a winner is declared.” But there is no room here for any voter to revisit and revise that list, in the light of candidate withdrawals from count to count. It’s all nailed into place at the very start. Enter O’Leary, intent upon replicating the precise scenario behind Donald Trump’s successful Republican nomination campaign, a scenario which should be universally acknowledged as “The Art of the Con.” First must come a creaky political set-up with dual vulnerabilities, a leadership convention most noteworthy for its abysmal paucity of credible candidates, and further noteworthy for what could be a counterproductive voting system. Here, with the Conservatives, the only two possible contestants with national recognition, Peter MacKay and Jason Kenney, opted early to decline what 36 dialogue
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probably seemed a chancy venture: the former to bide his time with family and business, the latter to build a base with Alberta’s Progressive Conservative party. Among the others first up, Kellie Leitch surged forward in the media, pushing past the former debacle of her association with the Harper campaign’s “snitch line” to touch off a similar dog-whistle frenzy for vetting (implied, but never stated, Muslim) immigrants according to “Canadian values.” Other than her, there were eleven more hopefuls back then, not one of whom had much support beyond the strictly local. Who, for example, outside of the Ontario riding of Durham, had ever heard of Erin O’Toole? And then, there’s that flaw in the balloting system itself. Reflect on this fundamental question: how many members of the Conservative party will bother to research the credentials of each of the 14 candidates presently seeking to become leader? On available evidence, few to none. “An Insights West survey,” Black noted, “found only four out of 14 candidates were familiar to more than half the 1,007 respondents.” Should that be the case with those Conservatives listing their leadership preferences, name recognition will undoubtedly determine preferences from second selection on down to the tenth. And that’s the real key. Got it now? With every vote count after the first, each ballot for every candidate dropping out will be assigned to the next candidate still standing [italics mine] on that ballot in the subsequent count. Assume after the first count, a given ballot cast for a withdrawing candidate also lists two other candidates in order of preference who are themselves withdrawing: and Kevin O’Leary is choice number four on that ballot, but he is still standing – so he gets that vote in the second count, and retains it for every count thereafter. Repeat this process time after time, which will happen mechanically because the process is immutable, and the key strategic factor must become name recognition: it isn’t so much being the first choice of most voters, but being a default choice somewhere in the top few selections of every voter, that will carry the day. So Kevin O’Leary stage-managed his campaign with all the trumpery of his American “Shark Tank” persona, himself as yet another flamboyantly bully-boy egotist offering bluster and bad manners as flimsy counterfeit of decisiveness. It’s all a mockery of integrity, made-for-television smoke and mirrors. Rather than frankly declare his interest and get involved www.dialogue.ca
with policy, he indulged in almost a year-long spectacle of hide-and-seek with the media, a candidate who pretended he wasn’t sure the job was worthy of a selfstyled “Mr. Wonderful.” Then he created a committee, headed by such well-beyond their best-before date conservatives as former premier “Chainsaw Mike” Harris of Ontario and former Senator Marjorie LeBreton of the Duffy expense-fraud cover-up, supposedly to gauge public support for his candidacy, already actually well under way. And then he formally entered the race, deliberately on the day following an all-candidate’s French debate, igniting a blazing media fuss about his competence in French. But it’s all showmanship, remember, and most assuredly no substance at all, with this character. What does he really believe about firearms regulation? We don’t know, and can’t know, even after all that media coverage. Did he deliberately time his candidacy announcement to sneak past an embarrassing exposure of his limitations in French? Again, we don’t know and can’t know, even after all that media coverage. And that has been the pattern of the man’s approach, right from his opening moves. Pull a stunt, pick a fight, stir up the media to focus on you, then carry on indefinitely. Another day, another stunt, or another fight, it doesn’t matter. The media coverage is all that matters, reinforcing the substance-less image of a man of mock-leadership. Visit Alberta, pick a fight with Rachel Notley, NDP premier. Attack her, say nothing else! Visit Ontario, pick a fight with Kathleen Wynne, Liberal premier. Attack her, say nothing else! Visit Nova Scotia, pick a fight with Stephen McNeil, another Liberal premier. Attack him, say nothing else! “I reach millions of Canadians each week through the media, and I have promised all of them that I will shine the light on mediocrity and incompetence in government when I see it,” he boasted in a Facebook open letter hectoring McNeil: “so I’m putting you on notice.” And that’s the essence of his leadership: nothing on offer but cheesy abuse. “It’s time you start doing a better job,” he ranted at McNeil. “And if you don’t, well you can ask your friend Kathleen Wynne what happened to her poll numbers when I started writing letters.” Focus attention on someone else, preferably a target for partisan vitriol, and never let up on the ever-threatening demeanor. That’s the style, all presumption, the huffing, puffing, bluffing verbal hooligan, purveyor of www.dialogue.ca
insult. Facebook and Twitter, that’s all, folks. Truly, we have seen this movie before. In fact, nothing but this combative trumpeting has been evident for months, right from when O’Leary first began defining himself for the Conservative party. In Halifax at the end of January, he insisted everything would change tremendously through the sheer force of his personality, once (as he assumes) he obtained the Prime Minister’s office. Never mind other provincial leaders or other political parties: if they were foolish enough to stand in his way, they would be brushed aside. With dissent from “any leadership, regardless of party,” or even “each premier” asserting provincial rights, “I’ll be very punitive,” he brags. “They’ll have to deal with me – that’s how I lead.” He’s outlandishly fond of two pronouns, “I” and “me,” brandishing one or the other as he fantasizes his ascent to power. “As soon as I get to Ottawa,” he prophesizes, “the rules and regulations have to be competitive with other jurisdictions.” Implied here, but not stated, of course, is that those “other jurisdictions” are federal and state jurisdictions south of the border: hence, also implied here, but not stated, is that Mr. Punitive will join his Washington counterpart in a race to the bottom of economic development. “I have to lower corporate tax rates, I have to lower personal tax rates, I have to strip away regulations that are detrimental to the economy.” Sound familiar? Nor is there any need for Mr. Punitive to be specific about how he might accomplish all this. “I’m basically going to have to reverse everything Justin Trudeau did.” Everything. Senate reform? Judicial appointments? International trade deals? Immigration policy? Pipeline approvals? Aboriginal rights? No specifics, as ever. No policy papers, no detailed statements, nothing. “He seems to think he can establish a useful contrast with Justin Trudeau,” Bill Black acidly observes, “by being unpleasant.” And that, in a nutshell, is the heart of the matter. Surely, in this country, informed by witnessing the administrative horror show steadily unravelling to the south, we can do better. Starting now: with the nation waiting to see how the Conservative party will respond to the mediadriven challenge of Kevin O’Leary. Every Conservative, before drawing up that ballot with ten names, would do well to reflect on one of Stephen Harper’s more hurtful but hatefully lingering gibes. Does “Michael Ignatieff: he didn’t come back for you” …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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have any resonance now? It should, with far greater relevance, given O’Leary’s manifest political vulnerabilities. As Black notes, O’Leary “lives in the United States and is in no apparent rush to move back to Canada.” Whereas Ignatieff spent decades studying, writing and lecturing internationally to contribute to the world’s store of knowledge, O’Leary has spent much of his adult life amassing American dollars on American television for himself alone. Believe it, everyone. “Kevin O’Leary: he didn’t come back for you.” A closing gentle word of advice. Conservative voters,
when you list ten names on that ballot, focus on ten of the Canadian candidates who have consistently been here and working in the public interest. And of the four others you must leave off that list, surely Mr. O’Leary should be right at the top. Release him back to his shark tank, swimming about in pursuit of all his American businesses, back to looking after his primary interest: himself. That would be a great kindness to us all. Wilfred Cude, BA (RMC), MA (Dalhousie) WEBSITE: www.wilfredcude.com ♣
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“That’s My Take On It” – John Shadbolt
Canada and carbon…
Forwarded by John Shadbolt, Acton ON
If Mainstream Media would do its job, the manufactured climate debate would not be the scam it is. According to his sources Canada has 990-million acres of forests, 370-million acres of wetlands and167-million acres of crop yielding farmland. These are known as "carbon sinks". Biologists tell us that trees absorb about 2.6 tonnes of carbon per acre. So if you do the math 990-million acres x 2.6 tones per acre = 2.574 billion tonnes of carbon being absorbed every year. Now if you do more math: 36-trillion tonnes {the amount of world emission} x 0.0167 (1.67%) = 601.2-million tones. -- This is the amount of carbon that Canada contributes to the world emissions. In the forests alone, Canada absorbs almost
four times the amount of carbon that it emits. This means that the other three quarters of our forests are being sustained by carbon being emitted by the rest of the world. This calculation does not take into account the wetland or farmland that also absorb carbon. Canada really couldn't get any greener, so why are our politicians hell bent on punishing us with these ridicules carbon taxes? If the media were honest this information would be made public. Considering the fact that Canada is given no credit for absorbing much more carbon than it emits I think there is a good case for some lawyer to charge our governments with a "class action lawsuit." Herman Schwentner, ECA REVIEW (East Central Alberta) [http://ecareview.com/ ] ♣ ***
Speculation about the future in the Exponential Age! [Origin unknown] Our world is rapidly changing but most of don’t realize how fast this is happening. The FUTURE is approaching faster than one can handle..! In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went bankrupt. What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 years and, most people won't see it coming. Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on film again? Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law. So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way superior and became mainstream in only a few short years. It 38 dialogue
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will now happen again with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3-D printing, agriculture and jobs. Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age. Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years. [For example:-] Uber is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world. Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties. Artificial Intelligence (AI): Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go* player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected. [*Go is an ancient abstract strategy board game for two players]
…/
www.dialogue.ca
In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM's Watson,** you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. [**Watson is an IBM supercomputer that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and sophisticated analytical software for optimal performance as a “question answering” machine, named after IBM's founder,
Thomas J. Watson.] … Watson already helps nurses
diagnosing cancer, it’s (apparently) 4 times more accurate than human nurses. Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans. […]♣ John Shadbolt is Vice-president of the Canadian Action Party (CAP) Website: http://actionparty.ca/ ♣
