DialogueMagazine Vol.33-2-Remembering Maurice King

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VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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PHOTOS

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WINTER 2019-20, VOL. 33, NO. 2

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An invocation from the publisher…

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Maurice J. King, 1927 ~ 2019 Dearest Readers, In case this is the first time you are hearing the very sad news… Maurice passed on, at the age of 92½, on the morning of 2 December 2019.

He leaves many legacies from his life lived to the full, and he is greatly missed by all who knew him. Maurice enjoyed reminiscing about the Maurice, Janet & Penny adventures of his youth and with his family and (Summer 2019) in his multiple careers – some of which you will hear about in the pages that follow. Maurice’s favourite poem, which came to him at a very young age, was: “Words that are spoken are easily said, Words that are written are easily read, But words engraved upon your heart Never leave you, never part.”

And he had much love and many personal connections engraved upon his heart – which many people have recalled in their memories of him.

It is indeed an interesting twist of fate that Maurice has left us at the time of the Dialogue issue marking the end of our alphabet challenge (begun in 2013). Perhaps something in his soul figured that the last letter – Z – was a good time to take his final bow. However, he was, in his last days, worried whether we would be able to keep Dialogue going in his absence. Maurice’s participation in proof-reading and on the administrative side of things (especially Bookkeeping!) was invaluable, but it is his indomitable will that has allowed all of his ventures, throughout his life, to succeed. Gabriel Communications, the not-forprofit that Maurice created, will continue as the publisher of Dialogue – and Maurice’s invocation to us all is to rely upon our own resolve (and perhaps a little help with proof-reading, bookkeeping and donations!) to ensure that his legacy continues well into the future.

Thank You for continuing to be part of this venture of dedicated writers, artists and readers who are pursuing your dreams of a better world.

Wishing you and your loved ones a Happy Christmas and a Healthy New Year.

Maurice

Publisher-In-Memoriam

Janet

volunteer editor

…and

Penny & Lucky!

IMPORTANT: If you wish to continue receiving the magazine, please ensure your subscription is up-to-date! PLEASE LOOK AT YOUR ADDRESS LABEL ON THE BACK COVER of this issue to find your RENEWAL DATE. If your subscription is due, you will find a renewal slip enclosed inside the back of the print magazine. THANK YOU! A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO WINCHESTER PRINT FOR THEIR EXCELLENT SERVICE. AND THANK YOU TO THE THRIFTY FOODS FUNDRAISING PROGRAM (More on p.58)

www.dialogue.ca

…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 33rd 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 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) Your donations and Gift Subscriptions are also vital to keeping the magazine going!

We receive NO government funding and no advertising revenue. We rely totally on the generous support of our readers & subscribers. Thank You!

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was founded in 1987 and is now published quarterly.

Maurice J. King, Publisher-In-Memoriam Janet K. Hicks, Volunteer Editor

Date of Issue: Dec. 23, 2019 Also available at www.dialogue.ca 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.

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Tel: 250-758-9877 E-mail: dialogue@dialogue.ca WEBSITE: www.dialogue.ca Deadlines: Sep. 1st - Dec. 1st March 1st - June 1st

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Remembering Maurice March 25, 1927 ~ December 2, 2019 and to Ireland; and took his five daughMaurice King – to countless people ters on a road trip to Ireland (with Janet who knew him over the many decades driving the mini-bus). of his community and political activism in Quebec – was a “larger than life” In 2000, Maurice retired (for the 3rd or character who, time and time again, 4th time!) and moved west, settling in accomplished the impossible.

Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, where he enjoyed 18½ years of relaxed living After leaving school very early to get a – while still actively involved with his job, the scope of Maurice’s involvefamily and in the publishing adventure ments ranges from leading his local unknown as Dialogue! ion out on strike as a very young man, working at the CN, where he was emMaurice and Dialogue editor Janet ployed for many years before being Hicks were married in Nanaimo in granted leave of absence to work full2002; Penny joined the family the time in the credit union movement, creating worknext year, and Lucky around 2010. place and local credit unions, and developing & leadIn Maurice’s own words… ing a successful credit union league in Quebec and Here are some of Maurice’s words, from June participating at national and international levels.

2018, about his life in his retirement years…

Somehow he made time to go get his Senior Matric, [Extract from an email sent to his daughter Jean] with evening classes and his B.A. from Sir George.

“I often think that we humans have created a soHe participated as a councillor & a three-term mayor called civilization that is contrary to our basic nature of Greenfield Park (1964-78) on the South Shore of and to that of a natural universe. As I sit in my Montreal, where he had also been elected to his local garden, all that I see are flowers and trees swaying in school board. From 1983-99 he was providing strong harmony with the wind. The birds, bees and other leadership to the Chateauguay Valley English-Speakcritters, tweeting and buzzing and Penny and Lucky ing Peoples Association (CVESPA). He founded, with laying in the grass; everything seems to be in harJanet Hicks in 1987, Dialogue Magazine. Then there mony with the wondrous and generous universe that is was, in 1988-89, initiating – and winning – a case at surrounding me. the U.N. Human Rights Committee against the Canadian Government (with Kim Campbell as Justice Min- “This feeling of tranquillity and peace is one that I ister) over Quebec’s Bill 178 as an infringement of have not enjoyed as I strived to survive and meet the human rights. He created & led a new political party, demands inherent in our civilized society. This is not the Unity Party, with candidates in the 1989 Quebec to say that I have not had great moments of joy and General Election. And he published, in 1993, The happiness in my family, with my friends and in my First Step: his first-hand account his participation in successes. I suppose as my life draws to a close my the efforts of English-speaking Quebecers to address mind is less civilized and more in harmony with language discrimination and human rights violations nature. Whatever, it’s a great feeling.” (Maurice) by successive Quebec (& Cdn.) Governments. * * * And that is just a few of the highlights of a life ‘lived On the next page, we share with you Maurice’s words to the full.’ While all that was going on, Maurice mar- from the Introduction to his book, The First Step. ried Catherine Oliver and helped raise five daughters Future issue of Dialogue will share more of his in a marriage that lasted happily for 25 years, with writings. many summer family trips to PEI. He participated You can also read a tribute from Maurice’s daughactively with his extended family & community and ters at the First Memorial/Dignity Memorial website. travelled extensively on business and pleasure trips.

LINK: https://tinyurl.com/dm-mjk-2122019 – where you can add a comment or memory until December 31st.

He took his sister Mary on road trips through the U.S. 4 dialogue

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The First Step – by Maurice J. King The conflict between Quebec nationalism and Canadian values and the story of the appeal to the U.N. Human Rights Committee against the violation of freedom of expression Park, from 1964 until 1978, I worked with FrenchA book written by Maurice King in 1993 speaking citizens who wanted the same things for their and published by Southwest Quebec Publishing (a not-for-profit which Maurice founded) children that I did for my five daughters: a safe and caring community in which to live. Throughout the years, Introduction I have shared in the pride of being a Quebecer and I I was born (in 1927) in the St. Henry district of Monhave shared the emotions and "joie de vivre" of my treal, in the Province of Quebec, in an area now French-speaking friends and their families. known as Little Burgundy. I grew up in the area, atIt is from this background of strong roots in Quebec tending St. Anne's boys' school in Griffintown. Early and an enduring love for my province, that I write this in life, I learnt about the contradiction that is Quebec.

As we "micks" proceeded to St. Anne's school, two or book. I am neither an academic nor a politician, but I am a person who has truly tasted Quebec life and I three miles away, we would meet the French kids gospeak with but one motivation: to ensure my country ing to St. Joseph's school, as well as the Protestant is one where all citizens are treated equally, where the kids going over to Royal Arthur school. If one or two of us met one or two other kids, there was no problem. individual rights and freedoms of everyone are respected, and where people of all languages, religions, But, meet a group of four or five – and you'd better and races can live together in harmony. start to run or hide! The same applied if our gang met Always, I have been a proud Canadian and Quebecer. one of "them." I quickly learned to travel in a convoy.

I never understood this phenomenon of attacking each My love for Quebec has never been diminished by my love for Canada. I have always believed that Canada other, because when we were at home, Protestant, was "one nation indivisible." However, the experience Catholic, French and English – we all played together of living in Quebec in recent decades has made me on the streets and swam together in the Lachine Canal. aware that this vision of one Canada is not shared by From the perspective of many decades, it seems to me the majority of French-speaking Canadians in Quebec. that human behaviour often follows a similar pattern.

There are two French nationalist views in Quebec. As As individuals, we seem to accommodate each other's one grows, the other weakens and each takes its turn differences, but if we find ourselves suddenly in the as the predominant view. The present popular view is larger "gang," we can become aggressive and intolerant. Perhaps it is for this reason that I have come to dis- that expressed by Lionel Groulx (1) and supported by trust the concept of "collective rights" – because people both the Parti Liberal and the Parti Quebecois, calling for Quebec to be a French homeland. The other view tend to act differently in "gangs" than they do as indiis that of Henri Bourassa (2) – and espoused by Pierre viduals and a "right" that is appropriate for an individElliot Trudeau – seeing Canada as a dual French-Engual can be very destructive, when applied to a group.

I learned my French in the streets of St. Henry. I spent lish country and thereby make Canada a "homeland" for all French-speaking Canadians. my summers in and around Shannon, an Irish settleI have attempted to delineate the results of these two ment north of Quebec City, where both my mother's and father's families settled in 1823. I remember many visions, from the perspective of their impact on other Canadians, especially English-speaking Canadians visits to Quebec City, St. Catherines, Valcartier and living in the Province of Quebec.

St. Basil, in County Port Neuf. Many of my relatives are still in those communities and are married into I believe that if we understand the roots of the issues French-speaking families. that face us, we are better prepared to understand the My experiences in the Quebec trade union and coopsolutions that are available to us and better able to reerative movements, where the majority were Frenchalistically allocate the responsibility for the serious risks speaking, gave me a great deal of respect for the French posed today to Canadian unity and Canadian principles Canadians with whom I worked and shared a common such as equality and individual freedom. These fundaphilosophy. As councillor and Mayor of Greenfield mental Canadian principles have come under attack, …/ www.dialogue.ca

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especially in Quebec, as a result of the collectivist goals associated with French Canadian nationalism and the language legislation it has generated.

Many Canadians have taken the courageous step of defending the principles of individual rights and freedoms and the equality of all Canadians. The defense of these principles has been all the more difficult as a result of the widespread taboo, generally enforced by government, media and big business, against any criticism of Quebec nationalism or Canada's official language policies. Despite the general proscription, however, the criticism has continued, mostly by ordinary Canadians, who have sometimes had to put their reputations or jobs on the line to defend their country's principles.

For the most part, the struggle for individual rights and freedoms in Canada has been fought by "extraordinary" Canadians that hardly anyone knows. I hope this is a first step toward giving the credit where it is due.

Strong words and controversial issues My descriptions and observations of Canada's language laws and French-Canadian nationalism contain some provocative words and concepts, such as "racist," "totalitarian," and "language cleansing." I have employed these descriptions only after giving them a great deal of thought and only where I believe that they are fully justified. It will be for the reader to decide if the descriptions are appropriate.

I am not the first to raise odious analogies to describe what is going on in Quebec. Such notables as Pierre Burton, Justice Jules Deschenes and Pierre Trudeau have drawn on comparisons between Quebec language policies and some of mankind's most evil, repressive regimes.(3) *** I use the term "race" as defined in the general introduction of the Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which stated: "The word 'race' is used in an older meaning, as referring to a national group, and carries no biological significance." In this context, the B & B Commission was evidently racially-oriented, as its task was to suggest paths to a federal future of equality between the "two founding races."

A definition of 'racism,' from Webster's Third New International Dictionary is: 'the assumption.., that races differ decisively from one another, which is usually coupled with a belief in the inherent superiority of a 6 dialogue

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particular race and its right to domination over others.'

The reader will decide if Quebec's Charter of the French Language is inherently racist and how Canada's Official Language Act affects all Canadians.

What is the status of Canadians who do not belong to either of the "two founding races?" *** The use of 'totalitarian' is based on the meaning defined in Webster's: "relating to a political regime based on subordination of the individual to the state and control of all aspects of the life and productive capacity of the nation, especially by coercive measures..."

The reader will have to decide if the measures taken by the Government of the Province of Quebec, over the past 30 years, to impose the values of the "collectivity" on the individual, are indeed totalitarian in nature. One might also ask the same question regarding the Official Languages Act of Canada. *** "Race," "nation," and "people" – according to Webster's are often used interchangeably to indicate an aggregate of persons who think of themselves as comprising a distinct unit, For instance, they quote David Bernstein, who asks: "What is a nation? A group of human beings recognizing a common history and a common culture, yearning for a common destiny, assuming common habits, and generally attached to a specific piece of the earth's surface."

Sometimes "nation" is opposed to "state" - as J. R. Green's suggests in Webster's: "A state is accidental; it can be made or unmade; but a nation is something real which can be neither made nor destroyed."

The reader will have to decide whether French-speaking Canadians do indeed constitute a "nation" - and if so what relationship there will be between the nations of English and French Canada. *** The word "ethnic" is also defined by Webster's as "having or originating from racial, linguistic and cultural ties with a specific group."

The "cleansing" which I describe is also, according to Webster, "to free or rid of any undesirable feature or condition." This is the sense in which I describe the linguistic cleansing that has taken place in Quebec.

The context in which Quebec has sought to be rid of www.dialogue.ca

the presence of English is in no way meant to be compared with the violent actions and atrocities that have become associated with the term "ethnic cleansing."

The reader will be asked, nevertheless, to evaluate the

justification for the toll of human suffering and family dislocation caused by Quebec's linguistic policies and the failure of the Canadian Government to protect its citizens in Quebec. – Maurice J. King, 1993

FOOTNOTES 1. Lionel-Adolphe Groulx (1878-1967, commemorated by Claude Ryan as the spiritual father of modern Quebec; "toyed with the idea of an autonomous state for French Canada."

(The Canadian Encyclopedia, p. 777) 2. Henri Bourassa (1868-1952), grandson of Louis-Joseph Papineau; founder of Le Devoir, insisted "that Canada ought to be an Anglo-French country." He opposed Groulx's concept of a separate French state (Cdn. Encyclopedia, p. 210).

3. Pierre Burton described Bill 101, several years after its passage as an "authoritarian, Nazi-Fascist form of law," as cited in "Live Jews" by Lionel Albert, Suburban, Montreal, Jan. 27-28, 1990.

Justice Jules Deschênes, in his Quebec Superior Court judgement against the language provisions of Bill 101, admonished the

legal reasoning of Quebec's Attorney-General thus: "Quebec's argument is based on a totalitarian conception of society to which the court does not subscribe."

Pierre Trudeau: "...I think we are entitled to draw the line when we get into government whose mandate is to govern particularly for one linguistic community. It would be the same if they were to govern for one religious group or one race ... we have seen examples in history where governments become totalitarian when they think they are governing only for one race, and the others can go to concentration camps." (March 30, 1988 before the Senate hearings on the Meech Lake Accord).

4. John Richard Green, English historian, author of "A Short History of the English People" (1874) [INTRODUCTION FROM “THE FIRST STEP” BY M. J. KING] ♣

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Thank You for Helping to Sustain Maurice’s Legacy Although Maurice spent many years in leadership roles defending the rights and freedoms of individuals, he always knew that many issues are better addressed from a broader perspective. Indeed, as a lifelong “co-operator” he was passionately involved with cooperative ventures – from workers’ unions to credit unions, to the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation) and non-profits. And he continued, all his life, to join credit unions and cooperatives for his fuel purchases and banking & insurance services.

Dialogue, created as a not-for-profit, almost 33 years ago – is a ‘hybrid’ cooperative adventure that relies on the participation of many people to create each issue and to sustain the publication. We have been operating on the proverbial “shoestring” (about $5000/year),

thanks to all the volunteer labour that we all put into each issue – and thanks to generous donations, most gratefully received, from a small number of readers.

Dialogue has also been sustained by Maurice subsidizing the expenses by $1-2,000/yr., which we are now challenged to replace with new subscribers or donations! Thank you if you are able to help.

Maurice so appreciated your commitment to Dialogue through many years and we look forward to many more years of working together, producing this – in the words of Roxanne Davies of N. Vancouver – “wonderful, quirky, informative, thought-provoking, community building, frustrating, … unique publication” that belongs to us all.

With Love & Gratitude, Janet ♣

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With Gratitude and Love From Christina Stafford, Nanaimo

[My dear Janet], I (was) utterly shocked to learn of Maurice’s passing…. And I am beyond grateful that you offered me the gift of spending such precious time with him when I brought the soup over…. I feel profound empathy for you now, as you live this soul altering change through your whole being. And bless you for being Maurice’s support and beloved partner through the challenging things you both faced together all the way along.

I’ve been thinking of you both ever since my visit – because a little piece of revelation arose for me – that took quite a few days to surface and integrate. www.dialogue.ca

While visiting, the subject of “the beyond” came up… which Maurice wondered about…

I responded to his unknowingness with a callow statement that I “knew” it was benign and loving….. But my certainty felt a little forced when I said it – and I realized that it was simply that I wanted it to be true…. Then days later, I understood how wise Maurice was in his uncertainty….. This is a wisdom that Leonard Cohen shared with us too….

It’s the “unknowing” that is the very requirement for the mystery to enter…. and guide us home….

Leonard Cohen called it the “crack” in everything – the way the Light gets in… This is so opposite to …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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the conditioned mind that wants certainty…. and it was an amazing lesson for me. So I send you both heartfelt love, compassion, empathy and caring, and gratitude for the gifts of your lives!

May the love you shared with Maurice allow your deep connectedness to blossom in new and unexpected form…

With love, Christina Stafford A luminous light remains...

Quote: Antoine Bovena Artist: Anne Kertz Kernion ©2011 www.cardsbyanne.com ♣ **************************************************************

With Deep Gratitude to You All for Your Thoughts & Prayers…

Adrian Swanston, Ann Harper, Bill Annett, Bill Woollam, Bob Hansen, Brendalee Vokes, B.W. Powe, Chris Bowers, Christina Stafford, Connie Fogal, David Foster, Derrick Lonsdale, Dolly Dennis, Erik Andersen, Grace Joubarne, GreyBruce Writers,Gunther Ostermann, Harold & Roberta Wilson, Herb Spencer, Inge Hanle, Jennifer Duggan, Jeremy Arney, Jim Duffee, Joanna Richot, John Shadbolt, John Woodsworth, J.S. Porter, June Ross, Karl Backhaus, Kevin Annett, Larry Kazdan, Lawrence McCurry, Leanne Salter, Lyn Carlson, Madeleine Bruce, Marie Gaudet, Mike Neilly, Noel Patterson, Norm Zigarlick, Paul Bowles, Penn Kemp, Peter Sauvé, Peter Weygang, Ralph & Joan Van Walleghem, Randy Vancourt, Richard K. Moore, Rob Southcott, Robin & Esther Mathews, Sherry Leigh Williams, Susan McCaslin, Susanne Lawson; and to the many, many people who have left messages on fb and at the Memorial: https://tinyurl.com/dm-mjk-2122019 ♣ **************************************************************

Thinking of You… Another Note from Christina…

Wishing you freedom from all that grabs your attention and focuses it through the lens of duality – where anxiety and sorrow, fear and anger appear to dominate – where safety and joy, peace and harmony can seem like utopian fantasies... And may you be free from the countless generations of conditioning that taught us that the only safety – in a falsely perceived reality of inanimate and indifferent forces – was control... May we remember the serene, natural beauty of the world.... and our innate

capacity for harmonic resonance with it, whenever our hearts are open with gratitude for the ordinary miracle of "life."

May your heart reveal the mystery of an ancient and true love story that has co-existed all along – with the story of dominance and control.

And may we all experience that shift in awareness that invites the revelation of our perfect part in the new narrative.... Christmas seems the right time to receive and honour such revelations and gifts....

With much love, Christina Stafford ♣

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TO THOSE I LOVE AND THOSE WHO LOVED ME (shared by Maurice’s daughter Ann) When I am gone, release me, let me go…

I have so many things to see and do, You mustn’t tie yourself to me with tears; Be happy that we had so many years.

I gave to you my love, you can only guess, How much you gave to me in happiness, I thank you for the love you each have shown, But now it’s time I travel on alone.

So grieve a while for me, for grieve you must, Then let your grief be comforted by trust.

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It’s only for a while that we must part, So bless the memories within your heart.

I won’t be far away, for life goes on; So if you need me, call and I will come, Though you can’t see me or touch me, I’ll be near, And if you listen with your heart, you’ll hear, All my love around you soft and clear.

And then, when you must come this way alone, I’ll greet you with a smile and say, “welcome home”.

Author Unknown ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Food For Thought

The fundamental need for belonging

By Jim Taylor, Okanagan Centre BC

Today is the last Sunday before Christmas. I can confidently predict that every Christian congregation -and possibly those of other religions too -- will hear a sermon about the birth of Jesus.

I can also predict some of the themes of those sermons.

Some will use Mary’s status to urge people to do something about poverty. Or about justice. Or perhaps about historic discrimination against women. The Christmas story becomes a means of getting at a social issue.

Others will use a series of carefully selected Bible verses to prove, beyond any doubt, that God Almighty became a helpless crying baby. And/or that biblical prophets knew all the details of an obscure birth that would take place 500 years later. And therefore, by extension, that every other word in the Holy Book must also be 100% accurate.

A friend and retired preacher calls all of this “head stuff.” It’s wonderful material to argue about. But it makes no difference at all to how you drive on the highway. Or how you treat the cashier at the grocery store.

Our evolving brains I contend, rather, that Christmas is about having a Small Furry Mammal brain.

To explain that, I need to invoke the theories of an ordained minister, psychologist, and environmental advocate, Michael Dowd.

Our brains have evolved, Dowd says. And you can trace that evolution in our brains themselves.

The earliest life forms -- such as a single-cell amoeba -- didn’t need a brain at all.

But when the first vertebrates crawled out of the sea onto dry land, they needed some kind of brain to coordinate their fins, or legs, or whatever they crawled with.

That primitive and rudimentary brain still perches on top of our spinal cord, where it can instantly access muscle reactions to danger. It has only two programs -- Fight and Flight. (Some biologists add additional F-words -- Freeze, Feed, and Fornicate.)

That’s why you should not try to pet an alligator. www.dialogue.ca

Dowd calls this our “Lizard” brain. Every human has one. Some individuals -- I won’t name him -- operate almost entirely out of Lizard brain.

The next stage of mental development, Dowd calls the “Small Furry Mammal” brain. Because all mammals nurture their young. Some do it longer, and maybe better, than others. But all newborn mammals need nourishment and cuddling from their mothers.

As brains evolved, they added a “Monkey Mind” -those undisciplined synapses that leap from idea to idea, entranced by anything new and shiny.

And finally, the brain develops a prefrontal cortex -the big lobe right behind your forehead that handles executive functions. It thinks things through. It considers alternatives, controls impulses, applies values.

Dowd punningly calls the prefrontal cortex our “Higher Porpoise” brain. Only the most intelligent mammals have it. It takes time to mature. Teenagers are still developing it, which is why so many teenagers die doing irrational things like diving off cliffs or driving dangerously.

Back to our roots Stress -- emotional, physical, or chemical -- sends our brains backwards. When students panic during exams, they shut down their rational brain and shift into Monkey Mind, unable to focus. Similarly, alcohol tranquilizes the Higher Porpoise, which explains why drunk people do stupid things.

