Dialogue vol 26 no 5, March-April 2013

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VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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MAR.-APR. 2013, VOL. 26 NO.5

www.dialogue2.ca

A word from the publisher and editor…

dialogue is...

Dear Reader, …an independent, volunteerAlmost five years ago, in June 2008, the cover of produced, not-for-profit Canadian dialogue asked, “If not me, who? If not now, magazine, written and supported when?” Some of the same “characters” from that by its readers - empowering their cover are revisiting us today ~ and they look like they voices and the sharing of ideas. need a wake-up call... Perhaps we all do!! And the Now in its 26th year, dialogue one “real person” on the cover is doing her best to rally us with her drum. [The back cover shows where she is from...] provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and an In spite of the efforts of many Canadians, assaults on our common wealth have antidote to political correctness. been increasing – against: our natural environment, community resourcefulness We encourage readers to share and sustainability, our democratic institutions and sovereignty, etc. – resources with others the ideas and insights built up over many centuries and, indeed, millennia. gleaned from these pages.

In this issue, many writers implore us to Wake up and take back our Country!

– and our lives – from the dominant growth-driven influence of what is often reIf this is your first issue, please ferred to as the “military-industrial-banking-pharmaceutical corporate complex.” let us know what you think of it.

Whether they work in concert or not, these global sectors all follow the same If you would like to share your myopic playbook: “Maximize profit, minimize costs, and to Hell with people and ideas and become a writer in the planet.” Some believe that it is the scheming of a handful of ‘psychopathic dialogue magazine families’ that is responsible for the latest concentration of wealth and degradation of the planet over many generations. Others may assess the cause of our Consider this your personal current “runaway train wreck” as residing in the ideas, ideologies and beliefs, invitation to participate! promoted and implemented by (political/corporate) “leaders.” It is, of course, We also need your support as a possible that both of these scenarios are in play, with egomaniacal ideas and subscriber, to help us continue beliefs both inspiring and being used by monarchs and political & religious elites (See P. 58 for details) to manipulate their subjects, citizens and followers over the centuries.

We receive NO government funding The question is also: HOW can we wake up Canadians? The daily news, if we & little or no advertising revenue.

We rely totally on the generous follow it, provides us with the mental diet equivalent to “high calorie malnutrisupport of our readers & subscribers. tion.” The concentration and control of mainstream media today – as was forewarned decades ago – makes it extremely difficult for the average person to dialogue was founded in 1987 know what is really going on, as everything is presented through a bias that and is published six times a year. supports the prevailing paradigm, even when lip-service is paid to “two sides” of Maurice J. King, Volunteer Publisher Janet K. Hicks, Volunteer Editor an issue. On the other hand, we have the Internet, with its own menu of scandals, absurdities, distortions and propaganda, where we have the challenge of Date of Current Issue: Mar. 20, ‘13 distinguishing real and ‘unreal’ facts from appealing and/or bizarre fictions – Annual subscription: $30.00 many websites having kernels of truth scattered through their worldview. [including G/HST [The price has been rounded And all the while, can we maintain our sanity, our humanity, and our sense of off to make our bookkeeping easier! Thank you. humour? The many contributions in this issue, both the serious and the lightGST # 89355-1739] hearted, help us to find the answers to these and many more questions.

Canada Post Agreement No. 40069647 Registration No. 08915 Be sure to read the powerful tribute to Sacred Headwaters by Wade Davis, ISSN: 1184-7042 p.23, with some photos from his video on the back cover (and the young drumLegal Deposit: mer on the front!) May you find the wake-up call you need in this issue!

National Library of Canada (409731) We are very pleased to welcome several new writers in this issue. J.S. Porter The views expressed in this will be soon be taking up a new column for dialogue; in this issue he is sharing publication are those a story about his dog, Dylan, on p.59. Bruce Powe introduced John Porter to dialogue with a gift copy of the last issue and Bruce says, “I'm very pleased to of their individual authors. hear John will be writing for you. He's a fine essayist, one of the best around. I Reprints of published articles are like the lyrical lift and heart in his voice.” Other new writers joining our dialogue included for their educational value. with this issue are: Arthur Caldicott (p.38), Inge Hanle (35,40), Peter Ewart (39), 6227 Groveland Drive Charles F. Matchett (49), David Climenhaga (14) and Ed Faulkner (p.4).

Nanaimo, BC, Canada V9V 1B1 This issue of dialogue was made possible by the participation and support of its Tel: 250-758-9877 readers and friends; the magazine is an independent, volunteer-produced, notfor-profit publication that relies completely on the subscriptions and donations Fax: 250-758-9855 of its readers to thrive. If you are able to help, your donation is much appreciE-mail: dialogue@dialogue.ca ated and helps to keep the publication viable. Without your support and your WEBSITE: www.dialogue2.ca voices, there would be no dialogue! Thank you. , Janet, www.dialogue.ca volunteer publisher volunteer editor/layout …and Penny, of course! VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013 dialogue 3

Maurice

Benefits versus cost

From Near and Far…

Ken Kellington, Devon AB Canadians are facing increased personal living costs but with improved communication are able to investigate the cost of government programs and policies to determine the benefits versus the cost. Presently, ‘the need for’ or ‘the structure of’ our Canadian Senate is topic of conversation by many Canadians.

Canada has a Parliamentary System of Government with elected Members of Parliamentary that, by a majority vote, establish or amend the laws and policies of our Country.

Presently the Canadian Senate benefits versus cost is one challenge facing our elected Members of Parliament.

They also face similar problems with other programs and policies, such as the Official Languages Act (1969) and Equalization Payments.

Canadians have a right and duty to investigate how these Acts and Policies will affect their lives and the lives of their children. Please accept this responsibility to investigate and question your Member of Parliament on their opinion on these very important issues. [kellingtonkl@gmail.com ] 

Protecting one’s belief paradigm Dr. Nancy Banks on Vaccines – information that we all need to hear and understand

Inge Hanle, Vancouver BC This 14 min video clip (below) by Dr. Nancy Banks… says it all and explains the emergence of a “medical paradigm” that continues to endorse and escalate a mandated “infant vaccine schedule” that is destroying the neurology and immunology of an entire generation of children, with disastrous personal consequences and dire implications for the future of society. Every era seems to have its own version of the “Inquisition” to protect a mandated “belief paradigm” from the analytic challenge of noncompliant “thought heretics”. I welcome your analytic comments after listening to Dr. Banks. Please watch Dr. Nancy Banks on Vaccines.

LINK: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F_yj1T8Qu8

"We're not doing science, we're doing warfare.... You have a whole population of children captive to the pharmaceutical industry… sacrificed to the pharmaceutical gods.”

– Inge Hanle, CDSAPI More from Inge on pp.35,36,40 

Remaking of Canada nears completion Ed Faulknor, Hamilton ON

Comment re: Our economic shock absorbers are shot

Stephen Harper has almost succeeded in remaking Canada into a less caring and less worker-friendly society since his Conservatives came to power. Along with his political acolytes in the provinces like Tim Hudak (Ont. PC leader), who want to strip union rights and cut welfare, Conservatives in Canada seem determined to finish the job.

As Carol Goar points out (in the Toronto Star, Feb. 13), Employment Insurance has just about been eliminated as protection for the mast majority of working people, welfare has been cut and eligibility requirements increased to the point where 60 per cent of recipients are below the poverty line and have to rely on food banks just to survive.

At the federal level, Ms. Goar lays out the blueprint to make Canada a low-wage right-to-work country where it is harder to get help when you are down and if you stumble you are truly on your own. All of this is happening at a time when corporate Canada and the very rich are doing better than ever, but maybe that’s the whole point.

The case that Carol Goar makes is solid and even offers a way out of this moral morass through the tax system. But don’t hold your breath waiting for Jim Flaherty to bring that into reality. That would spoil their whole plan.

[Published in the Toronto Star on Sat Feb 16 2013 (forwarded by S. McDowall, letter online at thestar.com/: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/TSrocnc 

Reality TV cameras film CBSA raid on construction site: in Canada

‘B.C. migrant workers face deportation after raid’ – CBC News, Mar 16, 2013: [EXTRACT & LINK] Construction workers who were filmed by a reality TV crew while they were arrested by border agents made their first appearance before the Immigration and Refugee Board in Vancouver [on Mar 15, 2013]. Five workers are being detained pending hearings on their eligibility to stay in Canada, while a sixth was released on conditions. CBSA [Canadian Border Services Agents] officers swooped down on the construction site [in East Vancouver on Mar. 13] and arrested the men, who were suspected of working illegally. Afterwards, the production crew asked the suspects in custody to sign release forms so they could broadcast their images.

Diana Thompson’s husband, Tulio Hernandez, faces deportation back to Honduras. “I feel that it makes it that much worse,” Thompson said on Thursday, “that these

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companies are going to profit off a reality show of them, basically tearing families apart.” The CBSA says it was looking for one migrant who had a criminal history, but found several others without proper documentation.

Immigration lawyer Douglas Cannon says CBSA officers should not be accompanied by TV cameras.

Video: Reality show goes too far New reality show Border Security criticized for violating privacy of immigrant workers Immigration raids on reality TV Officials are under scrutiny after a TV crew filmed their raid on a construction site: VIDEO LINK, 2:26 min: http://tinyurl.com/a2uuklm [Quote, an observer: “It was horrible… wasn’t sure I was in Canada; it was almost like being in the States.”]

LINK: www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/story/2013/03/15/bcimmigration-raid-cbsa-reality-tv.html AVAAZ PETITON: http://tinyurl.com/A23229 

www.dialogue2.ca

“Prévoyance”

AN OPEN LETTER TO FINANCE MINISTER FLAHERTY March 21, 2013, From Paul Hellyer et al [Open Letter follows] Something like this is needed in Canada and soon, before we have a "Cypress solution" imposed on us.

Erik Andersen Canada already had the spectacle of our banks being insolvent in 09 when the "free market" conservative folks had to transfer over $100 billion of "stranded" bank assets to CMHC accounts. It is not smart to be too smug in the present circumstances. – Erik, Gabriola BC AN OPEN LETTER TO FINANCE MINISTER FLAHERTY We, the undersigned, firmly believe that 2015 is far too late to balance the federal budget. Powerful stimulus is essential now, to revive the economy and get it running on all cylinders. All that is necessary is to use the power given to you by the Canadian Constitution. There is a precedent.

From 1939 to 1974 the Bank of Canada provided the Canadian government with large sums of money at near zero cost. This got us out of the Great Depression, helped finance World War II, and many great post-war projects like the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Trans-Canada highway, as well as contributing to the establishment of our Medicare and social security systems which were the envy of the world.

All was well until 1974 when, without government approval, the Bank of Canada abandoned its shareholders, the Canadian people, and adopted the rules of the Bank for International Settlements. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is the de facto headquarters of the international banking cartel, a club of immensely rich con artists who have persuaded kings, queens, emperors and politicians to give them licenses to lend the same money to 15 or 20 different individuals, companies, or governments simultaneously, and collect interest from each one of them – a global fraud without equal.

This international Ponzi scheme has been so successful that big banks now control the ultimate destiny of trillions of dollars in assets which they acquired with virtual (debt) money that isn’t worth more than about five cents on the dollar – not much more than monopoly money.

Since the Bank of Canada joined the BIS club in 1974 it’s been all downhill for the Canadian economy. In 1974 there were no food banks in Canada. Today there are 1,921, and the need is still growing. Then, Medicare was well funded and tuition rates were low. Now there are long waiting lists for elective surgery, and tuition fees are far too high.

This decline in our welfare since 1974 is the direct result of the Bank of Canada adopting two BIS edicts. First the adoption of the ideas of Milton Friedman, especially monetarism. Second, the Bank of Canada agreed to stop providing the federal government with low-cost money as it had been doing for 35 years. Instead, the government has had to borrow in the market and pay as much as 20% interest.

The first of these decisions resulted in using high interest rates, which are the clumsiest of all possible tools to fight www.dialogue2.ca

inflation. The terrible recessions of 1981-82 and 1990-91, that created both social and economic chaos proved that the cure was far more dreadful than the disease.

The Bank of Canada’s second decision to stop providing low-cost money has resulted in monstrous increases in government debt at all levels. Between 1974/75 and 2010/11 Canadian taxpayers paid 1 trillion, l00 billion dollars interest on the federal debt alone – more than $2,000 each year for every man and woman in the workforce – and all of it unnecessary. And the debt remains. There is no way to pay it off!

The system is broken! John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman both erred when they assumed it was selfregulating. It has to be managed by governments on behalf of all the people. Our government has to use its sovereign power to liberate us from being slaves to debt.

We therefore demand that you table your austerity budget – an idea that was tried in the 1930s and failed miserably – and adopt a new deal for Canadians. So that you will know exactly what we mean and want, we have spelled it out for you as follows.

A SOCIAL CONTRACT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE OF CANADA In view of the fact that our present banking and financial system is unstable, unsustainable and basically immoral, we the undersigned, on behalf of all Canadians, demand that the federal government use its constitutional power over all matters pertaining to money and banking by forthwith taking the following action to benefit all Canadians.