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Have I got an 'O' for you! John Woodsworth, Ottawa, jw@woodsworth-ott.ca Recently it came to me that Ottawa should have its own municipal anthem, especially for Canada's sesquicentenary year (2017). And that the text and melody include a nod to Canada's national anthem. I have submitted this to the Ottawa 2017 committee but I have not yet received confirmation or rejection. Letters of support addressed to guy.laflamme@ottawa2017.ca are welcome. You can hear the tune on my You-Tube piano channel (under the pen-name "Ottaworth" at the following link,
LINK: https://youtu.be/4EysrzD8QZ8
Here are the words: O Ottawa! Our capital sublime! Down through the years you've stood the test of time. From Bytown to a city strong You have shown and proved your worth, From Canal Rideau to the Gatineau You have made your mark on the Earth! Great Tower of Peace! Proudly you stand! Welcoming humanity with chime so grand! O, Ottawa, ring out across this land! ♣
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The Global Monopoly Game Mike Nickerson, Lanark ON, Sustain5@web.ca
Pondering the Trump phenomena & the positive aspect of pulling out of global trade deals, I wonder if Dialogue readers would be interested in my article on "The Global Monopoly Game." (Extract follows) At the URL below you will find links including to the article "A New Economic Game" LINK: www.sustainwellbeing.net/PEN_article.html [EXTRACT] Growth, as we've experienced it over the last century, is no longer possible. We have touched our planet's limits. Nevertheless, some players are still growing their fortunes. More often than not, they do so at the expense of individuals and public services; financial bubbles also provide the appearance of growth while sifting additional wealth to the winners of the Global Monopoly Game. "Monopoly" is said to be the most popular board game of all time. It mirrors the process of Capitalism. Originally created to demonstrate the economic insights of Henry George, its first patent was granted in 1904 under the title of The Landlords Game. The game soared in popularity during the 1930s when people, unable to participate in the real economy, could at least fantasize a place for themselves in the game. Land Provides Value When the board game begins, all the properties are www.dialogue.ca
available and players can easily collect them. Later in the game, when all the property is owned, a trip around the board can be very costly. This reflects Henry George's observation as a resident of San Francisco while it grew from a frontier town into a city. As long as there were open spaces, where newcomers could set themselves up, everyone prospered. Once most of the land was taken, newcomers had to rent space from those who had claimed it earlier, making it much harder for them to get by. George published his findings under the title, "Progress and Poverty" (recently re-published with updated examples). At the beginning of the 1900s it was the most popular book in the US, second only to The Bible. Poverty, George explains, is created by the monopolization of "rent" – the ongoing value inherent in land. In the Monopoly board game, almost everyone knows that once one player gets ahead in the game, there is little chance of catching up. Nothing short of extraordinary luck can change the outcome. According to the rules, however, the game is not properly over until the losers have all mortgaged their properties and lost them to the winner. When the winner has it all, then the game is over. We are in the mopping-up stage of the Global Monopoly Game. The winners are obvious. For most …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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of humanity and the natural world, as long as we continue with the same game, the prospects are not good. In the original board game there was an alternative set of rules, by which players could cooperate for mutual benefit rather than competing to beat each other. The key difference was that the basic rent for the land value, not counting the buildings, was paid to a community fund, rather than to the owner of the property. Henry George felt that paying income and business taxes is unfair. People work hard at their jobs and to build businesses and buildings. They deserve to enjoy the fruits of their labour. At the same time that people are having their hard earned income taxed away, others are making large sums of money for doing nothing. Picture someone purchasing a piece of land in a developing neighbourhood. If the community builds a school for the local children, the value of the land goes up. A transportation system is constructed to serve the community – the land value goes up again. It is the same with hospitals, local businesses, theatres, parks and other developments that make the community more convenient and satisfying. In each case, the owner of the piece of land is enriched by the efforts and investment of the community. George said that,
because increasing property value results from the community's efforts, it is the appropriate source for collecting money to support the community. Indeed, rather than being liabilities to be paid off, schools, hospitals, communications networks and other community services are assets that create real wealth. They could easily be supported by the value they create if that value wasn't claimed by people who did little or nothing to create it. As you might imagine, those who were getting rich collecting unearned rent were not fond of George's plan. Fighting back against the popular interest in land value taxation, they promoted the new "Neo-Classical" economics. Instead of teaching that "Land", "Labour" and "Capital" all had to be considered to assess economic well-being, "Land" was lumped together with "Capital," thereby making it difficult to identify how much common wealth was being expropriated by private interests. As unfair as the Neo-Classical system has been, it has produced considerable abundance over the years. Today, there is another factor coming into play that compels the end of the Old Game. […] Mike Nickerson, SustainWellbeing.net CONTINUE reading - about Exponential Growth at LINK:
www.sustainwellbeing.net/global_monopoly.html ♣
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Can we protect ourselves from exposure to damaging rays? Anna Christine Doehring, Nanaimo BC
We live at a time of more and more exposure to WiFi but also to gamma rays from the Cosmos. Even NASA has acknowledged the effects of the sun and cosmic radiation on our emotions. I heard more details about this on an interview of a German biophysicist and want as many people as possible to know about this. I will have an information talk about: What keeps us safe from the damaging effects of scalar waves, gamma rays of the Universe, WiFi/EMF and mind control. Date and Time: Tuesday, March 28th, 2017, at 7:00 pm Location: at her home-office 6280 Olympia Way, Nanaimo Fee: by donation. Please call 250-756-2235 when you want to attend – seating is limited. Because of its urgency I will repeat the talk when too many want to come or are unavailable on the 28th. Please let me know if you are interested. [Anna Christine is a Certified Reconnective Healing Practitioner. On www.wellnessnews.ca you’ll find her article below about Reconnective Healing®. As of April 1st, we will have the Wellness News finally in the Qualicum Beach, Parksville, Lantzville, Nanaimo, Cedar and Ladysmith area. The layout of this new Newsletter is like the Coffee News and it will be in doctors’ offices and coffee shops.]
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Benefits of Reconnective Healing® Reconnective Healing is a unique interaction between our body’s energy field and a spectrum of energy, light and information. It provides access to create change and improves all aspects of a person’s life – health, career, relationships and abundance. People looking for a natural way to regain health are turning to Reconnective Healing® to relieve stress, depression, anxiety, sleep problems and all kinds of chronic pain and physical problems. There have been many scientific studies on Reconnective Healing® showing that it restructures damaged DNA, is twice as effective as physical therapy in restoring range of motion in frozen shoulder, and that it supports peak athletic performance! The many benefits include: more energy, better brain function, balanced emotions, improved memory and better sleep. It balances all body systems and brings us back into wholeness. Over the last ten years, thousands of people all over the world have discovered the amazing benefits of Reconnective Healing®. Anna Christine Doehring, RHFP, RCP, Energy All Around Therapies, www.Energy-All-Around.com♣ www.dialogue.ca
Haunting the Stacks
“Resonance”
by Susan McCaslin, Fort Langley BC
Many writers I most love were avid readers as children or became so at some point in their lives. For me as a child, reading was my central refuge and bliss. It remains so. At a certain point after tasting the salt and tang of poetry and story on my tongue and letting them slip into my body, I wanted in my own way to emulate what I so much admired. So I started scribbling down poems at about the age of six. I remember writing one about ghosts in grade four which my mother kindly preserved for me. My path to writing began with nursery rhymes and fairy tales. My friend J.S. Porter recently pointed out that this was the case with the Romantic poet S.T. Coleridge as well. “That’s how he habituated his mind to the vast,” John wrote. Once, when I was too young to read university-level books, my parents visited a large university library where they had met. I recall hauling a dense tome off a shelf, setting myself up at a table with the adults, pretending to read seriously and understand every complicated sentence. I longed desperately to be part of the worlds books could open. Later, in my twenties, I had a recurrent dream of getting lost in the stacks. Miraculously, an entire row of books fell back, opening into a world beyond the books themselves. I felt I had entered “the library of the world” where books are not a means of escape, but entrances into alternative realities. More recently, I found myself haunting the stacks at the SFU (Simon Fraser) library where the ghosts of my old friends and professors were still hanging around. I did my Master’s degree at SFU from 19691973 and worked both as a Teaching Assistant and in the SFU library to pay for my education. On a recent expedition to the stacks, I found a compelling book, Reading John Keats by Susan J. Wolfson. She talks about Keats’ enormous love of reading. He wasn’t socially advantaged like Wordsworth, who went to Cambridge, but ingested words like honey or a secular sacrament. To my mind, Keats’ extraordinary letters are among the best ever written. Wolfson writes: What if this talented young man had had the means to www.dialogue.ca
attend a university? He would have been a star student: vigorously underlining and annotating, eager to talk about his reading, rereading constantly and probably petitioning for an interdisciplinary program in literature, philosophy, and medicine. Keats was a voracious reader, lived in books he said, had read Hamlet forty times (from his ease of reference it’s clear he had much of Shakespeare by heart). His letters bristle with his reading, not only in reports but in their very metaphors, figured as books, passages, and reading itself (“dark passages”; the heart as a “horn-book”). (Wolfson, Reading John Keats, University of Cambridge Press, 2015, Intro. x) When haunting the stacks I sometimes wonder what will happen to many in this new generation who aren’t so much into reading, who skim abbreviated texts on their cell phones, tweet, and may not be able to concentrate as previous generations did? I am on board with valuing and resurrecting the oral traditions, and know in my bones how literature arose from oral traditions, performance, and ceremony. However, I can’t call myself a performance poet, though I listen deeply to the musicality of poetry and speak my poems aloud or in the silent voice within while composing, feeling each syllable and the rhythms of the lines on tongue, pulse, and in my entire body. Some of my favourite poets self-identify as sound and performance poets, like my friend Penn Kemp, who is a craftsperson par excellence, accomplished in both written and spoken word. I love how many sound poets take pains to memorize and perform their poems. I’ve improved enormously since my shy days when I could barely look up from the page, much less chant or passionately beat out the words on the drum of my tongue. Deep down I’m an introvert who enjoys snuggling in with a book, touching and turning the pages. Yet I would insist there is not a clear distinction between written word and spoken word, and that all poetry is deeply rooted in the body, in dance, movement, and oral tradition. Yet still I remain a creature of the book. I’m not a Kindle reader because I love the feel of a book in my hands, the smell or mustiness of its pages, and in my own writing I still enjoy the connection between pen and paper. Inspired by books, I often begin my …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Susan McCaslin, Haunting the Stacks, contd.