Fear instantly activates the Lizard brain’s Fight or Flight responses -- unless the Higher Porpoise can intervene in time.

Christmas, I contend, takes us back to our Small Furry Mammal brain. Christmas incarnates our desire to be loved. To be needed. To be valued.

Whether we believe those nativity stories or not, they touch one of our most basic needs -- to belong.

Especially during the long dark nights of winter.

That’s why we gather together. In families, in congregations, in community organizations. We may not even like some of the people in our clubs, our workplaces, our churches. But we desperately want to …/ belong. Not to be alone.

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So we celebrate noisily at office parties and quietly at worship services. We hold family reunions. We radiate good cheer around dinner tables. We hear a story as familiar as a Tim Hortons donut. And we feel comforted.

Not because it supports causes we believe in. Nor because it can be proved by biblical paleontology.

Rather, because it reaches way back into the secondoldest root of our brains. The Lizard brain reacts only to threat. The Small Furry Mammal brain reacts to love. To caring.

So we rehearse and recall the story of a lonely young girl giving birth in a stable. And like the wondering shepherds, we gather around her, and welcome her baby.

And we feel that we too belong.

Jim Taylor **********

Copyright © 2019 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved. To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca (and send a copy to dialogue@dialogue.ca too, please!) ♣

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Nativity

by Rev. Kevin D. Annett

The last Christmas we were all together hangs over memory like the fog did that year in the Alberni valley. It was a time of gathering, years of labor summoning many together where once there were but a few. And it was a time of ending.

The church stewards had warned me to expect an overflow crowd at the Christmas Eve service. Like overgrown elves they busied themselves around the building, stringing wires and sound systems in the cold auditorium kept that way to save money. The snows had come early, and our food bank was already depleted.

With my eldest daughter Clare who was but five, I walked to the church one morning in the week before yule, pondering the cold and the sermon. That's when I met the one who would pierce the fog for us.

The woman stood patiently at the locked door; her brown eyes seemed relieved as we approached, and she gestured at me.

“You’re that minister" she declared, as daughter Clare fell back and grabbed my hand.

Before I could answer, the stranger smiled and uttered with noticeable pleasure at her double entendre, “They say you give it out seven days a week!”

I smiled too, picking up Clare, who was clinging to me by then.

“If you mean food, we’re a bit short, but you’re welcome to what’s left.”

The basement was even more frigid than the outside air, but the woman doffed her overcoat and emitted a cough that might have been a sigh as we approached the food locker.

“For all the good it’ll do …” she remarked, as I 10 dialogue

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unlocked the pantry and surveyed the few cans and bags on the shelves.

I turned and studied her for the first time. She was younger than she had sounded, but a cellular growth marred her upper lip, and a jagged scar ran down her face and neck. Her eyes bore a rough aboriginal wariness.

“I’m sorry there’s not more …” I said to her, since back then I still saw things in terms of giving. But she shook her head, and instead of saying anything, she looked at Clare, and the two of them exchanged a smile for the first time.

I was staring glumly at the cupboard so bare when she inquired, "You doin' a Christmas play here?"

I nodded.

"I bet it’s the usual crap about angels and shepherds, yeah?" she continued.

I just smiled. But her gaze was somber.

“Them people in church, they sing about him and say they know him but shit, they wouldn't spot him if he bit 'em on their ass" I chuckled at that point. The native woman continued.

“Why don’t you do a play about if he came here to get born?"

Before I could comment she picked up a small bag of rice and donned her coat, and concluded, “My bet is Him and Mary and Joseph, they’d end up crashing in the Petrocan garage, down River road. The owner there lets us sleep in the back sometimes.”

And then she was gone.

I stood with Clare for a moment, wondering who the woman was. But my daughter tugged at me with a quiet whimper and I quickly locked the food cupboard www.dialogue.ca

and carried her to my office. I cranked up the heat and set her to drawing. And then I sat at my desk and I wrote for the rest of the day.

The kids in the Christmas Eve service figured it out immediately. The Indians who dared to mingle in the pews with the pale folks that night also took to the amateur performance like they’d composed it themselves. They laughed with familiarity as the ragged holy family was turned away by the local cops and the hotel owners and by every church in town.

It was only the official Christians who were shocked into open-mouthed incredulity at the coming to life of something they thought they knew all about. As the children spoke their lines, I swear I saw parishioners jump and writhe like there were tacks scattered on the pews.

“Joe, I’m getting ready to have this kid. You’d better find us a place real friggin' quick.

“I’m trying, Mary, but Jehovah! Nobody will answer their door! I guess it’s ‘cause we’re low lifes.”

“Look! There’s a church up ahead. I bet they’ll help us!”

If you believe the Bible, whoever He was loved to poke fun at his listeners and shock them out of their fog. Our play would have made him proud. As the eight-year old girl who played Mary pleaded fruitlessly for help from a kid adorned in oversized clerical garb and was covered in scorn by the young “priest”, I heard a sad moan rise from the congregation.

But things took a turn when Mary and Joseph came upon an Indian, played of course by one of the local aboriginal kids.

“Sir, will you help us? My wife’s going to have a baby…”

“Sure!” replied the native kid from experience. “I got a spot in a shed behind the gas station down the road.

The owner lets us all sleep in there!”

And in a contrived scene of boxes and cans scattered where our communion table normally stood, Mary had her baby, as erstwhile homeless men with fake beards and a stray rez dog looked on and one of the wise men urged Mary to keep her newborn quiet lest the Mounties hear his cries and bust everyone for vagrancy.

Voices were subdued that night in the church hall over coffee, cookies and Christmas punch. The normally dull gazes and banal remarks about the time of year were oddly absent. The Indians kept nodding and smiling at me, saying little, and not having to. The children www.dialogue.ca

were happy too, still in costume and playing with the local stray who had posed as the rez dog in the performance that would always be talked about. It was the pale parishioners who seemed troubled, perhaps sensing their own pregnancy as a threatening mystery.

It was one of my last services with them. Somehow we all knew it, since we had entered the story by then.

For a churchly Herod had already heard a rumor and dispatched assassins to stop a birth, and me, even though it was already too late.

My daughter Clare was not running and rolling with the other kids, but in her manner joined me quietly with her younger sister Elinor in tow. Our trio stood amidst the thoughtful looks and unspoken love as person after person came and grasped our hands or embraced us with glistening eyes. An aging Dutch woman named Omma van Beek struggled towards me in her walker and pressed her trembling lips on my cheek and said something to me in her native tongue as the tears fell unashamedly from both of us.

Later, when we were scattered and lost, I would remember that moment like no other, as if something in Omma’s tears washed away all the betrayal and loss that were to follow. And perhaps that looming nightfall touched my heart just then, for I gave a shudder as I looked at my children, almost glimpsing the coming divorce, and I held my daughters close as if that would keep them safe and near to me forever.

The snow was falling again as we left the darkened building, kissing us gently like it had done years before when as a baby, Clare had struggled with me on a toboggan through the deep drifts of my first charge in Pierson, Manitoba, on another Christmas Eve. And still on that dark Alberni night, quiet flakes blessed us with memory and settled in love on all of creation, even on the unmarked graves of slaughtered children up at the local Indian residential school.

The Byzantine icon depicts Jesus as a baby, hugging his worried mother while she stares ahead into his bloody future. Her eyes are turned in grief to the viewer, but his gentle face sees only her, past the moment, past even his own death.

The image may still hang in the basement of my church, where I left it.

Kevin Annett Kevin Annett is a renowned Canadian whistleblower, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and former United Church clergyman in Port Alberni, BC. He was fired without cause VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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and defrocked without due process in 1995-97 after exposing …/ crimes in United Church Indian residential schools.

His work can be found at www.murderbydecree.com and www.bbsradio.com/herewestand .

Listen to Kevin live every Sunday at 6 pm eastern at www.bbsradio.com/herewestand . See the evidence of

genocide in Canada and globally at www.murderbydecree.com and https://tinyurl.com/YT-KA-evid.

Some of Kevin's books can be ordered here: Murder by Decree - The Crime of Genocide in Canada: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530145619 ♣

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Only with Honesty, Truth and Justice can there be a future for our species...

From Gunther Ostermann, Kelowna BC To the Editor. 10.14.2019

Would you go on an airplane trip, if the unqualified passengers were to hold a vote, as to who would be the captain, co-pilot and navigator?

Nobody in their right mind would go on such a suicide trip. But, aren't the passengers of spaceship Earth on such a disaster-prone trip, which becomes ever more apparent, every day, which we try to avert, by changing the unqualified management every few years, with equally inexperienced people?

Where are the philosophers, academics and scientists?

Do they have no vision?

No wonder young people are justifiably very angry and go on the street. Why did it come to this? We humans seem to be the most foolish creature in the animal world, despite all our smart gadgets.

Do we ever think what inferior physical creatures we are, compared to all other animals of similar size, who are stronger, faster and far superior in the use of the five senses? And some animals have ultra sound

ability, heat-seeking, magnetic, star and sun navigation abilities, and who knows what other senses?

To preserve such awesome nature, we need a yet-to-be-created cooperative user society, where all our needs are met. Justin Trudeau’s dad, Pierre, got some wisdom with age and after retirement; and he wrote in his book: Lifting the Shadow of War, Quote: “Cooperation is no longer advantageous; in order to survive it is an absolute necessity. The proper discharge of those functions calls for more than TINKERING with the present system. We know in our hearts what has to be done if we have not yet found in our minds the way it has to be done...The role of leadership today is to encourage the embrace of a GLOBAL ETHIC. An ethic that abhors the present imbalance in the basic human condition.” [End quote] Yes, an Ethic that all mature leaders should embrace: “Do not expect from others to live with less than what you’re willing to live with.”

Sincerely Gunther Ostermann, Kelowna BC gco@shaw.ca (250 765 8726) ♣

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So-called fiscal prudence constrains growth of a green economy Larry Kazdan, Vancouver, lkazdan@gmail.com Written in response to Winnipeg Free Press Editorial, Perpetual deficits not sustainable strategy, 12/23/2019

Counselling the federal government to balance its budget in preparation for a rainy day is a holdover from the gold standard era when national governments could run out of bullion. Today monetarily sovereign countries like Canada, the U.S. and Japan (but not Greece which uses the Euro) can always create however much fiat money is needed. As Alan Greenspan, then U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman explained, "...... monetary authorities—the central bank and the finance ministry—can issue unlimited claims denominated in their own currencies.."

Governments with such powers can either spend too much causing inflation or spend too little allowing 12 dialogue

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mass unemployment. Since Canada today has over one million people officially looking for work, another large cohort working less hours than they prefer, and many others in despair who have given up and aren't even counted, much room for targeted job creation remains.

The Liberal government should robustly aim for true full employment and ignore misguided advice for socalled fiscal prudence that only constrains growth of a green economy, harms society's most vulnerable, and properly belongs in the Victorian era.

Footnotes: 1. Alan Greenspan, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman: https://tinyurl.com/FR-70114 "…monetary authorities—the central bank and the finance ministry—can issue unlimited claims denominated in their own currencies ... a government cannot become insolvent with respect to www.dialogue.ca

obligations in its own currency…"

2. William Mitchell is a Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment & Equity, Univ. of Newcastle, NSW, Australia. https://tinyurl.com/Wm-Mitchell “There is no reason that a fiscal balance should be anything in particular over any particular time period. It should be whatever is necessary to support the non-government spending and saving decisions and ensure there is sufficient spending in the economy to achieve full employment.”

3. John Maynard Keynes https://tinyurl.com/JM-Keynes-cs “The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature which prevents men from being employed, that it is “rash” to employ men, and that it is financially ‘sound’ to maintain a tenth of the population in idleness for an indefinite period,

is crazily improbable – the sort of thing which no man could believe who had not had his head fuddled with nonsense for years and years… Our main task, therefore, will be to confirm the reader’s instinct that what seems sensible is sensible… We shall try to show him that the conclusion, that if new forms of employment are offered more men will be employed, is as obvious as it sounds and contains no hidden snags… that to set unemployed men to work on useful tasks does what it appears to do, namely, increases the national wealth;” Larry Kazdan CPA, CGA, lkazdan@gmail.com http://mmtincanada.jimdo.com/ ♣

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“Prévoyance”

Thoughts prompted by Guardian article, re: ‘Debt in developing economies rises to record $55tn’- LINK: https://tinyurl.com/TGT-55T Erik Andersen, Gabriola Island, BC

Good morning Canada; This is a story (Guardian link above) about the scale of borrowing in other parts of the world but you have to realize excessive borrowing is also happening in Canada and BC. The Federal finance Minister only just disclosed we are looking at a large and growing deficit. Like the Feds, the provinces are borrowing at unsustainable rates by using the dirty trick of letting contracts for wishful public works; like Muskrat Falls, Site C, and more mines at Fort Mac. Governments use contracts to avoid having to report DEBT because the accounting profession allows contracts not to be shown as DEBT. Of course secrecy of contracts is how citizens are kept from understanding the terms of these contracts and why the BC Law Institution declared CONTRACT LAW unfair in 2011.

There is a companion article with this posting, describing the operating instructions to the RCMP as they impose the TransCanada Pipeline/Government will on building the natural gas pipeline to Kitimat in opposition to First Nations land ownership.

The pumping stations are all likely to get BC Hydro electricity at MORE EQUAL RATES than BC citizens and the energy needed to liquify will likely have a similar rate.

Watching all this going on is what the Greeks did before having all their public assets taken from them. www.dialogue.ca

Are we going to be next?

The history below (Shemitah) is instructive. Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff was a strong proponent of cycles, so much so he got the attention of Stalin who then, after gaining some understanding, had him Gulaged and executed.

There is something compelling for going with cycle theory because it allows a projection of either boom or bust. The K-wave indicates we are in a turnover period then headed for global trouble. If there is a reason for trouble, it has to be a combination of destruction of currency real values plus crazy levels of debts, private plus public. The suggestion that a troublesome Shemitah is due in 2022 is as good as this sort of thinking gets. The K-wave is about every 60 years and about that long ago we did have an Annus horribilis (1960).

Regards Erik, twolabradors@shaw.ca Season’s greetings from Erik ♣ A Special Thank You to Erik for the beautiful flowers he delivered. to Dialogue.

"Shemitah [as shared by Leanne Salter, from LINK: https://tinyurl.com/coint-7-years ], the last year of a seven-year cycle in the Jewish calendar (also known as the Sabbatical Year, “a year of rest unto the land”) has several times in the past brought immense financial hardships to the world. The biggest Wall Street crash of 1987 happened during Shemitah and so did the bond market carnage of 1994. The 911 terror attack happened a day after Shemitah in 2001 and Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the subsequent 777-point fall in Dow Jones in 2008 also happened around Shemitah. ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Ideas from David Foster, Port Perry ON

Addictions We Cannot Shake David Muir Foster, Port Perry, Ontario

Addictions are far more widely spread than you might think. And as all successful narcotic pedlars do, selfish pill pushers are designing the next addiction for the widest possible public. Pills and Processes. In my own case, there are some 8 addictions I can’t shake.

And 4 I won’t accept but others do. Oh Yes, many of us were addicted to smoking tobacco with no idea what the downstream effects were.... (I gave up smoking 50 years ago. But now I have other addictions...)

I like a warm bed in winter. A hot drink in the morning. A sanitary place to pee and immediately remove it from sight and stink. A roof that doesn’t leak, and windows I can look out so I can pity the poor saps out there who are more addicted than me. They expect paths and roads that never get muddy or slippery. Snow instantly removed. They tend to acquire automobiles for several addictive purposes... The higher the vehicle sits above the road the greater the addiction reward. The Lord High Mukki Muck in almost regal splendor.

Our vehicles are places of portable privacy where persons are insulated in their own private domains, able to shut others out or invite them in as ‘company’ (depending on their age) where they can practice their further addictions... all the way from sharing a cigarette (or sex) into asking smart phones to explain the next weather pattern or travel routes. The smart phone itself is a new addiction. As indeed is R&D into further Hi-Tech. We give it status by calling it ‘AI’, (Artificial Intelligence or ‘Industrial Design)’... But it is really just another addiction... Electricity Dependency is an addiction. Be a Consumer waving bank cards to reduce your cash balance in favour of a bank that has no knowledge of the Queen’s image on a bank note.

Banks are addicted to ‘Technical change’ and ‘growth’ that is a cancer that soon turns putrid. Money flows come easily to some, and to others not at all.

There is an addiction we have to certain styles of movement just for the sake of comfort or curiosity.

‘Ahhh!’ (you say), ‘that isn’t addiction... it’s the natural state of mankind, The competitive Market Place’.

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In fact all warm-blooded creatures have many similar compulsions. But Ahh! I argue, not the deliberate designers of ‘dissatisfaction with the old’, and a lurching after the ‘new’. I rest my case. (Even there ...addiction to ‘lawyer talk’) Christmas and birthday gifts are addictive behaviour.

We like our addictions, we just don’t recognize them as such. Think a bit about what you as a human can’t do without, (where for comparison) animals can. Because of our addictions, we live a lot longer than most other animals, but we really don’t know how to measure the cost. It has grown from having a coffee when we first wake up. The odours are important.

Addictions rise toward Infinity. ‘Wants’ becoming ‘Needs’... But then it gets into things of the mind.

Habits of comfort fanned into flames of desire by the Addiction Pedlars all around us (the Advertisers).

Never thought of them that way? List your addictions and realize what a sap you are... Addicted persons love the company of other addicts. It is called ‘Brand Loyalty’ in the addictive TV Adverts. And you lose your will... The Devil told me so. He controls addictions. Very little opposition.

The Devil’s Friend Sitting around in the hubs of Hell, the Devil said to his friend…

‘I wonder if you could do as well in bringing a man to his end?’

He was proud of his efforts over the years, the Serpent, and Sin, and Eve, And the things that drive strong men to tears and happy hearts to grieve.

And his Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Pestilence, Famine and War, And his lies that are told by a lover’s lips and deceptions by the score.

The Devil’s Friend made an evil face and he said ‘I’ve not your power, But I think I occupy First Place’ (and the Devil began to glower.

For he knew what his friend was about to say, and he feared that he might be right…

For the Devil’s deeds were of Ancient Days, and his friend’s was a newer blight). www.dialogue.ca

So the Devil searched both high and low to find a Judge he could trust, And he found a man he had come to know, who agreed he would judge if he must.

The edge lay with the Devil’s Friend, for he was a man like me, And he knew how men rush to their end, and dig their graves with glee….

So the Judge then chose between the two (and it wasn’t very hard) for the Devil’s Friend gave me and you

the Plastic Credit card.

Loans at 27% compounding. Smile and take a ‘selfie’ with your window into Hell, (your cell phone), master of addiction that now you can’t escape …

All that has changed in a mere 40 years.

Heh heh heh heh Hell DMF Dec 14, 2019 David Muir Foster, Port Perry – on a small lake north of Oshawa. Nearby we have a small band of 60 uncertain Mississaugas who have lost their way. david.foster2@powergate.ca ♣

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Also from David: A book I am happy to recommend…

“The Girl who saved the King of Sweden The Girl who saved the King of Sweden is actually a constant belly laugh book of deep insight: constant opposites compared over time since WW2. Published in 2013 by Swedish humorous fiction writer Jonas Jonasson, a first Canadian version is in English. The Girl who saved the King of Sweden is wildly improbable and funny with a thread of truth. Fascism, versus anarchy, Republicanism, bumbling civil servants and ballot box cheating. One of the plot incidents has to do with creating a magazine not unlike Dialogue, and then debating what to do with it in its afterlife... Pages 284 to p288 (if you care to read that far.) It took me a long time to go through it with its mix of real history and improbable chance choices that challenged all my values and notions. I remain a Canadian Monarchist.

If you can find a copy, do read it and think about the options… A pair of identical twins named Holger One and Holger Two, a gifted Soweto Black girl ‘in Apartheid South Africa,’ who at age 5 is forced to

haul toilet residue to a dump, and gradually learns she is a mathematical genius. Escapes Africa but runs into others with a stolen atomic bomb the Israelis have built for the South Africans. Biting comment. Escapes Apartheid and gets to Sweden. Has trouble getting the Powers that be to believe that she is driving around illegally hauling a real live 3 megaton atomic bomb in a trailer she wants to be rid of. No one will listen...

The historical context accurate, the players bumblers.

To me it points out how sheep-like and inexperienced we here are. A lot of laugh out loud humour. This was a huge international best seller I highly recommend, along with its predecessor The 100 year old Man who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared (More than 6 million copies sold worldwide.)

[There are also two sequels, Hitman Anders and the Meaning of It All (2016) and The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man (2018) David Foster, david.foster2@powergate.ca ♣

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What Time Is It? A Book by John Berger (Author), Selçuk Demirel (Illustrator), Maria Nadotti (Introduction) - Sep. 24, 2019

“Patience, patience, because the great movements of history have always begun in those small parenthesis that we call ‘in the meantime.’” —John Berger The last book that John Berger wrote was this precious little volume about time titled What Time Is It?, now posthumously published for the first time in English by Notting Hill Editions. Berger died before it was completed, but the text has been assembled & illustrated by his longtime collaborator & friend Selçuk Demirel, and has an introduction by Maria Nadotti. www.dialogue.ca

What Time Is It? is a profound and playful meditation on the illusory nature of time. Berger reflects on what time has come to mean to us in modern life. Our perception of time assumes a uniform and ceaseless passing of time, yet time is turbulent. It expands and contracts according to the intensity of the lived moment.

We talk of time “saved” in a hundred household appliances; time, like money, is exchanged for the content it lacks. Berger posits the idea that time can lengthen lifetimes once we seize the present moment. “What-isto-come, what-is-to-be-gained empties what-is.”

Hardcover, 120 pages; ISBN-10: 1912559145 ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Christmas Memories

Ramblings

Randy Vancourt, Toronto ON

There are certain special times of year that always seem to elicit strong memories, probably none more so than Christmas. The holiday season seems almost custom-designed to create memorable moments; not necessarily always good ones, but memorable nonetheless.

One of my very earliest Christmas memories is a slightly unpleasant one. I vividly recall the day in Grade One when an older student breathlessly decided to share with me his recent discovery about Santa Claus’s existence. Of course I didn’t believe him for a second, but still asked my mom about it as soon as I got home. I was fully expecting her to deny what this kid had told me, but her answer began with, “Well I guess you’re old enough to know the truth…”

Believe me, that’s a memory that lives on forever and will definitely inform the way I answer my own kids when this question arises.

Fortunately most of my other Christmas memories have not been quite so devastating. I recall so many great moments decorating trees, caroling door-todoor, school pageants, opening presents, sharing Christmas dinner with the family. Of course some memories stand out not because they are warm and cozy, but unexpected, hilarious or simply strange.

There was the Christmas we bought a turkey that had obviously been defrosted and refrozen, which we only discovered while roasting it on Christmas Day. The stench was so overpowering that even the dog wouldn’t go near it.

One year I was marching in the Santa Claus Parade dressed as Cookie Monster from Sesame Street.

Sadly a part of the costume did not arrive from New York, so rather than being hidden, my face protruded directly out of Cookie’s mouth, making it look like I was his half-digested snack and horrifying the kids.