1. The government of Canada should print fifteen nontransferable, non-convertible, non-redeemable $10 billion nominal value Canada share certificates.

2. Simultaneously the Justice Department should be asked for a legal opinion as to whether the share certificates qualify as collateral under the Bank of Canada Act. If not, legislation should be introduced to amend the Act to specify their eligibility.

3. The government should then present the share certificates to the Bank of Canada that would forthwith book the certificates as assets against the liability of the cash created, and deposit $150 billion in the government’s bank accounts. The federal government should immediately transfer $75 billion to the various provinces and territories in amounts proportional to their population, with the understanding that they would help the municipalities, as appropriate, so there would be no need to cut back on essential services, or sell valuable assets.

4. Amend the Bank Act to reverse the 1991 amendments that eliminated the requirement for the Canadian chartered banks to maintain cash reserves against their deposits and provide the Minister of Finance, or someone acting on his or her behalf, the power to set the level of cash reserves  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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OPEN LETTER TO FINANCE MINISTER, contd. for banks and other deposit taking institutions up to a maximum of 34%, provided the increase, beginning in fiscal year 2013/14 is not less than 5% per annum until the new 34% base has been established in 7 years. This will ensure that there will be no inflation resulting from the government-created money.

5. Repeat the action prescribed in Sections 1 and 3 above in accordance with the following schedule. (a) 2014/15 $150 billion of government-created money (GCM); (b) 2015/16, $150 billion GCM; (c) 2016/17, $125 billion GCM; (d) 2017/18, $125 billion GCM; (e) 2018/19, 50% of the estimated increase in GCM to bring bank reserves up to 34% by the end of fiscal year 2019/20 (likely to be an amount greater than $100 billion); (f) 2019/20 the remaining amount of GCM to increase bank reserves to 34% (again likely to exceed $100 billion).

6. In each fiscal year following 2019/20 the amount of GCM spent into circulation will be 34% of the desired increase in monetary expansion for that year with the remaining 66% to be the prerogative of the chartered banks.

N.B. The great advantage of changing the system over a 7year period is to allow all levels of government the certainty of a cash flow adequate to complete projects once begun, and to facilitate a smooth transition to the new stable and sustainable system.

7. After a year or two of robust economic growth, as tax revenues begin to rise, the amount of GCM created during the transitional period should exceed prudent budgetary requirements, so governments at all levels should take advantage of the opportunity to pay off significant amounts of their outstanding debt. It is estimated that the federal government could reduce its net debt by as much as one-third, providing further relief to hard-pressed taxpayers.

8. We demand that the parliament and government of

Canada implement items 1 to 4 above not later than midnight May 10, 2013 in order that the economic benefits will begin for students seeking employment.

9. We believe these actions to be so essential for the future welfare of the majority of Canadians, and as a precedent for other struggling countries, that should parliament and the government fail to meet the deadline above we will feel duty bound to adopt such peaceful measures as are within our power to guarantee that the 99% of Canadians on the lower end of the income scale are not shortchanged one more time.

See www.BankonCanada.ca for more information.

Yours respectfully, Jerry Ackerman, Paul Amodeo, Erik Andersen, Carol Bailey, David Banerjee, André Bernier, Erick Bittschwam, Andrew Cichocki, George Crowell, Arestia Dehmassi, Derrel Dular, Ann Emmett, Helen Ferreira, Connie Fogal, Sarah Harrington, Paul Hellyer, William Krehm, Christopher Lambe, Chris Lang, Judy Lewis, John McMurtry, Dennis Morrison, David Patrick, Richard Priestman, Margaret Rao, Susan Rawley, Hon. Alan Redway, Hugh Reilly, John Riddell, Sarah SackvilleMcLauchlan, Dix Sandbeck, Michael Sinclair, Derek Skinner, Myra Sonnichsen, Victor Viggiani, Andrew Ward, George Waters, Sydney White, Keith Wilde, Pierre Zgheib Contacts: Jerry Ackerman (613/375-8256); Ann Emmett (416/654-3499); or Paul Hellyer (416/850-1375).

P.S. from Paul Hellyer: The open letter to Finance Minister Flaherty (was) placed in the Press Gallery in Ottawa (Mar 21 13)…It is online at: www.BankonCanada.ca If you agree that it is in fact a better alternative, then write letters to MPs, Finance Minister Flaherty and the Prime Minister at: House of Commons, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6 and demand that the BankonCanada alternative be adopted.

More information about a rally on Parliament Hill will follow later. Cheers, Paul From: Erik Andersen, [twolabradors(at)shaw.ca] 

Canada’s role in the destruction of Libya – we are active participants in the real “evil empire” Stephanie McDowall, Nanaimo BC I will mourn 'till my last days Canada's active role in the bombing of Libya; the destruction of Libya's wonderful infrastructure, and the thousands who have died and are still dying....now from hunger and disease. Previously unheard of in Libya. Oh but wait! The international bankers & corporations now have control of Libya and her resources. That was the goal. Thanks a hell of a lot to Stephen Harper.

Appreciation as well to Tom Mulcair, Bob Rae and Louis Plamondon for making this easy for Harper to do. It is not an exaggeration to state Canada's hands are dripping in blood thanks to these four men. We are now active participants in the real "evil empire." This is unforgivable. How do these people sleep at night? (I just can't curb my tongue on this matter) The following is informative reading from the U.S., by Dave Hodges (link follows) [EXTRACT]: “Libya under Mr. Gaddafi, was Africa’s most prosperous democracy. Their government was much more responsive

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to the people than the United States. […] I never thought I would write the words in which I marveled at how Libyans were treated better by Gaddafi than Americans are by Obama. Make no mistake about it, Gaddafi was a thug, but a thug who provided more for his people on a comparative per capita basis than Obama does for the American people. What does it say that a known terrorist is more compassionate towards his people than Obama? Perhaps, it is Obama who is the real terrorist. And what has become of Libya since Gaddafi’s death? They are headed back to the Dark Ages courtesy of the central banker-sponsored AlQaeda who now runs the country. Have you noticed that anything these central bankers touch turns to pure manure? If our country ever gets disassembled in the same manner, Libya provides a good barometer of what lies ahead for most Americans.” (D. Hodges) LINK to article: http://tinyurl.com/c9jquu9  www.dialogue2.ca

HEALTH and HOCKEY…

Exposing the Business of “Curing Cancer” Jeremy Arney, Victoria BC Back in 1965 my mother died actually from pneumonia bought on by having a body riddled with cancer (& from the effects of the treatments). She had both breasts and her womb removed and it did little, then into the primitive chemo and radiation cures – nada. At that time my younger brother with time on his hands did research and found that the cancer foundation had more money to spend on research for the 'cure' than they could use in 20 years.

Here we are all these years later and the Terry Fox run each year brings in more money world wide for the ‘search for the cure’ than some European countries have in their budget, and way more than all the big pharma companies put together would even want to spend fixing something that makes them so much money.

What we have here is the greatest donation out of fear that the world has ever and will probably ever know, and the answers are right in front of us but so many ignore them.

It's food we eat, the colas we drink, the internal stresses we allow ourselves to create, the fear of sunshine, the fear of

being different and standing up for a better world for our grandkids, the atmosphere we create and then breathe, the lack of exercise, (the list goes on and on) all because our bodies no longer understand what they are for. Wonderful machines and we are destroying them ourselves. I am not a vegetarian or vegan; I enjoy meat but I have to know it isn't full of artificial junk.

We can go on blowing money by the millions to 'find a cure' (which I actually believe gets spent on the design and manufacture of new drugs to harm us for diseases we don't even have yet), or we can start at the beginning and teach our children how to look after their bodies, and care for them as they need to be cared for.

If we do that it doesn’t really matter what "they" try to do does it? Well I suppose it does, but I can dream can't I? By the way, there is a doctor Burzynski in the good old USA who has been persecuted for years because he has been very successful with his system for curing cancer.

– Jeremy [granpaiswatching@gmail.com]  [JEREMY’S COLUMN IS ON P.36-37]

“That’s My Take On It”

Challinging my MP on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

John Shadbolt, Acton ON Letter to my Member of Parliament, Michael Chong, CPC MP: Since you promote GMOs, I wonder if you feel any guilt about the Indian farmers that commit suicide because of GMO crops? Do you feel that eliminating all crops except GMO is the way to go, because obviously that is the plan. Do you feel that having one or two companies in control of food is a good idea? Do you feel that lost crop diversity is good?

Do you think companies like Monsanto should sue farmers

Stompin’ Tom and Hockey

Mike Harvey, Langley BC I realize that it’s wrong to criticize hockey when Stompin’ Tom Connor’s song stating that “there is no game you can name like the good old hockey game” is being played frequently because of his untimely death. Sorry, Tom, but I can name two or three that equal or surpass hockey in entertainment value; at least as far as I’m concerned.

The first of these is soccer. The world’s most famous and most watched game, by far. There is one aspect of the game that many find appealing; the sporting start with the inclusion of little kids in the opening ceremonies. This respectful aspect is usually carried on prior to the match and concludes with handshakes amongst opposing team members at the end of the contest.

Certainly, there are certain distasteful occurrences to be www.dialogue2.ca

who want nothing to do with GMOs? Do you feel that side effects are of no concern from people or animals eating GMOs? Since you promote GMOs, I think I am entitled to get some replies.

Do you think that you, as a paid representative of Canadians, are entitled to deny us the right to know which foods are GMO, and also those foods containing GMOs? Do you work for us, or the big companies?

[Sent with: Link to video on GMO foods: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/cjp7esu ] – John Shadbolt, Acton ON [ cdr000(at)primus.ca ]

endured such as fake injuries and rumours of game fixing.

But by and large this is a superb contest between men (or women) who are in magnificent physical condition and can run more than twelve kilometres during the event. Contrast this to most hockey games we watch.

I could mention rugby, of course, with the roughest, toughest go at each other without mercy, or tennis matches than can last for hours in blistering heat. Canadian football is another game that is enjoyable as is hockey, I gladly admit.

But, sorry Tom, there are other games many of us can name that do compare with your good old hockey game.

Too bad you didn’t write a song about them but unfortunately it’s too late now.

[Email: templetownharvey(at)shaw.ca] [MORE FROM MIKE, P.43-44]  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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1 Billion Rising: The Dancing Revolution

Tsiporah Grignon, Gabriola Island BC Janet, Thank you for your work on Dialogue. I love the cover of the Jan./Feb. issue, a very powerful and useful quote, plus the graphics.

Also thank you for printing my article [‘Slavery in Food Production,’ in the last issue]. From some feedback I have had, it has made an impact. I would get so frustrated at chocolate buyers, my friends particularly thinking they should know better. One friend, however, took the time to explain to me that people just don't KNOW. So now more people know, and even if they do not choose to change to fair trade, they cannot "unknow" something, and they will have to deal with their conscience ... at one time or another.

This, my newest article, below (which is appearing in the March 11th edition of the Gabriola newspaper, The Flying Shingle) is my first article about women… I did a lot of research for this, and had to cut out all sorts of ugly things, because the word count for the Shingle is 800 words. (I have come to appreciate the value of a word count. It makes me really choose what it is I want to say.)

I took part in this event, as women did in Nanaimo and, apparently, in 207 countries…. It was a powerful event – online at: http://onebillionrising.org/ – and I also suggest if you have time, to look up “City of Joy” in the Congo – http://drc.vday.org/building-the-city-of-joy – to see the inspiring work being done there for female victims of gender violence… There is not much written about women in Dialogue, and the timing is right. – Sincerely, Tsiporah

1 Billion Rising: The Dancing Revolution

It happened on Valentine’s Day 2013. Hundreds of millions in over 200 countries danced in the streets - to end violence against women and girls.

Called 1 Billion Rising, it refers to the distressing figure that 1 in 3 women on the planet will be beaten or raped during their lifetime. According to a United Nations report, up to 70% of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime, most often by intimate partners or someone they know and trust.

Women are rising and speaking up for those who cannot.

The word “femicide” is defined as “the killing of females by males because they are female”. Horrible examples include the burning of witches, so-called “honor” killings, wife-killing by immolation (often because of too little dowry) and female sex workers murdered by their johns.

1 Billion Rising has said Enough is Enough! The spark for this movement came from long-time feminist activist, Eve Ensler. In 1996, she authored the award-winning play The Vagina Monologues, which has since raised more than $90 million for grassroots anti-violence projects. Her current new play is the extremely powerful Any One of Us, also being performed to fund-raise for women’s centres.

Over 100 years ago, American activist Emma Goldman

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said: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”. Ensler knows women. Her vision for 1 Billion Rising was for women to Dance: “One billion women violated is an atrocity. One billion women dancing is a revolution.”

Whether free-style or to special choreography, women danced to the song “Break the Chain”. “I dance because I love, because I dream, cause I’ve had enough, Dance to stop the screams, Dance to break the rules, Dance to stop the pain ... It’s time to Break the Chain”.