poems in a notebook, then transfer them to the computer screen for multiple edits. As Marshall McLuhan predicted, libraries have been transformed by the electronic revolution, and transmission and accessibility of information increases daily. Yet I don’t think books will die or become obsolete. The only problem for my relatives will be what to do with my heavily annotated and musty volumes of “forgotten lore” (Edgar Allan Poe). My substantial book collection began when I was a student, housed then between stacks of bricks and boards, but now residing in hand-made bookcases my husband built for me. Though I cull my collection about once every ten years, I’m not ready to part with many of my companions. Even my old collections of Anderson’s and Grimm’s fairy tales reside on the shelves as dear old friends. One hazard of being a book worm is that I love to annotate in the margins my books. My confession goes further, as recently at SFU I checked out some posthumously published volumes by my deceased friend, feminist philosopher Grace Jantzen. Then I pulled from the shelf another of her books published in the ‘90s whose title sounded familiar. When I returned home and leafed through the book, I discovered my own pencilled-in marginalia covering some of its pages from over a decade ago. I observed that no one had checked out the book since that time and found in the scribbles my younger self revealed with what now seemed naiveté coupled with enthusiasm. Recently, when I was checking out a heap of Keats’ and Jantzen’s books at the SFU library, I chatted with a young man at the desk who noted that my alumni card indicated I had started attending SFU in 1969. “Wow,” he said, “I’ve never seen a vintage library card like this one!” “Well,” I retorted, “Guess that makes me pretty vintage too.” Then he asked me about Keats and Jantzen (it must have been a slow afternoon in the library). Next he noted my name on the
card, scrutinized me again, and said, “Hey, I took your first-year English class on poetry way back in the 90’s at Douglas College, and you were into Keats then.” Next he disclosed that he had gone on to become a library assistant and a musician. Libraries remain places of mystical synchronicity for me and always have been. Nearly four decades ago, I bumped into my husband to be, Mark, on the stairs to the SFU library. Back then, I had known him only as my colleague Grace Jantzen’s “best philosophy student.” Now we laugh at how, when he was briefly in my first-year English class, he transferred out because the class met too early in the morning on a day when he preferred to go skiing. We both perceive that moment on the stairs at SFU as an island-in-time epiphany, since we both felt unaccountable elation in the reconnection, but didn’t quite know why. I was at SFU that day to research Coleridge, and he to look up a philosopher he had studied, as he had gone on to become a philosophy major. He later said he was impressed that I didn’t only care about poetry and research during the teaching semester, but haunted the library in the middle of the summer. I had the same reaction to his bookish quest. Reading and writing have been and remain lifelong passions for me. When I review the many selves I have been, those are the consistent threads. Sometimes I feel as if I was “born that way.” No one in my family was a reader or had literary instincts. Yet my engineer father read to me as a child. I think my first book was Beatrix Potter’s Tales of Peter Rabbit, which I learned to read by following the mysterious words as his finger trailed underneath both them and the charming illustrations. Reading was a trick I simply had to do myself, and the writing followed in due course. Reading and writing still fit together for me like oatmeal and brown sugar, strawberries and ice cream, red wine and dark chocolate. Susan McCaslin
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In this edition of Dialogue, “O is for…” O’Leary, oak (p.59), oatmeal, Obama, obfuscation, object, obligations, observe, obtain, obvious, occasion, occupy, October(Crisis, p.9) octopus (p.32), odious, offering, officers, Official Community Plan (p.21), oil, okay, old(er), Olsen (p.13), Olympic, Omega (p.16), on/off, one, One World Government 42 dialogue
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(6,21), online, Ontario, open (letter), openings, opin-
ion, opportunity, opposite, opposition, orchestra, order, ordinary, organizations, organize, original, Orion, orthodox, Orwell (p.32), Oshawa (p.25,32), other, Ottawa (p.2,39), ourselves, outside, outrageous, overheard, overt, owl (p.59), own…♣ www.dialogue.ca
“Intimate Details”
By J.S. Porter, Hamilton, Ontario
Animals (for Marshall)
You ask who will then take us to the kingdom which is in heaven? The birds in the air, the animals on earth, the fishes in the streams and the oceans. They all shall take you to the heavenly kingdom which is in your heart. Egypt, 16th B.C.
My friend Wayne Allan, a worker in the arts, has a framed poster of the above words in the sunroom of his house in Dundas, Ontario. The poem speaks to the deep connection between human beings and our fellow creatures and how our destinies entwine. A short story by Hemingway— “Old Man at the Bridge” – makes the same kind of connection. The story has to do with an old man who takes care of animals—four pairs of pigeons, a cat and two goats. He flees his town under bombardment. He stops at the bridge for a rest. This is during the Spanish civil war. He worries about the animals—how will they survive? A stranger reassures him that pigeons can fly and cats can look after themselves. He makes no mention of the goats. As custodians of the earth, isn’t that our duty: to take care of animals? Images of animals on the walls of caves in France and Spain constitute some of the earliest works of human www.dialogue.ca
www.spiritbookword.net
art. Animals were what we feared, what we needed to kill for our survival, what we dreamed of. How often in a Norval Morriseau painting, for instance, the human animal morphs into other animals or other animals morph into the human, how often one animal contains the forms of other animals within itself. Morriseau’s space is fluid, always on the edge of transformation or open to the possibility of new interdependent and interpenetrating forms. All living things come from the same stuff, share a common origin and development, a common DNA. Each form, every animal, is genetically akin to every other form and animal. I associate particular artists with particular animals. Paul Klee, for instance, loved cats, drew and painted them, his favourite Bimbo. Emily Dickinson had deep affection for her dog Carlo. For me the most intimate line in her sheaves of poetry is, “Tell Carlo—He’ll tell me!” Hemingway ha stone graves for his cats (and his dogs) with their names and dates inscribed. His posthumous novel Islands in the Stream teems with his personal cats in the section called Cuba. When his cat Boise died, he wasn’t sure if he could carry on. I associate certain friends with particular animals. Wayne is a cat man, I’m a dog man, Hemingway is a dog and cat man. Of all the European painters I can think of, it’s Marc Chagall, the Russian Jew, who most strikingly makes visible the bonds between the human animal and other animals. In Chagall, the animal and human worlds naturally entwine. Think of Child in Perambulator and Goat, 1916, India ink with pen and brush and opaque white on paper, where a goat stands guard over a human infant; the Strollers where a woman nestles a baby and a man carries a cat; or the old woman raising a rooster to her face as if to kiss it in Woman and Rooster, 1916, India ink with pen and brush and opaque white on paper. The woman and rooster share the same colouring – white, a pale yellow and black. Chagall materializes a bestiary with a particular …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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emphasis on the rooster and the goat, animals that would have been a part of his childhood in his Russian village of Vitebsk. Lucian Freud has his dogs and Marc Chagall his roosters. Closer to home, Robert Bateman has his cats. He has a particular painting of a cat stepping out of an open barn window with an
exploratory paw extended, its body half-concealed by dark. The cat likes to hide and conceal. The dog, on the other hand, knows nothing but complete revelation, complete transparency, in its behaviour and manner. J. S. Porter, www.spiritbookword.net ♣
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Welcome to a new contributor to our dialogue…
THE NEANDERTHAL AND THE BEDOUIN Margaret Miller, Vancouver BC
My centenarian aunt and I live together in an old house in Vancouver. One of our favourite things to do in the evening is watch popular science TV shows about human origins and the early migrations of our ancient ancestors out of Africa and around the world. As we understand it, advances in this field have come from basic spade work and from major technological and scientific advances, especially breakthroughs in human and hominin DNA sequencing. When looking at these programs we wonder how our own stories might fit in with those of these ancient people and their journeys; we also wonder how our ancestors’ experiences and ways of being might relate to the current state of the world. A few years ago one of our friends had a DNA test that traced her ancient ancestry. My aunt and I thought this was pretty exciting and decided to have our DNA tested too. There are a few different organizations doing this kind of testing but we eventually went with the National Geographic’s Genographic Project, which collects DNA with the goal of understanding humanity’s genetic roots and how, since leaving Africa about 67,000 years ago, we came to populate the world. The Project identifies the unique genetic markers that reveal participants’ “deep ancestry” as well as their specific regional affiliations. And because our ancestors mixed with ancient hominins, results also give percentages of participants’ Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestry. So we signed up, paid our money, received our kits in the mail, sent back our DNA swabs, and waited. But before going any further with my story I need to give some background. First, my aunt loves Neanderthals. For decades after the 1892 discovery of Neanderthal bones in what is now Belgium, Neanderthals were considered in the popular imagination to be the quintessential “cave 44 dialogue
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men” – low browed, fist dragging, and stupid. Aunt Margaret long had an inkling that they were getting a bad rap, that they were somehow being underrated, but her position was definitely in the minority. Then in the 1950s she heard the news of the discovery of a Neanderthal grave in Iraq. What struck Aunt Margaret (and others) most about these findings was that the people had sprinkled flowers on the grave of their dead companion. This was hardly the behaviour, she said, of our stereotypical glowering, lumbering brute. Rather, she thought that this was the action of a people with an awareness of beauty and a need for love and relationships. Since then, further discoveries have confirmed that there is much more to the Neanderthals than was originally supposed and that, as Aunt Margaret said, they have indeed gotten a very bad rap. The second thing to know is that I am crazy about Bedouins. If I was to fix a date on when this love was kindled it would have to be when as a little girl I saw the film Lawrence of Arabia for the first of many times. I was transfixed by the scenes of the Bedouin, the most memorable being the camel charge down a wadi lined by rows of ululating Bedouin women.* And though my post-colonial mind is somewhat loath to say it, I was also enthralled by Anthony Quinn’s portrayal of Howeitat leader Auda Abu Tayi proclaiming “I am a river to my people!” As a teenager living in a city in a temperate rain forest I spent hours drawing desert scenes with nomadic tents and shimmering moons and for my first serious travels I headed for the Middle East, ending out in a desert oasis. I was to return to that part of the world many times. My appreciation for the Bedouin was partly aesthetic – I loved their poetry, their jewellery, their clothes. I also loved that their lives seemed to be in almost constant motion. As is often the case with such things I didn’t look deeply at the reasons for my …/ fascination or try to explain it to myself. www.dialogue.ca
Back to my story. After about six weeks of tense waiting the results finally came through online. What did we learn? Jumping out at Aunt Margaret were distant relatives among today’s indigenous Saami people of Scandinavia, while I found out that I have 0.6% Denisovan DNA. But there were bigger surprises in store. According to the information we were sent, people may have between 0 and 3% Neanderthal ancestry. Aunt Margaret has 3.7%. She is basically maxed out on Neanderthal genes. As for me, I share deep ancestry with a group that has a homeland around the Levant, reaches its highest frequency in Arabia, and comprises around a quarter of the Yemeni and Bedouin lineages. We are, we concluded, a Neanderthal and a Bedouin. Our first reactions were ones of almost delirious excitement. In a speech on the occasion of her 100th birthday, which took place a few weeks after we received our results, Aunt Margaret told the somewhat bewildered 150 or so assembled friends and family that she was, in fact, a Neanderthal, and that she could attribute her extreme good health and longevity to her Neanderthal roots. As for me, upon receiving my results I immediately went out and rented a DVD of Lawrence of Arabia and watched it, again. Then we thought a little more about what we had learned and what about the whole experience had most inspired us. Doing these tests undoubtedly left us both with a deeper appreciation of humanity’s com-
plexity and relatedness. Every one of us is the outcome of a spectacular reconfiguration of people of many types across great swaths of time and geography. The idea of some kind of racial purity now seems even more puerile and pathetic. It now seems to us that at our most basic physical levels we are all each other’s relations, connected at a near or great remove. As our ancestors journeyed they may have crossed paths in places and ways we can only begin to imagine. My aunt and I can no longer look into the eyes of a stranger in quite the same way. As for the fact that our intuition about being a Neanderthal and a Bedouin was so strong and so correct, we are now listening more carefully to what else may lie beneath our conscious thoughts and memories. While we may think of ourselves as modern, at a deep level we now see ourselves as ancient people – looking at the world through ancient eyes, experiencing the world with ancient bones. And our ancient wisdom is being called for now. With climate change, political upheaval and extreme violence taking the world to a precipice, inspiration and solutions may be found in remembering something we have let sink beneath the surface. Is there a strength in our deep relatedness we can call on now? Is there hope to be found in something about our humanity that we have forgotten? We find ourselves wondering: What else do our bones know? Margaret Miller, margaret.alice.miller@gmail.com ♣ * ululation is a high-pitched tongue trill
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Thoughts
From Vera Gottlieb:
Why do we only Rest in “peace”? Why don’t we Live in peace too? – Gas station wisdom in Johannesburg, South Africa From Susanne Hare Lawson:
"Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening; no doubt, no awakening." – Zen Proverb "A negative is just an undeveloped picture, bring in the light." – Carlos Casteneda www.dialogue.ca
THEM
From Ralph Forshaw
Nanaimo.