Then there was the Christmas I was hired to write the music for a huge holiday stage production in Toronto. I had dreams of it being the next Radio City 16 dialogue

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Music Hall event, but instead the producers lost over a million dollars, cheques bounced, performers walked and the theatre seized the assets in lieu of payment. Thanks to a kind security guard, I was able to sneak back in and rescue my music from the orchestra pit before it was thrown away. Happy Holidays indeed.

For my most bizarre Christmas moment though, I have to go back to one of my first years in Toronto. I had recently moved from my home in Quebec, and my parents decided to come visit for the holidays.

My family always made sure to attend church on Christmas Eve, so I decided to take them to a local United Church that I went to occasionally. This building happened to be directly across the street from a place of worship with a slightly more evangelical bent.

This was the typical sort of Christmas Eve service; singing carols and retelling the nativity story. Suddenly halfway through, the rear doors to the church flew open and in came a rollicking group of Christmas revelers. We all watched in amazement as they danced up the centre aisle, loudly singing an uplifting gospel tune while playing drums and shaking tambourines.

They reached the front of the church, finished their song and looked out at the congregation. One could almost hear the proverbial penny drop, when their leader looked at us and said, “Um…I think we’re in the wrong place.”

Their intended destination had been the church across the street but apparently someone got the address wrong. So back down the aisle they danced again, singing a holiday carol as they went. As the doors shut behind them our minister stood wordlessly for a moment, then said, “Well, so much for a silent night.”

Silent or otherwise, every Christmas season brings something a bit special and memorable to our lives.

So this year may your turkey be plump, juicy and ideally, not rancid, and may all your loved ones be either at your table or in your heart.

Randy’s Website: www.randyvancourt.com ♣ www.dialogue.ca

THE THREAD

Tales from Fruitvale…

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC

There was a dozen of us at the meeting; we played a game called ‘table topics.’ This game took the form of a lucky dip of sorts, fishing through the large envelope, searching with our fingertips through the contents for an object to talk about. There were shapes and forms of all sizes and texture, hard, soft, round, a flat rectangular slab, wires and even a bar of chocolate.

Each of us took a turn, dipped into the contents of random items, chose one, pulled it out and revealed it to the others. All gave pause as we considered what we had in our hands, then, on the spot to speak about it, we made up our stories to fill two minutes. Interestingly and strangely each participant felt somewhat connected to his unseen choice of things. When the thing was revealed, people expounded upon it with a sigh of relief and a connection to the item. The chocolate bar was eaten; the computer wire and headphones elicited stories of life interest, the slab of wood had a finish which was the envy of a furniture stripping project. There was also: ginger root, a single sock, a key and a pen. My blind choice turned out to be a spool of thread. Two points came to mind, one, a practical solution to clothing repair and sewing on the essential button. My second choice was to use ‘the thread’ as a philosophical symbol. It was just the previous day I had found, in a pile of old papers, an old quotation, written in wobbly script on an index card by one of my children many years ago. “I am in all relationships as a thread through a string of pearls.”

My first thought was of course, connectivity, connection as in an invisible thread with each other. At each meeting, we were all connected by the thread of our common interest in being there, and thereafter to our families, grandchildren and humanity at large. We are connected to our town and country, the planet, our moon and the sun upon which we depend for our lives, and, not to forget our solar system and our prized place within it, in the ‘just right zone.’ Also somewhat more tenuously we might add.....The Milky Way galaxy, certainly astronomers would have a more connecting thread with that. www.dialogue.ca

I concluded with the inference of the invisible thread being voluntarily extended to a deeper source of origin, the option of belief left to the individual. This was as far as I got in that time allowed but reflection afterwards upon that conclusion, led me to speculate further on the mystical thread.

We speak of the thread of memory and recently we have just remembered the human losses of the two world wars. On television I watched the story of Lt. Col. John McCrea who wrote the poem, “In Flanders Fields.” My eight year old grandson Malachi just sang that song with his choir in the recent 2019 Remembrance Day ceremony. That poem has spun a thread which extends to others across the generations.

The subject of our local minister, who gave the address at the Fruitvale cenotaph, was a plea to humanity to, ‘Serve others and not our own selfish pursuits of power that leads to war and oppression.’ The names of the local Fruitvale soldiers were called; they had served Canada, lost their lives in foreign lands and we who stood there, living in our home towns all across the country, owe our freedom to those who paid the sacrifice and to those who returned scarred from the experience.

Across the planet are different races, cultures, beliefs, but with just mutual respect or empathy, the invisible thread would tie all, extending everywhere – like the internet, but deeper within. “I am in all relationships as a thread through a string of pearls.”

This thought transcends humanity’s divisions which threaten its civilization with potential destruction as history records, particularly in the nuclear age. We could be completely wiped out. The universality of a thread connecting relationships is not common everywhere; it is frayed through divisive politics and further unravelled by the armaments industry, oil and corporate power, the financing of dictatorships and exploitation of peoples.

This thought of universality is a thread to the infinite.

Just as the Earth is influenced by the moon and its seasons of growth and regeneration, so the planet traverses the zodiac of constellations in its orbit of the sun, as the entire solar system travels through the galaxy. The Milky Way could be seen as a cosmic …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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mother within whom our solar system was incubated.

This is looking beyond, at the great mystery – gazing at stars, peering through telescopes and, for professional astronomers, reading radio wave data, measuring and computing distances and material elementary substance. But there is also, the looking WITHIN for the thread of meaning in existence.

We are on a planet bobbing in the sea of space, our atmosphere and magnetosphere receiving, deflecting and regulating rays of cosmic power which bring life and death. We are in a dance of light and darkness, spring and winter, prone to extremes in temperatures and projectiles from the great beyond. We make our appearance at birth and experience this biological spaceship travelling at 67,000 miles per hour, but all we notice is the night passing into day, from sleep to waking. We work to possess what we need, to house and feed ourselves and coordinate our lives to do our task of choice or duty; we learn our trade and try to reach our goal, which seems to keep moving.

Day by day we assimilate what we can through digestion of food and thoughts, environment, education and potential conditioning. We try to stabilize our lives while other forces pressure us to fight for survival or

persevere through struggle – leaving somewhere within us to feel some need for self expression. We might carve from wood or write a song of love or of rage against misfortune or tyranny; there are many paths for many hearts and bodies.

Someone invoked us to “serve the path with heart.”

Relationships bring us harmony until some trust is broken and then the light within us gives way to darkness. Perhaps soul searching may seek to eliminate the toxins acquired by our character, when equanimity is lost, and the memory of deeds encrusts our spirit so that the thread connecting each other is broken. But then, if there is a glimmer of hope or someone cares and helps in some way. Then, as if from the deep winter, spring again brings new energy to respond; and aspiration seeps through our weary mind like a chance for salvation.

‘The thread’ we must visualise and integrate into our path with heart. Of course, we are not all a high soul like Ghandi, for example, but his message is simple: to unify not divide, to persist in adversity, aim for peace and freedom, keep spinning the thread.

Paul Bowles, December 2019, scribepoet@hotmail.com ♣ SEE ALSO FROM PAUL: Year of The Rat: calligraphy, P.59 ♣

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“The Fifth Columnist”

His name was Rico, he wore a diamond Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON

I’m embarrassed to say that I followed the American elections more than our own. Beyond listening to a few clips on the CBC, I was transfixed by CNN. I don’t think I’m the only Canadian alarmed by what is transpiring now in the United States. Every day, impeachment of the President of the United States grows closer. Every day we hear testimony that the president tried to strong arm the leader of another country to investigate and smear his political rival, Joe Biden.

A remarkable thing in the hearings was that the people were there to testify about what they knew, what they saw, but Republicans repeatedly attacked the process during questioning. They could not argue the facts. Instead, Americans were asked to believe that the president was investigating corruption in tiny Ukraine, while the president himself has refused to divest himself from 18 dialogue

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his businesses, and dark hints of money laundering, of being a Russian puppet, swirl about him.

Even if you believe that the president wasn’t guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours, high crimes being “one that can be done only by someone in a unique position of authority, which is political in character, who does things to circumvent justice”, there are two things which should matter more than anything.

One, the president is extremely suggestible. The press can assault him day after day and he punches right back. But speak on the telephone to this president, as the president of Turkey did, or communicate in a letter (Kim Jung-un of North Korea), and somehow, for some reason, he’s extremely malleable. For some reason, he distrusts the word of his intelligence agencies and believes the word of the tyrant, Vladimir Putin. It’s bizarre, isn’t it, to attack the leaders of your allies, and fawn over dictators. Hard to believe that Russia has been an adversary, in one guise or another, of the U.S. www.dialogue.ca

since 1917, over 100 years, and yet we are told that tiny Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Two, Trump has extreme impulse control issues. For example, without consultation, he orders the pull out of U.S. forces out of Syria, which precipitates its invasion by Turkey and allows Russia to consolidate its ground. With business interests in Istanbul and Moscow, it’s quite a coincidence that the president has tossed aside American foreign policy, whatever you might think about it, to favour two countries in which he has business. I think Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, had it right we she suggested that, referring to Donald Trump, all roads lead to Russia.

More than high crimes and misdemeanours, Trump’s suggestibility and impulse control issues are dangerous in a man who has his finger on the “nuclear trigger”.

This alone makes waiting until 2020 a risky business.

It’s sad to say that the current Republican Party is not the party of Reagan and Bush, it’s more of a cult. What Trump has done with this once respectable party is highjack it and make it a fascist political party. Not so much a Hitler as a Mussolini. The thing is, do Americans wait for the 2020 election to oust this misogynist, racist president?

From the Washington Post comes this remarkable

admission, quoting Donald Trump, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”

Maybe. But if I were looking for a way to remove the cancer from office, I’d threaten him with the RICO statutes. According to Wikipedia, “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) is a federal law designed to combat organized crime in the United States. It allows prosecution and civil penalties for racketeering activity performed as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise”. Examples of racketeering include bribery, fraud and money laundering! Hmm. An ominous note was sounded when Trump suggested at a rally in Kentucky, “What they don’t know is that when we hang it up, in five years...or nine years, or 13 years...or maybe 17 years, or maybe – if I still have the strength – 21 years...” This would mirror the political trajectory of Vladimir Putin, who has been in office for almost 20 years. The worst fear is that Trump will simply call the elections in 2020 “rigged”, and refuse to leave office.

At the end of the song, Copacabana, Barry Manilow counsels us to not fall in love. For millions of Americans, this is good advice.

Mike Neilly, michael.neilly@bell.net ♣

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Also from Mike Neilly…

I'm very sorry to hear the news of Maurice. When I heard of his passing, the poem High Flight (below) came to mind. When my sister died over 40 years ago, I knew that she had gone to a far-away country and I would see her again. I still do.

Wishing you well, Mike’

High Flight ~

By John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace www.dialogue.ca

"High Flight" is one of the most-recited poems in the world, and it has been since it was written in September 1941 by a 19-year-old Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot Officer, John Gillespie Magee Jr. Three months later, young Magee was killed in a training collision over England. Over 77 years later, the poem remains his powerful legacy.

Where never lark, or ever eagle flew — And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. John Gillespie Magee, Jr. (1922-41) was born in Shanghai, China, to an English mother and an American father.

At the age of eighteen, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, trained as a pilot, and was sent to England to fly a Supermarine Spitfire with the 412 Fighter Squadron. After a high altitude test flight one day, John wrote his parents a letter and enclosed a poem--this one—that the test flight had inspired. He was killed a few months later, when his plane collided with that of another British military pilot. ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Z is for…

The letter Z… A German word, starting with Z comes to my mind, - 'Zukunft' meaning ''Future' KAREN KARATEEW, Qualicum Beach, BC My Husband and I often contemplate our ZUKUNFT,

what might happen, how will it unfold, what can we do to prepare for it, will it be a purposeful life?

We remembered how our parents tried to prepare us for our future. I grew up in Canada, my husband in Germany. We both got our first piggy banks when we were about six years old.

Our parents wanted us to have a better, brighter Zukunft. They worked very hard to make sure that our future would be good. I don't remember them taking much care about their own Zukunft.

For me, as a child, it was scary: one day it will happen, Zukunft is no longer far away, all of a sudden it will be reality.

I realized that the preparation for my zukunft was quite a battle: learn, work, and save. The older I got, the faster that wheel turned – learn-work- save.

Although I realized the importance to save for rainy days, to me it seemed to run out of control.

Although we lived a healthy life – most of our food came from our gardens, the air was fresh and the water was clean. The word pollution did not exist for us as children.

Obviously there was a bigger problem than we all thought: worries about our future made us sick. It takes a bigger toll out of our lives than we realize.

A few weeks ago my dear friend of 38 years, Shena, called me with determination in her voice. My Aussie Friend, never mincing words, got to the point: I am going bye bye.

She explained her life the last six months. She wanted to be the master of her own destiny. I cannot sit, lie, or even walk without crying with pain. There is no quality nor dignity to my life. I have put all my

affairs in order and even arranged the 'celebration of life' next month.' She laughed when she said she couldn't trust her three sons to put things in order, 'They can't even agree on which restaurant to go to without a major discussion.'

Hearing her story, I reluctantly realized that the doctor-assisted dying could be a compassionate offering.

Still, she was my friend and I realized again that this would be my last time that I would speak with her.

Between tears and great sadness, I thought of myself, my loss of my friend, my feelings. But, this was her life, her 'zukunft,' her destiny. I had no right to plead with her to live for our sakes. This had been a long, drawn out process for my friend. She elected and was awarded this ability to be master of her destiny.

With a heavy heart I asked her, what advice she had for me. (Silly question, but I did not want to end this conversation.) She answered, “Always have a smile for everyone you meet, and never judge people.”

Generally, we do not know the exact death time of our family or friends, and to know this, made things finite, and I asked her if I could call her the next day for a brief moment. When I did, I was better composed and in concluding our conversation and in a low voice I said, “You have been a wonderful friend to Heinz and me. Wherever your journey takes you, please take all our love with you.” While she laughed, she said, “I am greedy, I plan on taking everybody's love with me.” I quietly said goodbye to my dear friend.

Since that day I think more about my own zukunft, live my life, my zukunft, today, don't put things on the back burner, and, being a Buddhist – mindfully prepare for that big journey, called reincarnation.

From: karateew@shaw.ca ♣

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Thoughts about the Future – a.k.a. Zukunft I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day. – James Joyce The future influences the present just as much as the past. – Friedrich Nietzsche 20 dialogue

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No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. – Alan Watts ♣

www.dialogue.ca

Z is for Zeitgeist ‘The defining spirit or mood, as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time’ Here is an excerpt from one person’s analysis of our times… by Chris Kirckof:

Dear Matrix, I am aware of your efforts to dumb down, sedate and control the world’s populations. I am fully aware of your destructive programs to sicken and alter humanity through the chemical, electromagnetic and genetic modification of our food, plants, animals and ourselves. I am aware of your careless destruction of our earth, skies and oceans through resource exploitation, geoengineering and weather modification. I see all of your many false flag events and devious schemes purposely designed to keep the world in perpetual fear and continual wars against fabricated outside enemies for control and profit. I have caught on to your fascist medical system designed to drain and destroy humanity via the decrepit allopathic medical system based on profit and ill health at every level, including the proliferation of pharmaceuticals, invasive and debilitating treatments and deliberately damaging vaccines. […]

I am aware that your “entertainment” industry is simply socially engineered mind control. I am informed of your AI, electromagnetic grid and mind manipulating designs and technologies that are being imposed to further expand your psychopathic control program. I know that you repress emerging technologies that threaten existing parasitic profitable ones, such as the hazardous petroleum and nuclear industries, when alternative energy sources and other such solutions have arisen for many decades which you have suppressed. I am aware that you sequester knowledge and information in a vast array of fields to keep the general populace in the dark and thereby disempowered as to our true historical context, while you are coveting secret information and carrying out advanced covert research for your own ends. […] ~Chris Kirckof From: patricia white pwhite.red@gmail.com READ at: https://barbaramckenzie.wordpress.com/2018/06/14/dearmatrix-from-chris-kirckof/ ♣

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Some ‘Zeitgeist’ files about our Times…

What a system-crash could look like?

From: June Ross, Nanaimo jross12@telus.net - Dec 4, 2019 and Gene McGuckin, Dec 3, 2019

Well, here's an essay putting forward what looks like educated guesses about what the climate/social/economic/political crisis will look like, when the ka-ka hits the fan. It illustrates the obvious fact that a system-crash could be prolonged and ugly. The desirable alternative comes at the end. Most of the article is the motivator for doing the necessary organizing to achieve the desirable alternative. I know this is a politically controversial method of convincing people, but a growing library of scientific reports strongly suggests that the gentler methods might be made irrelevant by the rush of objective circumstances. *******************************

Catabolism: Capitalism’s Frightening Future LINK: www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/01/catabolismcapitalisms-frightening-future/

By CRAIG COLLINS, Nov. 1, 2018

The word “catabolism” comes from the Greek and is used in biology to refer to the condition whereby a living thing feeds on itself. Thus, catabolic capitalism is a self-cannibalizing system whose insatiable hunger for profit can only be fed www.dialogue.ca

by devouring the society that sustains it “Out of the frying pan, into the fire” is an apt description of our current place in history. No matter what you think of globalization, I believe we’ll soon discover that capitalism without it is much, much worse.

No one needs to convince establishment economists, politicians and pundits that the absence of globalization and growth spells trouble. They’ve pushed globalization as the Viagra of economic growth for years.

But globalization has never been popular with everyone. Capitalism’s critics recognize that it generates tremendous wealth and power for a tiny fraction of the Earth’s seven billion people, makes room for some in the middle class, but keeps most of humanity destitute and desperate, while trashing the planet and jeopardizing human survival for generations to come.

Around the world, social movements believe “Another World Is Possible!” when neoliberal globalization is replaced by a more democratic, equitable, Earth-friendly society. They assume that any future without globalization is bound to be an improvement.

But now it appears that this assumption may be …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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wrong. In fact, future generations may someday look back on capitalism’s growth phase as the dynamic days of industrial civilization, a naïve time before

anyone realized that the worst was yet to come. […]

LINK: https://tinyurl.com/cp-catabolism

♣

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Why the World Needs a Google Detox Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola, Nov 17, 2019:

Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies, a former senior software engineer at Google… shares his inside knowledge of this global monopoly, revealing why Google is not a reliable source of information anymore… and how Google is manipulating public opinion and the political landscape […] Google tools

such as autofill search recommendations can be used to sway public opinion… (with) significant political consequences. Research shows biased search rankings can shift voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, and that people will be completely unaware of having been manipulated […]

LINK: https://tinyurl.com/Mercola-6739 ♣

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The Arcadia Project Dean Goddard, Vancouver Island, BC

Would you like to do something inspiring and visionary with the last decade or two of your life? Do you find the 24-hour, plugged-in, ‘turned-on,’ ‘tuned-in’ lifestyle of our times to be out-of-synch with your inner nature and spiritual wellbeing? The Zeitgeist of the 21st Century – as in the spirit, ideas and beliefs of the time – is overwhelming and disconcerting to many of us – aging ‘Baby Boomers’ or ‘War-time’ or Depression-era babies – who grew up in simpler times, before the Digital Age. And perhaps we find ourselves wondering if there is any hope of returning to a more holistic way of living our remaining years…

There is a project on Vancouver Island with an intent to provide a living circumstance that is financially, environmentally, and socially sustainable… a ‘permaculture’ retreat, if you will – for exploring ways to live in flexible, evolving harmony with others and within our natural world. We call it The Arcadia Project, in tribute to the simple, pastoral lifestyle of the Arcadians of Greek history.

We are following an ancient belief that we as humans have a great need to feel needed and to feel we are contributing something positive with our lives. This is not something widely taught in our culture, yet it is the foundation of a healthy and happy life. So we are seeking to develop an alternative to the traditional “retirement” in a community of everyday comforts & passive entertainment. We envision a place where you wake up daily, knowing you have a valued role to play and are surrounded by an environment of productive and “health giving” activity, where your ‘caring’ for others and your environment is valued and supported.

We are proposing a natural form of active retirement 22 dialogue

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situated on farmland, where we can achieve a wide breadth of participation and sustainability. We are a small group of retired individuals looking to purchase land that will be developed into The Arcadia Ranch: a multi-generational, participatory and caring community. Young and old will live together and share resources, maintain facilities, operate work-shops to help lower costs while generating revenue from the goods produced. Work-shops will include a greenhouse and gardens, wood and metal shops, arts, crafts/weaving, candle making, writing/reading, poetry & theatre, bakery and café, and others based on the knowledge and skills of residents.

Anticipated costs to the retired residents are estimated at 50% compared to conventional retirement facilities.

More importantly however is that everyone no matter what age, will have opportunities to offer and receive caring support while feeling useful and needed.

Workers and their children will be provided food and lodging (and perhaps a small stipend) in return for their care, work and support. [Provincial health services will be accessible when needed.]

At this time, we are seeking those with similar interests and seeking something different at this stage of their lives. The epidemics of loneliness, habitat loss, income inequality, anxiety, and others all demand solutions that work. Our answer is developing social living circumstances where fellowship, frugality, and love for the environment are at its foundation. If you are interested in contributing to the development of these ideas, please email arcadiaranch@gmail.com or call Dean at 778-871-3606. We will keep you up to date in future issues of this magazine.

From Dean Goddard, Vancouver Island Email: arcadiaranch@gmail.com

♣

www.dialogue.ca

“Zorro, Zinsser and Zinnias” Penn Kemp, London ON Activist poet, performer and playwright Penn Kemp is the League of Canadian Poets Spoken Word Artist, 2015. Her latest book of poetry, River Revery, was published by Insomniac Press in 2019.

See https://pennkemp.weebly.com.

Poem for the Transient Zinnia Entrances are everywhere, entrancing, luring me to the ever realm of now where somewhere I am always present, waiting for my mind to remember and sink down to ground, the simply true.

The past sways, shadowed by vague remembrance, sways and looms in the clearing by the creek. Looks to the main chance to be be heard again right this time as rain left puddling.

valerian and foxglove growing unadulterated.

This garden I’m lazily pleased to watch zinnia parade your season of glory as though my gaze were enough to bestow curative property by osmosis, direct through vision. Zinnias tell their own time, a continuous measure of light, soothing and sequential. Before I lift a finger they are all ready mulch. And next winter will have to rely on my mind’s eye for balm and taste’s solace.

Names and memories on the tongue, exotic dittany of Crete, Jacob’s Ladder, witch’s vervain.

Instead for the garden and you I offer only words infused in a violet litany of properties.

Jewelweed touch-me-not, rich globes of red and gold catches and holds light along the bank.

Penn Kemp

There is more past than future for me.

But there’s always time for beauty and reflection, however muddy the water.

Though Narcissus heads have nodded off, the duty of such beauty is ever to bud.

An early version of this poem appears in Penn’s River Revery (Insomniac Press, 2019).

The properties of zinnia are orange, not medicinal. Unless you consider beauty to be healing (I do!) O mutative metaphor, your bloom lasts from last frost till fall, longer than your daisy cousins by far and fuller.

How could I have landed here on this littoral, an unknown shore away from home in another continent, on ‘la otra orilla’, where all is new?

* You beam, dappled in sun yard, belying any need for action beyond your own rhythm. I could be brewing Earl Grey tea from bergamot leaf as I drink lemon balm, peppermint, rosemary.

I could make tinctures to strengthen immunity out of evening primrose and echinacea purpurea.

Or I could make Bach Flower Remedies from impatience, chicory, clematis to ward off moods.