[LINK: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL5N8rSy4CU/ ]

The chain reaches back to the Garden of Eden myth. It’s about assertion of male superiority that led to societies structured according to patriarchal values – hierarchy, dominance and competition. Men devised a variety of ways to repress women, and justified using violence against them. To this day, old men take child brides as their sex slaves. Others are content to pay for sex with young women, caring little for their dismal lives of poverty.

In some places, women themselves perpetuate gender inequality, because it is built into religion or ancient tribal customs. Some African women keep alive the barbaric practice of genital mutilation, from which women experience life-long pain and some die. Chinese and Indian women practice female infanticide, because their culture places a much higher value on males.

Although 1 Billion Rising was planned months ago, it was galvanized by the gruesome gang rape and murder of a 23 year old student on a bus in Delhi, an event that shocked the world. India was forced to take a sober look at its deeprooted discrimination against its women, including allowing perpetrators to go unpunished. How strange for a country where many pray daily to the Divine Mother.

Rape has currently become the ultimate “weapon of war”, a tool of demoralization and ethnic cleansing. Think Rwanda, Sudan and The Congo. Ensler herself spent VDay in Congo’s City of Joy, the center she helped found for survivors of gender violence in the city of Bukavu. Even nuns are raped to demoralize the community by knowingly destroying the much revered purity of these women.

Sadly, in North American culture, rape has become the stuff of jokes. Several months ago a young American comic joked about rape. When a woman in the audience called out that rape jokes are never funny, the comedian’s adolescent response was to suggest it would be “funny” if she were raped right then by “like five guys”.

Certainly humour functions as a necessary coping mechanism and release valve, but this comic stepped way over the line, actually threatening a woman with violence. This incident has sparked a controversy amongst comedians about what is funny, and what is not.

Men who understand the seriousness of the 1 Billion Rising movement were encouraged to participate. Ensler expressed her outrage: “You live with us, make love with us, father us, befriend us, brother us, get nurtured and  www.dialogue2.ca

mothered and eternally supported by us, so why aren’t you standing with us? Why aren’t you driven to the point of madness and action by the rape and humiliation of us?”

This past Valentine’s Day, men did participate, adding to the energetic force field of potential change in the con-

sciousness of humanity. Together we pledged our commitment to put violence against the female of our species at the centre of a global discussion. What is needed now is real legislation that breaks apart systemic patriarchal values.

– Tsiporah Grignon, tsiporah@island.net 

Tales from Magical Moon Lake

Eating Animals – The Link to Disease and the Vanishing Rainforest

From Magical Moon Lake, by Karl Backhaus (Inset #5) This Insight is for people concerned about their health and the future of Planet Earth.

Only in 2002 did I become aware of the fact that almost two thirds of the agricultural land in North America is used for raising beef. A cow has to eat ten pounds of vegetation to produce one pound of meat. The inefficient use of our resources results in 90 percent of the grain grown in North America being fed to livestock. In contrast to the vast amount of land used for raising cattle, only two percent of the land we cultivate is for the production of fruit, vegetable and nuts.

Before I became aware of this disproportionate land-use it seemed normal that huge round bales of hay, each weighing perhaps half a ton, dominate the countryside during summer. Imagine the abundance of food for humans if many of us would become vegetarians. We would have room for forests again. The land and we too would be much healthier.

We seem to have forgotten the wisdom given in the Bible (Genesis 1:29). God said, “See, I give you all the seedbearing plants that are upon the whole earth, and all the trees with seed-bearing fruit: this shall be your food.”

For a while I had forgotten too, for nobody had ever mentioned to me the menace we are creating to our planet and ourselves through wanting to eat meat. With an evergrowing population each one of us can make a difference through cumulative effects.

Many a caring person may think, “What difference does it make if I enjoy a steak or hamburger?” But if we look at the US population of 291 million, times one-quarter pound hamburger not eaten, it would amount to a staggering saving of 73 million pounds of beef if everyone would only skip one meal. Can you imagine the impact of two or three hamburgers not eaten, or many people even becoming vegetarians? A single hamburger, eaten only once a week during a lifetime of seventy years, would require five acres of rainforest destroyed forever.

With the ever-present advertising to eat meat, to overcome bred-in habits of convenience and acquired taste takes personal strength and willpower.

The German magazine “Der Spiegel” (# 15 April 2005) mentioned 31,100 outlets in 119 countries with $45.9 billion sales for McDonalds, and $37 billion sales for Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King, etc.

We are so bombarded with temptations that a general change of habits may be difficult to accomplish in time for the sanity of our planet and ultimately the survival of life on www.dialogue2.ca

earth. It sounds perhaps too radical but lets look at some more facts.

National Geographic mentioned (page 91 of the 3/2004 issue) “269 lbs of meat as [the] average consumption per person in the US.” This would amount to a yearly meat consumption of 78 billion pounds.

Here are some more disturbing facts. The 150 million beef cattle in North America, in single file, would circle the globe 8 times. Each of them produces 4.5 tons of groundwaterpolluting manure annually. Cattle unnaturally trample land that cannot regenerate naturally.

The demand for beef in the USA and other western countries is so great that in South America the rainforests are burnt down at an ever-accelerating and frightening speed to create new cattle ranches and farmland for these countries.

The trouble with rainforest land is that it is really not suitable for agriculture. In a few years time, the land will not be productive any longer and will be abandoned as wasteland.

There is a great potential that the abused land without trees may turn into desert.

More and more forest needs to be destroyed to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for meat. At the present unchecked pace of destruction of the forest and the land it is foreseeable that within only a decade or two (5 to 7 thousand days), the rainforest and many other forests will be gone.

Forests are the lungs of the Earth.

Forests manufacture oxygen for us to breathe, and absorb a great portion of the C02 we produce. Forests are the sponges for retaining water to recycle, a vital carrier for rain and rivers to make our planet liveable. When the forests are gone, we will all suffer – and, sooner than later, be extinct.

For a while we may think, well, this is not in our backyard. But right now an enormous piece of living space of native peoples and the natural world has been destroyed. Without forests, there is also no habitat for millions of wild animals, butterflies, insects and fish. With no place to go, they will all die.

Gone will be the plants and trees of great value and healing powers, physically, aesthetically and spiritually. Gone will be the unseen world of many small kingdoms, including the realms of nature spirits, and many things we are not even aware of We are all participants and responsible in this scenario – more so than ever. We only have to open our eyes to see the wastelands and deserts on earth that once were lush and abundant with life.

Today, countless people are suffering from the shortsighted mistakes of our ancestors. But here we are with  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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similar attitudes. The only difference from the past is that people then existed only in millions, and the Earth could deal with that. Today, with an exploding population of more than six billion people, the space on Earth is rapidly shrinking and soon will be used up.

It is sad to see that the need for temporary personal survival or the greed to have more is always a priority for the majority of people, who do not care what happens after they are dead. Today, in the age of the computer where it is easy to simulate to see where we are heading, it is difficult to fathom that Homo sapiens (“intelligent man”) is bypassing his mind and massively polluting, abusing and destroying limited life-essential resources at an everaccelerating speed. Everyone in power seems to want to cash-in on what is still left. We have become masters of self-destruction and, with an unprecedented efficiency, are creating our own coffins. It seems that whatever may pro-

duce a high yield in the stock market we will invest in, even in our own demise.

The “unsinkable Titanic” is sinking – while the ‘Dow Jones’ is still rising until the last tree is cut.

We are dreaming of profits and security through stocks that cannot make green our dying planet.

It is not difficult to put two and two together to predict that our civilization is on a rapid downslide. Eagerly we are creating a second Mars in our solar system. Graham Hancock writes in his book, ‘The Mars Mystery’ – “All that is certain is that Mars was once vibrant with rain and rivers, lakes and oceans, and that it is now barren and dead.”

[To be continued] From Magical Moon Lake (2005),

by Karl Backhaus, Holland Centre, ON moonlakepublish@netscape.net ISBN 0-9739979-0-7 

In the Spirit of St. Francis of Assisi…

Mike Nickerson, Lanark ON Cynics, get out your armour!

People have been asking why the new Pope chose the name Francis. In this BBC footage of the Pope talking, he says: "We're not having very good relationship with nature."

Francis of Assisi was a man "who loves and looks after what has been created."

LINK: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21812046 Might the spirit of Francis of Assisi manifest through one of the biggest organizations on Earth?

Could be interesting.

Creation – Evolution - Creavolution An Open letter to Sir David Attenborough

Gunther Ostermann, Kelowna BC I absolutely love all the documentaries you have made about nature; they are awe-inspiring. But all is not well in the world, as I remember your appeal from 2006 “can we save Planet Earth” as you witnessed the destruction of nature first hand. But now, your recent statement that “We are a plague on the Earth” is really alarming and prompts me to write this letter. I have read with amusement and sadness, that there are still some self-righteous people who want you to burn in hell, for being an agnostic and not giving God credit for his creation. I understand your doubts and reasoning that a loving benevolent God couldn’t possibly create a worm in Africa that can only live by burrowing through a child’s eyeball, etc. But the belief in a loving-benevolent God is a man-made concept and had to lead to disappointment and rejection of such an assumption.

For Darwin, it must have been a courageous step, from the comfort of Biblical Creation to suggest Evolution. Had he lived longer, or today, he might have proposed Creavolution, as it describes adequately what Prof. Richard Dawkins said, “natural selection is a cumulative process” and “Darwin teaches us to seek out graded ramps of slowly increas-

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“To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.” – Raymond Henry Williams “The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the 1 billion people who still attempt to live on half the price of a cup of coffee each day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival. It has failed, spectacularly, in its own terms, to provide economic stability and secure people’s livelihoods.”

– Tim Jackson, New Economics Foundation, UK Sustainability Project - 7th Generation Initiative 2799 McDonalds Corners Rd., RR #3, Lanark, Ont. K0G 1K0 --- Phone: (613) 482-1208 www.SustainWellBeing.net / Email: sustain5(at)web.ca

ing complexity, as flowers use a bribe of food, like nectar.”

Does this not suggest that there is an inherent creative power, in all organisms, which selects, seeks and bribes, and appears when planetary condition are right? This is something that will never be found under a microscope, or in a billion dollar experiment, as it is intangible and invisible like the YOU and I, and the Source of everything. If all atomic stuff were removed from our body, there would be nothing left of us to look at. Would anybody believe in the metamorphosis of the butterfly, if it weren’t an established fact? Not in a million years!

The president of the American Atheists, David Silverman, said that Attenborough’s revelation, of being an agnostic, “does not damage the atheist community,” and agrees with Dawkins that physical evidence of God is the necessary catalyst. “Now if God shows himself to me, just as if Santa Claus shows himself to me, I won’t be an atheist.” And Dawkins wrote, “If he existed and chose to reveal it, God himself could clinch the argument noisily and unequivocally in his favour.” How can anybody take these two people seriously, with their juvenile arguments, in these matters?

Have you ever thought what inferior physical creatures we humans are, compared to the animals, some of which  www.dialogue2.ca

have – in addition to their five senses – ultrasound, heatseeking, magnetic star- and sun-navigation abilities, and who knows what other senses? The only thing we have ahead of the animals is a slightly bigger brain, which, sadly, is primarily used for money making and deception, at our peril.

Well, ten thousand scientists are the exception, as some have spent four decades in trying to figure out how the universe had its beginning, with the Big Bang, through experiments at the Hadron Collider in CERN. In 2012 there was big excitement with the apparent discovery of the Higgs boson, or God particle, which was supposed to change everything.

But to more than 99% of the world’s inhabitants it means absolutely nothing, You know, what would really change the world and the way we think? If scientists would have the humility and guts to admit that there exists “INTELLIGENCE” that is more incomprehensible than the YOU and I. Because, they have spent some hundred million hours with math and experiments with the biggest machine* ever built, studying something all atheists-evolutionists consider ‘an accident.’ (*Google LHC IMAGES and be amazed) And they still don’t know what makes the electron spin around the nucleus.

During a lifetime of questioning, I’ve concluded that Creavolution fits well with what I discovered, and used that concept

for the first time in 1988 in an open letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, where I also predicted. “Every year lost in curbing the violence of man against man and nature will require eons of the Earth to heal itself, and nobody really knows the day of no return.”

Ted Turner was more callous, but frank, and said in 1992, “If we don’t make the right choice after we have all the information, then we don’t deserve to live.”

Physics professor Stephen Hawking lamented, “we’re acting with reckless indifference to the future on Planet Earth, and it will be difficult to avoid disaster…”

And last month, the CEO of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, “Unless action was taken to combat Global Warming, the next generation would be roasted, toasted, fried and grilled.” Should we not heed such prominent people’s call for action, as well as yours? Or will those in charge, wait until there is nothing left worth living and saving? Because, what we don’t cherish will perish.

Let us then speak and act for nature, and our descendants who cannot yet speak for themselves.

Gunther Ostermann, Kelowna, BC, gco@shaw.ca 

Soft & Hard Edges Column – Jim Taylor

New technologies want your job

By Jim Taylor, Okanagan Centre BC Our 13-year-old Volvo, now pushing 250,000 km, shows signs of not being immortal after all. Nothing serious, mind you. Just minor inconveniences, like windows that jam, and dashboard lights that won’t go off.