First of all you meet THEM and right away you like THEM Then very much you like THEM and then you love THEM Then angels do become THEM. Sugar and spice are THEM and all things nice are THEM Thank you for being one of THEM. Please note that I am an amateur linguist – therefore this type of 'haiku' - Ralph F. ♣
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“Break a leg!”
Ramblings
Randy Vancourt, Toronto ON
“Break a leg!” is a common wish that performers offer one another just before going on stage. In spite of its negative connotation, it’s actually meant to convey good luck. For some reason in the theatre it’s considered bad luck to say good luck; no one is really clear why. It’s also not the only good luck tradition. I’m from Quebec where the more common wish is, “Merde.” In Opera it’s customary to say, “Toi, toi, toi” which is meant to imitate the sound of someone spitting – and you thought opera singers were classy. Clearly all this wishing of good luck is meant to offset the fact that so many things that can go disastrously wrong on stage. Actors forget their lines, props break, costumes rip. I once had a wall fall over on me during a show. My wife was in a production of the opera Tosca where someone accidentally shot the tenor. Imagine the carnage if we didn’t wish each other luck! At one point I was fortunate to be cast as in a touring musical production called The Legend of The Dumbells. This show told the true story of a group of performers who entertained Canadian troops during the First World War. The Dumbells were hugely famous during the war and from 1919 to 1932 they toured their shows across North America, even ending up on Broadway in 1921. I was privileged to work on this show with director/choreographer Alan Lund; if you are above a certain age you no doubt recall the famous dance team of Alan and Blanche Lund. Alan went on to direct and choreograph hundreds of CBC television shows, and as Artistic Director of the Charlottetown Festival he was responsible for the original stage version of Anne of Green Gables, which has been running there every summer since 1965. Our show was large – 15 people on stage with an orchestra in the pit. The set rotated and there was smoke and explosions. The potential for problems was quite evident. Fortunately our show was fairly incident-free. 46 dialogue
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The only little snag we hit was one performance when two of the actors, one of them a full foot taller than the other, accidentally got their pants switched. We learned that night that a poignant ballad about losing comrades in the War should not be performed by guys in comically ill-fitting trousers. They remained stoic while the rest of the cast and orchestra tried in vain to control our laughter. At least our tears were real. Then we arrived at the Nepean Arts Centre, near Ottawa. Unfortunately the local stage crew had neglected to “spike” the edge of the stage. Spiking means to put glow tape (tape that is visible in the dark) in various spots on the stage so the actors can find their way in the dark. Obviously this practice is even more vital when performing with an orchestra pit – a huge, gaping cavern directly in front of the stage. Add in bright stage lights that have the habit of blinding you a bit at the best of times, and we had the perfect storm. I had just begun a duet with Tim Murphy (who was dressed as a woman); an old music hall tune called “Give Me A Cozy Little Corner.” Halfway through the song I briefly looked away from Tim, then turned back a second later. Somehow within that tiny span of time, Tim had vanished. I was alone on an empty stage; he had completely disappeared. From the horrified gasps of the audience it was clear that they had seen what happened but it took my brain a few seconds to process the information. Without a clearly marked edge, Tim had unwittingly walked off the stage and into the orchestra pit. He had fallen right onto the musicians, and barely missed impaling himself on the drummer’s cymbal stand. I courageously continued the duet with my invisible co-star, not exactly clear on what was happening. Suddenly Tim popped up from inside the orchestra pit, still in one piece, arms held high in the air like an Olympic gymnast in drag, and we finished the number to enormous applause. And best of all, he didn’t break a leg. www.randyvancourt.com ♣
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Reminiscences of 1950s London
City With A Soul
Denny Z. Petrik, mainland BC
“The hell with it, we are going to call you Denny.” When one trudges along the grey path of aging, someAnd the name stuck. Both Billy sand wife played the times the only escape rests in reaching out for happy memories of yore. My year in London, England was a piano and would at times provide wonderful and cheerful entertainment. No, those two kind hearts very pleasant part of my life… All the best, Denny cannot be forgotten. A few years ago I met an English couple travelling They also had a dog – Mickey. One day I took through the interior of BC. As we sat over a friendly coffee, I found out that they were from London. And I Mickey for a walk and on a fairly quiet street I let him off the leash. Unfortunately just about that time a douguess I got a bit of a dreamy look on my face and whispered: “London – the city with a soul.” The visit- ble decker bus was coming along and I panicked and started hollering: “Mickey! Mickey” Fortunately ing gentleman quickly asked if I had spent some time Mickey did not get in the way of the bus and eventuthere. So I confessed that in 1950 I lived in London ally did come to me. But the bus stopped anyway, for a year. even if there was no stop sign. And the driver got out, And he then asked if I really thought that London had came over, quickly befriended the dog and then quia soul. I said: “Yes.” etly advised me that when we call a dog, we should Then he looked at me with a very serious face and call gently, we should not yell at the creature. said: “If that is how you felt about London, my friend At that very moment I remembered that back in PraI advise you never to go back now.” gue we often heard that the British are very kind to anFew words later it became obvious that like most imals. And there was a bus driver who interrupted his places on Earth, London has changed and possibly not trip and took the trouble to enlighten me. I guess what for the better. I had heard in Prague was true. Later on that evening, as I sat in my comfortable arm So I had met two wonderful landlords and a very kind chair at home, I thought about what the man said and bus driver. Such spicing would give almost any city about my feelings about London. Did I really feel like an excellent flavour. But London had more to offer. that and if so, what produced I heard about the busisuch a deep feeling. Of course ness district where apmemories went through my parently, at that time, mind. was nothing else but London was the first city that business. The name of accepted me as a displaced the district I no longer person and gave me a chance remember. But I was to earn a living. That alone told how empty it was would produce considerable on Sundays. Curious, I gratitude on my part. Wonderof course I had to exful icing on that cake was the amine it the very first Cockney couple who took me Sunday off duty. And I Denny and friend Maureen feeding the pigeons in as room and board guest. did walk into the totally The spark of goodwill showed up right in our first empty and silent streets – the feeling of a ghost town meeting. I introduced myself. Unfortunately my origi- was quite overwhelming. nal first name is or was one of the truly Czech names One of my very pleasant memories was the transit – starts with the two letters of ZD. And that is a comsystem of London. From a railroad station just up the bination with which an anglo-saxon person does have street from our house, a 20-minute train ride got me to a problem. Wonderful Billy Jones tried to pronounce Charring Cross Station. A quick walk down stairs …/ it. Two tries, two failures. www.dialogue.ca
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Denny Petrik, City With A Soul, contd.
put me on subway platform and in another 30 or so minutes I was on the opposite side of the city, at my friends’ place. It was very efficient. Except once! I left my friends’ place, took the subway and headed for Charring cross, it was close to midnight. At the railroad station I managed to get to the platform just as the train was leaving and catching it was impossible. No other train to our district was due till sometime in the morning. I had no money for a taxi and was due at the hospital for work at eight in the morning. There was nothing else to do but to start a long walk home. Shortly after I got started I was walking along a very quiet street near the docks. Nobody else was around, just darkness and silence. Before long a police car came by and since a lone person in a deserted district is suspicious I had to be stopped and questioned. When I explained my predicament and divulged to the officers how much I was being paid for working as a nurse they simply told me to get into the car – they would drive me home. And they did. Since I worked as a student nurse, my days off were seldom on the weekend. On one “weekend” Wednesday I chose to go and visit the famous Tate Gallery. Well, I entered the establishment somewhere around 10.30 in the morning and the place was deserted. I strolled along the hallways and marvelled at the fabulous collection of paintings, all by myself. At one point I stopped at a painting of an old man. Instantly I was overcome by the beauty I saw – those were not colours on the painting, those were magical hues. “That’s beautiful,” I finally mumbled to myself. Unbeknown to me, one of the gallery guards had sneaked up behind me and overheard what I mumbled and quickly added: “So it should be, it’s Rembrandt!” Then I found out that I was looking at Rembrandt’s famous self-portrait. For the rest of my viewing I had the guard’s pleasant company and his kind explanations.