I could soak roses and heliotrope in oil for attar or cream skin ointment from orange calendula.

I could stir fry these glorious trumpet squash flowers, stir starflowers of borage into salads.

Longshore Drift into Morning, for William Zinsser

The only way from the sea and its stony shingle is straight up a grassy cliff to the native village at the top. The last few yards are treacherous because of steep overhang. I dig through loose earth under the grass roots to reach the plain, scrambling up the scree to scan the flat directly.

The villagers themselves take circuitous routes round the mountain along a desert path to climb more securely to their homes. Wary of visitors, they might shove me off the cliff just as they had pushed the memoirist, William Zinsser. Coattails flapping, he flew into bleak space and fell to his fate.

Castaway, I scan the plain for evidence of storied plan,

But all that activity is for other years. Leave www.dialogue.ca

…/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Penn Kemp: Longshore Drift into Morning, contd.

sediments of geological strata that might clue me into cultural niceties a gesture might provoke or puzzle.

I’ve been worried about writing memoirs, not wanting to delve back to the past. Zinsser says In How to Write a Memoir: Be yourself, speak freely and think small.

But look where that left Zinsser in the dream’s spindrift!

These tablelands call for a broader spread, a bold sign that will welcome me into the next day’s writing large.

Penn Kemp An early version of this poem appears in Penn’s Barbaric Cultural Practice (Quattro Books)

What Matters As if. What matters. As if. What’s left.

We have only our elegies, even the need for elegy, remembering and inventing: invenio, I come upon. I come upon your prints on muddy path, neatly, deliberately splayed.

And wish you well on your way, wish you well, ghost Fox conjured by your track and a whiff of presence real or imaginary, who can tell. Well, you could, if you were here.

In passing through this vale (memory’s world, trudging up sludge), the word that springs to mind is devotion, despite the mess, life's unholy business forever left unfinished.

Devotion to the earth and its creatures: you.

By any other name, you are onomatopoeic.

You slink best in Spanish as Zorro or Zorra, the vixen. By your name we shall know you, sly.

[An early version is in Penn’s Fox Haunts.] ♣

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The Poetry of Susan K. Woodsworth

Child of discovery

Susan K. Woodsworth, Ottawa 28 Aug 1989, Poem #120 (shared in her memory by John Woodsworth)

I wish to return to my childhood.

I wish to recapture those moments of not knowing: crystal-shaped, light prisms, catching the fire of discovery — that perfect purity like a clear looking-glass in which I may view myself and Nature at one in a single ray, whole, didactic, designated, a meteored foundation becoming a springboard to a future, the past barely perceptible, which could act as a leverage of weights, slowing down the bounding hopes…

The faithful reaching out for wonders of each dawning hour — hours not measured by the timing sounds of distant years that gather the dust of non-productive experiences or mistakes unrecognised…

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I want to stay as a child forevermore — to feel the eternal energies — to know only the light and find the dark — not a fear-dwelling of nought, but just a shade to rest from the noon-day sun of life’s intense purposes…

I think I lost the child, age beckoning me on — advancing years, decline — Then I must find the child of expectancy, give birth again and again to a universe of light, all space filled with the child…

Creation’s eternal cry: To give birth to the child!

Yes, the child of discovery goes on in a perpetual bliss of recognition — the birth process is in the mind of us all — the Child of the Universe — Our home of eternal discovery!! ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Winter Time – What Does It Mean To You? B. Rouse, Owen Sound, mistawis@bmts.com

Remember back to winters we experienced long ago – the winters haven’t changed really, but I’m afraid we have. Long ago, and perhaps far away, winter and snow meant a lot of different things – Christmas concerts, an Eaton’s “Flexible Flyer” under the tree, skiing, skating, snowball fights, snowmen, snow angels, Valentine’s Day! And on the downside – very cold feet, lots of awkward clothes and boots to get into, frozen lunches when we got to school, hurriedly dressing in cold bedrooms, not too many snow-days from school – we walked, so it wasn’t a case of buses not being able to get through.

I won’t say we didn’t wish for spring sometimes, but we took winter as it came and believed the groundhog when he made his prediction. We welcomed the sight of the first crow of the season, and maple syrup time meant spring was on its way.

Now, of course, we’ve grown up! Winter means cleaning off our car, shovelling lots of snow,

cancellations of all sorts of our activities, and a close watch on temperatures and road conditions. We probably experience aches and pains we blame on the weather, and we’re certainly more careful about exposing ourselves to the current bout of ailments going the rounds.

As old-timers, we talk about the winters we have known and how bad they were, a prime example being the winter of 1947 when everything was shut down for two weeks! We can reminisce fondly of trips by sleigh or cutter behind a team of horses, and, failing that, the clanking of the chains on the wheels of the cars as they travelled the icy roads. The memories undoubtedly are better than it actually was!

Apart from school, entertainment wasn’t so important, possibly we did get bored, but there frequently were neighborhood parties – crokinole, euchre, and just visiting back and forth. We got through it, and if we moaned, that is not part of our memories now! We do know, of course, that spring will come – it always has!♣

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Christmas - the whole story, from the History Channel Candy canes, Santa Claus, presents under the Christmas tree... Where did all this stuff come from?

Some surprising answers. A History Channel documentary tracing how a holiday that started in pagan Rome became the centerpiece of the Christian year.

And why this season is known as much for shopping as for the birth of the Christ Child.

“Christmas Unwrapped.” (video) LINK: www.brasscheck.com/video/christmasthe-whole-story/

– from Brasscheck TV

♣

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Winter Solstice

by Dreama Vance, SpiritualDynamics.net

December 21st is Winter Solstice for the northern hemisphere. It is my most favorite day of the entire year! Yin energy is at its peak and calls us to settle down with a warm cup of herbal tea and reflect on the past year. It calls us inside ourselves to contemplate, meditate, and rest in the reassurance of the Presence.

You can feel this energy pulling you. The energy calls you inward. It is one of the reasons we experience so much stress during this time of the year. We are running around madly, busy as can be, exactly opposite of what the energies of Nature are calling us to do. When we are in harmony with the Earth and her energies, we move into flow and grace.

Stop and rest today. www.dialogue.ca

Be still and quiet your mind and allow reflection.

I have been reflecting during Winter Solstice for several years now. As I reflect on the past year, a single word or phrase will come to consciousness that identifies the energy of the year just lived. It will be the theme or topic of experience that life has given me in my journey. […] READ MORE: www.spiritualdynamics.net/articles/solstice/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

♣

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Robin Mathews Uncut

CANADA AND CHINA. From Slavery to Managed Citizenship on the Globe. PART ONE

By Robin Mathews, November 2019

The ‘great’ civilizations of Greece and Rome were founded upon slavery at a time when physical labour was basic to managing individual life. But life could have proceeded there, happily… without slavery.

China used slavery through some of its history, but does not seem to have founded its community on slavery as did Greece and Rome. There were, indeed, times when slavery was outlawed in China. (The history of China is very long – over three thousand years, and so almost any generalization about China can be challenged.) Wars killing millions have been fought there by the ambitious. Competitions for suzerainty have been common. Some scholars suggest Mao’s (modern) policies and actions resulted in the brutal death of untold millions.

In what we choose to speak of as modern times (post the Christopher Columbus “discovery” of the Americas, 1492), one of the most brutal, oppressive, and warlike (democratic) Imperial Powers – the USA – was also founded upon slavery. Even while composing its great Declaration of Independence (declaring that all men are created equal) and for many decades after it … the U.S. welcomed ships full of Black Slaves and put them to (mis)use ….

Indeed slavery has much to do with the difference in development between Canada and the United States.

The U.S. has a more productive climate, about seven times as much arable land, and it produced an independent central government nearly a hundred years before Canada did…. But perhaps the most important element of its growth to wealth and power was SLAVERY which flourished in the USA for 250 years before its erasure. One of the major expenses in the Capitalist System (we all know) is The Cost of Labour. In the U.S.A. for nearly 250 years the Capitalist system could develop with a huge slave population almost erasing “the cost of labour” from the account books of huge portions of the U.S. economy.

China’s (recorded) history is very old and fascinating.

The communities, clans, ethnic groupings, movements of population resulting in the “Han” people and its equation with the Chinese may play a small part in the present “sinofication” of the Uyghur (Islamic) population allegedly being “re-educated” (inside kinds of 26 dialogue

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settlement areas) into conformity with present Chinese values. Put very simply, the imposition of present values under the “for life” head of the Chinese government, Xi Jinping, will want to erase (or at least defuse) the Muslim faith, assure use of the Chinese language (Mandarin), and teach acceptance of whatever iteration of Communist belief is dominant in China. (”Managed citizenship?”) That is not at all to say the Chinese Mainland population is servile.

Indeed, public protests and disagreement have not been uncommon, and the Central Government takes pains to work on the living conditions of average Chinese people ... raising the standard of living of a gigantic population as a major program.

We cannot say – with the wildest stretch of the imagination - that a “good” (U.S.) democratic country is in contest with an “evil” (China) “undemocratic” country for global dominance… or that a freely choosing, enlightened population faces a “managed” population under the “heel of communism”. The U.S. population is as managed as any population on the globe….

For the 35 or so millions of (mostly) Euro-Canadians in a Canada that crystallized in 1867 (upon a subgroup of indigenous peoples roughly brushed aside), the one billion and a quarter population/Chinese phenomenon (in a country smaller than Canada) shaping itself over 3000 years until the 1912 Declaration of the Republic of China (ending 2000 years of dynastic rule) presents a reality and a modern State of a stunning and complex kind.

In 1949 the Chinese State was won to Communism by a romantic, adventurous, daring, imaginative, and (more recently) much maligned “wartime leader” called Mao Tse-Tung. He was, among other things, a political philosopher, military leader, and a poet … and even a theorist on the need for ‘democracy’ within a centralized system.

Today… China still presents itself as a Communist society (a semi-Command Economy). It is, in fact, a One Party State … and the One Party has opened itself to something like ‘Capitalism within a Communist State’. Within that One Party State ties to increasingly large and successful “Capitalist” corporations are made with the governing class – a class that cannot be called “dynastic” certainly … but which has www.dialogue.ca

visible ties to the Mao generation … as if succession in power is based upon Party affiliation and merit … married to some kind of affiliation with the Mao generation.

After two thousand years of dynastic rule, could it be possible that a natural tendency of spirit, historical experience, and a special understanding of “rulership” is moving China close to old ideas? Time will tell.

When democratic government is not in use in a country, the search for top governors tends to move into and among people with familiar backgrounds, historical relations, and genetic connections. And those people tend to forge relations with especially helpful associates … found among those with (apparently) civic, non-political, kinds of Corporate power….

Does that mean serious exchange and relation cannot exist between such a government and “democratic” governments of the West? Not at all. It means simply that special care must be taken to fashion meaningful ties. Special care … on all sides.

In the meantime, in Vancouver, a drama is playing out with the arrest and extradition proceeding (requested by the U.S.A.) related to Meng Wanzhou, who is a top officer of Huawei, said to be the world’s largest telecommunications technology corporation. Wanzhou is accused by the U.S. of violating (U.S.) Iran sanctions – (questioned and/or rejected by many countries).

THAT situation has played upon … and plays upon Canada’s relation to China. And since China is vying for predominance as a trading and military power in “the East” (at least) of the world … Canadians would do well to think about it … and about Canada/China relations. It is not, however, a one-way street by any means. To achieve its aspirations, China, too, must think of its one-on-one relations with other countries on the Globe. Moving into a relatively new relation in the world, China is flexing its muscles and seeking super-power relevance and influence ….

Unknown to its inner circle of leaders, apparently, such a position requires more subtlety than China has shown so far in problems facing Huawei’s arrested Meng Wanzhou. The two (actually more than two) Canadians apparently seized in China, kept in torture circumstances … untried … make a mockery (to Canadians) of any claims that China lives under the rule of law: a revelation that has been broadcast in a way China simply could not wish for. (To say nothing of China’s refusal to buy certain Canadian products … www.dialogue.ca

as “punishment”.) The actions by the Chinese government open questions that deserve close attention … and reveal things about that country, about Canada, and the world that we all need to try to see clearly….

The Vancouver Extradition procedure requested by the U.S. government (of the Canadian government) intends to remove Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the huge Huawei international technology Corporation, to the U.S.A. for trial... for various alleged wrong-doings. The request is freighted with contradictions. On the face of it … a perfectly reasonable request under the Canada/U.S. Extradition Treaty was made which requires (and is proceeding) that the subject of the request, Meng Wanzhou, undergo a process in Canadian court to determine that the U.S. request is legitimate… and, if so, to then be handed to U.S. authorities for trial in the U.S.A. A Canadian can argue that the request has been made in proper form and the treaty is a common structure among countries (China apparently has a number of extradition treaties) and Canada is simply fulfilling its obligation … and must do so.

The request, however, exists in a global condition in which the U.S.A. sees itself in contest with China over trade matters, spheres of influence, military power, and “control” of geographical areas (like the South China sea, etc.). In addition, the Chinese may see Canada as nothing more than a U.S. lackey….

In South and Central America where the U.S.A. promotes and supports thug leadership which aligns with U.S. policy, it has trained some of those leaders in the U.S. School of the Americas. Both Russia and China have been known to support legitimate forces struggling to represent the people of those countries … against U.S. thug policies and allies. In almost every case, Canada has supported the most egregious violators of Human Rights put in place or openly supported by the U.S.A. in Central and South America.

China, therefore, has no reason to believe that Canada is acting purely out of the requirements of the Extradition Treaty with the U.S.A. (but, perhaps, as a known & proved lackey of whatever U.S. policy is hatched...)

As in all well-run Communist Societies, merit and need decide the lives of the Chinese people: “from each according to his (her) ability, and to each according to his (her) need”. Meng Wanzhou’s father is an especially talented man … creating, “according to his ability” Huawei, over which he still retains a …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Robin Mathews: CANADA & CHINA, contd.

measure of power. His needs being especially great (as a man of genius), he is now listed as a billionaire.

And Huawei, in keeping with the operative policy in China, exists in the structure of “Socialism with Chinese characteristics….” As an ‘independent’ Free Market corporation, Huawei may or may not, ultimately, take direction from the Chinese government ….

The founder’s daughter, Meng … joined Huawei, we are told, as an answerer of telephones. But having great ability, she now contributes as Chief Financial Officer and a member of the Board of Huawei … her relation to the founder, her father, the powerful billionaire, has had no bearing upon her rise (from sheer ability) in the Corporation. Her needs, too, are significant … and upon her arrest in Vancouver, she was able to choose which of her Real Estate holdings – valued overall at something more than twenty million dollars – she would choose as a place to reside during the legal process….

A further complication – if not a major contradiction in the matter – involves the ‘violations’ with which Meng Wanzhou is charged. She was arrested on suspicion of violating U.S. Trade Sanctions against Iran.

Those are unilateral U.S. Sanctions which have been questioned by many and rejected by the United Nations. Upon the discovery of Iran’s nuclear undertaking (earlier), a Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action was initiated by a number of countries, the U.S. among them. The U.S. withdrew (May, 2018) claiming “a horrible agreement” … criticism which the UN didn’t recognize.

U.S.-Iran Relations might fill an encyclopaedia. Suffice it to say that since the forcible removal of the Shah of Iran, 1979, (a U.S. puppet), the U.S. (deeply interested in the oil-rich nation) has wanted to exert a proprietary hold on the country. And so the withdrawal of the U.S. in May, 2018, from the Joint (many nation) Comprehensive Plan Of Action (approved by the UN) to oversee Iran’s development of nuclear power for peaceful purposes led to the re-institution of heavy U.S. sanctions against Iran … not approved of by many other countries.

In that light alone … the U.S. allegations against Huawei and Meng Wanzhou are open to serious question. Nevertheless, she is charged by the U.S.A. with conspiracy to defraud multiple international institutions; to defraud certain banks by pretending to clear 28 dialogue

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money for a corporation in order to disguise its dealing with Iran; with wire fraud to mask sales to Iran; with obstruction of justice and with misappropriating trade secrets….

A reasonable Canadian might observe that the U.S. sanctions against Iran are highly questionable … and so being able to “violate” them (questionable sanctions) may be equally questionable…. And in that light, some argued at the time of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou that she should have been released because the U.S. sanctions against Iran are illegitimate. As true as that may be or have been … Canada felt bound by its Extradition Treaty with the U.S.A. to arrest … and to hear the arguments in Court for and against there being a legal basis for the arrest….

A more serious contradiction in the whole matter has been engaged in by China … which has chosen to arrest, hold in torture conditions, and not bring to trial two (actually more) unrelated and innocent Canadians! But Canada didn’t request the Extradition of Meng Wanzhou: the U.S.A. did. And so China should have seized U.S. citizens in China, demanding that the request for extradition of Meng Wanzhou be withdrawn by the U.S.A. HERE, the contradictions of Big Power Politics seem clearly to be in play. China appears to have been afraid to offend the U.S.A. in a matter wholly created by the U.S.A. Instead, China decided to “beat up” Canada for something Canada is not responsible for…. And, to rub salt into the wound, China bought products from the U.S.A. to make up for products it refused to buy from Canada…!

The real possibility that the whole scenario is a sham points to another serious contradiction. And that is the failure to use the Canadian courts expeditiously to manage Canadian needs. No one claims that ‘wait times’ and ‘procedure’ times and ‘accessibility’ to Canadian courts are reasonable for Canadians. But the courts can be used endlessly ‘on call’ to please a country (the USA) seeking, perhaps, false charges against a trade competitor….

The Canadian State, moreover, which leapt to serve the dubious request of the U.S. has still not moved on the gigantic False Flag, fake Islamic Terrorist Event at the B.C. Legislature grounds on July 1, 2013 – an event alleged (by TWO higher courts) to have been intricately and criminally created by the RCMP, involving the entrapment, improper incarceration, fake charges, and enormous mental stress to two wholly www.dialogue.ca

innocent Canadians who have not received a single gesture of compensation from the RCMP or the Government of Canada ! !

Contradictions in the Meng Wanzhou Extradition case in the Vancouver Courts pile up as I write … not

only in Canada, but in the lands of the two ”principals” in the case, both apparently too powerful to be challenged or to be bothered much with Truth and Justice….

Robin Mathews, rmathews@telus.net ♣

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“Have Computer Will Write” ~ Jeremy Arney The World of our Children and Grandchildren…

Jeremy Arney, Sydney BC

Men are not renowned for multitasking, but the other day I was doing a crossword for light relief while almost watching CBC on my TV. A woman whose name I did not catch came on the program and she was lamenting the fall of Canada from 12th to 25th place regarding our children. The emphasis seemed to be on the shame of the fall rather than the lack of benefits to our young, which somehow typifies the general attitude of today in almost every aspect of our lives.

Well really, I asked myself, what did she expect?

Let’s start with her problem with obesity among Canadian kids. We have so many fast food chains here in Canada that are used for quick easy “meals” when in fact the nutritional value of their wares is highly questionable. Fast burgers (either fake meat of plant based (vegetarian maybe), sugary sodas, french fries, sugary candied bars and pies with no real fruit, donuts and donut holes, all designed to be eaten as quickly as they are microwaved, are not a good substitute for real food cooked at home. Yet go to a grocery chain and try to find an oyster, sardine or mussel that doesn’t come from China soaked in some kind of brine containing who knows what. Bread and bakery products and cereals are almost all from GMO grains known to have no real nutritional value but expensive to produce so bread for example is so overpriced it is stupendous. Cows are fed steroids to help them grow fat, pigs are battery raised in cages, chickens the same, eggs are mostly watery and pale yoked, and milk which has been cream content removed to make it more palatable (?) is really a bovine growth hormone, so naturally commercial milk fed kids are going to get fat; that’s what milk is supposed to do to calves. When I was very young in England we always seemed to have a jersey cow and the milk – with rich cream on top – was rationed and delicious and we didn’t get fat. www.dialogue.ca

Now real milk is outlawed and how many producers have been taken to court for providing it by whatever means? I remember a farm here on the Saanich Peninsula which sold real milk in jars with the cream on the top until they were forced out of business.

Next is one of the other health problems facing our children. Here in BC from the age of 1 day to 18 years there are 53 compulsory vaccinations, most of which are just boosters of previous injections, and give temporary immunity at best. Again, when I was young, if a kid in the neighbourhood got measles, mumps, whooping cough, chicken pox, etc., we were sent to play with them and I had all those sicknesses and acquired the lifelong immunity which goes with having had them. Yes, some were uncomfortable but my immune system today is strong enough that I only get sick from some form of bad cold or maybe mild flu about every 10 years or so and it might last for 3-4 days. On the other hand, today we have children being denied access to school because they have not been inoculated for things like measles. If indeed the anti-measles vaccination (for example) was any good why would any parent worry about their vaccinated children being infected? Let’s not forget too that most of this vaccinating is done in pharmacies or clinics today as there are not enough doctors in Canada (or doctors who have the time to stop prescribing drugs) to perform such a task.

That is the physical sickness side of things, but what about mental health? Or the electromagnetic smog to which are we all subjected? Wi-Fi in schools, shopping malls, coffee shops, school buses and mass transit, some streets (Goldstream Avenue in Langford for example), and the almost essential smart phones.

Smart meters, cars that drive themselves, start and unlock at the touch of a cell app, games, movies available upon access to the net, and the intense need to text all the time instead of talking. Today on TV, watch the ads and see that SUVs, trucks, cell …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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phones, drugs that have side effects than can be worse than the disease they are supposed to “cure” up to and including death, are somehow essential to our health, happiness and wealth. The smart phone is I suppose the fore runner of the AI take over as there seems to be nothing you can’t do on your phone including (if the ads are to believed) locking your home front door from another country! To prove a point maybe about force-fed gullibility Canadian advertising today is almost totally about Black Friday. What in the Canadian reference is black Friday? when is it? who started it and what does it denote? Even more mind boggling is that it is not one day but a week or two running into the selling frenzy that is called Christmas.

But the worst is coming: 5G is on the way no matter what because the telecom corporations want the profit from it and safety is not a consideration. Nor it appears is the health and wellness of their families. Even if all the electro smog that will be bombarding us all whether we have a smart phone or not is overrated, the fact is that we need to eat. Yes, that means birds and insects need to be here to pollinate the plants we eat but if we kill them all off with this electromagnetic 5G two things will happen.

Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” will become a reality, and the ancient Cree proverb – “Only when the last tree has died, and the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will they realize

that money cannot be eaten.” – will be looking the foolish “white man” in the face.

I try to talk to my grandchildren about this and they listen politely then go back to their computers and smart phones to continue frying their young brains.

Regretfully that is also the story of today in that there are many who understand but 1,000 times that number who not only do not understand and do not want to be bothered to understand.

But back to the kids and what we have been and are doing to them. We are teaching them that electronics are great babysitters; that the ability to text is more important than the ability to speak; that fast and convenient food is better even if it is lacking in nutritional value and makes one fat; the only real listening to do is the electronic clutter of internet games; that bigotry, hatred and violence are good; that peace and love are bad; that the ultimate goal is to be the winner which means the last one standing (too bad there is no one left with whom to gloat about it); that money only has relevance to the poor; perform on a stage almost naked and sing meaningless but catchy little ditties and make more in a week than most Canadians make in a life time of hard work.

In other words, the meaning of life really is 42, and we are quickly getting to be 42nd in the world of our children.