As a result, I’ve spent hours gawking at new cars in dealer showrooms while I wait for the irritants to be fixed. I’m astounded by the features available. Automatic braking, if you get too close to the car in front. Rear vision cameras, when backing up. Automatic warnings, should you wander out of your lane. Drowsiness alerts. Cruise control that will slow the car downhill. Automatic braking for pedestrians or objects in your path.

Some new cars will even park themselves. Push the button, take your hands off the wheel, and let the car do the job for you. Who needs drivers any more?

Indeed, I can imagine these technologies combining with GPS navigation systems. Program your destination into the car’s computer; the car will do the rest. (At least this would eliminate the irritating voice that keeps saying, ‘Recalculating.’)

It was ever thus. When I was a teenager, in the car-crazy 1950s, enthusiasts quarreled over the merits of automatic transmissions. One group loved them, celebrating what technology and engineering could accomplish. The other group scorned automatic transmissions -- they didn’t believe that any machine could supplant a driver’s skills.

OBSOLETE SKILLS But that’s what all new technologies do. They take over a skill that once belonged to a select few. Sometimes they www.dialogue2.ca

give that skill to the unskilled masses. Sometimes they just take it away, period.

Pocket calculators, for example. Young people no longer bother learning mental math. Author Ward Kaiser pulled up at a U.S. gas station. The sign told him to pay inside before pumping. “Tell me how much you want,” the attendant inside demanded. “It’ll take ten gallons,” said Kaiser.

Nope, she wanted the figure in dollars, not in gallons. “At $2.95 a gallon, ten gallons will be $29.50, right?” he replied.

Kaiser recalls, “The attendant looked at me as if I had just breezed in from an unknown planet. After a moment of silence she called out to another worker, ‘Tom, this guy wants ten gallons. What does that come to? I don’t have my calculator with me.’”

Long distance weapons abolished the skill of creeping up on unsuspecting prey. Wheel, roller and lever rendered pure brawn obsolete. Textile mills put home spinners and weavers out of business. Printing presses ended the need for monks laboriously copying manuscripts by hand. And now, when you shop at Canadian Tire and Home Depot, you’re expected to be your own unpaid self-serve cashier.

LOSS OF TAX REVENUES As B.C. lurches towards a provincial election, it becomes increasingly apparent that this government -- indeed, any government -- has failed to consider the effect of new technologies. Which are rushing upon us faster and faster.

As retired bank economist David Bond noted recently, the proportion of taxable citizens in the population is steadily shrinking. Bond attributed this to demographics --  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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principally the growing number of baby boomers leaving the work force and entering retirement.

But there’s another factor, too -- the people whose jobs will be affected by new technologies. Some will face unemployment, others underemployment.

Why, after all, should a business pay people to do a job that can be done more efficiently by a machine?

And cheaper, too.

Machines are expensive, yes. But they don’t take sick leave or vacations. They can work more than one shift a day. They don’t demand pension plans. Or annual raises.

BUT WHO PAYS? Fifty years ago, magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science imagined a world in which robots did all the work. In industry, of course. In the home, too. Think of all the appliances that do tasks once requiring servants.

Automation would free people for leisure activities, these publications dreamed. But they didn’t consider who would pay for that free time. When computer typesetting supplants linotype operators, should linotype operators continue to get wages for not working?

Can governments collect income tax from the robot arms that weld cars together on an assembly line?

Consider the math. If a single piece of heavy equipment

such as an excavator replaces 40 pick-and-shovel labourers, the government loses 39 income-tax sources. One -the operator -- gets a new job.

Sure, governments can tax the corporation that owns the excavator. But when corporate tax rates are half those of individuals, or less, the government is a net loser.

Bond suggested that governments might have to substitute higher sales taxes for those lost income taxes. But machines and computer programs do not buy consumer goods. And displaced workers have less income to spend on anything.

Regardless of which party forms the new government in B.C., there will eventually have to be a massive adjustment in the ways governments collect enough income to keep functioning.

But I don’t see any government even starting to think about it yet.

Copyright © 2013 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved. Please encourage your friends to subscribe to these columns. But if you forward a column, please identify yourself as the sender, so that I don't get accused of sending out spam! To send comments on this column, to subscribe or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca 

Memories of An Old Gaffer

Who watches out for the best interests of the people?

John C. McCullough, Richmond ON It is strange, and at times wonderful, how past memories sometimes pop into my old head. Memories of events, or something I had read, but had long since set aside or forgotten. This particular one occurred fairly recently, in the wee hours of the morning. Why at that time, I have absolutely no idea, other than the fact that I am now 85 plus, and you know frequent night treks to the "you know where" at that age become quite commonplace.

I must let you know too that I tend to read just about anything that I find of interest, especially newspaper or magazine articles, regardless of the subject matter. Doctor's waiting rooms are great for old magazines, aren't they? There must be an awful clutter in my old upstairs head space...

This article I'm about to relate to must have been published 30 years ago, or earlier; where and when, I don't know. But believe it or not, it was about automation. I think it might be from a British source, as it is about their industrial complex.

Here goes:--The powers that be were becoming concerned about the age of the British industrial complex, some still using equipment dating right back to the late nineteenth century.

What to do about it? Well, --- they opted for a very realistic solution. Go to Japan, which had begun adopting computer controlled methods of production. What the delegates found was a real eye opener.

One manufacturing plant they visited was engaged in fabricating units on assembly lines, with welding work per-

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formed by computer controlled machines. If there was the slightest flaw in a unit it was diverted automatically for manual inspection. All of this was being overseen by a tiny handful of employees.

Another was a visit to an optics manufacturer, where lens production was being performed by computer control once again. The old adage, --- “To get a perfect lens, it must be created and polished by a skilled craftsman." --- was no longer the case. The components being ‘manufactured’ were of excellent to superior quality.

Upon reviewing the results of their visits, the committee attempted to deduce what would occur if drastic action was undertaken to totally modernize their own industries in Britain.

What was found was:-1/ It would cause a drastic reduction in the workforce; up to two out of five employees would be no longer required.

2/ A college education would also be of little use in obtaining a good job.

Of course when the politicos got wind of this, the anchors were immediately thrown out ! To potentially lay off forty percent of the workforce would be a disaster, especially if there was little hope of finding employment elsewhere.

One suggestion considered was to insist on employers contributing a sum equivalent to the salaries of workers displaced by automation of their production facilities. The funds accumulated could be diverted to other "make-work" projects, such as, rebuilding and maintenance of public infrastructure, www.dialogue2.ca

e.g. roads, public buildings, services etc. After all, private industry was in a win-win situation: fewer labour problems,  unions, sick pay and other benefits to contribute to. And machines could work twenty-four hours per day, if required.

After giving this subject some thought, I feel that a part of this scenario actually did occur, and is continuing. But not the sharing of the wealth being created by the advent of automation. We are all aware of the "corporate downsizing" binge which began in the 1980's and is continuing. Where manual labour is still essential to production, the corporate people attempt to go "offshore" for cheap labour, as much as possible. Part-time local employment with no benefits was also becoming the "norm".

So!!! Any monies saved by automation, with subsequent

staff/employee (read, human being) reduction is, to the corporate structure, JUST ‘FOUND MONEY’ to add to the corporate coffers. Is it any wonder that so many of the major corporate entities are sitting on so much cash?

Does any of this benefit the communities in which they operate? Not that I am aware of.

Did ANY of the political parties watch out for the best interests of the people? A resounding NO! I would like it if someone can debate what I have tried to put forth here. The current situation doesn't affect me too much --- BUT --- we all have kids and grandchildren who yet have a life to live. How about them?

From: John McCullough [sjmccullough@sympatico.ca] 

“Ideas Whose Time Has Come”

Trojan Horses on Mother Earth’s beaches

David Foster, Port Perry ON ‘The Sievert is a fundamental in radiation dosimetry. Named after Rolf Maximilian Sievert, a Swedish medical physicist renowned for work on radiation dosage measurement and research into the biological effects of radiation. One ‘sievert’ equals 100 rem, (an older unit of measurement still in widespread use). One sievert carries with it a 5.5% chance of eventually developing cancer. Doses greater than 1 sievert received over a short time period are likely to cause radiation poisoning, possibly leading to death within weeks...’

That is from Wiki… (Wicked Wiki making us aware).

A recent little book ‘Strong in the Rain’ by five American writers living in Japan after the Fukushima disaster, published a table of what doses of ‘sieverts’ per hour the people of Japan are still living with. There is an Ontario awareness thing about sieverts… because one of the largest Nuclear Corporations in the world, wholely-owned by the Ontario Provincial Government (OPG), has a problem… Ontario built its future on Nuclear Power, (along with convenient neglect of public education about things nuclear, and ignorance of the sea).

And now it wants to slip its nuclear waste under the shore of Lake Huron in one of the most bizarre rationales you can imagine… A thousand engineers all nodding their heads – like those toys people put in the rear windows of their cars, pretending they know something we don’t. Can you imagine being the Minister in charge of that?

There are in fact two proposed nuclear waste dumps by Lake Huron, called Deep Geologic Repositories (DGR) – one to hold "low and intermediate" waste and the other to hold "high-level" radioactive waste.

Gordon Edwards heads a citizen watchdog agency called the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. He is good at what he does. He is the one who turns up at the stacked Nuclear PR meetings and asks ‘What clothes do you think the Emperor is wearing this week?’ (See LINK: www.ccnr.org ) In his latest e-mails, Edwards speaks of the www.dialogue2.ca

insane idea of trying to bury 60 years of Nuclear Wastes under the shores of Lake Huron. The Corporation has already committed millions to bribing the local communities into acceptance. There is no discussion of ‘sieverts’. The politicians have no idea what they mean.

In a one-page Fact Sheet circulated by Edwards, a local group called Stop-the-Great-Lakes-Nuclear-Dump-Inc. says [Quote] “Low and intermediate level radioactive nuclear waste will be buried in the nuclear waste dump. Intermediate level nuclear wastes are highly radioactive and many remain toxic for over 100,000 years. Some are as dangerous as nuclear spent fuel. No scientist or geologist can provide a 100,000 year guarantee that this nuclear waste dump will not leak.

"Approval of the nuclear waste dump in the Municipality of Kincardine (DGR1) will set precedents (toxicity of waste, proximity to lake, geology) and smooth the way for the much publicized second underground nuclear waste dump for the high level nuclear spent fuel involving 21 communities (DGR2). Kincardine’s DGR1 is the Trojan Horse in our midst.

"OPG is paying $35.7million to Saugeen Shores, HuronKinross, Arran-Elderslie, Brockton, Kincardine. All are adjacent to the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant site. $10.5 million has already been paid even before approval to construct the dump is received. OPG can unilaterally cancel payment if the municipality fails to support the nuclear waste dump proposal.” [LINK: http://tinyurl.com/b2qtcya ] “40 million people in 2 countries rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water…” [End of Quote] An on-line petition can be found at LINK: http://tinyurl.com/aljc9so .

So, Trojan Horses ride again. Serious Bad Stuff. Huge implications. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

There is another Horse on the beach…

Those long chain polymer plastics that scientists told us ‘disintegrate biologically’ – well, it turns out they only break apart to become tinier and tinier bits you can’t even see, and no municipal waste system can stop). And then the extra surfaces exposed on particles, act as host to heavy  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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metals and durable poisons we have created (and pretended that they too ‘disappear’). It is affecting the food chain. (Podcast CBC Radio Feb 16, 2013, ‘Oceans of Plastic’, Quirks and Quarks’, oceans watchdog Alanna Mitchell again). You’ve heard of the ‘gyrs’, 5 of them swirling around each of the oceans and now filled with permanent plastic molecules too small to remove. And we allow industry to go on making more. And still the Engineers nod their heads mindlessly as they drive us into the future. Coastal people know little about Ontario Power Generation and its mission of re-electrifying Ontario’s economy, and inland people know little of Trojan Horses on the coast where DilBit Oil and persistent plastics meet the sea. According to Mitchell, even washing your 65% polyester sweater sheds permanent particles that no system can stop.

A suggestion just appeared in ‘Nature’ magazine that calls for the reclassification of plastics that are particularly difficult to recycle and that are most toxic when degrading: PVC, polystyrene, polyurethane and polycarbonate. The scientists say these types of plastics — used in construction, food containers, electronics and furniture — make up an estimated 30 percent of the 280 million tons of plastics produced last year alone.

There has been a revolution in measuring devices, and we the people need some close at hand. It is not ‘parts per million’ any more… it is parts per billion. And your Grade 10 chemistry is wildly inadequate for coping. God Help us.

David Foster, Port Perry ON david.foster2@powergate.ca 

A Tale of Two Provinces: BC’s NDP and Alberta’s Wild Rose – ‘Rosehip Tea Party’ – show why opposition matters

By David J. Climenhaga, February 20, 2013

David Climenhaga, author of the Alberta Diary blog, is a journalist, author, journalism teacher, poet and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Toronto Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. His 1995 book, A Poke in the Public Eye, explores the relationships among Canadian journalists, public relations people and politicians. He left journalism after the strike at the Calgary Herald in 1999 and 2000 to work for the trade union movement. Alberta Diary focuses on Alberta politics and social issues.