It would be difficult not to like a city where so much kindness meets one. Just as it is difficult to forget the evening strolls along the Thames, the street lights shining brightly, the river flowing silently, tug boat horn tooting softly and Big Ben greeting the evening gently – perhaps such evenings were the most charming ingredient of the city’s soul. The company of a pretty nurse did not spoil anything either. Denny Petrik P.S. A pup-sitting story… I lived through a fabulous doggie happening yesterday. I have two pillows for the pup down here, one in the living room and one in my “office”. The one in the living room is used most of the time, consequently is more worn out and a bit more dirty. But as usual, yesterday afternoon it was parked by my armchair and waited for the little occupant so that pillow and pup could be lifted onto my lap. A wee afternoon nap never hurts anybody. However, Puppy did not want to lay down on it, actually ran away. I simply suspected that she went to lay down longingly on the stairs and wait for the steps of one of the girls (Granddaughters) upstairs. But I was wrong! She soon returned, dragging the cleaner pillow from the office. She parked that one next to the worn out unit, crawled into it and with her lovely brown eyes gave me that famous “lift me up” look. I guess I will be shopping for a new pillow. I did not want to believe what was happening but it was and it did. Denny Z. Petrik ♣
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Laughter & ‘Lightenment!
Old age ain’t so bad…
• Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternatives – Maurice Chevalier
• Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough. – Groucho Marx
• You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old. – George Burns
• Last Will and Testament: Being of sound mind, I spent all my money. – Anonymous
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“Stirring the Soup”
Adding a Future to our History
Marie Gaudet, Edmonton AB
Speaking as a Canadian, a hopeless optimist and the grandma of a smart little half-Canadian, halfAmerican boy – and considering the shaky state of the U.S. right now, it sure seems that we’re in a fine mess in the Americas lately, doesn’t it? Isn’t it time we take a look at what we’ve done wrong and agree it’s time to fix it? Right now, even having children is too cost-prohibitive to contemplate when you think of the costs of day care, schools and entertainment. But how can we have a future without children, right? Still, a shrewd person would either a) use birth control until the world comes to its senses; b) start a revolution and take back control; or c) take a page out of someone’s book and implement free education, like the good people of Finland did. No tuition fees, fully subsidized meals, and publicly funded education, from daycare, through to (one) kindergarten (only), school and all the way to continuing education! But no, not we. After popping out kid after kid, our parents are left with no alternative but to both go to work to “make ends meet”. Of course, they feel compelled to follow the trend by leaving their kids in daycare, then in toddler pre-school, then pre-school, followed by prekindergarten and then kindergarten – each of them costing “les yeux de la tête” as we say in French (‘an arm and a leg’) – and all of that before the child even reaches Grade 1! To alleviate their guilt, mom and dad try to place the children in a smaller daycare, assuming their kids will have better care this way. Throughout these alleged educational levels though, the children are a) removed from parents’ nurturing presence at too early of an age, and b) raised in an atmosphere severely lacking in the care and attention they require to grow up identifying as a unique person with traits, skills and ideas worthy of contributing to society. So instead of being built up and nurtured at home by a loving mom and dad, they’re sloughed off to people who give them the barest minimum of care in order to achieve a profit for their daycare. And why? So mom and dad and daycare operators can have all the toys and baubles to keep up with the Joneses, as they are conditioned to do by all the direct www.dialogue.ca
or not-so-direct messages they receive 24/7 by phone, Facebook, TV, radio, ads, billboards, snapchat, twitter, news and so-called entertainment such as reality TV. It’s not all the parents’ fault either because they seek all these toys to escape from the exhausting pressures of trying to have everything they are unconsciously but continually being programmed to believe they need in order to be happy. So they give their kids away for someone else to raise and turn a perturbed but blind eye when they realize they no longer know these relative strangers in their house. And then they feel guilty for ignoring the problem so they escape some more. It’s a vicious cycle, one which leads to the parents repeatedly buying things but never achieving “real” happiness. Have you ever stepped back and wondered why we put up with this nonsense? These kids, from kindergarten on, are educated all right. Although I am a very strong advocate of education, I also believe our system needs a good clean-up. Our kids are taught things they may or may not ever use in life but they are unquestionably taught to conform. Why couldn’t they be taught where an apple or avocado comes from and how to grow them? Or that they should go out and do something nice for someone else because that’s how to be part of a community? Or that the more thankful you are for what you have, the more you will have? Or how to expand their views and their vision outward, rather than just keeping it within the five-foot radius that surrounds them? To be selfless rather than selfish? That no matter what career they choose in life, it will have more meaning if they also add a little philanthropy to the equation? And that a philanthropist can bring more than just money to the endeavor? Do they leave school knowing deeply and personally about another person’s culture or faith or country? Or do they leave after 12+ years of schooling, absolutely unsure of how the planet and everyone on it really functions? Instead, from an early age, they are propagandized by the world of toys, games, Ipods and Ipads, social media and anything computer generated. This “simulated” world is in fact artificial life – a virtual world where you can change your persona at will and pretend to be someone you’re not in an online …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Marie Gaudet, Adding a Future to our History, contd.
world that doesn’t exist. To make things easier yet, you are encouraged to shorten words, abbreviate them so that your message can be truncated and your “unknown friends” (because you’ve never met them) don’t have to spend too much time reading you. The end result being that a) we now have a generation of post-secondary applicants who don’t know how to spell; b) their pared down versions of messages have impeded what should have become an abundant vocabulary; c) they now have a wealth of unexpressed feelings and emotions stuffed down so deep that they may never know how to let their true self out, even if they could sort their true self from all the fictitious online personalities they’ve created; and d) most tragically of all, they will never have learned the fun of reading and writing, playing with words, poems, rhymes, puns, tongue-twisters, anagrams, word-play jokes and all the other fun stuff you can do with words. Generations XYZ will be alone together in this limbo between people who know how to write (we elders) and all the younger generations to come, who may no longer be able to communicate using the written word by then and who will consequently have an astronomically small vocabulary at best. Will the human race regress backwards to the Stone Age? And before you say this is all fiction, remember that it could easily become true fiction if the state of climate change continues on its present course. Or if the new President of the US reacts to a mean tweet with a push of the wrong button. Then we could all end up in a nuclear winter that will make the Stone Age seem like an exotic vacation by comparison and which will be very difficult for any of us to survive. Especially with no electricity to power our toys, give us light, keep foods fresh, build our shelters or generate power for hospitals and other necessary services. What a shock to the system these last few generations would face, they who have thus far thrived on enthusiastic indifference to everyone around them because that’s all they’ve ever been shown. They will be so disoriented when they’re forced to look up and see real people they have to actually communicate with; or when they find out some of these non-virtual people are the friends they’ve been chatting online with for years and they don’t look remotely like their online personas; or they realize they have no healthy homes to go to, no schools where they can meet acquaintances, no shelter, 50 dialogue
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no food… and absolutely no clue how to get out of this mess because they’ve never been taught how the natural planet works, nor the people on it. No instructions. No googling “what to do when…” No emergency alerts coming in by text directing you to an approved muster point. The decision will be theirs alone whether to evacuate or not and exactly how to do that anyhow. There will be no balanced insanity here, just pure and abject terror. Do I paint a pretty picture? OK, I generalize for sure and I’m normally not one for fear-mongering but I think it’s smart to ponder such things while, for the most part, going about your business. But I expect many of you are aware of the possibility that some of the above could actually happen in this lifetime. The point is, it’s not too late for us to go back to basics and commit to teaching our children what they should know before we task them with the upkeep of this planet without giving them the adequate skills and knowledge to do it -- so that they can be prepared to (God forbid) survive a major catastrophic event, should one arise. At the moment, our younger generations (along with the rest of us) are like birds in a cage, living the life of bankrupt millionaires. A gilded cage, granted, but what it all boils down to is that we all just exist to financially support our benevolent despots (yes, I’m talking about the well-known covert 1%). But those of us who have lived longer at least have an inkling of how things used to work and how they could still work. We’ve planted gardens, built our own homes, gathered nuts and berries, cooked over wood stoves, planted and harvested wheat by hand, slaughtered animals for food (only what was needed, mind you), canned fruits and vegetables for winter, dug our own wells, sewed our own clothing, quilted blankets, knitted stockings, measured time by the sun, constructed our own root cellars… this among a myriad of basic survival skills that we then got lazy and forgot to pass on to our own. I’d hazard a guess that if the above hypothetical situations were to take place, older people would fare far better than younger ones. However, if we’re gone, then our children and their children will be stranded and may be lost. And it would be our fault! My mother used to repeat this old nugget to me: “Il faut éviter de mettre tous ses œufs dans le même panier” or “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. Glancing from my basket of eggs to my mama, …/ www.dialogue.ca
I must’ve had two large question marks floating above my head. But isn’t that exactly what we’ve done? We’ve built a world run by technology, packaged it securely in a nice basket with a ribbon, and then forgotten how to live without it. So if it is ever destroyed, we would be running around like chickens without heads, wouldn’t we? Thankfully, I haven’t had to learn by experience the meaning of that old adage, but my kids might have to. My beautiful and smart and audacious and bodacious and passionate explorer of a grandson may have to! Without electricity or energy or heat or a home or the skills to procure his needs, he would soon realize that life can’t be sustained. All the resources of the planet at his disposal (or what remains of them) and he wouldn’t know what to do with them. And he’d wonder what the heck his parents were thinking when they didn’t teach those things to him. He’d think they’re perfect screw-ups, that’s what