Jeremy Arney, iamjema@gmail.com ♣

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Slow Death by Rubber Duck: How the Toxicity of Everyday Life Affects Our Health ~ Book by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie The landmark book about the toxicity of everyday life, updated, revised and re-issued for its 10th anniversary, along with the experiments from Smith and Lourie's second book, Toxin Toxout.

It's amazing how little can change in a decade. In 2009, a book transformed the way we see our frying pans, thermometers and tuna sandwiches. Daily life was bathing us in countless toxins that accumulated in our tissues, were passed on to our children and damaged our health. To expose the extent of this toxification, environmentalists Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie offered themselves to science and undertook a series of over a dozen experiments to briefly raise their personal levels of mercury, BPA, Teflon and other pollutants. The ease with which ordinary activities caused dangerous levels to build in their bodies was a wake-up call, and readers all over the world responded.

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But did government regulators and corporations?

Ten years later, there is good news. But not much. Concise, shocking, practical and hopeful, this new combined edition of one of the most important books ever published about green living will put the nasty stuff back where it belongs: on the national agenda and out of our bodies.

Paperback, 384 pages; Publisher: Knopf Canada; Updated edition (Feb. 5 2019); ISBN-10: 073527570X See also, video: www.brasscheck.com/video/slow-deathby-rubber-duck/?omhide=true ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Study shows how coffee is Good for Your Brain!

Dr. Perlmutter, October 1, 2019 EXTRACT & LINK https://tinyurl.com/DrP-coffee

There has certainly been a lot of information appearing in scientific literature as of late indicating that coffee consumption is good for the brain. One recent report has revealed what I believe to be a very specific mechanism that directly relates the consumption of coffee to the well-established reduction in risk for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).

Researchers in Toronto, Canada, recognizing that coffee consumption is correlated with the decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease, set about to unravel the specific mechanism whereby coffee is neuroprotective in humans. They explored whether certain compounds found in brewed coffee can protect the brain by

reducing the aggregation, or clumping, of specific proteins that occur in the brain. … The results of the study are really important. All of the extracts show that the various coffees inhibited the clumping of the two proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, with dark roast being the most potent … Caffeine itself, although neuroprotective through other mechanisms, had no specific effect on protein aggregation. … Epidemiological studies show that there is a reduced risk of AD in people consuming coffee, tea, red wine, as well as in those who have a higher education level or engage in physical activity.

More on the Study: https://www.drperlmutter.com/study/phenylindanes-inbrewed-coffee/ ♣

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Monkeys Beat Humans in Cognitive Flexibility Analysis by Dr. Karen Shaw Becker December 05, 2019 LINK: https://tinyurl.com/DrB-2411 [EXTRACTS] Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to adapt your behaviors in response to a changing environment. It’s a useful skill, one that allows for efficient work and is associated with many benefits in humans, including higher resilience to stress, increased creativity, better reading abilities and better quality of life.

Sometimes, however, humans may find it challenging to be cognitively flexible, preferring instead to complete tasks the way they always have — even if there might be a better way. Monkeys share many cognitive similarities to humans, but in the case of cognitive

flexibility they may be more advanced, readily adapting to changes in their environment in ways superior to humans, according to research published in Scientific Reports.

In a study measuring cognitive flexibility, 70% of monkeys used the shortcut right away while only 39% of humans used the short cut at all. In another study, researchers looked into the experience of social adversity on monkeys, revealing that it may impact them on a cellular level. Social adversity likely affects monkeys and humans similarly, such that it can strongly affect future health, gene expression and immune function. LINK: https://tinyurl.com/DrB-2411 ♣

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That’s My Take On It… From John Shadbolt

Some pithy quotations relative to our world today From: John Shadbolt, Acton ON, shadbolt617@gmail.com ♣ www.dialogue.ca

VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Linda McQuaig’s new book: The Sport and Prey of Capitalists:

How the Rich Are Stealing Canada's Public Wealth In her new book, The Sport & Prey of Capitalists, Linda McQuaig shines a rare spotlight on the economic dogma of our times – privatization.

Why are we selling off the impressive public enterprises we often battled as a nation to create?

In the early 1900s, thousands of Canadians battled wealthy interests, winning control of Niagara Falls and creating a public power company. Another popular movement succeeded in creating Canada’s public broadcasting system to counter American dominance of the airwaves. And a Canadian doctor established a publicly owned laboratory that saved countless lives by producing affordable medications, contributing to medical breakthroughs and helping to eradicate smallpox throughout the world.

But in recent decades, we have allowed our inspiring public enterprises to be privatized and our vital public programs downsized, leaving us increasingly dominated by the forces of private greed that rule the marketplace.

In The Sport and Prey of Capitalists, Linda McQuaig challenges the dogma of privatization, which has defined our political era. She argues that now more than ever, as we grapple with climate change and income inequality, we need to expand, not shrink, our public sphere.

Contents Introduction One: Justin Trudeau Meets the Smartest Guy on Wall Street Two: The Worst Deal of the Century Three: The Thrill of Hearing Organ Music on a Train Crossing the Prairies Four: Niagara Falls, Berlin Rises Five: From Horse Barn to World Stage: The Connaught Story Six: Driving Out the Loan Sharks: The Case for Public Banking Seven: Oil and the Search for Our Inner Viking Eight: The Triumph of the Commons Acknowledgements / Notes.

Website: https://lindamcquaig.com/ Published by Dundurn, Toronto www.dundurn.com/books/sport-and-prey-capitalists Paperback: August 2019; $24.99, 264 pp, 6 x 9 in ISBN 978-1-45974-366-3 ♣

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BrasscheckTV Report/ video

“The terrifying truth of corporate power” Russell Brand interviews Jacques Peretti. They do a good job of getting to the heart of the matter. (56 min) www.brasscheck.com/video/common-sense-spelled-out/

Notes: Common sense spelled out. Follow the money… The nation state has become redundant and has become a civil service for corporations because of the rise and reach of the transnational corporation beyond the control of any nation. The corporate model has become the dominant power model and is now being mimicked by national governments, which are increasingly being led by autocratic businessmen. …

About 5 global corporations are behind the vast majority of the powerful companies today. … Where it used to be oil companies and the large consumergoods producers (Nestlé, etc.) now the ascendant corporations are the purveyors of data (as in Google, Facebook) because data has become the most valuable commodity… Mental illness & poverty are worsened 32 dialogue

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by the corporate paradigm (i.e. Big Pharma)…

See also: Jacques Peretti BBC Documentary: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcoy8_pvldM And his book: The Deals That Made the World: Reckless Ambition, Backroom Negotiations, and the Hidden Truths of Business – by Jacques Peretti | Mar 26, 2019

www.brasscheck.com/video/common-sense-spelled-out/ ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Lies Which the West Manufactures and then Consumes New Eastern Outlook-Column by Andre Vltchek

https://journal-neo.org/2019/11/20/lies-which-thewest-manufactures-and-then-consumes/

After my work in the Middle East had finished, at least for the time being, I was waiting for my flight to Santiago de Chile. In Paris. I could count on a few ‘free’ days, processing what I had heard and witnessed in Beirut. Day after day, for long hours, I sat in a lounge, typing and typing; reflecting and typing.

As I was working, above me, France 24 television news channel was on, beaming from a flat screen.

The people around me were coming and going: West African elites on their wild shopping sprees, shouting unceremoniously into their mobile phones. Koreans and Japanese doing Paris. Rude German and North American beefy types, discussing business, laughing vulgarly, disregarding ‘lower beings’, in fact everyone in their immediate radius.

No matter what was happening in my hotel, France 24 was on, and on, and on. Yes, precisely; for 24 hours, recycling for days and nights the same stories, once in a while updating news, with a slightly arrogant air of superiority. Here, France was judging the world; teaching Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, about themselves.

In front of my eyes, above me, on that screen, the world was changing. For many months I had been covering the nightmarish riots of the treasonous violent ninjas in Hong Kong. I was all over the Middle East, particularly Lebanon, and now I was on my way to my second home, Latin America, where socialism has kept www.dialogue.ca

winning elections, but was getting beaten, even terrorized, by the corrupt and crooked Western empire.

All that France 24 kept showing, I have been habitually witnessing with my own eyes. And more, much more, from many different angles. I have filmed it, written about it, and analyzed it.

In many countries, all over the world, people have been sharing their stories with me. I have seen barricades, photographed and filmed injured bodies, as well as tremendous revolutionary enthusiasm and excitement. I have also witnessed betrayals, treasons, cowardice.

But in the lounge, in front of the television set, everything appeared pretty groovy, very classy, and comforting. The blood looked like a well-mixed color, the barricades like a stage of the latest Broadway musical.

People were dying beautifully, their shouts muted, theatrical. The elegant anchor in a designer dress was beaming benevolently, whenever people on the screen dared to show some powerful emotions, or were grimacing in pain. She was in charge, and she was above all of this. In Paris, London and New York, powerful emotions, political commitments and grand ideological gestures, were made outdated, already a long time ago.

During just the few days that I spent in Paris, many things have changed, on all the continents.

The Hong Kong rioters were evolving; beginning to set on fire their compatriots simply because they dared to pledge their allegiance to Beijing. Women were unceremoniously beaten, with metal bars, until their faces were covered in blood.

In Lebanon, the big clenched fists of the pro-Western regime-change Otpor were suddenly at the center of the anti-government demonstrations. The economy of the country was collapsing. But the Lebanese ‘elites’ were burning money, all around me, all around Paris and all around the world. Poor Lebanese Misérables, as well as the impoverished middle class, were demanding social justice. But the rich of Lebanon were mocking them, showing. They had it all figured out: they have robbed their own country, then left it behind, and now were having a great ball here, in the “City of Lights”.

But to criticize them in the West has been taboo; forbidden. Political correctness, the mighty Western …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Andre Vltchek, Lies the West Manufactures…, contd.

weapon used to uphold the status quo, has made them untouchable. Because they are Lebanese; from the Middle East. A good arrangement, isn’t it? They are robbing their fellow Middle Easterners, on behalf of their foreign masters in Paris and Washington, but in Paris or London, it is taboo to expose their ‘culture’ of debauchery.

In Iraq, the anti-Shi’a and therefore anti-Iranian sentiments have been dispersed, powerfully and clearly, from abroad. The second big episode of the so-called Arab Spring.

Chileans have been fighting and dying, trying to depose a neo-liberal system, forced down their throats ever since 1973 by the Los Chicago Boys.

The Bolivian socialist government, successful, democratic and racially inclusive, has been overthrown, by Washington and Bolivian treasonous cadres. People have been dying there, too, on the streets of El Alto, La Paz, and Cochabamba.

Israel was at it again, in Gaza. Full force.

Damascus was bombed.

I went to film the Algerians, Lebanese and Bolivians; people who were pushing for their agendas at the Place de la Republique.

I anticipated the horrors that were waiting for me, soon; in Chile, Bolivia and Hong Kong.

I was writing, feverishly.

While the television set was humming.

People were entering and leaving the lounge, meeting and separating, laughing, shouting, crying and making up.

Nothing to do with the world.

The outbursts of indecent laugher erupted periodically, even as the bombs were exploding on the screen, even as the people were charging against the police and the military. *** Then, one day, I realized that nobody really gives a damn. Like that; so simple.

You witness what happens, all over the world; you document it. You are risking your life. You are getting engaged. You get injured. Sometimes you come close, extremely close, to death.

You do not watch TV. Never, or almost never. You 34 dialogue

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appear on the television, yes; you supply stories and images. But you never watch the results; what emotions your work, your words and images, truly evoke.

Or do they evoke any emotions at all? You only work for the anti-imperialist media outlets, never for the mainstream. But for whomever you work for, you have no clue what the facial expressions your reports from the war zones are arousing. Or what emotions any war zone reports stir.

And then, you are in Paris, and you have some time to watch your readers, and suddenly you understand.

You get it: why so few are writing to you, support your struggle, or even fight for the countries being destroyed, decimated by the empire.

When you look around, observing people who are sitting in a hotel lounge, you clearly realize: they feel nothing. They want to see nothing. They understand nothing. France 24 is on, but it is not a news channel, which it was intended to be, many years ago. It is entertainment stuff, which is supposed to produce sophisticated background noise. And it does. Precisely that.

Same as the BBC, CNN, Fox and Deutsche Welle. *** As the legitimately elected socialist President of Bolivia was being forced into exile, tears in his eyes, I got hold of the remote control, and switched channel to some bizarre and primitive cartoon network.

Nothing changed. The expressions on the faces of some twenty people around me did not change.

If a nuclear bomb would have exploded on the screen, somewhere in the Sub-Continent, no one would pay any attention.

Some people were taking selfies. While I was describing the collapse of the Western culture on my MacBook. All of us were busy, in our own way.

Kashmir, West Papua, Iraq, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Palestine, Bolivia and Chile were on fire.

So, what?

Ten meters away from me, an American businessman was shouting into his phone: “Are you going to invite me back to Paris in December? Yes? We have to discuss details. How much am I getting per day?”

Coups, uprisings, riots, all over the world.

And that plastic, professional smile of the lady, the www.dialogue.ca

news announcer, in her blue and white retro designer dress; so confident, so French, and so endlessly fake. *** Lately, I keep wondering whether the inhabitants of Europe and North America have any moral right to control the world.

My conclusion is: definitely not!

They do not know, and they do not want to know.

Those who have power are obliged to know.

In Paris, Berlin, London, New York, individuals are too busy admiring themselves, or ‘suffering’ from their little, selfish problems.

They are too busy taking selfies, or being preoccupied with their sexual orientation. And of course, with their ‘business’.

That is why I prefer to write for Russian and Chinese outlets, to address people who are scared like myself, anxious about the future of the world.

The editors of this magazine, in faraway Moscow, are; they are anxious and passionate at the same time. I know they are. I, and my reports, are not some ‘business’ for them. People whose cities are smashed,

ruined, are not some sort of entertainment in the editorial room of NEO. In many Western countries, people have lost their ability to feel, to get engaged, and to fight for a better world.

Because of this loss, they should be forced to give up their power over the world.

Our world is damaged, scarred, but is tremendously beautiful and precious.

It is not a business, to work for its improvement and survival.

Only great dreamers, poets and thinkers can be trusted, fighting for it, steering it forward.

Are there many poets and dreamers amongst my readers? Or do they look, do they behave, as those guests in the hotel lounge in Paris, in front of the screen beaming France 24?

Andre Vltchek is philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s a creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that penned a number of books, including China and Ecological Civilization. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” ♣

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Are We the Baddies?

The 2018 Syria fraud exposed

From Adrian Swanston, Vancouver,

It's a weird world when Fox News reports the news with as much accuracy as WikiLeaks, but credit where credit is due.

The Assad regime DID NOT attack its own people with gas. The reporting was a total fraud.

Here are the facts: A year after the fact.

alipatricesankara@gmail.com

Wonder if this link is worthy of insertion for future publication?

Are we the baddies? NBC chief foreign correspondent tweets amazement to find US foreign policy not always great: VIDEO LINK: www.rt.com/usa/473738-richard-engel-usa-bad-guys/ ♣

VIDEO LINK:

www.brasscheck.com/video/the-2018-syria-fraud-exposed/♣

**************************************************************

New U.S. Data Shows Income of Top 1% Has Grown 100 Times Faster Than Bottom 50% Since 1970 From June Ross, Nanaimo, jross12@telus.net

Article by Julia Conley, staff writer Published Dec 9, 2019

by CommonDreams.org LINK : https://tinyurl.com/cd-inequality100

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett are the three richest people in the U.S., with more combined wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. New data just released explains the numbers behind Sen. Bernie Sanders' often-cited statistic that the three richest Americans hold more wealth than the 160 million people who make up the bottom 50% of the population. Washington Post columnist Greg www.dialogue.ca

Sargent published what he called "stunning" findings from UC Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman, showing how both an explosion in annual earnings by the rich and an increasingly regressive tax structure have combined to allow the top 1% of Americans' wealth to triple over the past five decades.

Meanwhile, working people are taking home just $8,000 more per year than they did in 1970. In what Sargent called "the triumph of the rich, which is one of the defining stories of our time," the richer a household is, the more its take-home wealth has grown in the past 50 years. ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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If the Public Only Knew The Truth… about EMFs, EMR thickens in a room as more people smoking different devices enter the room;

By J.G. Flynn, Captain (retired), Nov 13, 2019

If the Public Only Knew The Truth – That ‘Industry-Captured’ Governments are Harming and Killing the Public!

Here are some facts, which informed people know: •

Scientists, globally, and the major militaries of the world, have known for many decades that residential electricity (power-line frequency [50 Hz/60 Hz] electro-magnetic fields [EMFs]) and pulsed radio / microwave frequency (RF) electro-magnetic radiation (EMR) CAUSE (albeit not solely) leukemia and many other forms of cancers, autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, miscarriages, stillbirths, suicides, depression, asthma, cardiac problems, Tinnitus, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), SIDS (Sudden-Infant-Death-Syndrome), etc.;

•

Residential 50 Hz/60 Hz EMFs and RF EMR both emit hazardous NON-thermal radiation, which is invisible, silent, odorless and tasteless; humans can neither sense nor detect it;

•

The latency of most cancers and other serious diseases is at least 10 years and can be 30 years or even longer, depending on a person’s lifestyle, living environment and overall exposure to EMFs/EMR; (Non-Hodgkin lymphoma nearly claimed my life some 25 years after I had foolishly and naively adopted all contemporary electricity-based technology.)

•

Mainstream news media controls (determines) what the public is allowed to see/hear/read about the dangers of NON-thermal power-Line EMFs and pulsed RF EMR;

•

The cancer industry world-wide virtually never mentions EMFs / EMR when discussing possible causes of cancer;

•

Mainstream news media controls (decides) what the public is allowed to see/hear/read about the countless lawsuits launched in many countries of the world by people who claim that their or their loved one’s health suffers or suffered because of NON-thermal EMFs/EMR;

•

EMFs and EMR - from all sources, on all frequen-

cies - adds up or thickens, much as smoke

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•

What “5G” (fifth generation) technology really entails, and that no man, woman or child - and no living thing - can possibly escape the hazardous pulsed NON-thermal microwave radiation (RF EMR) that will be emitted simultaneously by some 20,000 low orbiting satellites and an estimated 13-million microcell towers in the U.S. alone (placed in front of every 2nd to 10th home in every community in the U.S.A.). (Note: The public needs to realize that the microwave frequencies to be used in 5G technology have not only never been tested and proven to be safe for humans, but are known to be some of the same frequencies used by the U.S. and other major militaries of the world to control and/or disperse crowds. These frequencies are electronic warfare weapons; and,

•

All of the above incalculable amount of hazardous microwave radiation simply adds to the previous unfathomable amount of man-made EMFs/EMR (which the WHO calls ‘electro-smog’) that has already been emitted by man’s earlier 2G (2nd generation), 3G and 4G technologies!

Knowing the above, people understandably ask: Why would governments, especially those that claim to be “democratic” governments, allow industry to do this to an unsuspecting, defenseless public – when it is known that even the perpetrators themselves can’t escape this radiation? Is this some monstrously-insane macabre plot to reduce planet Earth’s population?

If not, what other reason can there be to explain how/why Western governments are deaf and blind to today’s enormous and ever-growing list of disease epidemics and premature deaths? […]

Sincerely, J.G. Flynn, Captain (retired), Bowser, BC My original book: Hidden Dangers, has sold in 14 countries plus the Isle of Man. My new, revised Hidden Dangers – 5G is expected to be available for sale on Amazon.com and other major online book sellers.

The above introduction is from an 8-page Report prepared by J.G. Flynn, detailing the long history of health and safety issues since residential electricity was introduced into American homes in the late 1800s and explaining the impact of EMFs and EMRs on living things – which are bio-electrical beings.

If you would like to receive the full Report, pdf file, please email: dialogue@dialogue.ca ♣ www.dialogue.ca

ZAPPED!

GENERATION ZAPPED – THE FILM Received from Herb Spencer, Surrey BC, with his comment: I am sure most people are unaware of the invisible threat from manmade electromagnetic radiation. The facts at the end of this link illustrate how we are threatening our children (and ourselves). Herb, spsi99@telus.net NOTES FROM THE WEBSITE:

Generation Zapped is an eye-opening documentary which reveals that wireless technology can pose serious health risks, from infertility to cancer.

Through interviews with experts in science and public health, along with people who suffer from high sensitivity to wireless radiation, the film suggests ways to reduce your exposure and protect your family.

Synopsis Like cigarettes and the toxic chemicals before it, emerging science is revealing the concerning reality that some people may suffer health impacts from radiation emitted by wireless devices.

We meet four people who are struggling with a variety of illnesses from wireless radiation - a breast cancer survivor who had carried her cell phone in her bra, a long term cell phone user with brain cancer, and a fit, seemingly healthy couple with neurological impacts now identified as being linked to wireless data transmission radiation.

Scientists, health researchers, physicians, and other experts document the links and concerns about this technology.

The multi-billion-dollar telecommunications industry goes to great lengths to lobby Congress, influence policy-makers, and dispute any scientific data correlating wireless technology to potential health risks, which is reminiscent of the lead, asbestos, and tobacco industries before them.

GENERATION ZAPPED is a powerfully moving and thought-provoking documentary, daring to shine light on this invisible inconvenience, and empowers audiences to understand how to reduce their exposure to protect themselves and their families.

Full Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybxfk0XZWps [1 hr, 14 min] ♣ **************************************************************

Lloyd Burrell’s Practical Guide to EMF Mitigation Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked, Dec 22, 2019; LINK: https://tinyurl.com/Mercola-6775

WEBSITE: https://generationzapped.com/

Generation Zapped: Official Trailer https://generationzapped.com/#gen-trailer www.dialogue.ca

VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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“Your Health Matters�

Chelation therapy in medicine Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, Strongsville OH

Chelation therapy is an intravenous treatment designed to bind heavy metals in the body and cause them to be excreted in urine. Lead, mercury and cadmium are derived from the soil in minute quantities and have an effect on some of our tissues by interfering with normal oxygen utilization. Proponents claim that chelation therapy treats coronary artery disease and other illnesses that may be linked to damage from free radicals, reactive molecules that are associated with metal toxicity.

This method of treatment has been advocated for many years by a small group of physicians, many of whom had been persecuted because of lack of approval of the treatment. Some had even lost their medical licenses. Over the years, they persisted and had constantly tried to get cardiovascular specialists to carry out a clinical study because they were convinced that their clinical and laboratory observations were important. No such study had materialized and so they got together to perform a study in their individual offices, combining their results.

This study was termed TACT (Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy). The results of the study were reviewed by Academia. It was found that it demonstrated a significant reduction in a combined primary endpoint of death, myocardial infarction (heart attack), stroke, coronary revascularization (heart surgery) or hospitalization for angina (heart pain). In diabetic patients the benefit was more extreme. The authors, from Columbia University Division of Cardiology and Mount Sinai Medical Center, reported that EDTA* chelation may be a well-tolerated and effective treatment for patients after heart attacks, suggesting that further studies were required.(1) Subsequently, a review summarized evidence from two lines of research previously thought to be unrelated: the unexpected positive results of TACT and a body of data showing that accumulation of biologically active metals such as lead and cadmium is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

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TACT 2 in an attempt to replicate the findings of TACT 1.(2) Two authors from Columbia University

Division of Cardiology reported that they were seeking participating sites for TACT 2.(3) Iron chelation It is fairly well known that a common cause of anemia is iron deficiency, treated by taking a supplement of an iron containing medication. What few people are aware of is that an ingestion of too much iron, like the heavy metals mentioned above, will cause the same kind of interference with oxygen utilization. It is just another example that too little is as bad as too much. Although treatment of iron deficient anemia is seldom a cause of iron overload when administered by a physician, perhaps the major cause is from repeated blood transfusions given to people that have problems in synthesizing hemoglobin, or a disease that causes red cell destruction.