British Columbia and Alberta, Canada's two westernmost provinces, have lots in common. Both have economies that rely heavily on volatile natural resources, well-educated, diverse and generally socially progressive populations, and Westminster-style parliamentary legislatures in beautiful old buildings.

Both are also governed by irresponsible neoconservative coalitions with misleading names that have been in power far too long, each of which has an obsession with balanced budgets and also faces a problem balancing the darned things. The B.C. neoconservatives are called Liberals and are led by Premier Christy Clark. The Alberta neoconservatives are called Progressive Conservatives and are led by Premier Alison Redford. Apparently Clark and Redford can't stand one another, owing to Clark's refusal to commit political suicide to help Redford -- but that will have to be a topic for another day.

There are big differences, too, of course, and I’m not just talking about the West Coast weather forecast.

Chief among them in the political arena is that there's an opposition party in the B.C. Legislature. It's called the New Democratic Party led by a fellow named Adrian Dix and we're told it could very well win the next provincial general election that's now just weeks away, God willing and the crick don't rise.

Hoist on its own petard, the B.C. Liberals must hold the election on May 14, thanks to the party's own un-Canadian fixed-election-date legislation. The reliably neoconservative Vancouver Sun begged yesterday (Feb. 19) for the vote to be pushed back to a more convenient date, say, one when

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there's a more popular neocon premier at the helm.

Here in Alberta, by contrast, we have for an "opposition" one of the offshoots of the American Tea Party -- which I like to think of as the Wild Rosehip Tea Party -- which acts as a cheerleading section for all the worst instincts of the governing party, the unprogressive Progressive Conservatives of Premier Alison Redford.

The Wild Rosehipsters, officially known as the Wildrose Party, are led by Danielle Smith, who used to be an intern for the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. They believe in everything the PC Party led by Redford does, and more!

Woo-hoo!

This difference is important because while the New Democratic Party in B.C. most certainly acts as a brake on the worst instincts of the neoconservative B.C. Liberals, and occasionally even pushes them in the right direction, which is the left direction, the Wild Rosehip Tea Party in Alberta always pushes the neoliberal Conservative Party in the wrong direction, which is to say politically speaking the right direction.

Still with me? I’m trying to make a serious point here.

We saw examples of this yesterday (Feb. 19th) in both provinces. In British Columbia, pushed by the NDP, Clark's neoconservative Liberals tabled a budget that, while rich in flaws, did at least one sensible thing -- to wit, it included a modest increase in business taxes to help the government meet its commitments.

The mainstream media in B.C. was crowing with delight at how the Liberals had outmaneuvered the NDP, who have been calling for a similar tax increase. (Clark also sort of outmaneuvered Redford, by actually managing to put together a budget she could claim, however fancifully, to be balanced.)

The B.C. Liberal budget, which also included a modest (and temporary) increase in income taxes among higher income earners, "captures some of the political territory that has long been occupied by the New Democratic Party opposition, by turning to corporations … to help put the budget back into black," raved the Toronto Globe and Mail.  www.dialogue2.ca

Personally, I think this sells B.C. voters short. Those who support a more sensible and sustainable taxation policy have to know that these increases will be out the window the instant the Liberals manage to squeak back into power, if they do, and (said voters) will likely behave accordingly in the polling booth. Regardless of that, we’ll presumably know soon enough.

Meanwhile, back here in Alberta, we were having a holycowflops moment yesterday with the realization that the latest analysis of the government’s resource-dependent revenue ‘misestimates’ mean the looming budget deficit could be as high as $4 billion.

Since Ralph Klein was premier, the province has made an obsession of avoiding both tax increases and deficits, no matter the cost in crumbling infrastructure or flagging services. As a result, the Richest Place on Earth ™ exists in a perpetual state of economic crisis, and this entirely selfinflicted injury now has the potential to become a major embarrassment for Redford.

But with the Wild Rosehip Tea Party pulling the whistle cord and sitting in the driver's seat of the province’s ideological locomotive, there's absolutely no danger we'll smooth out the wild fluctuations in resource prices with the application of sensibly progressive taxes.

Hell no! We'll drive this train right off the bridge if we have to before we'll raise the lowest business taxes in the country by even a single percentage point or give up our "flat tax" -- ensuring that more cash can all head south across the U.S. border in the form of massive corporate profits.

And when it comes to petroleum royalties, we won't even

“The Politics of Imagined Opinion”

By Prof. James Tracy, Global Research, March 11, 2013 [EXTRACT, link follows] Where do you locate yourself on the political spectrum? Are you liberal or conservative? On “the left”, “the right”, or perhaps you’re a bit of both (“moderate”).

It is no secret that American mass culture often blunts the capacity for civic engagement and political awareness. Yet those who pursue an identity in acceptable political dialogue are less aware of how the parameters of American politics have been carefully crafted to elicit vicarious and seemingly meaningful participation for the politically inclined.

This is at least partially because political elites have, for close to a century, carefully crafted and presided over a political universe of smoke and mirrors for their subjects; one where citizens think and act as if they have political choices and agency, thereby perpetuating the myth of democratic participation and enfranchisement. Thinking along these lines is apparent in the almost century-old writings of the wellknown American political commentator Walter Lippmann.

Lippmann’s many observations on media and public opinion are significant not just because he was a distinctly influential and gifted commentator, but also because of his many close working relationships and affinities with the most powerful financial and political elites of his day. In fact, historian Carroll Quigley recognizes Lippmann as “the authentic spokesman in American journalism for the [Anglowww.dialogue2.ca

collect the money we say we’re owed!

So yesterday we had the unedifying spectacle of Finance Minister Doug Horner getting up on his hind legs and telling us that public service managers were going to have a haircut, and anyone who is negotiating a collective agreement with the public sector -- which is pretty well all the public employees in the province -- had better get ready for a trim as well.

Remember, these public employees are in many cases the very same naïve voters who flocked to the PCs’ side last April to keep the WRTP out of power, thereby saving the government's sorry keester in its darkest hour.

If nothing else, this should tell us all we need to know about the importance of having the right opposition here in Alberta.

If we had Adrian Dix and the B.C. NDP as the opposition, we could probably expect Redford's Progressive Conservatives to behave like grownups. Hell, that might even be true if we have Brian Mason and his Alberta NDP as opposition.

Instead we have the Wild Rosehipsters and so the government's key strategy is to sell out the people who saved it and reward the people who came very close to destroying it, and who furthermore still want to.

What's wrong with this picture?

David J. Climenhaga, St. Albert AB Reprinted with permission from the author and from rabble.ca LINK: http://tinyurl.com/bq6vvr3 rabble.ca c/o The Hive 128 W Hastings St #210, Vancouver, BC V6B 1G8 Website: http://rabble.ca 

American] Establishments on both sides of the Atlantic in international affairs.”

As World War One concluded, Lippmann played a central role in recruiting intellectual talent for “the Inquiry,” a group of several dozen analysts set up by the Wilson administration and powerful Wall Street bankers and oil barons to ostensibly establish plans for a peace settlement, what eventually crystallized as Wilson’s Fourteen Points and a transnational system of governance called the League of Nations most Americans rejected. In reality, the Inquiry was a philosophical and functional precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, gathering, analyzing, and producing recommendations on how the bankers and oil men should proceed with maintenance of their overseas assets in a vastly rearranged geopolitical environment.

In the years following the Inquiry’s dissolution, Lippmann wrote his most well-known work, Public Opinion, where he lamented the US public’s rejection of an international government and expounded on how the thinking and behavior of modern individuals are largely determined through prejudice, or “stereotypes”, thus rendering citizens unfit for meaningful participation in public affairs. “For the most part we do not first see, and then define,” he famously wrote, “we define first and then see.” And, acknowledging the growing power and political implications of electronic  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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mass media, Lippmann marveled at how “on the screen the whole process of observing, describing, reporting, and then imagining, has been accomplished for you.”

Along these lines Lippmann envisioned how political persuasions may be ready-made to develop a seeming relationship with political iconography and sloganeering where positions, sensibilities, and identification with an imagined

community all take place through televisual displacement and atomization. With the media’s major control over representation and imagination comes the power to exclude undesirable political objects and ideas, thereby rendering them for all practical purposes out-of-mind. […]

LINK: www.globalresearch.ca/the-politics-of-imagined-opinion2/5326226

Robin Mathews Uncut

Stephen Harper. Psychopath? Connect The Dots. . .

Part 1 – In Alberta and BC: Stephen Harper Destroying The Rule Of Law Alberta energy specialist Andrew Nikiforuk (Tyee, Feb. 22, 2013) reports the involvement of the federal Minister of Justice in what may be called direct interference with the rule of law in Alberta. The story Nikiforuk tells leaves the trail of malfeasance clear and examinable.

In “a stunning move, the Harper government” – through the Department of Justice (reports Andrew Nikiforuk) – has promoted a key judge (in a landmark fracking case) from the Court of Queen’s Bench to the Alberta Court of Appeal.

As Andrew Nikiforuk puts it, the move was made in order to remove Justice Barbara L. Veldhuis, presiding judge, from “the multi-million dollar ($33 million) lawsuit” being pressed

by Jessica Ernst in the matter of fracking pollution and those responsible for it.

Madam Justice Veldhuis will be replaced. Her replacement will automatically be questionable – suspected of being a “plant” to prejudice the case in favour of Stephen Harper and Encana, one of Canada’s largest natural gas producers.

Readers need to know that the judge on a case is usually – for very obvious reasons – bound to that case. The judge is said to be “seized” with the case – meaning responsible for all aspects of it from beginning to end. Being “seized” usually means not to be interfered with, not unnecessarily delayed, NOT REPLACED without very sound reason – because the judge knows most about the complications of the case.

The judge is “seized” also because law and courts have a long history of powers of all kinds wanting to get rid of judges in order to tamper with, change, and/or redirect the judgement in cases. That is one of the reasons a judge is “seized” – so that any meddling by power can be seen for what it is, an action intended to violate the fair administration of justice.

Jessica Ernst is fighting Encana and was close to getting a ruling from Madam Justice Veldhuis that she could sue “Alberta’s energy regulator … for failing to uphold provincial rules, protect groundwater, and respect the constitutional rights of Canadians”.

That ruling would have placed a burden of responsibility upon frackers that they have been doing everything they can to avoid [with the full support of Stephen Harper, anti-environmentalist].

The Harper Junta interference is, I suggest, mischievous, prejudicial, scandalous, and stunning in its obviousness.

But we have been there before.

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In the trial of Dave Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi (part of the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to the CNR by the Gordon Campbell group) the judge “seized” with the matter was Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett. The pre-trial and trial ran from after the laying of charges in December 2004 to the outrageous explosive ending of the trial in October 2010.

But that ending happened without Elizabeth Bennett presiding.

For – like Justice Barbara L. Veldhuis in the fracking case – Bennett was removed in what many believe was a Stephen Harper decision to protect his ‘friends’ – Gordon Campbell and others.

In order to defend the accused, Defence lawyers had to call for RCMP officers’ notebooks, for investigation records, for materials in BC Rail headquarters, for government records of pre-sale manipulations, and much more. At almost every call, RCMP delayed. The Special Crown Prosecutor fudged and fumbled. Almost every time, Madam Justice Bennett upheld the Defence request as a reasonable part of the rights of the accused to defend against the charges against them.

Out of the blue Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett - by the power that only resides in the Minister of Justice in Ottawa was raised to the B.C. Appeal Court. Would she leave the matter that she was seized with? In theory, she didn’t have to.

Then a nightmare event happened in the B.C. Supreme Court. Out of nowhere, the bulldog Associate Chief Justice of the day Patrick Dohm appeared to preside at a process.

The apparent reason for the event was for the Special Prosecutor William Berardino to make a motion that Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett be removed from the case. He gave two reasons. The first and completely ridiculous reason was that she couldn’t be in two places at once – and so must go. The second reason he evinced was that she had incorrectly employed process. That I believe was a wholly false assertion.

Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm received the motion with enthusiasm … and with such approval that he admitted he had already chosen the person to succeed Elizabeth Bennett. That meant he had to have chosen Bennett’s replacement before there was a motion to have a replacement made!

The Special Prosecutor, incidentally, had been appointed in flagrant violation of the legislation governing the appointment of Special Prosecutors. William Berardino was not noted  www.dialogue2.ca

for experience in criminal prosecutions. But he had been partner and colleague for seven years of the sitting Attorney General Geoff Plant. And he had been partner and colleague for eleven years of the sitting Deputy Attorney General Allan Seckel. Because of those connections he was completely unqualified for the appointment he received.

It seems he was to focus on the three men, to get a judgement against them, and to show to British Columbians that there had been real wrongdoers in the “sale” of BC Rail, three of them, three (lower level) Sikh employees, and they were all charged and were all convicted. Justice triumphs!

End of story.