he’d think. And he’d be right. As for me, because I’m lucky enough to know of what I speak (having lived in a past without technology), I will make it a point to work with his parents to teach my grandson where food comes from, how to grow and keep it, how to build things, store things, shelter himself, clothe himself, hunt and trap as needed (not me personally), how to make human connections, how to protect himself, how to live minimally but healthfully… and how to always take care of Mother Earth, who will then be only too glad to return the favor. I sure hope everyone else does the same because that’s what it’s going to take if we’re to have a future history. Marie Gaudet, Edmonton P.S. In conformity with the letter “O” theme in our alphabet series, you will find 20 Oxymorons throughout my column. Happy Hunting! (Clues on p.52) ♣
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FARM LIFE at Ambrose and Kayley’s Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC
scale model tractor with a hay bailer in tow. This Inside the barn, a baby lamb nestles serves the toy farmyard, spread across the floor, which in the hay with Timber the guardian. expands with animals, fencing and equipment over the At night the coyotes howl, smelling years of gift giving. One-and-a-half-year-old Easton is the newborns. Throughout the night pacified by his grand folks with a big yellow dump Timber and Stella, both white Pyretruck of his own: one that has a red button which, nean mountain dogs, patrol the farm when depressed, shakes the vehicle and sets it racing on the tree line above Pritchard. across the floor to recorded yells of “Dig that dirt, dig Nine lambs are born within a that dirt.” week, the weather is cold and The farm, set high above the snow deep. Thompson River valley, In the early morning as we gazed changes colour as the sun sets in through the window at the farm striations of deep gold and grey. spread outside, a steel outbuilding Over the blinding white untramcollapsed under the weight of melled fields, shadows fall. snow. Three of us shovelled off Lambs follow their mothers the roof anyway. Disillusioned along the trodden path through that we hadn’t thought of doing it the deep snow to the barn. They before but with other chores to do, follow a rhythm of narrow winKayley spreads hay for the horses ter life until the thaw and green while I chop firewood, my wife growth of spring opens their Allison takes care of the two chilworld to roaming the expansive dren. Ambrose checks the chicken A baby lamb nestles in the hay with Timber, pasture and woodland that is the Pyrenean mountain dog coop for eggs before continuing their yet unknown kingdom. his Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC work on building their new house on the hill. scribepoet@hotmail.com During our visit, Corbin had his fourth birthday and Please see also the poetry verse by Paul, received, among transformers and Bat-mobile, etc., a on the back cover, p.60 ♣ www.dialogue.ca
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Feedback re Dialogue Magazine +
From Susanne Hare Lawson, Tofino, BC
From Leopold Durstberger, Gibsons BC
Re the Winter 2016-17 issue: Beautiful edition of your amazing magazine, thank you so much, the colors are quite remarkable... have a great holiday season and I hope you are both well and happy, love and gratitude from Susanne Lawson. ♣ ***
January 2017: Thank you for telling us what we never hear or see on TV or in print. Keep it up and try to avoid trivia. And keep it short and in Big Print!!! durstberger@yahoo.ca (subscriber since 2011) and with clipping of comment by S. McDowall (below) – and his comment: “How true!!!” S. McDowall: Many have come to accept that “our” side is capable of great evil. As a people, we tend not to question what our countries are doing to others. We find a way to jail or legally prosecute people who are successfully encouraging people to question. We need only to look at what the Allies have done to Iraq, the cradle of civilization, the whole of the Middle East, Africa, Malaysia, Vietnam, certain Latin American countries, and on and on. Our side has been responsible for the death of millions of people, either by bombing, starvation or great deprivation. Civil wars which the West often encourage and fund result in the deaths of masses of people, often for control of resources or the geographical regions the West wants. We must not forget the death of millions of Indigenous people in North America either. Few of us question what is going on. Now it is Syria’s turn to be destroyed and next it will be Iran. Then comes China and Russia. Why are we so stupid? Why do we, the people allow such terrible crimes against humanity to be done in our name? We need to throw off the shackles that are controlling us and that will destroy us in the end. I am truly grateful I am old. Thank God! ♣
From Leonard & Bertha Hayes, Shigawake QC
Dear Janet, Maurice, Penny and Lucky, Again, thank you so much for your great magazine – Dialogue. I truly enjoyed David Foster’s poem, “Talking with God,” “Morning” and the “The Ballade of Justin Trudeau.” Also “Creativity” by Sherry Leigh Williams. And “From Refugee to Release.” What a story! Randy Vancourt’s – and Wayne Allen Russell’s were very interesting! My daughter-in-law and I had a good laugh when Russell’s story was read. Imagine at my age getting a laugh out of “First Date.” I have decided to send a gift subscription to my brother Osburn in Powell River. He has lived there for 50 years+. I have visited him twice. He retired from the mill there, a few years ago. He is single, has lots of good friends there. Also we have a sister who is married and she and her husband live in Surrey, BC. We also have two grandsons living in BC: one in Whistler and one in Cranbrook, with his wife and three-yearold daughter, Caitlin… - Leonard & Bertha (subscribers since 1989) ***
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Laughter & ‘Lightenment!
Female actresses on the topic of aging
“If you survive long enough, you’re revered – rather like an old building.” – Katherine Hepburn (1907-2003)
“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” – Lucille Ball (1911–89)
“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have ♣ defeated age.” – Sophia Loren (1934- ) 52 dialogue
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Marie Gaudet, Oxymorons – Clues (re P.51): Para. 1: hopeless optimist, a fine mess Para. 2: birth control Para. 4: blind eye, relative strangers Para. 6: absolutely unsure Para. 7: artificial life, unknown friends Para. 8: alone together, astronomically small Para. 9: true fiction Para. 10: enthusiastic indifference Para. 11: balanced insanity Para. 13: bankrupt millionaires, A gilded cage, benevolent despots, well-known covert. Para. 14: hypothetical situations Para. 15: perfect screw-ups Para. 16: future history ♣ www.dialogue.ca
“Observations from Lithuania”
Ken Slade, Vilnius
Vilnius: Just Another Ordinary Day. . . of Discovery . . . to 500+ years-ago… by KR Slade (note: terms that are Lithuanian-language, but are not commonly used in English, are printed with Lithuanian quotation marks ( example: „x“). Also, some Lithuanian terms are spelled with Lithuanian-alphabet 'diacritical' (a/k/a 'accent') marks that are not part of the English / Latin alphabet -- if researching / using such terms, simply use the English-alphabet obvious letter!) Photos on p.59.
Vilnius, 24 May 2013 . . . For me, for more than a decade of living in Vilnius -- Lithuania’s capitol city -- today is just another ordinary day . . . maybe too ordinary; but not for long . . . let’s go for a walk . . . come with me … My little studio-flat is located ~150 meters (= ~500 feet) down the slight hill from the front of the train station, which was built in the mid-1860’s, for the Saint Petersburg to Warsaw railroad. Diagonally across the street from the train station is the Soviet-era inter-cities bus station/terminal. The entire plaza is the centre for intracity buses and trolley-busses; as well as for a large and a small food store, dozens of small retail-shops, and a dozen kiosks that sell small items. So, I could walk up the hill to the ,,stotis“ [translation: ‘station’ -- for train/bus transportation]; however, there is not so old or beautiful, and as with all train / bus stations, in all cities of the world, is a centre of some criminal behaviours. I will walk in the other direction, about 100 meters (= ~325 feet) to ,,Pylimo gatvė“ -- one of the historicallyimportant streets in Vilnius. In Lithuanian, ,,gatvė“ (usually abbreviated, as ,,g.“) is translated into English as ‘street’ [note: in (authoritative !!) ‘Lithuanian-English’, 'street' is always abbreviated as: ‘str.’]. The name, location, and historical function, of this particular street are central to this story. Let’s take the walk . . . view the photos . . . we will go to a section of the perimeter, not inside, of the Old City . . . but, you will need to know some history -- to 500 to 700 years ago -- to understand what you see . . . The Original Vilnius = The Old Town / The Old City The city of Vilnius existed pre-1323, by which date the city had become the capital of Lithuania under the reign of Grand Duke Gediminas of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The city's location, surrounded by forests and wetlands that were difficult to penetrate, offered good natural defence. In fact, such natural defence was superior to the previous capital in Trakai (27 km / <17 miles west of www.dialogue.ca
Vilnius), and much better than the more-ancient capital at ,,Kernavė“ (39 km / 24 miles north-west from Vilnius, and 36 km / 22 miles north of Trakai). Vilnius is named for its location at the confluence of the smaller and shorter Vilnia River with the much larger and longer Neris River. On maps, since the end of WWII, Vilnius is found in the south-east (i.e., lower-right) of Lithuania, 33.88 km / 21.05 miles from the Belarus border. Originally, Vilnius (as well as Trakai and ,,Kernavė“) was in the geographic centre of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In Vilnius, the Lithuanian phrase ,,Vilniaus senamiestis“ (= 'Vilnius Old Town', or 'Vilnius Old City') refers to the area that was inside of the city's original defensive-walls. This portion of modern / metropolitan Vilnius is one of Northern Europe's largest-surviving medieval old-towns; containing: an area of 3.59 square kilometres (= 1.386 square miles = 887 acres = 359 hectares), encompassing 74 quarters, with 70 streets and lanes, having 1,487 existing-buildings with a total floor area of 1,497,000 square meters (= 16.1+ million square feet). The terrain of the Old City is flat. Mostly-all of streets are: short (i.e., a couple of hundred meters / yards), narrow (e.g., some are too-narrow for a single automobile; most other streets are only in one direction for motor vehicles), and frequently not straight. Most existing buildings are of some of Europe's greatest old architectural styles -- Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque (and Rococo), Neoclassical, and Mannerism -- all which co-exist and complement each other. There are some elements of 19th century styles, including ‘Czarist’ (compare Victorian), and Arts-and-Crafts (e.g., peasant / countryside). There are a few examples of 20th century architectural styles (or interior décor): ‘modern’ (whatever that is!; but nothing tall); Art Nouveau (a/k/a Jugendstil), Art Deco, and Bauhaus; and the post-WWII Soviet-Realism, including Brutalism, notably in areas that had been completely destroyed by the Nazi occupation. Perhaps, the key concept of the architecture of the Old Town, as well as the environs, is buildings that have an interior courtyard, which is a fascinating, albeit somewhat hidden, treasure. The tall church-towers, the ornamental-iron roof-top decorations, as well as the red (or red-orange) tiled roofs are the most-obvious architectural aspects of the Old Town -- which makes Vilnius unique. In 1994, the Vilnius Old Town was included in the 'UNESCO World Heritage List', in recognition of universal value and originality. …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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In one corner of the walled-city, where one side fronts the Neris River and another side has three small but steep hills, was the older upper (i.e., hilltop) castle, with the royal residence. Two more fortifications occupied the two hills immediately-adjacent to the upper castle. Before there was a city of Vilnius, somewhere on one of these three hills, Grand Duke Gediminas was hunting; he had a dream to build a city that would be his capital, in this place. A lower-castle complex soon would become the much-larger of the four fortifications, to hold a cathedral and residence of the bishop, and gardens. With the Neris River on one side, and the smaller Vilnia River separating the upper and lower castles, there was constructed a moat around the entire lower-castle. The two castles and the two forts each had their own walls, towers, barracks, stables, and armouries. The City Walls The Lithuanian term „Pylimas“ is commonly / currently translated as 'embankment', the obverse of which would suggest 'ditch'; „Pylimas“ can be translated also as 'rampart' or 'wall'. European medieval (and early-Renaissance) city-walls usually involved a 'ditch' in-front of / exterior to the wall. An embankment / ditch -- in military engineering -- is an obstacle, designed to: hinder, slow, and/or disperse an attacking force; to obstruct tunnelling and wall-climbing by an attacker; and to maximise defensive firepower that can be brought to bear from the relative protection afforded by the ramparts. The ditch increases the effectiveness of the wall: attackers must climb down, then cross, then climb up, then scale the wall; the ditch adds the advantage of preventing any attacker from merely walking unhindered to the wall. When filled with water, such a defensive ditch is called a 'moat'. Moats may be dry, intentionally / quickly filled with water, naturally gather water, be used as a sewer / drainage, and as well as for a dumping-ground for all sorts of unwanted and often-deleterious debris (notably human and animal excrement). Throughout Europe, this type of excavation was often called 'the city ditch' -- a name that well may conjure 'stinking to high heaven', and an unhealthy place; imagine such a breeding ground of disease and pestilence!! Indeed, in Vilnius, along the outside of the ,,Pylimas“, there is a plateau (named ,,Naujamiestis“ = ‘New City’) from which water naturally flows downwards, and could flood the Old City. The ending third-portion of ,,Pilymo gatve“ bordered the Old Town edge of the original Jewish quarter, called the 'Black Quarter' -- perhaps because Jews wore black 54 dialogue
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clothing, and/or perhaps because the area was known as being unhealthy. The defensive masonry-walls of Vilnius were built between 1503 and 1522, for protection from the Crimean Khanate, at the beginning of the Muscovite-Lithuanian Wars. The original wall was 2.5 kilometres (= 1.5+ miles) long; and, had nine (or ten) gates, and five towers (of which two survive). This stone and brick wall was a key element of the defensive system of Vilnius, and was financed by the city's landowners. In the 17th century, when the dangers from Moscow and Sweden arose, the question of the city’s security arose again, and an artillery bastion was built not far from ,,Subacius“ Gate. The bastion, often called 'the barbican', a Renaissance-style defensive installation, consisted of a low tower, installed at a corner of the defensive city wall, with underground cannon premises. The function of the bastion was to repulse an advancing enemy, by means of artillery / cannon fire. The Vilnius bastion was damaged during the war with Moscow in 1655 -- 1661, and ceased any function other than becoming the city dump. Following the final (i.e., 3rd) partition of the Polish--Lithuanian Commonwealth, in 1795, Vilnius became Russia's third-largest city. The Russian-czarist government ordered the demolition, between 1799 --1802, of most of the wall, and all of the gates (except the 'Gate of Dawn'). However, there are remaining dozens of fragmentedlengths of the original wall; some which are completely intact for dozens of meters, and visible from streets or from interior-courtyards; other fragments may be seen as the exterior or interior walls of current old-buildings. The greatest existing continuous-length of the wall, for hundreds of meters, is visible from the streets -- from the right-hand-side of the exterior of the 'Gate of Dawn' to the former 'Subacius Gate'. The Russia deconstruction of the wall and gates, as well as the abandonment of the 'Barbican' artillery bastion, was due to the fact that such fortifications became redundant due to the newer designs of fortifications beginning in the 1800's, as required by the new invention of explosive shells. Anyway, it is probably quite-unlikely that anyone in Vilnius complained when most of the ,,Pylimo“ wall-section was removed, and the 'embankment' of that part of the city-wall was filled with earth to create ,,Pylimo gatve“. Rather, there were probably cries of "Long live the Czar !" Ken Slade, Vilnius, Lithuania All Rights Reserved: 2004 kenmunications@gmail.com ♣
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“The Vagabond Writer” THE GOOD WEEDS Wayne Allen Russell Clearwater BC
I hope the readers enjoy these stories, they will bring laughter and a few tears to you. Taken from truth, but the “Family Weed” is fictitious. The family: Archibald (‘Pop’) & Mary Elizabeth/Loretta (‘Mom’) George (‘Donkey’), Aug. 17, 1930 Ben (‘Shooter’), Apr 2, 1932 Bob (‘Stretch’), Oct 10, 1934 Adam (‘Flyer’), Jul 30, 1936 Tom (‘Weasel’), June 4, 1941 Marian (cousin), Aug 21,’ 25 Sam (cousin), December 26, 1931 Bobby (cousin), May 3, ‘35 Ray (my buddy) Joe (Ray’s brother) Shirley (Grouch), May 19, 1925¨ Juniper (June)
A Story about Lisa…
See photo, p.2
Another game we played was pig riding; this involved taking the steel hoops off the wooden barrels, (smaller ones about 18 inches in diameter). One of us would stand, legs spread over the small back door to the pig house, both hands holding a steel hoop, wrapped with rags, over the exit. The other one would go into the pigpen and chase the pig out. It would run through the little door, right into the steel hoop, giving us a natural halter. When the ring tightened up on the pig’s neck, we got jerked down onto his back, and what a ride that old pig would give us! Did you ever see anybody ride a pig? There is nothing to hang on to therefore it isn’t done. That is, of course, without the ingenuity of a lot of small farm children with no toys to play with like they have today. So we made up our own games. Pop kept complaining that he could never fatten up a sow for butcher no matter how much he fed them. This leads me right into another story. We had one old sow we named Lisa and every time she had a litter, there would be fifteen piglets. Always, only twelve survived, maybe because she only had twelve teats. After learning that this always happened, we rescued the runt and two others, raising them ourselves. In every litter of piglets there was always one much smaller than the rest and so he was called the runt. We would start feeding them with eyedroppers until they were big enough to be fed by a baby bottle. Once they were big enough to eat the pig chop, they were put back with the others. This saved them but only temporarily! Now comes the interesting part of the story. When it www.dialogue.ca
was time for Lisa to get bred by the boar, having no male pig of our own, we had to take her to the neighbour’s farm. The farmer who owned the boar pig was about 20 miles away. To get her there, Pop would feed her one ear of corn and use a second ear of corn to get her to follow him. We took the back seat out of our old 1925 McLaughlin-Buick, built solid, as were all cars of those years. One of us would stand at the back of the car. Both back doors wide open and when Pop led her in one door, we would shut it behind her. Pop would drop the corncob, and then back out the other door closing it behind him. We took turns at every opportunity, to go for a ride. We rolled down the back windows for Lisa; she always stuck her head out as we drove to the other farm. We boys loved to watch the look on people’s faces as they passed us on the road. It was priceless. They would glance at us and then their heads would snap around for another look. We always joked that they’d head home and tell their families that the ugliest person they had ever seen, they had seen today. The third time we took Lisa to the boar we didn’t need a cob of corn, we just opened the car door and she walked right in. Another funny thing, after the second trip she never raised a stink. (In any way)! We always sat on the fence and watched the breeding. Did you know? That boar pigs have a pecker shaped like a corkscrew? I always wondered what would happen if one was born with a left-hand thread? On the subject of pigs, when we had the means to keep one for butchering, nothing went to waste. We usually did our own butchering and the cuts were much the same as they are today. Butchering was not an easy job. Once the pig was dead, we would hoist it up with pulleys and drop it into a 45-gallon barrel of boiling water. This was done outside over the fire pit. Next, we would hoist it out of the water and with a sharp knife; shave the hairs off the skin. We’d lower it into the water again and again, until all the hair was gone. The boiling water would take off one layer of skin along with the hair. We then cleaned it, saving all the edible inner parts. We had a smokehouse, and the hams were cured at home. Most of the fat was cut off the front end of the pig. This part was skinned and all the fat was rendered into lard for cooking purposes. The skin became cracklings (rinds) baked in the oven. …/ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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The intestines were washed out very thoroughly, flushed with hot, hot water, and stuffed with ground meat. This meat was hand-ground in a galvanised grinder clamped tightly to a heavy bench. The pork was cut into small chunks and along with spices for extra flavour, pushed into the top of the grinder with the heel of one hand while the other hand turned the crank. The ground meat came out the bottom into a container, then it was stuffed into the intestines, and finally, when they were cut and tied about every
four inches, these were our sausages. The head, excluding the eyes, was cleaned with a scrub brush and a small wire brush. It was then put in a big pot and boiled until all the meat fell off the bones. The bones were thrown away, but the broth was mixed with spices and put into bread pans to cool. When cool, it jellied and became headcheese. Even the pig-feet were used. As with the head, they were cleaned and when cooked with white navy beans, oh my! The mouth waters just writing about those pig hocks and beans. -- Wayne Russell, The Vagabond Writer ♣
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Tales from My Travels ~ Don Parker The story of my travels around the world on the working cargo ship, MV Rickmers Jakarta By Don Parker, Georgetown ON In November 2005, at the young age of 77, I embarked on the trip of a lifetime, lasting in all about six months ~ as a passenger on the working freighter, MV Rickmers Jakarta, [First chapter in Vol.28 No.1-Autumn 2014, p.43]
Chapter 9, Part 2 (continued from Vol. 30, No. 2)
Mon., Dec. 19th: We are well down the coast of Portugal at this time of writing. After breakfast, Cam came along with another chip he wanted downloaded to a CD. Again, he encouraged me to make a copy for myself which I gladly did. Cam has a Nikon digital with a zoom lens which allows him to take shots of things that are impossible to get with my point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix P1, good and all that it is. To-day, Andrew, the Chief Engineer, gave Cam and I a tour of the Engine Room. First impression: NOISE! Second impression: MASSIVE! Third impression: COMPLICATED! I could go on with this list but I think my point is made. There is a vast difference between the engine propelling this ship and the one Henry Ford used in his Model “T”. In both scenarios, fuel must be moved from a tank to a combustion chamber. Oil must be moved to perform its lubricating functions while electricity must be generated and directed somewhere, and water must be treated in a similar fashion. On the Jakarta, oil is used for many purposes and under many guises. As fuel, it is called bunker fuel; as a lubricant, it is called lubricating oil, but when it is used as a lever, it is called hydraulic oil. Each of these different oils require different properties to perform their respective functions. 56 dialogue