The method of removing iron that has been deposited in tissues is by chelation, using one of several agents administered orally. This promises a reduction in associated morbidity and mortality.(4) The use of thiamine in chelation I remember reading an article in the veterinary literature some years ago. Because of a sick cow, a farmer had called a veterinarian who had recognized the symptoms of thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency.

When given an injection of the vitamin the symptoms in the cow had disappeared but they had subsequently returned and the veterinarian was asked to come again. Thinking this was a strange recurrence, the doctor had the presence of mind to search the field where the cow had been grazing. He had found an old trunk in a corner of the field that was partly covered with lead paint and which the cow had been licking. Lead has a sweet taste and the veterinarian concluded that this was the cause of the thiamine deficiency. In a study using rats, calcium disodium EDTA was more effective than thiamin in enhancing the urinary excretion of lead in restoring lead induced biochemical alterations. However, the combination of the drug and thiamin enhanced the beneficial effect and was particularly effective in reducing the brain concentration of lead.(5) In lead-loaded www.dialogue.ca

sheep the combination of EDTA and thiamin administration was better than EDTA or thiamin given singly. It was concluded however that thiamin, even by itself, does increase lead excretion via bile and urine, (6) a beneficial effect that has not been followed up since. The influence of dietary protein deficiency on the effects of exposure to lead or its combination with copper was investigated in rats. The simultaneous supplementation of copper reduced some of the lead-induced alterations and body uptake of lead more efficiently in animals fed a normal diet than in those fed a protein-deficient diet.(7) Note that a small amount of copper and a healthy protein intake in the diet appear to protect the body from the harmful effects of lead, enhancing again the importance of diet in preventive medicine.

Heavy Metal Toxicity in Autism Most people are aware that autism is in epidemic form in America. The evidence is rapidly accumulating that this disease is another example of brain energy deficiency. It is marked by a complex interaction between environmental factors, genetic predisposition and energy availability, making it difficult to state that there is a single causative etiology.

There is evidence that heavy metal deposition has a part to play in producing oxidative stress. (8) We came across a family in which the mother was a recovered alcoholic. She had two children, a boy and a girl, both of whom had symptoms typical of autistic spectrum disorder. Both children had unusual concentrations of arsenic in the urine whose source was completely unknown. Erythrocyte transketolase studies (a test for thiamin deficiency) were intermittently abnormal, coinciding with alternating improvement from diet restriction and supplementary vitamin therapy. Their symptoms quickly relapsed after ingestion of sugar, milk, or wheat. We hypothesized that oxidative stress, related to the presence of arsenic, combined with genetic predisposition and malnutrition provided the intermittent relapse and recovery in both of these children. (9) Energy metabolism It is hypothesized that energy deficiency is the root cause of disease, coupled with genetic risk and the variability of stress factors, including trauma and infection. Because of its vital importance in so many aspects of energy production and distribution, thiamin seems to be emerging as a unique therapeutic www.dialogue.ca

modality. Yes, it is true that if a human genome is 100% intact and the diet reaches perfection, health would remain intact throughout life. But because of the variability of genetic risk, the unpredictability of stress factors and the imperfection in diet, disease has become common in the modern world.

In my book, A Nutritional Approach to a Revised Model for Medicine, I compared the hedonism of the advanced civilization in the ancient Roman Empire with that of the hedonism that exists in our society today. The Romans kept their wines in lead glazed jars and the lead was leached out into the wine, giving it a sweet taste. Their symptoms were common and completely unrecognized for what they represented.

We suggest that thiamin deficiency would enter into the equation by a method that would be completely different from what is commonly being appreciated in our society today, the hedonism associated with the ingestion of sweets. Chronic mild lead poisoning, particularly if associated with thiamin deficiency, would lead to many symptoms that are exactly the same as those experienced by millions of people today who are suffering unknowingly and in many cases unfortunately unrecognized for what they represent.

Only very few people take advantage of this scientifically supported information, no matter how many books are written or how many lectures are delivered. However, since we all have been educated to take pills in the treatment of our symptoms, perhaps an emphasis on vitamin supplements instead of drugs might be a simple answer.

Over and over, I have emphasized high calorie malnutrition as an insidious and prolonged method of inducing a variety of effects in the brain that result in just as much of a variety of symptoms. Chronic fatigue is perhaps the commonest symptom and it has given rise to a common diagnosis named Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) that is said to have an unknown cause. – Derrick Lonsdale, M.D. “Everything is connected to everything else.�

References 1. Avila MD, Escolar E, Lamas GA. Chelation therapy after the trial to assess chelation therapy: results of a unique trial. Curr Opin Cardiol 2014; 29 (5): 481-8.

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2. Lamas G A, Navas-Acien A, Mark DB, Lee KL. Heavy metals, cardiovasvcular disease, and the unexpected benefits of chelation therapy. J Am Coll Cardiol;67(20):2411-18 3. Lamas GA Ergui I. Chelation therapy to treat atherosclerosis, particularly in diabetes: is it time to reconsider? Expert Rev Cardiovasc Ther 2016; 14 (8): 927-38.

4. Sheth S. iron chelation: an update. Curr Opin Hematol 2014; 21 (3): 179-85.

5. Flora SJ, Singh S, Tandon SK. Chelation in metal intoxication XVIII: combined effects of thiamin and calcium disodium versenate on lead toxicity. Life Sci 1986; 38 (1): 67-71.

6. Olkowski AA, Gooneratne SR, Christensen DA. The effects of thiamine and EDTA on biliary and urinary lead excretion in sheep. Toxicol Lett 1991; 59 (1-3): 153-9.

7. Flora SJ, Coulombe RA Jr., Sharma RP, Tandon SK. Influence of dietary protein deficiency on lead-copper interaction in rats.Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 1989; 18 (1): 75-82.

8. Obrenovich ME, Shola D, Schroedel K, et al. The role of trace elements, thiamin(e) and transketolase in autism and autistic spectrum disorder. Front Biosci (Elite Ed) 2016; 7:229-41.

9. Lonsdale D, Shamberger RJ, Obrenovich ME. Dysautonomia in autism spectrum disorder: case reports of a family with review of the literature. Autism Res Treat 2011; 2011:129795: doi: 10.

1155/2011/129795.

* EDTA: (ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid) 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? and also Why I Left Orthodox Medicine.

His 2017 book: Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition, explores thiamine and how its deficiency affects the functions of the brainstem and autonomic nervous system by way of metabolic changes at the level of the mitochondria… This book represents the life work of the senior author, Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, and a recent collaboration with his co-author Dr. Chandler Marrs. ISBN: 0128103876 / ♣

Laughter & ‘Lightenment

From Herb Spencer, spsi99@telus.net

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www.dialogue.ca

Behind The Curtain

Unspeakable Memories: The Day John Kennedy Died Ed Curtin, Maine, November 22, 2019

There is a vast literature on the assassination of (U.S.) President John F. Kennedy, who died on a November 22nd Friday like this in 1963. I have contributed my small share to such writing in an effort to tell the truth, honor him, and emphasize its profound importance in understanding the history of the last fifty-six years, but more importantly, what is happening in the U.S.A. today. In other words, to understand it in its most gutwrenching reality: that the American national security state will obliterate any president that dares to buck its imperial war-making machine. It is a lesson not lost on all presidents since Kennedy.

Unless one is a government disinformation agent or is unaware of the enormous documentary evidence, one knows that it was the CIA that carried out JFK’s murder. Confirmation of this fact keeps arriving in easily accessible forms for anyone interested in the truth. A case in point is James DiEugenio’s recent posting at his website, KennedysandKing, of James Wilcott’s affidavit and interrogation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, declassified by the Assassinations Record Review Board in 1998. In that document, Wilcott, who worked in the finance department for the CIA and was not questioned by the Warren Commission, discusses how he unwittingly paid Lee Harvey Oswald, the government’s alleged assassin, through a cryptonym and how it was widely known and celebrated at his CIA station in Tokyo that the CIA killed Kennedy and Oswald worked for the Agency, although he did not shoot JFK. I highly recommend reading the document.

I do not here want to go into any further analysis or debate about the case. I think the evidence is overwhelming that the President was murdered by the national security state. Why he was murdered, and the implications for today, are what concern me. And how and why we remember and forget public events whose consequences become unbearable to contemplate, and the fatal repercussions of that refusal. In what I consider the best book ever written on the subject, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (2009), James W. Douglass explains this in detail, including the James Wilcott story.

Realizing what I am about to say might be www.dialogue.ca

presumptuous and of no interest to anyone but myself, I will nevertheless try to describe my emotional reactions to learning of John Kennedy’s murder so long ago and how that reverberated down through my life.

I hope my experiences might help explain why so many people today can’t face the consequences of the tragic history that began that day and have continued to the present, among which are not just the other assassinations of the 1960s but the lies about the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent endless and murderous “war on terror” with its mind-numbing propaganda and the recent anti-Russia phobia and the blatant celebration of the so-called “deep-state’s” open efforts to overthrow another president, albeit a very different one.

On November 22, 1963 I was a college sophomore. I was going down three steps into the college dining hall for lunch. (Many of my most significant memories and decisions have taken place on steps, either going up or going down; memory is odd in that way, wouldn’t you say?) I remember freezing on the second step as a voice announced through a PA system that the president had been shot in Dallas, Texas.

When I finally recovered and went down into the building, another announcement came through saying the president had died. The air seemed to be sucked out of the building as I and the other students with a few professors sat in stunned silence. Soon little groups on this Catholic campus joined together to pray for John Kennedy. I felt as if I were floating in unreality.

Later that day when I left the campus and drove home, I thought back to three years previously and the night of the presidential election. Everyone at my house (parents, grandparents, and the five sisters still at home) had gone to bed, but I stayed up past 1 A.M., watching the television coverage of the vote count.

My parents, despite their Irish-Catholicism, were Nixon supporters, but I was for JFK. I couldn’t comprehend why anyone would vote for Nixon, who seemed to me to personify evil. When I finally went up the stairs to bed, I was convinced Kennedy would win and felt very happy.

It wouldn’t be for another tumultuous decade before I would hear Kris Kristofferson sing – …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Never knowin’ if believin’ is a blessin’ or a curse Or if the going up is worth to coming down….

From the rockin’ of the cradle to the rollin’ of the hearse The goin’ up was worth the coming down – and I would ask myself the same question.

In the meantime, the next few years would bring the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile crisis, and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, among other significant events, and for a high school student interested in politics and world events it was a heady and frightening few years.

It was a country of newspapers back then, and I would read perhaps 3-4 each day and sensed a growing animosity toward Kennedy, especially as expressed in the more conservative NYC papers. I can remember very little talk of politics in my home and felt alone with my thoughts. As far as I can remember, this was also true at the Jesuit high school that I attended. And of course nothing prepared me for the president’s murder and the feeling of despair it engendered in me, a feeling so painful that I couldn’t really acknowledge it. At nineteen, I felt traumatized but couldn’t admit it or tell anyone. After all, I was a scholar and an athlete. Tough.

Then on Sunday morning my family had the TV on and we watched as Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the guy the government said had killed the president. The unreality was compounded manyfold, and when later it was reported that Oswald had died, I felt I was living in an episode of The Twilight Zone, a popular television show at the time, whose narrator would say we are now entering the weird world between shadow and substance.

The next day a friend and I went to the Fordham University campus to visit a Jesuit priest who was a mentor to us. He had the television on for JFK’s funeral and we sat and watched it for a while with him. After a few hours, it became too painful and the two of us went outside to a football field where we threw a football back and forth. Perhaps subconsciously we were thinking of Kennedy’s love of football; I don’t know.

But I remember a feeling of desolation that surrounded us on that empty cold field with not another soul around. It seemed sacrilegious to be playing games at such a time, yet deep trauma contributes to strange behavior.

Then I went on with my college life, studying and playing basketball, until the day after Malcolm X was 42 dialogue

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assassinated on February 21, 1965. Those New York newspapers that didn’t like Kennedy, hated Malcolm even more and were constantly ripping into him. I vividly remember talking to my college basketball teammate the next day. His sense of devastation as a young African American struck me forcefully. As we walked to basketball practice and talked, his sense of isolation and gloom was palpable. Visceral. Unforgettable. It became mine, even though I didn’t at the time grasp its full significance.

In 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, I was driving to visit a girlfriend and remember hearing the news on the car radio and feeling deeply shocked. I felt immediately oppressed by the first warm spring evening in the New York area. It was as if the beautiful weather, usually so uplifting after winter and so joyously stimulating to a young man’s sexuality, was conspiring with the news of King’s death to bring me down into a deep depression.

Soon the country would awaken on June 5 to the surreal news that Senator Robert Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles the night before. Like so many Americans, when he died not long after, I felt his death was the last straw. But it was far from it. For all the while Lyndon Johnson had lied his way to election in 1964 and escalated the Vietnam war to savage proportions.

Death and destruction permeated the air we were breathing. The year 1968 ended with the suspicious death in Thailand of a hero of mine, the anti-war Trappist Monk Thomas Merton. Subsequent research has shown that that too was an assassination. And while all of this was going on and my political consciousness was becoming radicalized, I became a conscientious objector from the Marines. I was 24 years old.

By the late 1970s, having been fired from teaching positions for radical scholarship and anti-war activities, and mentally exhausted by the unspeakable events of the 1960s, I retreated into the country where I found solace in nature and a low-key life of contemplation, writing literary and philosophical essays, a novel, book reviews, and becoming a part-time newspaper columnist. By the 1990s, I gradually returned to teaching and a more active political engagement, primarily through teaching and writing.

Then in 1991 Oliver Stone jolted me back in time with his film JFK. I found powerful emotional memories welling up within me, and growing anger at what had happened to the U.S. in the previous decades. www.dialogue.ca

Soon JFK Jr., who was investigating his father’s assassination and was about to enter politics and take up his father’s mantle, was killed in a blatantly rigged “accident.” A month before I had been standing in line behind his wife in the bakery in my little town while he waited outside in a car. Now the third Kennedy was dead. I called my old friend the Jesuit priest from Fordham, but he was speechless. The bodies kept piling up or disappearing.

When the attacks of September 11, 2001 happened, I realized from day one that something was not right; that the official explanation was full of holes. My sociological imagination took fire. All that I had thought and felt, even my literary writing, came together. The larger picture emerged clearly. My teaching took on added urgency, including courses on September 11th and the various assassinations.

Then in 2009 I read and reviewed James Douglass’s masterpiece, JFK and the Unspeakable, and my traumatic memories of 1963 and after came flooding back in full force. I realized that those youthful experiences had been so difficult for me to assimilate and that I therefore had to intellectualize them, for the emotional toll of re-experiencing them and what they meant was profound. The book really opened me to this, but so too did the awareness of how sensitive I was to John Kennedy’s death, how emotional I felt when reading about it or hearing him speak or listening to a song such as “The Day John Kennedy Died” by Lou Reed. It was as though a dam had burst inside me and my heart had become an open house without doors or windows.

I tell you all this to try to convey the ways in which we “forget” the past in order to shield ourselves from powerful and disturbing memories that might force us to disrupt our lives. To change. Certain events, such as the more recent attacks of September 11, have become too disturbing for many to explore, to study, to contemplate, just as I found a way to marginalize my feelings about my own government’s murder of President Kennedy, a man who had given me hope as a youngster, and whose murder had nearly extinguished that hope.

Many people will pretend that they are exposing themselves to such traumatic memories and are investigating the events and sources of their disquietude. It is so often a pretense since they feel most comfortable in the land of make-believe. What is needed is not a dilettantish and superficial nod in the direction of having examined such matters, but a serious in-depth www.dialogue.ca

study of the facts and an examination of why doing so might make one uncomfortable. A look outward and a look inward. Just as people distort and repress exclusively personal memories to “save” themselves from harsh truths that would force them to examine their current personal lives, so too do they do the same with political and social ones. When I asked two close relatives of mine, both of whom came close to death on September 11, 2001 at The World Trade Towers, what they have thought about that day, they separately told me that they haven’t really given it much thought.

This startled me, especially since it involved mass death and a close encounter with personal death in a controversial public event, two experiences that would seem to elicit deep thought. And these two individuals are smart and caring souls.

What and why we remember and forget is profoundly important. Thoreau, in writing about life without principle, said, “It is so hard to forget what is worse than useless to remember.” This is so true. We are consumed with trivia, mostly by choice.

Perhaps a reason we remember so much trivia is to make sure we forget profound experiences that might shake us to our cores. The cold-blooded public execution of President John Kennedy did that to me on that melancholy Friday when I was 19, and by trying to forget it and not to speak of it, I hoped it would somehow go away, or at least fade to insignificance. But the past has a way of never dying, often to return when we least expect or want it.

So today, on this anniversary Friday, another November 22, I have chosen to try to speak of what it felt like once upon a time on the chance that it might encourage others to do the same with our shared hidden history. Only by speaking out is hope possible. Only by making the hidden manifest.

T. S. Eliot wrote in “Journey of the Magi” words that echo ironically in my mind on this anniversary of the (the last stanza) day John Kennedy died:

All this was a long time ago, I remember And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Remembering in all its emotional detail the day John Kennedy died has been a long and cold journey for me. It has allowed me to see and feel the terror of that day, the horror, but also the heroism of the man, the in-your-face warrior for peace whose death should birth in us the courage to carry on his legacy.

Killing a man who says “no” to the endless cycle of war is a risky business, says a priest in the novel Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone. For “even a corpse can go on whispering ‘No! No! No! with a persistence and obstinacy that only certain corpses are capable of. And how can you silence a corpse.”

John Kennedy was such a man.

Eliot was right: Sometimes death and birth are hard to tell apart.

President Kennedy’s courage in facing a death he knew was coming from forces within his own government who opposed his efforts for peace, nuclear disarmament, and an end to the Cold War – “I know there is a God-and I see a storm coming. I believe that I am ready,” he had written on a slip of paper, and his favorite poem contained the refrain, “I have a rendezvous with death” – should encourage all of us to not turn our faces away from his witness for peace.

We must stop being at ease in a dispensation where we worship the gods of war and clutch the nuclear weapons that our crazed leaders say they will use on a “first-strike” basis. If they ever do, Eliot’s question – “were we led all that way for Birth or Death?” – will be answered.

But no one will hear it.

Edward Curtin, E.Curtin@mcla.edu LINK: http://edwardcurtin.com/unspeakable-memories-theday-john-kennedy-died/ Website: http://edwardcurtin.com/author/ejcurtin/ ♣

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RKM: The story of my quest for understanding

By Richard Moore, Wexford, November 16, 2019

My career was in the software industry in Silicon Valley, working mostly for startups, and ending up at Apple and then Oracle. On my own time I read extensively about history and public affairs, wanting to understand how things really work in the world, how policies are really made and who benefits. Early on I adopted the hypothesis that the big decision makers are not stupid: if policies fail to achieve their stated objectives, it means the real objectives haven’t been revealed. This hypothesis has been confirmed time and time again. Like America’s always-failing policy of stopping terrorism, whose real purpose is to justify illegal military interventions.

My jobs were always satisfying and challenging, and the pay and stock options were always very good.

But I began to see myself nonetheless as a cog in a machine, and began yearning to be instead a person in the world, someone who is engaged with real problems, not the problems of some corporation. In 1994 I packed it in, with my retirement account as funding, and moved to Ireland. I wanted to become a writer, to begin sharing my ideas. In Ireland I figured there’d be few distractions, as I knew no one there. This move 44 dialogue

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was a reckless plunge into the unknown, and the best decision I’ve ever made.

If one is to write about public affairs, the work is partly about writing, and is mostly about learning things, or figuring out things, that are worth sharing. It becomes a quest to achieve understanding, and I chose an ambitious goal for my particular quest: to find out how the world really works, and to figure out how we could change it. To pursue such a quest, I suppose the recommended path would be research, research, and more research – delving into every available source until you find the answers you are seeking.

I’m far too impatient to follow such a path however, and I came up with a faster way of learning. My approach has been to act as if I already know the answer, to whatever particular question I’m investigating. I’d take into account what I’d learned so far, and come up with a theory. Then I’d put the theory out there, in postings to relevant online forums (aka email lists). My learning came from the responses I received to my postings.

I’d learn the most when people shot my theory down, with arguments, with counter examples, and with more attractive theories. This would then send me into www.dialogue.ca

research mode, but very selective research, related to the theory and its rebuttals. Then I’d come up with an improved theory and start pushing that.

When you take into account that there are lots of folks out there, who collectively know a lot about any particular question, my approach turns out to be a very efficient one. I get the benefit of all that collective wisdom, because people online generally like to argue and prove they’re right. My latest theory is the bait that hooks in those who know something I need to learn.

My theories of ‘the problem’ and ‘the solution’ have evolved by this process over the years. Originally I thought ‘right-wing thinking’ was the problem, and I figured educating the right to accept liberal values would be the solution. My understanding of the problem advanced rapidly from that primitive beginning.

At one point I thought the problem was about wealthy elites corrupting our political process. Then I focused on capitalism as a big part of the problem – a system that channels wealthy elites into exploitive pursuits, as they must always pursue growth at any cost.

Eventually I reached the position that still dominates my thinking: the problem is hierarchy itself. I wrote an article about this, The Story of Hierarchy. I argue – looking at both history and system dynamics – that political hierarchies have a natural tendency toward internal concentration of power, and external expansion of power. I conclude the article this way: Hierarchy always breeds greater hierarchy; every hierarchy provides a position of power for some clique, and power always corrupts, sooner or later.

In an age of technology, the inevitable outcome of the hierarchical social model is a tyrannical world government, of one flavor or another. It was always just a matter of time, as was the end of growth.

This is when my real quest began. I started exploring some very deep questions: How can we function in this complex world without hierarchy? What kind of better system could replace it? What kind of movement could bring about the transition?

Unlike with my earlier investigations, there aren’t ‘lots of folks out there’ who ‘collectively know a lot’ about such questions. We’ve lived under hierarchy ever since civilization began; indeed history has been largely driven by the evolution of hierarchy – a competitive struggle, leading to the survival of the www.dialogue.ca

baddest. Hierarchy has been so much a part of ‘how things function’ and ‘how things have always been’ that few people can even imagine its absence. How many fish can imagine the non-existence of water?

Whereas my first quest was as a student learning from the knowledgeable, in this second quest I’ve been forced into the role of searcher: exploring unknown territory, pursuing new kinds of activist experiments, and seeking out people and groups I could work with at various stages along the way. The quest has been going on for twenty years, and someday I may write about it. For now I’ll skip to the chase, and share my conclusions, my list of principles: • If a society is to operate without hierarchy, then it needs to be based on inclusive participatory democracy. We’d be required to govern ourselves, by talking through issues together, with all voices included somehow in the conversation.

• Such a participatory process cannot happen on a large scale. It can only be made to work on a small scale, the level of community.

• A non-hierarchical society must be based on decentralized sovereignty, with each community having full autonomy over its affairs.

• The world of facilitation has developed proven processes, processes that could enable a community-sized entity to operate as a participatory democracy.