It didn’t work. Mr. Berardino was confronted by excellent Defence counsel. They made a strong and fair case that defence of the accused could only be made by examining the actions of their highly dubious superiors… who gave orders.

Madam Justice Bennett permitted that reasonable defence.

Madam Justice Bennett was removed. She was replaced by Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie who was very soon elevated – a few weeks later - to Associate Chief Justice upon the retirement of Patrick Dohm. Quite soon after the end of the Basi, Virk, and Basi trial, she was elevated to the British Columbia Appeal Court.

Her role, it seemed to me sitting in the courtroom, was to get the case back to the three men only. But it didn’t work.

The trial became a hilarious display of amnesia ... almost of general Altzheimers Disease. Gordon Campbell’s decadelong chief of staff, Martyn Brown, could remember almost nothing. A member of the BC Rail Board, Brian G. Kenning, could hardly remember his own name, and didn’t even finish his testimony before the trial ended. And there were to be about twenty-five more of the same to come.

If the cross-examination had continued in the same way – and it might have grown worse – the cover-up of major wrongdoers would, I am sure, have exploded. Something

had to be done to end it. Backroom dealing went into high gear. The three accused agreed to what might be called charges reduced to almost nothing. The government of Gordon Campbell agreed to pay all of the ($6 million) costs of Defence. The $6 million (that might be called a bribe by some) to avoid criminal charges against top politicians and corporate ‘leaders’ (and perhaps some years behind bars for them) was cheap. It was a breach of procedure and was paid out of the pockets of the taxpayers of British Columbia – but what the hell! It worked.

Stephen Harper’s ‘friends’ got out of it all unscathed – and without paying a penny – by the simple action of the Minister of Justice in Ottawa stepping in (on Stephen Harper’s orders?), and promoting Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett from the B.C. Supreme Court to the B.C Appeal Court. To prove his prowess in the matter, Stephen Harper then appointed Gordon Campbell to what is perhaps the highest diplomatic position a Canadian can hold – Canadian High Commissioner in London.

In both cases, in B.C. and Alberta, the Stephen Harper Junta has used the courts and the administration of justice, I believe, to violate trust, to support alleged wrongdoers who might be found to be in serious fault or even criminally responsible, and to make justice in Canada a plaything of corrupt power. I suggest that only a government powered by a psychopath could so viciously and openly attack the rule of law in Canada.

Part 2 – The Saskatchewan electoral boundaries scandal: The question of Stephen Harper’s

sanity is before Canadians again. Insistently. Read online at: http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/235931182-stephenharper--psychopath-connect-the-dots

*** There are people in Canada who continue to believe Stephen Harper is not a psychopath. I am not one of those people.

– Robin Mathews, rmathews(at)telus.net 

CPR Democracy: a series

~ Examining the deficits in the theory & practice of Canadian democracy…

Ed Goertzen, Oshawa ON I chose the title words "CPR Democracy" since our democracy is in trouble. Not only do we not know how to practice it, but also I have come to believe that the knowledge of 'how to do it' is being deliberately kept from us.

Ed Goertzen

Fourth segment of a series

In the last tree segments I have tried to show that Democracy, for various reasons, no longer “flows from the people” as Sir Winston Churchill said it should.

I have also, I hope successfully, explained that there are three kinds of democracy and that the preferred one should be a “Representative Democracy”, and in the last edition of Dialogue demonstrated that the three ‘Democracy Deficits’, of neighbourhood, information and representation impact on each other, with the result that we, as voters, are left without the effective representation that Abraham Lincoln claimed, is to "provide for the people the results they www.dialogue2.ca

want from the conduct of their public affaires that they cannot provide for themselves as individuals.”

The cumulative effect is that the people we elect, almost totally, represent the political parties. The reason that the elected so willingly genuflect to the leaders of the parties is twofold.

The first reason is that they have been persuaded that they owe their election to the political parties and their leaders, purchased through the media.

Corporations, using their immense volume of advertising dollars, have effectively garnered the support of the Corporate Converged Media. Also, the converged corporate media facilitates the <dialogue> between themselves and the rulers, rather than between the rulers and the voters, the major reason being the cost.

The Stockholm syndrome does not need to be explained, “People (in this case the elected) are loyal to that upon which they are dependant.” The “Patty Hurst Syndrome takes it a step further; “People will adopt as their own  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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the agenda of those upon whom they are dependent.”

The second reason is that, by pledging loyalty to the party leader, it is their only chance of a meaningful role in parliament, as minister, committee chair or opposition critic, thus providing the illusion of opposition. The party leader by appointment, provides a member the opportunity for media exposure and thereby the likelihood of re-election. Members whose talents merit a major role but whose independent mindedness precludes their having a ministry or committee chair are usually shuffled off to chair a task force, which is promptly shelved.

Also, the structure of the House of Commons has been arranged so that divisions are vertical between parties instead of horizontal, between rulers and commoners as was intended.

Don Drummond who recently did a major study to find savings for the Ontario government’s minority budget made a key observation: "Almost every time a program was performing badly, I could trace it back to the origin of the program. Whoever had implemented it had not really thought long and hard about what they wanted." –

Ball, in TheTyee.ca] Brigette is one of the many young people across Canada who know that, in a few short years, they will be inheriting the country that we are preparing for them.

“To this day, a disquieting number of its participants believe that the traditional democratic channels - including the ballot box - have failed them. Over the past decade, it has spread to ever-expanding pockets of politically engaged Canadians. It does not help that so many of them have consistently failed to find an effective opposition outlet for their aspirations.” – Chantal Hebert, Toronto Star, 2013-01-03 People are desperate for a means to enter the political discussion and having their voices heard. That does not mean that they necessarily want their own contribution to prevail, it does mean that they want their contribution to be heard.

On the other hand they do not welcome the idea of partisan conflict with their neighbours. As a matter of fact, most people, aware of their ignorance despite having opinions, would agree, with little prompting, agree to disagree as a starting point for dialogue.

So what’s wrong is not the only problem, also what is missing needs to be identified.

Democracy is a process, not a Toronto Star, 2012-12-29 Most successful national process of voting, but a process Canadians are frustrated at not having organizational structures have more influence over the countries' politics, of preventing the rulers from imbeen predicated upon the ‘orders’ yet one in four voters surveyed in a recent posing on voters what they know model. While inherently dictatorial, poll admitted to never undertaking the dictatorship is based upon the is not in their interests. grassroots activities like signing a petition, need for the integrity of the joining a party or marching in a demonstration. organization. So long as the functions are free and open, the constraints force adherence to the elemental purpose SES Research conducted the poll for the Crossroads of the organization.

Boundaries National Council and the Public Policy Forum, a pair of think-tanks, to assess Canadians' attitudes toward The point is that the functions must drive the purpose and political activism and governance. Pollster Nik Nanos said not the requirements of the organization findings demonstrate voters are keen to play a greater role The following thought, adapted and modified from Rick in government decision-making but are frustrated with tradi- Salutin’s item in the Toronto Star, 20912-10-19, regarding tional ways of becoming involved. "People want more input, fan-owned sports teams. “The beauty of a new media arbut not on the political paradigm that exists right now", said rangement is that it aligns the experiential reality toNanos, who is president of SES. Sean Gordon, Ottawa Bu- gether with its economics.” reau, Toronto Star Sept 7th, 2005 Is there really any chance of a different system? Well, such Is today's youthful generation apathetic and self-indulgent? transformations do occur occasionally, when what had That myth was busted at a packed, standing-room-only seemed set in stone crumbles. book launch for a new anthology about the "power of Print looked like an impregnable feature of culture for 500 youth" and how to build movements for change. years. Its absence was unthinkable. Then, in just the last Young activists from across the country spoke about their decade and a half, it began to fade. Newsweek said this passion for climate justice, indigenous solidarity and week it will cease print publication. Time-Warner is shedstrengthening a sense of community in a society being ding its magazines. ripped apart by inequality and oppression.

With that perspective, can't we at least entertain the possi"There's this myth in our society that young people are apa- bility of different economic or media structures? thetic," said Brigette DePape, co-editor of the book Power Community ownership of small economic and media of Youth. "We're told that we don't care about anything but structures, a little like co-ops, would allow the profitsourselves -- we're the 'Me Generation,' we only care about benefits-gains to grow in the neighbourhood. our Starbucks and our MacBooks -- and I have seen exA poll suggested traditional parties are faced with a tantalizactly the opposite in my experience. ing opportunity, provided they can tap into the restlessness "I have seen young people who care so deeply about the many voters expressed. people around them, the environment, social justice, racial The poll found 61 percent of respondents would like a justice and independence struggles. They are actively putting forward their vision for a better world." [Quoted by David P. direct say on policy or government decisions but 31 percent said it should be left to politicians. 

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www.dialogue2.ca

Nanos was struck by the fact 24 percent of respondents “According to the most recent Canada Survey of Giving, said they had undertaken none of the five aspects of activVolunteering and Participating - an examination of data colism studied. lected from 2010 and released by Statistics Canada this past March - young Canadians (aged I5 to 24) volunteer Of the politically active, only 21 percent took out membermore than any other age group. Young altruists aged 15 to ship in a political party, 22 percent marched in a demon19 did an average of 115 hours of volunteer work in 2010, stration, 32 percent wrote to an elected official, and 38 perand those aged 20 to 24 volunteered for 159 hours. Karen cent attended a town hall meeting. Most popular was signWillson confirms that there has been a significant increase ing a petition! in the number of young Canadians getting involved…..”

“One of the most powerful third-sector forces in Japan is – Toronto Star 2012-11-14 the community-based mutual help organization, includes Democracy is a process, not a process of voting, but a more than 90% of all Japanese households. Neighbourprocess of preventing the rulers from imposing on hood associations began to proliferate in the 1920’s and voters what they know is not in their interests.

30’s, in large part to address the issues of rapid industrialiThe need is for a new kind of representative who will put zation and urbanization. In the late 1930’s the Imperial voter’s interests before party. That means we need to government incorporated these associations into the state counter the Stockholm syndrome which keeps party memmachinery. In 1940 the government ordered every combers toeing the line munity in Japan to form neighbourhood associations and made membership compulsory. The groups were used to The first responsibility is for an elected person to strive for spread wartime propaganda and the rule of law, then to assure that the control the distribution of food and law will be what the people require, not “Fascism begins the moment a services. After the war, neighbourhood what the rulers require. Then finally, ruling class, fearing the people may groups resurfaced as self governing use their political democracy to gain the elected should strive for stability associations without legal ties to the even if a period of instability (a series economic democracy, begins to degovernment. Known as jichikai, these of elections) must be endured. stroy political democracy in order to organizations now exist in more than Assuredly, just as Charles I rejected retain its power of exploitation and 270,000 neighbourhoods. A local being dependant upon the elected, special privilege.”

– Tommy Douglas jichikai generally consists of between current rulers will resist [perhaps to the 180 and 400 households. Its leaders death?] being controlled by the elected. The important point are elected and usually serve two year terms.” is that those who shape the law cannot usurp power of s/he – The End Of Work, by Jeremy Rifkin, (1995:227) who executes the law, the CEO power Some older readers will remember the almost 42-year A couple of months ago, a lobbyist with close ties to reign of the Ontario Progressive conservatives, first led by Stephen Harper and the Conservatives addressed a room George Drew. The run was attributed to the Big Blue full of environmentalists with some sobering news. EssenMachine, but few if any, even among Tories, have ever tially he told them “they and their organizations were “irrelelearned what the machine was and how it worked. vant” to Harper because they couldn’t move votes or influThe ‘machine’ was actually one person. The man who WAS ence electoral outcomes. His message – that modern polithe machine was a party organizer named A. D. McKenzie tics is not about good policy, but vote counting – was tough from Guelph. To put the machine in place, A. D. McKenzie, love, but accurate” Quoting an excerpt from The Dogwood got busy establishing a network of helpers out in the ridings Initiative: Wednesday, October 17, 2012 by Will Horter. who could keep him informed of problems and the mood of That leaves us with the game-changing challenge of, the electorate.

“What will it take to shift the vote”, certainly more than A. D. McKenzie was a brilliant man and a brilliant organizer banging on pots and pans. who established an amazing network of contacts throughout "Participating in the common good or general welfare prothe province. This network allowed him to see that problems vides the members of society with means that serve the arising in the ridings were dealt with promptly, and that the pursuit of their individual happiness. By aiming directly at Conservatives got the credit. He had a Conservative ward heeler not merely in every riding, but in every poll in the prov- the common good or general welfare, a good society and a just government also aim indirectly at the happiness of all ince. It made the Tories part of daily life in Ontario, or, to use persons who constitute the society and are under its govan appealing Maoist image, the party moved in the commuernment." nity as do fish in water. [Later], Mr. Davis and his organization [lived] off the strength of that creation.