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Because of my limited knowledge of how engines work, I can only take this analogy to a limited degree of fineness. What I have said about the different oils that this engine uses, the same can be said for water and electricity. We are a tad away from Henry Ford’s Model “T” now, but the point is that water is used for cooling, cleaning, drinking, and for creating steam. Much the same can be said about electricity which is used in huge quantities in some instances, and very tiny amounts in others. For example, when the large motors are used to operate the hydraulically powered rudder, huge amounts of electricity are required. On the other hand, the computer that directs the operation of these motors, and hence, the rudder, require relatively small amounts of electricity. The crew in the Engine Room are referred to as: Chief Engineer, 2nd Engineer, 3rd Engineer, and so on. As for the horse power rating of the engine, I cannot say at the moment. I do know that it has seven cylinders, but I do not know their bore or stroke. The drive shaft which the crank shaft rotates is about 16” to 20” in diameter. We have had our Engine Room tour and I thanked Andrew for providing us with the opportunity but I am glad it is over. The noise was not only well up in the upper decibel range, but its pitch was high as well, definitely not a low rumble. Now it’s time for lunch and I think I will take a chance on asparagus soup. 16:50: With the benefits gained from the asparagus soup, a walk to the bow, and a good nap, I’m ready for whatever comes. We are still sailing about 30 nms south of the western shoreline of Portugal at Lon 06:66 and Lat 36.8. The day is sunny, calm seas, but with www.dialogue.ca
a nippy wind. Came back to my cabin to read, nap, and get ready for dinner. 21:15: We are sailing around the south-western tip of Portugal heading straight for Orion and the Strait of Gibraltar (S of G) on an absolutely gorgeous night. The Bridge is all but jet black with only a bare minimum of light detectable and that comes mainly from the dimmed instruments. There is a light over the chart table, but that is concealed behind heavy drapes. During night time shifts, the Duty Officer (DO) is assisted by one of the crew who acts as a lookout. Often the C. is there as well. When I was up a few minutes ago, the C. made a note on the chart directing the DO to call him when we reached a certain point just before entering the S of G. When the seas narrow, traffic begins to get heavy and it’s the C.’s policy to have as many eyes on the Bridge as possible. Passing through the Straights of Dover is another example. 401 rush hour, with behemoths like this is nothing to sneeze at. Yes, we are traveling at, let’s say 20 mph, while the 401 traffic is belting along at 70 to 80 mph. That is not much of a comparison until the weight of each ‘vehicle’ is taken into account. Google tells me that a standard car in good condition and traveling at 70 mph, will take 315 feet to come to a complete stop. Google also tells me that the J has a summer time Dead Weight of ~30,000metric tons, but I can’t find a figure for stopping distance so let’s say it would take 2 to 3 nms. I will check that out in the morning, in the meantime, it is hasta la vista for to-day. Tues., Dec. 20th: There will be no hike to-day, the seas are up and the spray is flying. I went up to the Bridge after breakfast, and as I climbed the last flight of stairs, I wondered what the peculiar noise was from up there. It was coming from the windshield wipers, all ten pair of them. At the time, we were well into the S of G; now we are in the Mediterranean Sea heading for Genoa, Italy. Rumours are flying again; we will not be going to India – after all that fuss, bother, and expense to get a doubleentry visa – nor will we be going to Jeddah, but we will be going to Dubai, and we will have 3 to 4 days in Singapore, which I am looking forward to. When I stopped there in 2001, it was only for a few hours so I didn’t get to see very much. I did get to see a little of Sentosa Island, and I hope to see more of it this time… Wed., Dec. 21st: It’s a different day to-day; the seas are calm again; the sun is shining, and it looks like a day www.dialogue.ca
for the bow. We are at present - 08:45 - about 15 nms off the Islands of Mallorca, south of Spain heading directly for Genoa. This is definitely a day for the bow, but before I do that, I’d better get the rest of the Christmas cards written and ready for mailing. After lunch, I not only went up and into the bow, but it was still not all that pleasant with the coolness of the air, so I started heading back when I met Cam, along with the Bosun, Alberto, coming along the deck. I stopped to chat with them a bit and I also asked Alberto if it was OK for us to go into one section of the bow, the door to which was open. Alberto said it was OK and he took us on a tour of that section of the ship. He led us through several “rooms” and explained to us what the various pieces of equipment were for, and he eventually led us to a hatch which he opened. Beneath the hatch cover was a vertical ladder leading down to another section of the ship. We climbed down to another section of “rooms” and again, Alberto explained the purpose of everything we saw. We climbed down another ladder to another section and another hatch. We were already down the equivalent of about three decks, and when Alberto opened this next hatch, it led to four more vertical ladders which led to the very bottom of the ship where the bow thruster is located. Alberto advised against climbing down any further. These ladders were longer than the previous ones. He was concerned about our climb back up again. Neither of us pressed the matter. By way of comparison, my cabin is on Deck “D”, which is two decks below the Bridge and five decks above the working deck which is at the top of the gangplank. To climb down these last four ladders to the bottom of the ship would be the equivalent, when climbing back up again, of climbing 90 degrees vertically from the work deck to the Bridge deck. That is definitely not for me. Above the Bridge is an open deck which I always thought was called the Poop Deck, but not on this ship. On the J, the decks are called: Bridge Deck, Pilot Deck, D Deck, C Deck, B Deck, A Deck, Poop Deck, Upper Deck – with no designation for the deck above the Bridge. Just another one of those things, I guess. Now for a quick dash up to the Bridge to check on our position, then it is supper time which I will have in my cabin again. At 17:30, our position is: Lat: 41.36 N Lat: 05:00 E – Don Parker, Georgetown ON To be continued with JJ Chapter 10, Part 1 ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 3, SPRING 2017
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Contributors in Andersen, Erik, BC……....19-20 Arney, Jeremy, BC …………..08 Boese, David, ON……………18 Bowles, Paul, BC………...51,60 Broten, Delores, BC…………04 Canadian Action Party…........08 CDSAPI, Inge Hanle………...17 CJPME, QC (extract/link)……04 Cude, Wilfred, NS ……….34-38 Curtin, Edward, US…...18,28-30 Dobbin, Murray (link)………...13 Doehring, Anna Christine, BC 40 Durstberger, Leopold, BC…...52 Etkin, Jack, BC…..……….30-31 Forshaw, Ralph, BC…………45 Foster, David, ON …..…...27-28 Gaudet, Marie, AB…..49-51(52)
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Goertzen, Ed, ON………..25-27 Goldring, Peter, AB…………..31 Gottlieb, Vera, Germany…….45 Hayes, Leonard & Bertha…...52 Hudson, Michael (quote/link)..05 Joubarne, Grace, ON………..06 Kazdan, Larry, BC…………...05 Kellington, Ken, AB…………..33 Lawson, Susanne, BC…...45,52 Lonsdale, Derrick, M.D……...16 Maclise, Sharon, AB…………33 Mair, Rafe, BC……………20,59 Masuda, Gerry, BC…….........05 Mathews, Robin, BC………9-13 McCaslin, Susan, BC…..…41-42 McCullough, JC, ON………....05 McDowall, Steph, BC……….52
Miller, Margaret, BC………...44 Mitchell, William (quote/link) 05 Morton, Alexandra, BC……..08 Neilly, Michael, ON…….……18 Nickerson, Mike, ON……….39 Olsen, John, BC……………13 Parker, Don, ON………..56-57 Petrik, Denny, BC…………...47 Porter, J. S., ON……….........43 Ross, June, BC (from)….......04 Russell, Wayne, BC….……..55 Salter, Leanne, BC……...21-24 Shadbolt, John, ON…………38 Slade, Ken, Lithuania 53-54,59 Spencer, Herb, BC……....25,32 United Party of Ontario….….06 Vancourt, Randy, ON…….....46
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Coming soon: the new Cyberjournal website
in The Shattered Mirror to assess “democracy” in the “Mainstream Media” today, so let’s take a peek at the industry that wants more money to take care of it, and see how democratic it really is… Read on! http://tinyurl.com/csc-Rafe-shattered ♣
Richard K. Moore, Ireland - rkm@cyberjournal.org
Thanks to my long-time friend and computer guru Chris Thorman, and to WordPress expert Susanne Friedrich, we will soon have a much more attractive and useful version of cyberjournal. The cyberjournal website will be integrated with postings, and posting archives, and all will be up to modern WordPress standards in terms of readability. Not only will we have searchable cyberjournal archives, going back to 1995, but we’ll also have searchable archives of the renaissance-network (19992007), and of the cyber-rights campaign (1995-1996). This will all be easier to operate and update than the current systems, so you can expect to see more activity and more up-to-date material. There will be a comment capability, so that you will be able to contribute comments without waiting for me to post them. With the crisis of the Trump era upon us, along with extreme social divisiveness, there will be much for us to be studying and discussing. rkm websites: cyberjournal.org / escapingthematrix.org ♣
“The Shattered Mirror” – What caused the fall of Canada’s mainstream media? – the Internet or shoddy, sycophantic corporate journalism? by Rafe Mair, March 4, 2017 At: http://commonsensecanadian.ca
On Jan. 27, an outfit called the Public Policy Forum released a report call the The Shattered Mirror, dealing with the state of Canada’s media. Rafe asks: Is it a fair assessment with fair recommendations or one of the biggest corporate blowjobs in history? The Government of Canada contracted with the PPF, a non-partisan and independent think-tank, to assess the situation and make recommendations on what, if anything, should be done. The object was not to defend any mode of news delivery, but to evaluate the risk to democracy.” […] It’s interesting and I think central to this critique to note that there is no attempt www.dialogue.ca
Thoughts on St. Patrick’s Day The important thing for me, contemplating the life of Patricius, is not the mythology surrounding him; driving snakes out of Ireland, using a shamrock as a parable, or even his walking stick growing into an Ash tree. What’s important to me is understanding that sometimes, while in the midst of living one’s familiar, commonplace life, we can be abducted by our own life’s purpose and subjected to hardship and grief. These violent psychological, and sometimes physical tribulations, while presenting us with all sorts of problems, are perpetrated upon us by our own futurity— our own life’s purpose or meaning—reaching back to us, manhandling us, and roughly placing us upon our own life’s path. I don’t think it would be wrong to think of this as one of the modi operandi of bliss. Bradley Olson, Ph.D., Flagstaff, Arizona
https://tinyurl.com/JC-bo-stpat The worst BC scandal of all time! From: Rafe Mair, rafe@rafeonline.com Harry Swain, in 5 minutes of plain, uncomplicated, unadorned, English explains how BC HYDRO and Christy Clark are cheating us all, big time and that BC HYDRO is actually $5 BILLION worse off than it says and will get much worse, not even counting for $ 10 BILLION for Site C! Folks, I ask again. Where the hell is Attorney-General Suzanne Anton? When is she going to end her coverup of Liberal Party and BC HYDRO shenanigans going back to 2002? When will she stop running interference for Christy and let the law take over? When, in short, will she do her sworn duty? In my opinion, this is far and away the biggest BC scandal of all time! LINK: https://tinyurl.com/BC-hydo-accounting
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