• If a community were to adopt and use such processes, it would at the same time be undergoing a cultural transformation – the paradigm of collaboration replacing the paradigm of competition, ‘engaged personal empowerment’ replacing citizen passivity, a sense of community replacing a sense of isolation.

• Such a community would be taking us back to our evolutionary roots, taking us back home. We evolved from primate bands, and most of our existence as humans, according to anthropologists, has been in nonhierarchical, supportive communities, engaged collaboratively in the group’s activities – which, back then, happened to be hunting and gathering. Lacking supportive community, we are today like orphans who have lost their homes. In the psyche of civilized people lies a persistent undercurrent of anxiety.

• If communities were operating in this way, having undergone cultural transformations, then relations among communities would naturally follow the …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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same principles. Collaboration rather than competition would govern those relations. Collaboration would be seen by everyone as the most effective and satisfying way of dealing with challenges.

• Any movement aiming at such a global cultural transformation must itself embody that transformation. The lesson of history is that the outcome of a transformational movement always has the same structure as the movement itself: the means always become the ends; a Bolshevik movement yields a Bolshevik regime.

• The required movement would need to be decentralized, with each local group operating autonomously and by an inclusive democratic process. The movement would need to spread as a viral meme, not as a coordinated project. The seed would be a few communities that have found a way to transform their

cultures. Emulation of their success is what would drive the new culture’s viral expansion.

• There have been activist projects aimed at bringing communities together, attempts to create the seeds of a viral movement. These projects have not succeeded.

People have been so conditioned to isolated disempowerment that drawing them into community has become seemingly impossible. Only if this obstacle can be overcome, and a few seeds created, do I see any hope for overcoming hierarchy and rule by elites.

My book, Escaping the Matrix, expresses these ideas in much more detail. However the scheme presented there for creating seeds has not proven to be successful.

Richard K. Moore, Wexford, Ireland LINK: https://cyberjournal.org/rkm-the-story-of-my-questfor-understanding/ ♣

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LAWS THAT PUNISH FOR HYPOTHETICAL HARM MUST BE ABOLISHED Denis G. Rancourt, U of T Dept. of Physics Researcher, Ontario Civil Liberties Association (ocla.ca), denis.rancourt@gmail.com Denis Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of Ottawa (1987-2009). Known for applications of physics education research. Published over 100 scientific articles in the areas of metal physics, materials science, measurement methods, and earth and environmental science, and many social commentary essays.

Author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism.

He has just published the following paper, Sep. 23 2019, at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335989616

LAWS THAT PUNISH FOR HYPOTHETICAL HARM MUST BE ABOLISHED Research Paper by Denis Rancourt, PhD, U of T, 23 September 2019

Given the state of laws in Canada, it has become necessary to state the obvious: An individual legitimately can be punished solely for proven actual harm that is also proven to have been caused by the individual.

In a free and democratic society, laws that punish an individual for harm that is hypothesized to have occurred, or hypothesized to have been caused by the individual, or hypothesized to have both occurred and been caused by the individual, are pathological in that such laws attack democracy itself in its foundation, as explained below.

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Abstract: Canada has spawned a legal landscape not unlike that of past eras having blasphemy laws to prevent the alleged deleterious effects of the most offensive and subversive utterances of the day. This legal landscape vitiates the fundamental right of freedom of expression and incapacitates democracy itself.

by the State enforce many laws and rules that punish individuals for hypothesized harm, in which the State or State-sanctioned actor does not have to prove actual harm or actual cause. With these laws, proving actual harm is not relevant in the prosecution, and is considered inadmissible and unacceptably wasteful of court and tribunal resources.

Instead, the prosecutor merely needs to argue that there is “likelihood” that unspecified harm has occurred to unspecified “victims”, which is caused via an unspecified mechanism by the accused. Here, the prosecutor can rely entirely on the “judgement” of the court or tribunal, or can bring an “expert” witness to give opinion evidence about the said “likelihood” of harm. No victim will testify or be cross-examined. No evidence of actual harm, physical or psychological, will be entered. No victim will even be named or identified to the court. There is a total absence of evidence of actual harm caused by the accused person.

The proceedings are separate and distinct from any criminal proceedings of responsibility for actual www.dialogue.ca

physical or psychological harm against an actual and identified victim.

What are these laws, you ask? These are the socalled “hate speech” laws, the codes of conduct, and also the common law of defamation.[1][2][3] These laws include: • “hate speech” provisions of the Criminal Code • censorship codes, rules or “guidelines” enforced by social-media corporations • censorship rules and practices of employers regarding the personal actions of employees • professional-ethics codes or rules regarding personal expression on public media • codes of conduct on campuses • common law of defamation.

In all of these laws — in a total absence of proven actual harm, from mere expression of comment, opinion, thought or belief, excluding criminal harassment, intimidation or threat against any actual and specific person, often made through the filter of a public social-media platform rather than any face-to-face interaction — the punishments range from fines, to unlimited “damage” awards, to workplace or professional-association discipline, to loss of access to education, to loss of employment, to loss of professional certification, to lengthy jail terms or house arrests, and include gag orders or compelled speech enforced by imprisonment. Such is the status of Canadian law, despite the fact that Canada has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which expressly prohibits all such written or unwritten censorship laws.[1][2] As a result, Canada has spawned a legal landscape not unlike that of past eras having blasphemy laws to prevent the alleged deleterious effects of the most offensive and subversive utterances of the day. This legal landscape vitiates(*) the fundamental right of freedom of expression and incapacitates democracy itself.

The fundamental right of freedom of expression is the right that allows the individual free expression, and the personal agency that derives from free expression, even though the individual is confined by society’s changing and democratically agreed-upon rules.

Free expression is the right to express. It is essential for personal development and emancipation. It does not, in itself, confine others, and it is up to the individual to seek and secure receptive listeners. This is the essence of both personal growth and society.

Beyond personal growth within the fabric of society, freedom of expression plays a second role that is www.dialogue.ca

equally important. Democracy is susceptible to capture by a self-interested elite, and politics must not be solely a contest between dominant-elite special interests. The balancing force against runaway capture, in a democracy, is freedom of expression, together with freedom of association, which permit effective democratic participation, and are the true sources of the often touted “transparency” (whistle blowing) and “accountability” (popular opinion making).

Censorship, including censorship actuated with the pretext of preventing hypothetical harm, does not protect the individual. It is a lockdown designed to frustrate the essential democratic process of expression, discussion, debate and argument, in an increasingly illegitimate and intolerant system. Its use by politicians, in exploiting the oppression Olympiad in their partisan manipulations, is unconscionable, as is its use in special-interest propaganda by litigation. For these reasons, the State must not provide laws that enable an influential elite in-effect to neuter vehement individual expression that has transformative potential. The State must not be allowed to thus erode and suppress individual agency. Instead, it is the duty of the State to protect individual freedom of expression. If democracy cannot be trusted, then there is no democracy.

Relation to recent work In her 2018 book[3], Nadine Strossen brilliantly reviews the research showing that “hate speech” laws are harmful to society. While this scholarship brings current empirical support for abolishing “hate speech” laws, I don’t find it to be satisfying. We should not be reduced to making policy arguments regarding harm reduction in order to justify preventing the State from suppressing fundamental human freedom, or preventing the State from enabling elite interests and corporations from suppressing the said freedom. If history itself and the study of sociology[4] cannot inform us about the necessity to safeguard the fundamental human right of freedom of expression, then we are lost.[5] Opposing “hate speech” law is not “free-speech absolutism” Unfortunately, in the present climate of clamouring to ask the State to limit fundamental personal freedoms “for our own safety,” the arguments become polarized, and many have used the sophistry that the position of opposing the aberrant inherent features of “hate speech” law is equivalent to advocating for “free-speech absolutism.” This is a false …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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equivalency. If the State were to strike down all “hate speech” laws, limit the codes of conduct to exclude “hate speech”, and strike down the common law of defamation (which presumes falsity, damages and malice), then there would still independently exist: the civil tort of malicious falsehood, the Criminal Code provisions against threats, coercion, intimidation, harassment, and so on; and all the laws against discrimination. The individual would not lose any of these common law, statutory and constitutional protections.

Limiting the State’s power to prosecute victimless speech crimes (presuming harm at large, and presuming causation) does not limit the State’s power to enforce crimes that have proven victims and cause, irrespective of the role of expression in these offences, and does not limit the individual’s means to obtain redress.

Denis G. Rancourt, Toronto Endnotes [1] “Canadian defamation law is noncompliant with international law”, by Denis Rancourt, Ontario Civil Liberties Association report, 1 February 2016. (link follows…) http://ocla.ca/our- work/reports/canadian-defamation-law-is-

noncompliant-with-international-law/ [2] “Towards a Rational Legal Philosophy of Individual Rights”, by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, 15 November 2016. https://dissidentvoice.org/2016/11/towards-a-rationallegal- philosophy-of-individual-rights/ [3] HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship, by Nadine Strossen, Oxford University Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0-19-085912-1. www.nyls.edu/faculty/wpcontent/uploads/sites/148/2018/04/endnotes.apr2818.pdf [4] “Self-organization and time-stability of social hierarchies”, by Joseph Hickey and Jörn Davidsen, 29 January 2019, PLoS ONE 14(1): e0211403. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0211403 [5] “Cause of USA Meltdown and Collapse of Civil Rights”,

by Denis Rancourt, Dissident Voice, 7 September 2017. https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/09/cause-of-usa-meltdownand-collapse-of- civil-rights/ LINK: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335989616_LAWS_THAT_PUNISH_FOR_HYPOTHETICAL_HARM_MUST_BE_ABOLISHED Technical Report (PDF Available) September 2019 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33541.09443 Cite this publication Author Profile: www.researchgate.net/profile/D_Rancourt [Emphasis added by editor] * Vitiate: to destroy or impair the legal validity of. ♣

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Bureaucratic Armageddon Peter Weygang, Bobcaygeon, ON 2018-11-03

Bureaucracy, the power of the desk, was formed by merging the military chain of command structure with the industrial ‘cog in a machine’ view of humanity. Bureaucrats are paper pushers, who create regulations that demand strict obedience by the people, and by their employees in the hierarchical levels within the organization. In so doing they destroy the creativity, adaptability, and common sense, of the government work force. We are badly governed, at huge expense, not by elected politicians, but by government bureaucracy.

These bureaucracies exist without any external oversight. No one gets sacked for incompetence. The size, salaries, and working conditions, are set by themselves.

They hire the staff, who are clones of themselves.

Representational government is a total failure beyond the micro level. Every concern from the people is siphoned off into the bureaucracy. This is the standard reply: ‘Your comments will be forwarded to appropriate staff for consideration. A ministry staff member will respond to you as soon as possible. Once again, thank you for writing.’ (Nov. 2, 2018) The EU is a gigantic bureaucracy of over 330,000 people, with a budget of $240 Billion. It has more 48 dialogue

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control over the day by day life of the British people than exerted by their Sovereign, and Parliament. The EU parliament is the top dog. The upper level bureaucrats in the EU are each paid over $320,000, plus pension rights, and perks.

The common currency, and other EU activities, have left countries like Greece in financial, and social, tatters. Corruption, and fraud, compound the problems.

The estimated cost of fraudulent irregularities {in the EU} was €248m in 2013. {0.2% of the EU's annual spending – 10 times the rate for the UK}.

The citizens of Europe are forced to pay for this system, created by bureaucratic pressure, and not by the wish of the people.

But, my goodness, how the bureaucrats thrive! Thus, grows the Brave New World.

The UN is another bureaucratic megalith. Even accounting for inflation, annual UN expenditure is 40 times higher than it was in the early 1950s. The organisation now encompasses 17 specialised agencies, 14 funds, and a secretariat with 17 departments employing 41,000 people. The annual cost of administration is $5.4 Billion. …/ www.dialogue.ca

Peter Weygang, Bureaucratic Armageddon, contd.

One official noted that the UN was weighed down by incompetence and red tape. It’s a very heavily bureaucratic organisation. It hasn’t changed in a lot of years.

It has built systems on top of systems on top of systems. The structure will always protect the incompetent. Another official noted that Performance management is a joke. Almost everyone gets ‘above average’ in their assessment.

The UN has a notable history of failure in bringing peace to the world. The Rohingya crisis, and the annexation of Crimea, are examples. The truth is that when a natural catastrophe occurs, or armed conflict arises, it is the USA, Britain, France, and other sovereign nations that spring into action. The UN lags far behind with an assessment team, and eventually does very little. But hey! The bureaucracy soldiers on!

The changes in local government in Victoria County {City of Kawartha Lakes} are a textbook example of how bureaucracies grow.

First, we had strong local governments where the councillors were local people, directly serving their neighbours. There were 22 councillors. Budgets were tight, common sense reigned, the people were heard, and obeyed.

Then amalgamation. There were 16 councillors, and power shifted to the staff. Bureaucracy grew, budgets mushroomed, people were ignored, taxes increased, and bylaws came like locusts to consume personal freedom.

Then ward consolidation. There are 8 councillors.

The power base moves inexorably to the bureaucrats.

Their salaries, and benefits, consume most of the taxes. Services fall. Bylaws breed like maggots on a corpse. The people are beaten into submission. Then comes legal pot, just like Soma, to keep them acquiescent in their miserable lives. No revolution is possible. The spies are everywhere. In each mind-numbing hand-held communicator, and each security camera.

The next step – and this is a prophecy – will be the consolidation of the amalgamated municipalities into regional governments. They will be run entirely by the bureaucrats, with a token handful of elected officials. The regional chairman idea has already been introduced. These top elected officials will love their exulted life style far more that they will ever love the people.

The bureaucrats control the agenda. They decide www.dialogue.ca

what data will be gathered, from whom, and how.

They massage the output into a shape that serves them. This is the origin of fake news. Councillors only get the staff’s view of the best course of action. Yes, best for the bureaucratic regime.

The Core review, where the staff examined their own navels looking for possible pixie dust, was a blatant exercise in duplicity. It was bought, hook line and sinker, by council. It took two years, at an estimated cost of $2 million. It found that everything was slightly better than perfect, but a few more senior staff would help, together with closing local offices, and facilities.

We live in the age of data mining. The government can search for anything it wants, anywhere it wants.

This is a fundamental invasion of privacy that has been legalized by bureaucrats. Not only are bureaucrats a social elite, they are also greatly feared. Even the term Municipal Bylaw Enforcement Officer has the ring of a police state. Note also that the Liberal government plans to allow Statistics Canada to gather transactional level personal banking information of 500,000 Canadians, without their knowledge or consent.

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fejldo6NyMA

We should all be scared by the approaching tsunami of bureaucratic power, and the invasion of privacy.

We have a permitted a permanent political elite to grow, flourish, and destroy every other flower in the democratic garden. It will take an enormous effort by every citizen to deconstruct the administrative state.

Will the usual historical chain of events unfold? That is repression of the people, bloody revolution, a radical change, followed by the selection of a leader, to start the process all over again. Only the Athenians, and the Swiss, had the genius to find the one viable solution, and that is direct rule of the people, by the people, for the people. Lincoln knew his history.

Personally, I fear we are already too late. The people are so apathetic, so totally disengaged in what happens in city hall, that the ballot box can no longer change matters. In this version of Animal Farm it will be the bureaucrats who emerge as the pigs. So, get used to living in a human sized chicken-coop, watching propaganda videos, and laying eggs for your masters.

Peter Weygang M.A.;D.I.C.;M.Ed. Sec., Citizens for Direct Democracy Email: peterweygang@gmail.com ♣

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The Feudal Fiefdoms of Saskatchewan :

PART TWO

In the Regional Parks of SK, people own their homes, on land leased from management Boards that operate at a frightening level of autonomy, enabled by political interference and wilful blindness from municipal and provincial government. Five seniors are representing themselves in Court of Queen’s Bench against a Board-initiated Writ of Possession application. This is Installment Two of the story from Norm Zigarlick and friends on the idylls of park life and their search for ‘justice’.

Norm Zigarlick, SK, normzig56@gmail.com

My article, Feudal Fiefdoms of Saskatchewan, ran in the Autumn 2019 issue of DIALOGUE. I told of how four friends and I wound up as respondents in the SK Court of Queen’s Bench without a lawyer.

The legal action QB 174 was discontinued. That would have been cause for celebration, but Suffern Lake Regional Park Authority (SLRPA) immediately refiled three new applications (QB 230, 231, 232 of 2019). In honouring the tradition of not arguing in public media what is still before the courts, I will avoid specifics of the three as yet undetermined cases.

The Government of Saskatchewan is NOT named as a respondent or plaintiff in any of the applications; I am free to discuss the role they have played in the development of these actions.

Conspiracy Counsel for SLRPA stated in his Brief of Legal Argument: “The respondents raise many speculative allegations of conspiracy and retaliation by many levels of government without providing much specific evidence of actual conspiracy, or why busy and highranking officials of the government of Saskatchewan would be motivated into coordinating a giant conspiracy with a small Regional Park in north west Saskatchewan.”

This question might have been made to disparage our antique road show. However, we DO have significant support correspondence and Freedom of Information responses that indicate Governments above the local level were involved.

The word conspiracy has become something that conjures up images of tin foil hats, crystals, pyramids and crazy old men muttering nonsense about the end of the world. The real world understands conspiracy as: “two or more persons constructing a false narrative intended to disguise a truth.” I believe there were a chain of little conspiracies involved as opposed to a single giant one. Giant conspiracies require planning and coordination. We haven’t witnessed a lot of intricate planning in this adventure.

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Explanations and Excuses To date the Saskatchewan government and its agents look more like me trying to explain how I managed to get a minus score on an 8th grade spelling test or why I hadn’t attended 9th grade French classes for three months. My explanations at the time were a tad thin.

My point is the arguments and explanations provided to us by government and its agents over the past four and a half years are no stronger than mine of decades ago. Is it a coincidence that I honed my excuse fabrication skills in a Saskatchewan high school 60 years ago? Is this contagious? Perhaps my lack of academic dedication led to an inability to grasp the nuances of the English language which in turn have prevented me from recognizing the good intentions of the Saskatchewan government? To date the government’s good intention record is on par with the dizzying lows of my grade eight spelling score.

In any case, here we are, middle of December 2019, five people still enmeshed in a legal battle with one side spending public money on lawyers while the other has only their own pockets to pick. The five of us represent the remnants of the Suffern Lake Regional Park Cabin Owners Association. The intent of the Cabin Owners Association was to work collaboratively with all levels of authority to ensure equitable enforcement, transparent accounting and communications. The results have been consistently disappointing. www.dialogue.ca

The Ministry at the top of the bureaucratic mountain constantly bleats a well-worn mantra, “issues will be resolved at the local level”. Meanwhile, at the base of the mountain, the Park Authority regularly trots out their tired little pony neighing shrilly, “someone else, somewhere else, in some higher government authority granted us permission” to disregard democratic process, to flout regulation, to mangle process…

This is exactly how governments turn little problems into big ones. Rather than admit a small problem and deal with it at the outset, the chosen course of action is to bury bad news and punish anybody who tries to dig it up. These statements sum it all up: Parks Culture and Sports Minister Gene Makowsky says, “local resolution”, but locally Park Authority representatives publicly state, “we won’t be talkin’ to no Cabin Association” and “we shouldn’t allow a Cabin Association”. Not conducive to resolution.

Sadly, this process is only a microcosmic example of Governments in general. No longer are there Harry S Truman signs on desktops advertising “The Buck Stops Here”. Now it’s more a case of “if you wish to be ignored in English, please press one”.

Wilful Blindness Collectively a stunning amount of time and money has been spent on this legal circus: lawyers fees; travel expenses; court costs; bureaucratic processing within multiple agencies; plus, thousands of hours expended on general research and preparation of documents by the respondents. Supposedly actioned in response to taxes 90 days in arrears and in dispute.

Given the official structure of the Saskatchewan Regional Parks system, our four and a half years spent sharing substantial concerns should have been addressed at all levels with meaningful, positive change.

It does NOT stand to reason that well-paid, trained and qualified oversight personnel would allow reported inappropriate SLRPA operational, fiscal and management behaviours to go on for years only to have the whole mess wind up in court. How does one explain wilful blindness of that duration?

Troublemakers What did we get for our efforts? We were branded as troublemakers as opposed to trouble identifiers.

By the time of the 2019 local AGM, the troublemakers tag and misinformation campaign had inflamed the bulk of the cabin community to a level of animosity so www.dialogue.ca

high that calls were being made to barricade driveways, cut off water supplies and spend more money on lawyers; anything it took to get rid of the freeloaders, individuals who collectively have spent tens of thousands of dollars in trying to make things right.

Reading the minutes of that meeting is a distressing exercise. The manner in which we were vilified, in our absence, would make any dictator worth his salt very proud.

Nowhere, in those minutes, does leadership inform participants that lots 54, 56 and 27 were not the only lease-holders in arrears. [As noted at the end of Part One] The Chairman’s extended family had last paid their taxes in 2012. Payment bringing them up-to-date was made September 13, 2019. All oversight bodies were aware of this nepotistic scenario long before the GO button was pushed on QB 174 of 2019 – the court action against cabin owners based on nonpayment of taxes.

Titillating Timelines Still stinging from the results of the AGM and the ongoing smear campaign by the Park Authority, I wrote an email letter to Premier Scott Moe that was received by his office on the morning of June 10, 2019.

It explained that time had run out with regard to us waiting for government to take meaningful action on Suffern Lake Regional Park issues. Defamation, breach of trust, abuse of authority and wilful blindness had gone on long enough and it was our position that as government would not address the matter, we would use legal, political and media efforts to the best of our ability to leverage resolution. The stated intention was that we were prepared to act with immediacy.

At that time the Park Authority already had a Provincial Court case going against our colleague Jim Duffee. It was scheduled for trial July 4th and 5th.

On June 13 counsel for the Park’s small claims action advised that SLRPA intended to file a Queen’s Bench Writ of Possession on Mr. Duffee’s property. This new action was to somehow “narrow the issues” in the Provincial case. Based on that, counsel requested adjournment until a decision was made on the Queen’s Bench action.

Jim updated me on this new twist. The rest of our group subsequently met for discussion. At that time, I said I believed all of us would get served with Queen’s Bench notices because the Park and its …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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oversight bodies would be looking to involve us, as a group, in a court action that would derail our ongoing efforts to expose their wrongdoing.

Records show that on June 17 SLRPA’s QB attorney filed application with the Court. As I predicted, all five of us were named as respondents. I haven’t investigated what kind of financial opportunities exist for a prophet; at the moment I remain the non profit-prophet.

On June 20 all five of us received notice of service and, because of an error, were re-served June 21.

Before the Courts I might be a tad cynical, but when SLRPA’s only supporting affidavit was from their part-time contract secretary, I got to thinking somebody was in a hurry to get the issue “before the courts”. For those of you not familiar with the tactic, this is the only known way to get a politician to shut up.

We test drove the “before the courts” theory and wrote a letter to the Premier. His response dated June 19 (before we were officially served notice of filing!) stated that “As Premier, I am not able to become involved in matters before the courts”.

Hearing Aids and Legal Aid In reality, even with my tinfoil hat on, I don’t believe the Saskatchewan government set out with a GIANT plan as described by SLRPA counsel, to squash the concerns of cottage owners in a sandhill park with a pothole lake. What they did do was religiously follow the earlier pronouncement of their park planner, “we will always support our regional park authorities”.