"The common good or general welfare is only the proximate goal at which a good society and a just government Altogether McKenzie engineered 6 provincial elections and 20 by-elections, and won the lot. From: “The Power and the should aim. The goal achieved serves as a means to society's ultimate goal - the happiness of each of society's Tories” by Jonathan Manthorpe (1974:36:45) members or the general happiness of all.  Even though that was before the age of television, I "The crucial point here is that individuals BY THEMSELVES submit that the political science maxim that “all policannot work DIRECTLY for the general happiness - the tics is local” is still valid. www.dialogue2.ca

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happiness of all other persons in the society in which they live. They can do so INDIRECTLY only by working WITH OTHERS for the common good or the general welfare of the political community, which is itself a means to the happiness of each and every individual.” Pp. 141 "Ten Philosophical Mistakes" Mortimer J. Adler (1985) “Democracy doesn’t happen because people are given a chance to vote. It happens because of a whole series of interconnected changes in attitudes and in systems.” Toronto Star, 1997-07-09, Richard Gwyn From Letter of the Day by Professor Vaughan Lyon, Political Studies, Trent University Peterborough. “For generations, Canadians have been telling anyone who would listen, they want the MP that they elect and pay to speak for them…. But for this form of representation to occur, we need an appropriate enabling institution.”Toronto Star, 1996-05-06.

Stephen Handelman quoting Mikhail Gorbachev; “Democratic systems need to be reinvented, two important ways to do this are through more citizen involvement and decentralization.” – Toronto Star, 1995-10-03.

“Canadians need and deserve a counter-balancing measure to hold government and industry accountable - a way for them to band together to advocate their (common) interests as easily as interests can.” – Toronto Star, Dec 19th,

racy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.”

From Will Horter: “A couple of months ago, a lobbyist with close ties to Stephen Harper and the Conservatives addressed a room full of environmentalists with some sobering news. Essentially he told them they and their organizations were “irrelevant” to Harper because they couldn’t move votes or influence electoral outcomes. His message – that ‘modern politics is not about good policy, but vote counting’ – was tough love, but accurate.” – Will Horter: Dogwood Initia-

1995, by Aaron Freeman & Duff Conacher on “Citizen Utility Boards” (CUBs).

“Part of the genius of American Democracy has been to ensure isolated individuals face concentrated state and private power alone, with out the support of an organizational structure that can assist them in thinking for themselves or entering into meaningful political participation, and with few avenues for public expression of fact or analysis that might challenge approved doctrine.” – The Culture of Terrorism,

Not all people are interested in the law making process “Perhaps we should think about developing some kind of body of community members, unburdened by legal training and trial-oriented minds…., Such a group could sound out the neighbourhood and determine what are the policy and administrative of the people. (modified from) Chronicle Herald (NS), 1996-08-01

“A sense of morality, a passion for freedom, and a large and fearless capacity of righteous anger are at the heart of journalism. Otherwise, it’s nothing more than selling ads.”

Peter Desbarats, Dean of Journalism, U. of W.O. (1997) "The ability of a party to make a valuable contribution is not dependent upon its capacity to offer the electorate a genuine government option. Political parties... act as a vehicle for the participation of individual citizens in the political life of the country. ...Marginal or regional parties tend to raise issues not adopted by national parties. Political parties provide individual citizens with an opportunity to express an opinion on the policy and functioning of government. Each vote in support of a party increases the likelihood that its platform will be taken into account by those who implement policy, and votes for parties with fewer than 50 candidates are an integral component of a vital and dynamic democracy.” Figueroa v Canada (Attorney General) 2003 SCC 37 Tommy Douglas on Fascism: “Once more let me remind you what fascism is. It need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt -- it may even wear a dress shirt. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democ-

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tive, 2012-10-17

S. Learner from University of Waterloo quoted Craig McKie of Ottawa: “If Canadians are to have any alternative sources of information and commentary at all in the future, they will have to devise them themselves completely outside the media structures outlined above. As a practical matter, the only way of doing this is to use the Internet as the delivery medium. It avoids the expense of paper, no money changes hands, no bonds of fealty are created with bankers, it does not require a license, and there are no technical means of censorship.”

‘The demand for Representation has a long history going back to sections 51 and 53 of the Magna Carta (June 1215), which says that there should be no taxation without representation’. – COMER Journal, Sept 2012

by Noam Chomsky, p21.

“In the absence of organizational forms that permit meaningful participation in political and social institutions, as distinct from following orders or rationalizing decisions made elsewhere, the “instinct for freedom” may wither, offering opportunities for charismatic leaders to rally mass popular support with consequence from recent history.” The Culture of Terrorism, by Noam Chomsky, p.200

Also from Mr. Chomsky, ‘there is not a single non-partisan NGO that is organized on the same geographical basis as

that by which we elect our representatives’.

“A democracy movement should propose new civic structures that give citizens a voice in societal decision-making, mechanisms for citizens to hold people in positions of power accountable, and the means for citizens to band together to counter the power of large institutions. It should create "tools" of empowerment for citizens to use in all the principal social roles they play – as voters, citizens, taxpayers, consumers, workers and shareholders. It should rework the institutions of the country to bring them in line with the realities of a modern, working democracy. And, it should coordinate the efforts of people and groups who want to work together for common reforms.”  – Ralph Nader, Consumer Advocate, quoted from a letter to Friends of Democracy Watch

www.dialogue2.ca

As I expect you may be aware, the intention, never realized, of those who promoted the concept of democracy intended that the division of the parliamentary commons be horizontal between rulers and commoners, rather than vertical between political parties.

By merging the community and the neighbourhood with ‘new non-corporate print media’ we could have a new economic and social model that could develop a realistic moral code and social system.

How can we create the organizational structures that we need in order to shift the Stockholm syndrome type dependence that our elected have upon political parties and make them dependent for re-election upon the voters.

The apathetic can only be awakened through informing voters of what their elected are doing A mayor famously said, ‘it is not the responsibility of the elected to inform the voters of their public affairs.’ Yet we

cannot rely on the corporate converged media for unbiased and clear information.

In proposing how we can practice representative democracy, I have set myself some basic criteria What CAN we do? [Ability] Keep it elemental Keep it inoffensive Keep it effective Keep it organized Keep it disciplined Keep it uncomplicated Keep it inexpensive Keep it rewarding.

Keep it undemanding – time – material Keep it easily replicated, imitated.

I sincerely believe that, given the opportunity to engage in the <dialogue> of public affairs in a non partisan way, voters will become engaged.

To Be Continued in the next issue From: Ed Goertzen, Oshawa ON [egoert@netrover.com]

“The Fifth Columnist”

The Warrior Class

Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON Many Canadians are tiring of the histrionics and lip service of the Left concerning Canada’s aboriginals, crocodile tears, while little of any substance is proposed to address the issues on the reserves.

I’d like to propose a gesture of reconciliation and confidence in Canada’s aboriginals by forming a Canadian Forces regiment composed of mainly of Natives. I am fairly certain that the Left will condemn this proposal as windowdressing, pandering or racist. Although it seems to play into the multicultural Tower of Babel ideology that the Liberals wish to build for the sake of diversity, this idea makes sense on several levels.

First, in a typically Canadian solution, we have some mainly French-speaking regiments in Quebec such as the Van Doos, the Royal 22nd Regiment. One of our fighting ships, Ville de Québec, works in French. So, to those who would suggest that an “Indian” regiment is racist, look to Quebec. Elsewhere, in the United States, look to the Tuskegee Airmen, who formed an all-black fighter squadron in World War II. The British army has a brigade of Gurkhas, fierce fighters from Nepal.

Second, it seems to me that recruitment of minorities, especially aboriginals, has not been wholly successful. It was Roméo Dallaire, in his book Shake Hands with the Devil,

The Charter of the English Language

Kim McConnell, Canadians for Language Fairness February 24, 2013: Richard Field of the Montgomery Tavern Society has been fighting for the rights of Englishspeaking Canadians for many years. As a retired member of the Armed Forces, he knew how badly treated the English-speaking members of the military were by Trudeau’s www.dialogue2.ca

who described how Quebec gunners using English commands under-performed, but when working in the language of their own culture, excelled. My thinking is that this may work for native soldiers, surrounded and led by men of their own culture.

Third, while this regiment would indeed be culturally or racially-based, it elevates and actually integrates Natives into Canadian society. While Canadians are not militaristic and are not fond of overseas expeditions, paradoxically we love our men and women in uniform.

Adults need jobs, and need hope to survive. It is not “assimilation” of one’s culture that destroys the man, but loss of livelihood, a failure to provide and failure to succeed, and ultimately marginalization. A Native regiment is way up, a way out and a way forward.

I believe that this regiment would give native Canadians an opportunity to serve in a prestigious, well-regarded organization, to get valuable training and education and to see the world; and definitely to develop leadership skills. Natives were our allies during the War of 1812 and served a pivotal role in the defence and formation of Canada. The warrior class has been a powerful symbol for aboriginals. I don’t know about you, but I would rather stand along-side our native brothers in a common cause, than evict them as protestors from Canada’s bridges and railway tracks. dialogue always welcome, contact me at: fifth_columnist@magma.ca 

policy of Official Bilingualism. Many ex-military members of Canada’s Armed Forces are still very angry at the very obvious transfer of power from English-speakers to Frenchspeakers. I have heard from many of them and I doubt that these people will ever forget or forgive the deliberate act that has now spread right through the country, affecting  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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public as well as private sectors. Many people, like Richard, have fought this insulting social engineering policy that has benefitted nobody but the Francophones and the Francophiles (those who have decided that to capitulate is easier than to fight). Richard Field appeals to ALL Englishspeakers to fight back!!! Fight back or forever be subservient to a policy that puts linguistic prowess in a minority language above all other more important qualities like qualifi-

cations, experience and personal merit.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ HIS APPEAL & HIS CHARTER OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, EMAIL KIM: kimlian@bell.net 

Canadians for Language Fairness (CLF)

P.O. Box 40111, Bank & Hunt Club Postal Outlet 2515 Bank St., Ottawa ON K1V 0W8; 613-321-7333 Website: www.languagefairness.ca

“One Man’s Opinion”

Unanswered written questions to politicians

Ken Clark, Fergus ON As an individual, I have over time written numerous letters to politicians at varying levels of office, within both the federal and provincial areas, in an attempt to obtain an answer/response to a question posed or an opinion given.

It is my view that if citizens are to vote intelligently, and if politicians are to represent their constituents effectively, this type of rapport is crucial. Unfortunately, I have come to realize most politicians obviously do not view this situation as I do; some of my letters are not answered or acknowledged, others are acknowledged but provide no additional comment, still others are acknowledged with the comment “Mr. So & So is always interested in hearing from constituents…” – yet still fail to address the concern expressed.

Now I am not so naïve as to not understand politicians must receive daily many letters that are not worthy of response. However, when a serious or pertinent question or comment is put forth, surely it deserves the courtesy of a proper and timely response.

The above opinion is expressed once again because of an article that appeared in the National Post on Dec. 17, 2012 [by Christopher Curtis, Postmedia News]. The article began with: “It cost taxpayers an estimated $1.2 million to answer written questions from MPs – including $150,000 on a single query from a Liberal MP, new figures reveal.”

At this point I must confess that I am aware of the daily oral Question Period that occurs in Parliament but did not realize that MPs could submit written questions and what the cost involved might be to answer them.

“The questions, 305 of them, were all tabled in the House of Commons during a three-month period this year, and they were wide-ranging. For instance, a written question from NDP MP Peter Stoffer, about IT spending at the Department of Defence, Public Security and other federal agencies, cost $15,733 to answer.

It cost $15,358 to study the kinds of backdrops the government used when making announcements between February 2011 and June 2012 – a question asked by Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux of Winnipeg North. Mr. Lamoreux tabled four questions on June 19, for a total cost of $46,228.

NDP MP Alexandrine Latendresse’s question about expenses related to engraved letterheads used by the Conservatives was answered after $21,600 of research. The

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Quebec-City area MP submitted three questions on May 2, racking up a $39,000 bill.

And then there was Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, who asked a detailed question about the government’s vehicle procurement that, the government says, took $150,000-worth of work to answer.

The $1.2-million figure (in the National Post article) came in response to a written question from Tory backbencher Brian Jean, who feels the opposition should be limited in the number of written questions it puts to the government.

His query itself cost the government $5,669.”

I hope, but very much doubt, that this was taxpayer’s money well spent. I am more inclined to think it is just another example of good money sent after bad. I find it almost impossible to believe that answering questions could prove to be so costly.

[Quoting from the National Post again:] “Members of Parliament are allowed to submit written questions to the government, and often do to receive more detailed information from federal departments than they might obtain during the daily oral Question Period. The government is required to respond to written queries within 45 days. The information is gathered by federal staffers at a rate of about $60 per hour, per employee. But Liberal MP David McGuinty says the figures released on the cost of questions is just a diversionary tactic to intimidate parliamentarians.

“Let me get this straight, the Conservatives can put a price on the order [paper] questions but can’t seem to cost the F35,” Mr. McGuinty said. “But they’ve spent hours and hours figuring out how much these questions cost.

“The government spent more than $6,000 researching Mr. McGuinty’s query on funding cuts to Canadian libraries.”

So there you have it! Who can the poor taxpayer believe?

In my opinion it’s just another example of our government’s incompetence, regardless of which party is in power or in opposition. As the saying goes, round and round the money-wheel turns and where it stops nobody knows, or unfortunately cares, including the taxpayers, it seems.