In their commitment to the Suffern Lake park authority, government has deflected, misdirected, ignored, camouflaged and enabled all manner of inappropriate behaviours. When things got difficult to control with little white lies, they upped the ante and set out to shoot the messengers. In the end, the tactic they resorted to was using fear, the currency of lawyers, to try to force us to stop our efforts.

In fact, one of the SLRPA lawyers involved presented us with a notice of service which included directives stating the Park would generously allow us to sell our cabins to a third party. But NOT to just anyone.

“Any approved sale must be made on the following terms: The identity of the buyer must be approved in writing in advance by the Authority, in its sole and unfettered discretion”.

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Shortly after delivering that gem, SLRPA decided that instead of just hand-selecting the buyers and thereby controlling sale prices, they would have a go at scooping the properties for themselves.

That’s when our group of seniors, in need of a hearing aids as much as legal aid, wound up trundling off to court.

It remains my contention that SLRPA, a public body performing a function of government, did not act alone in creating the circumstances that forced us into court cases in which the loss of homes and/or significant portions of life savings is a real possibility.

On November 26 Saskatchewan’s Justice Minister and Attorney General issued a press release in which he said, “it is important for people to have confidence in government”. To be honest with you, Mr. Morgan? I am not really feeling all that confident.

Before we can disclose the full amount of information we have relating to this saga, the Court decisions on QB 230, 231 and 232 of 2019 must be delivered. I would never risk prejudging a Judge, but I am comfortable saying that what remains to be revealed is pretty dramatic. No matter what decisions are rendered there will be future stories to tell.

In the meantime, we continue to collect information for whatever comes next.

I want to thank everyone for the encouragement and support I received from the first article on this topic. I also want to stress that while I get to be a messenger, it’s not me that risked it all and took on a fight that no one, especially the government of Saskatchewan, expected them capable of. My co-respondents exhibit a certain kind of bravery and sense of fairness that has long since left the officials of the purported democracy we are told we have, a bravery and ethical commitment that include those who make DIALOGUE happen.

Satisfaction Not Guaranteed I’ve attached a letter that went to Minister Gene Makowsky. It was in response to a Suffern Lake Regional Park “Satisfaction Survey” conducted by his department. The results of the survey were then presented at an annual general meeting.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if my personal bias is affecting my judgement or if perhaps the survey effort [Letter follows…/ ] was somewhat predetermined. www.dialogue.ca

Letter from Suffern Lake Cabin Owners to Hon. Gene Makowsky SK Minister of PCS re the Suffern Lake Regional Park “Satisfaction Survey” From :slcabinowners@gmail.com Date: May 12, 2019 at 5:20 PM; Subject: Suffern Lake Regional Park Cabin Owners Feedback To: Honourable Gene Makowsky, Minister of Parks, Culture and Sport minister.pcs@gov.sk.ca , cc: other politicians and implicated individuals

ANALYSIS: SUFFERN LAKE REGIONAL PARK SATISFACTION SURVEY During the spring of 2018, the government of Saskatchewan in collaboration with Saskatchewan Regional Parks Association and Suffern Lake Regional Park Authority undertook to poll satisfaction levels of people with interests in Suffern Lake Regional Park. This effort was apparently spawned by concerns voiced by our working group, the Suffern Lake Regional Park Cabin Owners Association.

You have, Minister Makowsky, referred to the survey outcomes, commenting that the majority of individuals surveyed were satisfied with the operations of the Park.

In contrast to your approval of the survey and its results, the Cabin Owners group found the survey was designed to return a predetermined result favouring the government of Saskatchewan’s “other legislated entity”, the Suffern Lake Regional Park Authority.

The following is an examination of the published survey findings of the Saskatchewan government and the findings of the Cabin Owners group.

We have drawn information from FOI PCS 02/19-G, SAMA tax assessments and other verifiable sources. Any use of anecdotal information will be identified.

Sample Section Concerns SLRPA secretary, David Kiefer, states that he contacted 47 cabin owners by email and 9 by regular mail for a total of 56 cabin owners (email Kiefer to Clincke 28/05/2018).

Suffern Lake does not and never has had 56 cabins. To the best of our knowledge, there are 51.

The survey criteria stated there would be one response per household. However, there are apparently three owners who hold title to two cabins each.

At the time of the survey: 1 cabin and an undeveloped lot were owned by secretary Kiefer; 5 cabins were owned by Board representatives; and 2 owners had direct family ties to sitting Board members.

Therefore, SIX cabin owner respondents were evaluating their own management, at a time when their managerial behaviour and actions were under scrutiny and being contested, with an additional two respondents who would most likely exhibit a strong pro-SLRPA bias. www.dialogue.ca

Given the small size of the survey sample section, EIGHT predetermined positive responses would significantly skew results.

Also affecting the outcome, were the cabin owners who opted out after contacting you, Minister Makowsky, to advise that misinformation needed to be corrected and presented to the cabin owner community in advance of implementing the survey to ensure unprejudiced responses. Their decision not to participate was not indifference, it was in protest of the manipulative tactics driving the survey.

The Collaborators During 2016 and 2017 a large volume of correspondence and discussion was generated between the Cabin Owners group and Parks Culture and Sport (PCS). At the direction of Premier Brad Wall, then Minister Cheveldayoff informed us that our designated contact at PCS was to be Dominique Clincke (letter 02/21/2017).

In subsequent communications, Mr. Clincke advised that when it came to the private (cabin community) side of the park, Saskatchewan Regional Park Association (SRPA) was “out of the loop”. However, FOI responses and additional documentation clearly indicate SRPA was very much involved in this effort and obviously in the loop with Executive Director, Darlene Friesen, taking part in formatting the survey and structuring the comments published in the results.

Due to the tragic passing of Mrs. Friesen (coincidentally on the day after legal counsel for SLRPA, Robertson Stromberg’s Kim Anderson, advised two cabin owners their homes were going to be subject to Writs of Possession) we will not have an opportunity to clarify the interests she felt were represented/served by her participation.

Survey Participants The survey polled cabin owners as well as seasonal and occasional campers from both 2018 and previous years.

Questions included a section regarding satisfaction with the Board/SLRPA and asked whether respondents would be interested in taking Board positions.

Currently, Board representatives are appointed by the RMs and Village of Senlac, including the appointment of three members-at-large from the cabin owner population. There is no apparent allowance for campers to serve as board members.

How likely is it that a casual camper will check into a campground, ask about the management structure of the operating organization and then ask if there are Board positions available?

While we acknowledge that campers provided valid input to other portions of the survey, campers have no viable stake or probable interest in evaluating the financial …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Letter to Hon. Gene Makowsky, Minister PCS, contd.

concerns, taxation issues, breaches of privacy, abuse of authority and defamation perpetrated by SLRPA in their management of the park’s cabin community. Their input on the management questions merely weights the survey to show inflated approvals.

It is difficult to understand how Mr. Kiefer, who is a major SLRPA participant and deeply involved in the concerns voiced by the Cabin Owners group, was given carte blanche to handpick 26 campers, from the hundreds of visitors to the park during the time period referenced, to contribute to the survey and comment on SLRPA’s management style.

Several members of our group have experience in market research, public opinion surveys, wildlife surveys and political polling. None of us have ever seen a quantitative or qualitative survey with such a blatant built-in foundational bias.

Minister Makowsky, your Ministry prepared and approved the survey findings for public presentation as valid research when it was, in fact, merely a public relations effort to whitewash SLRPA. Our concerns describe serious issues with both operational and financial park management and the lack of both oversight and democratic process. It would be reasonable for the average citizen to believe the government of Saskatchewan would undertake a survey as a tool for direction to formulate a resolution to problems, not as a tool to camouflage wrongdoing, perpetuate misinformation and further discredit us while minimizing our concerns.

Circumstances at the Time of the Survey As if the baseline respondent structure of your survey was not flawed enough, PCS also employed the standby political tool of lying by omission in the survey methodology.

By the time this survey was implemented, your office and your government were fully aware of: - the slanderous nature of emails circulated by Park secretary, David Kiefer; - SLRPA Chairman Harvey Leer’s false claim that a member of the Cabin Owners group had cost the Park $6000 in lost lottery revenue (your other portfolio, Saskatchewan Liquor & Gaming Authority SLGA, confirmed this was an unsupportable statement according to an FOI response) - Mr. Kiefer falsely informing the attendees of the 2017 AGM that the Cabin Owners group had “called the cops on him” regarding lottery investigations when it was the SLGA that invited RCMP participation - Mr. Kiefer and Mr. Leer’s assertions that SLRPA lotteries run in 2012, 2013 and 2014 were operated properly (“perfect to a tee, better than most”), while in truth many problems have been identified in their lottery activities and more continue to come to light - the dispute over 2017 tax billing which saw some

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members of our group assessed tax increases double that of Mr. Kiefer’s stated Park average (still unresolved)

Mr. Minister, with the exception of Mr. Kiefer’s emails which were widely circulated, the comments above were directed to an audience of around 40 people, virtually all of whom had a vested interest through cabin ownership at Suffern Lake Regional Park. Such comments stated as fact

by SLRPA representatives would obviously have a significant impact on opinion survey responses.

Yet, despite your Government knowing all of the above, you chose to move forward with the deeply flawed satisfaction survey. Such an action can only be seen as creating a political tool to further discredit and marginalize individuals who questioned the integrity of a government whose lack of oversight allowed the noted abuses to take place.

Intentions and Realities Mr. Minister, in your correspondence of April 3, 2018, you advised Lisa Wildman of the intent of the survey and further stated that SLRPA’s management style would not be addressed. On that very same day, two cabin owners had their leases terminated ostensibly for being 90 days in arrears on the disputed tax bills. Remarkably, the terminations were issued only eight days after the Cabin Owners group had submitted requests to SLGA for further information regarding SLRPA’s lottery operations.

Coincidence? Or a bit of political stickhandling to redirect our efforts and intimidate us?

FOI responses indicate that not only PCS, but the entire Executive Council, were privy to and aware of these actions and the surrounding circumstances.

Mr. Minister, you have frequently and loudly proclaimed that Suffern Lake issues would be resolved at the local level (i.e.: 13 times in the 37 recorded minutes concerning Suffern Lake during the May 14th Committee meeting).

Meanwhile, your Ministry was directly involved in structuring the damaging survey and developing a meeting agenda, complete with a non-response strategy, for SLRPA to use at their 2018 Annual General Meeting (FOI). Such dedicated collaboration.

And yet, you were willing to be no more than an observer to the contrived legal efforts SLRPA made to confiscate the cabins of the individuals who questioned you and your agencies.

This does not reflect resolution efforts, local or otherwise, nor does it demonstrate Ministerial balance or commitment to addressing our concerns.

Closing Comments During the Standing Committee meeting for Intergovernmental Affairs and Justice held May 14, 2018, Minister Makowsky, you commented that the survey was intended www.dialogue.ca

to address concerns raised by cabin owners, including issues like taxation.

Sadly, your government and its agencies are far more interested in protecting political image and positions of power than honestly resolving concerns. It bothered you not at all that homes and life savings of everyday citizens were being aggressively put at risk while you enabled SLRPA, your “public body performing a function of government”, to continue the incompetent rule of their autonomous little kingdom.

Mr. Clincke states in his email of February 26, 2018, “The survey is looking good.… Anyway, I still think this will

help all of us deal with the situation including the park authority and the RMs.” Unsurprisingly, Mr. Clincke does not mention any benefit or anticipated help for cabin owners. Time has shown that the results of your biased survey actually worsened the circumstances for cabin owners who were already at risk.

What a proud legacy you and your fellow political travellers will leave.

Suffern Lake Cabin Owners Group: Lisa Wildman, John Danilak, Joanna Ritchot, James L. Duffee, Norm Zigarlick ♣ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

END OF INSTALLMENT 2 FROM NORM ZIGARLICK & FRIENDS ♣

**************************************************************

“Observations from Lithuania”

Ken Russell Slade, Vilnius

Changing for Ageing: (Part 4: ‘Addendum -- Notes, Fautes, and Quotes’)

by KR Slade Continued from Autumn edition: [Editor's note: Part 1 -- ''Changing for Ageing, ‘Into the Third-Age’" (about the author's feelings of reaching seventy years-of-age), was published in the Autumn 2018 issue; Part 2 -- ‘Some of the Micro Considerations’ began in the Winter 2018-2019 issue, was continued in the Spring 2019 issue, and was completed in the Summer 2019 issue; Part Ken Slade 3 -- 'Some of the Macro Considerations' was published in the Autumn 2019 issue.]

*** Information -- in our age, for our ageing The ‘information age’ is named to reflect the availability of an abundance of information; in fact, there now is ‘information overload’; furthermore, there is an over-abundance of conflicting information, as well as of mis-information. Everyone has a voice, and is able to have a platform, and social media allows us to reach a wider audience than would not have been possible ~20 years ago. The problem now is to distinguish the credible voices from the charlatans. Moreover, we are all individuals, with our unique DNA, experiences, environment, and internal and surface (i.e., skin) microbiome; one size does not fit all, and probably does not fit anyone. What often is ultimatelysought is impossible: a way to achieve the Dionysian archetype of eternal youth.

Today, the ‘go-to’ for advice is the Internet, social media, or friends; noticeably absent from today’s norm is the missing actual medical-provider. There is a lot of conflicting information on the Internet that is not accurate, or even vetted. Much of the Internet can be categorised as: catnip, drama and memorable www.dialogue.ca

images, fuzzy science, ‘click-bait’, pundits for twits or tweets, etc.

Instead of a competent medical-services provider, there is "Doctor Google'' and "Doctor Reddit".

There is an entire opus of nonsense advice. (e.g. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/11/what-doesliving-fully-mean-welcome-to-the-age-of-pseudo-profoundnonsense )

Yet, there are the available authoritative references (e.g., https://www.webmd.com , www.merckmanuals.com/professional ).

■ Here are some examples of misinformation: (1) http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180126-glutenfree-water-and-absurd-labelling-of-whats-absent

(2) Absurd advertising ... [sic:] the premium organic

water beverage: zero calories, zero carbs, zero sugars, zero caffeine, and contains no dyes, flavorings, or additives. “We’re gluten-free, non-GMO, and organic.’’

Contains: natural minerals; high pH (which helps the body neutralize acidity, reduce odors, and to stay in balance); and all-important electrolytes (which help you stay hydrated and refreshed). Pure refreshment: crisp, clean and delicious ! [viz.: www.getblk.com ] (3) In the second decade of the 21st century,

'studies' have shown: red meat is bad for you, red meat is good for you; butter is bad for you, butter is good for you; sugar is bad for you, sugar is good for you; salt is bad for you, salt is good for you; cheese is bad for you, cheese is good for you; more sleep is bad for you, more sleep is good for you; exercise is good for you, exercise is bad for you; and such examples are multifold. …/ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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KR Slade, Changing for Ageing, Part 4, contd.

(4) There are rampant common-statistical-errors;

in general, either being praised, or being blamed, for events that are largely determined by chance. In a particular example, where 4% (i.e., 4 out of 100) become ill from eating X, then 100% are denied X, and then 3% become ill, the conclusion is that by removing X, a 25% improvement is achieved -- whereas in statistical-actuality, the improvement is only 1% (and the 1% can often be explained by bad-science in the data collection, as well as ‘statistical error’ margin).]

(5) Contradictory medical-expert advice regarding diet as affected by saturated fat http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190712-saturated-fatworse-than-unsaturated-fat

(6) October 2019 -- According to new research, evi-

dence is too weak to justify telling individuals to eat less beef or pork.

(7) The mindless appeal: “Plastic food is good for you. Plastic food is made from natural ingredients found in the earth and the oceans. Plastic food is not genetically modified, because plastic has no genes.”

■ In the last decade, older people have become alarmed about the possible condition of their mental state -- recent-past, present, and future. The reality is: all people -- of all ages -- have cognitive and emotional limitations; in fact, everybody is irrational.

There is a spectrum that contains points of spastic to stupid. All people have times of questioning their own ability to problem-solve, and of doubting their own mental processes, and wondering if such condition is a permanent mental-distortion. Such questioning, doubting, and wondering are all probably without any foundation; if such issues were real, the person would not have the ability for such concepts. Crazy people do not know that they are crazy.

While there is an inevitable decline in our mental powers as we age, as our brains literally start to shrivel, these changes mostly affect so-called “fluid intelligence” -- functions such as our ability to solve new problems. On the other hand, “crystallised intelligence”, which includes verbal reasoning and acquired knowledge, actually continues to grow well into our 90's. It is important also to remember that not everyone ages in the same way, or at the same rate; some 70-year olds will be better at some things requiring crystallised intelligence, than much-younger 56 dialogue

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workers.

There can be too-great a conclusion from a single and simple behavioural manifestation. [Example: Some people are ‘slow wakers’ -- meaning that they require a period of time after completing sleep in order to be fully awake -- and, until fully awake, can be as drowsy as a grizzly-bear roused from winter's hibernation; drugs / alcohol may have similar effects.]

■ Alzheimer’s and dementia require special mention, especially concerning particular behaviours. At any stage of life, there is the common experience to misplace keys or eyeglasses, or walk into a room with a task in mind and then forget what that task is. Such misplacing / forgetting are often attributable to multitasking, or stress, and are considered part of normal aging. All people, of all ages experience word-retrieval problems, and may engage in repeating stories.

Such single episodes of limited range, and of no real / significant consequence(s), are to be distinguished from multiple / constant episodes with a range of unusual behaviours.

Example of a problem of a particular individual: (1) repeatedly becoming-lost when travelling from one well-known location to another well-known location; (2) starting to wear sweaters in warm weather, or not wearing coat in cold weather; (3) in restaurants, asking family members what he/she likes to eat; (4) difficulty filling-out a bank deposit slip, not understanding what is today’s date, or how to write the date; (5) laughing or crying inappropriately; (6) doing something dangerous -- to person, animal, object. In this example, the significance is: the repetitive action(s), simple functioning, and the combination of a multitude of unusual behaviours -- especially if increasing over time and in scope -- as well as the possibility of physical harm to self or others.

Here are some things to look for: notes/memos with reminders about simple tasks ... when neighbours or friends share concern (s) ... bills not paid (or overpaid) ... changes in physical appearance (e.g. someone who was always clothed neatly, suddenly wears wrinkled or dirty clothing) ... weight change(s) ... driving issues ( e.g., fender benders, parking in the wrong place) ... any behaviour that is out of the ordinary for the particular individual ... using an object inappropriately ... saying / doing things that are inappropriate (i.e., “no social-filter”) ... changes in speech, and/or personality ... cannot recall a relatively-recent conversation ... www.dialogue.ca

misses appointments ... has their phone shut-off, or service terminated ... their TV does not work. https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/114226818/howto-spot-the-signs-of-dementia-in-a-loved-one

■ Retirement is always a new reality, regardless of whatever preparation. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48882195

There is the necessity to make new decisions, with new facts / circumstances, for new issues. No decision is going to be perfect -- because there are going to be more changes -- therefore, the chances of making an ideal decision is approximately the same chance as winning the lottery!

Old-age has new medical requirements. Medical procedures (especially surgery) are much more challenging as we age; and with ageing, we certainly do not recover (as) quickly. The family-doctor, or general practitioner, may no longer provide what is needed for the older person. A ‘geriatrician’ is a medical speciality of physicians, who are devoted to the health and care of older people; this does not mean people who imminently are dying. https://www.npr.org/sections/healthshots/2019/06/17/732737956/a-clearer-map-for-aging-elderhoodshows-how-geriatricians-can-help?t=1560802916068

*** Conclusions The tides of trends are not all your friends; tidal trends per se deserve scrutiny; surf inside of a wave, and you can find your early grave.

Sexagenarians, septuagenarians, octogenarians, and all of the other subsequent ‘genarians’, do seem to have some special bond of common condition in the inevitable.

People ACT from their emotions, and not from reason; and people later JUSTIFY their actions with logic. Rationalising after-the-fact, replaces rational before-thefact, in the actuality of the human condition.

My favourite bumper sticker: “Ask your doctor if medical advice from a TV commercial is good for you”.

Ken Russell Slade,

Vilnius, Lithuania All Rights Reserved: 2019 kenmunications@gmail.com

[Editor’s note: this article will be continued in the spring 2020 issue; topics will include: Sleep, Sex, The Backache, Diet, Pharmaceuticals, et als.] ♣

Adieu Maurice ...

Dear Janet, My condolences to you, and to the family, on the passing of Maurice ...

Since receiving the news, I have been giving thought to having known Maurice... now, two decades since I had seen him... I remember that it was a pleasure for me to work with him, during our mutual time with the English-speaking community of Quebec... and, I smile with memories of our shared fun of humorous events.

We shared together that rare ability to communicate by sharing quick glances; mere eye-contact obviating any need for words; and quickly, often to avoid interruption of focus by what we knew would have been our laughter ...

I have enjoyed the last 15+ years of associating with 'Dialogue', which was his, and your, dedication for the last 30+ years ... I hope that the next issue of 'Dialogue' will provide insight into his life ...

In Maurice's last communication to me, some 14 www.dialogue.ca

months ago, regarding my 'Dialogue' series on ageing, he wrote: “... the many physical challenges that are incumbent with the wear and tear of ageing. But I can assure you that (at least in my case) the pleasures of my extra years are well worth the physical inconveniences. I began a new way of living on my seventy-fourth birthday, when Janet and I moved to Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Growing older has given me the opportunity to keep enjoying life and is well worth the need for hearing aids, eyeglasses, (dealing with) congestive heart failure and the occasional atrial fibrillation attack as well as the prescription costs. I hope the adventure continues."

I imagine that you must now be on your own new adventure; be well ...

Best wishes, K Ken-Russell Slade, kenmunications@gmail.com ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 2, WINTER 2019-20

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Contributors in Andersen, Erik, BC….............13 Annett, Kevin, BC……………10 Arney, Jeremy, BC…………..29 Becker, Karen Shaw (link)…..31 Berger, John (about-book)…..15 Bowles, Paul, BC………...17,59 Brand, Russell (link)…………32 BrasscheckTV links 25,30,32,35 Curtin, Ed, US………………..41 Foster, David Muir, ON…..14-15 Flynn, Jerry, BC……………...36 Goddard, Dean, BC…………22 Karateew, Karen, BC…….….20

Thank You

dialogue, Vol. 33 No. 2 ~ Winter 2019-20

Kazdan, Larry, BC…………..12 Kemp, Penn, ON…………….23 King, Maurice, R.I.P…. 4-8,19,57 Kirckof, Chris, US (link)……...21 Lonsdale, Derrick, M.D.,US…38 Mathews, Robin, BC………..26 McGuckin, Gene, BC……….21 McQuaig, Linda (about)…….32 Mercola, Dr. (extract-link)…..22 Moore, Richard K., Ireland….44 Neilly, Michael, ON………….18 Ostermann, Gunther………...12 Perlmutter, Dr. (link)…………31

Rancourt, Denis, ON…….46-48 Ross, June, BC (from)…...21,35 Rouse, B., ON……………….25 Shadbolt, John, ON (from)…..31 Slade, Ken, Lithuania……55-57 Spencer, Herb, BC (from) 37,40 Stafford, Christina, BC….......7,8 Swanston, Adrian, BC………35 Taylor, Jim, BC………………09 Vance, Dreama (link)………..25 Vancourt, Randy, ON…..........16 Vltchek, Andre (from Paris)….33 Weygang, Peter, ON………...48

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