Wouldn’t it be more beneficial and productive if MPs were as diligent in answering questions from their constituents?

You know, those to whom they are supposed to be responsible and represent! I am positive the cost involved to answer questions from their constituents would not be anywhere near the apparent cost of answering other MPs.  www.dialogue2.ca

Who Speaks for the Wilderness & People in Canada’s North?

Wade Davis: Sacred Headwaters "To put a copper mine at the top of Todagin Mountain is like putting an oil well on top of the Sistine Chapel."

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/HP1926222 [PHOTOS IN THE VIDEO: BY PAUL COLANGELO]

Aug. 16, 2012: National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis describes the Sacred Headwaters -- where three of British Columbia's greatest salmon-bearing rivers are formed: the Stikine, Skeena and Nass. The area is under threat by mining developments. Video by Patagonia features photos by Paul Colangelo and music by Todd Hannigan. To learn more and help, please visit: www.sacredheadwatersjourney.com

“No one is against oil and gas. The issue isn’t mines or no mines; it’s how many mines, where, at what cost to the environment, at what pace, and for whose benefit? … This isn’t just about the environment; it’s about human rights and human justice… I would love to see the fate of the Sacred Headwaters being an open discussion. It should be part of a referendum that is both national and international. Because this is a place that really could be Sacred Headwaters, not only of all British Columbians and all Canadians, but indeed of all peoples of the world.” – Wade Davis, in the video IDEO: http://tinyurl.com/FKsacredhw [SEE PHOTOS FROM THE VIDEO ON THE BACK COVER]

Tsunami of industrial development threatens British Columbia’s Sacred Headwaters

HuffPost BC, Sep 30, 2012, by Wade Davis, author & anthropologist This is not a story of Tibet or the Amazon, of life on the Arctic ice or in the searing sands of the Sahara. It is a story of my own backyard, a land known to the Tahltan people and all the First Nations of British Columbia as the Sacred Headwaters, the birthplace of the three great free flowing salmon rivers of home, the Stikine, Skeena and Nass.

Wade Davis, It is a high broad valley, nestled among Anthropologist mountains that score every horizon. In a long day, perhaps two, you can follow the tracks of grizzly and wolf, caribou and moose, and drink from the very sources of the rivers that cradled the great civilization of the Pacific Northwest.

When, in 1879, John Muir experienced but the lower third of the Stikine he called it a Yosemite a hundred miles long, and he later named his beloved dog after this river of his enchantment. The Grand Canyon of the Stikine, Canada's greatest canyon, often described as the K2 of whitewater challenges, was not successfully run by kayak until 1985; since then fewer than 50 men and women, all world-class athletes, have made it through. No raft has ever done so.

In the lower 48 (states) the farthest you can get away from a maintained road is 20 miles (32 km); in this northwest quadrant of British Columbia, an area the size of Oregon, there is one road, a narrow ribbon of tarmac heading north to the Yukon along the flank of the Coast Mountains.

I followed this road north in the 1970s, soon after it was built, to take a job as the first park ranger in the Spatsizi, the Serengeti of Canada. The job description was deliciously vague, wilderness assessment and public relations. In two four-month seasons I encountered but a dozen people.

In the course of my wanderings I came upon a shaman's www.dialogue2.ca

grave, which led to an encounter with a remarkable man, a Gitxsan elder who had lived all his life in the bush as a hunter and trapper. For more than 30 years, I recorded stories from Alex, the myths of Wy-ghet, the trickster transformer of Gitxsan lore, who in his folly taught the people the proper way to live on the land. These were all whimsical tales of moral gratitude played out against and within the backdrop of nature.

Through time, isolation has been the country's saving grace; now this very isolation could be its doom. The tar sands, Enbridge and Keystone pipelines -- these are just elements of a tsunami of industrial development sweeping over the Canadian north. In Tahltan territory alone there are 41 major projects, some with considerable promise, some of great concern.

On Todagin Mountain, a wildlife sanctuary in the sky, revered by the Tahltan as the home of the largest population of Stone sheep in the world, Imperial Metals intends to build a massive open pit copper and gold mine processing 30,000 tons of rock a day for 30 years. The project design calls for hundreds of millions of tons of toxic tailings to be dumped into the lakes of the headwaters, poisoning the source of the Iskut, the main tributary of the Stikine.

In the very meadows of the Sacred Headwaters, Shell seeks to extract methane gas by fracking coal seams that underlie a million acre tenure, drilling as many as 6,000 wells and injecting into the ground millions of gallons of toxic chemicals. The result would be a network of roads, pipelines, and flaring wellheads all producing gas to be shipped east to fuel the expansion of the tar sands.

Fortune Minerals would tear into the headwater valley itself, on a massive scale, with open pit anthracite coal operations that would level entire mountains.

HOME AND SANCTUARY

For more than a decade the Tahltan clans, Wolf and Crow, have actively opposed these assaults on their land, rivers and lakes. Men, women and children, old and young, even elders in wheelchairs have stood in rain and snow,  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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blockading the only road access to the interior. For them the Sacred Headwaters is home, their kitchen and sanctuary, the burial grounds of their ancestors and the nursery of generations as yet unborn.

With the support of every municipality downstream, of every locally elected politician in every party, the Tahltan to date have blunted these efforts to violate their homeland.

But now everything hangs in the balance. The fate of the country will be decided in the coming year.

Just before my old friend Alex died at 96, he gave me a gift, a tool carved by his grandfather from caribou bone in 1910, when Alex was a boy. It was a specialized tool, used by a trapper to skin out the eyelids of wolves. It was only after Alex passed away that I realized that the eyelids in question were my own and that Alex, having done so much to allow me to see, was in his own way saying goodbye.

All Wars Are Bankers' Wars

By Michael Rivero (From his website: http://whatreallyhappened.com/ WRH – “Are We Civilized, Or Merely Domesticated”)

I know many people have a great deal of difficulty comprehending just how many wars are started for no other purpose than to force private central banks onto nations, so let me share a few examples, so that you understand why the US Government is mired in so many wars against so many foreign nations. There is ample precedent for this. […]

[Read the detailed history, in full online, link at the end]

As a side note, we need to step back before WW2 and recall Marine Major General Smedley Butler. In 1933, Wall Street bankers and financiers had bankrolled the successful coups by both Hitler and Mussolini. Brown Brothers Harriman in New York was financing Hitler right up to the day war was declared with Germany. And they decided that a fascist dictatorship in the United States based on the one on Italy would be far better for their business interests than Roosevelt's "New Deal" which threatened massive wealth re-distribution to recapitalize the working and middle class of America.

So the Wall Street tycoons recruited General Butler to lead the overthrow of the US Government and install a "Secretary of General Affairs" who would be answerable to Wall Street and not the people, would crush social unrest and shut down all labor unions. General Butler pretended to go along with the scheme but then exposed the plot to Congress. Congress, then as now in the pocket of the Wall Street bankers, refused to act. When Roosevelt learned of the planned coup he demanded the arrest of the plotters, but the plotters simply reminded Roosevelt that if any one of them were sent to prison, their friends on Wall Street would deliberately collapse the still-fragile economy and blame Roosevelt for it.

Roosevelt was thus unable to act until the start of WW2, at which time he prosecuted many of the plotters under the Trading With The Enemy act. The Congressional minutes into the coup were finally released in 1967 and became the inspiration for the movie, "Seven Days in May" but with the true financial villains erased from the script.

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Now surely he is calling out for all of us to open our eyes to what is happening in the north. The Tahltan have called for the creation of a Tribal Heritage Reserve that will protect the Sacred Headwaters, and in doing so create the greatest protected area in British Columbia, a vast and pristine wilderness that will reach all the way to the protected areas of Alaska.

The voices of all people deserve to be heard. Surely no amount of methane gas, coal, copper or gold can compensate for the sacrifice of a place that can be the Sacred Headwaters for all citizens of the world.

LINK to the article & video at the HuffingtonPost B.C.: http://tinyurl.com/HP1926222 To learn more and help: www.sacredheadwatersjourney.com [ARTICLE REPRINTED TO INSPIRE US ALL TO PROTECT THE WILDERNESS & PEOPLE OF THE CANADIAN NORTH] 

In General Smedley Butler’s words: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of our country's most agile military force -- the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from second lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent more of my time being a highclass muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just a part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it.

Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.

In China in 1927 I helped see to it that the Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals and promotion. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. I operated on three continents." -- General Smedley Butler, former US Marine Corps Commandant, 1935

As President, John F. Kennedy understood the predatory nature of private central banking. He understood why Andrew Jackson fought so hard to end the Second Bank of the United States. So Kennedy wrote and signed Executive Order 11110 which ordered the US Treasury to issue a  new public currency, the United States Note. www.dialogue2.ca

Kennedy's United States Notes were not borrowed form the Federal Reserve but created by the US Government and backed by the silver stockpiles held by the US Government. It represented a return to the system of economics the United States had been founded on, and was perfectly legal for Kennedy to do. All told, some four and one half billion dollars went into public circulation, eroding interest payments to the Federal Reserve and loosening their control over the nation.

Five months later John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas, and the United States Notes pulled from circulation and destroyed (except for samples held by collectors).

John J. McCloy, President of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and President of the World Bank, was named to the Warren Commission, presumably to make certain the banking dimensions behind the assassination were concealed from the public.

As we enter the eleventh year of what future history will most certainly describe as World War Three, we need to examine the financial dimensions behind the wars. [… 1944-5, the Bretton Woods agreement for international finance; Federal Reserve, the "petrodollar"…]

In effect, the US, no longer able to back the dollar with gold, was now backing it with oil. Other peoples' oil. And that necessity to keep control over those oil nations to prop up the dollar has shaped America's foreign policy in the (Middle East) region ever since.

But as America's manufacturing and agriculture has declined, the oil producing nations faced a dilemma. Those piles of US Federal Reserve notes were not able to purchase much from the United States because the United States had little (other than real estate) anyone wanted to buy. Europe's cars and aircraft were superior and less costly, while experiments with GMO food crops led to nations refusing to buy US food exports. Israel's constant belligerence against its neighbors caused them to wonder if the US could actually keep their end of the petrodollar arrangement. Oil producing nations started to talk of selling their oil for whatever currency the purchasers chose to use. Iraq, already hostile to the United States following Desert Storm, demanded the right to sell their oil for Euros in 2000 and in 2002, the United Nations agreed to allow it under the "Oil for food" program instituted following Desert Storm. One year later the United States re-invaded Iraq, lynched Saddam Hussein, and placed Iraq's oil back on the world market only for US dollars.

The clear US policy shift following 9-11, away from being an impartial broker of peace in the Mid-East to one of unquestioned support for Israel's aggressions only further eroded confidence in the Petrodollar deal and even more oil producing nations started openly talking of oil trade for other global currencies.

Over in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi had instituted a stateowned central bank and a value-based trade currency, the Gold Dinar. Gaddafi announced that Libya's oil was for sale, but only for the Gold Dinar. Other African nations, seeing the rise of the Gold Dinar and the Euro, even as the US dollar continued its inflation-driven decline, flocked to the new Libyan currency for trade. This move had the potential to seriously undermine the global hegemony of the dollar. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call www.dialogue2.ca

Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. So, the United States invaded Libya, brutally murdered Qaddafi ( the object lesson of Saddam's lynching not being enough of a message, apparently), imposed a private central bank, and returned Libya's oil output to dollars only. The gold that was to have been made into the Gold Dinars is, as of last report, unaccounted for.

According to General Wesley Clark, the master plan for the "dollarification" of the world's oil nations included seven targets, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran (Venezuela, which dared to sell their oil to China for the Yuan, is a late addition). What is notable about the original seven nations originally targeted by the US is that none of them are members of the Bank for International Settlements, the private central bankers’ private central bank, located in Switzerland. This meant that these nations were deciding for themselves how to run their nations' economies, rather than submit to the international private banks.

Now the bankers' gun sights are on Iran, which dares to have a government central bank and sell their oil for whatever currency they choose. The war agenda is, as always, to force Iran's oil to be sold only for dollars and to force them to accept a privately owned central bank.

The German government recently asked for the return of some of their gold bullion from the Bank of France and the New York Federal Reserve. France has said it will take 5 years to return Germany's gold. The United States has said they will need 8 years to return Germany's gold. This suggests strongly that the Bank of France and the NY Federal Reserve have used the deposited gold for other purposes, and they are scrambling to find new gold to cover the shortfall and prevent a gold run. So it is inevitable that suddenly France invades Mali, ostensibly to combat Al Qaeda, with the US joining in. Mali just happens to be one of the world's largest gold producers with gold accounting for 80% of Mali exports. War for the bankers does not get more obvious than that!

You have been raised by a public school system and media that constantly assures you that the reasons for all these wars and assassinations are many and varied. The US claims to bring democracy to the conquered lands (they haven't; the usual result of a US overthrow is the imposition of a dictatorship, such as the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iran's democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and the imposition of the Shah, or the 1973 CIA overthrow of Chile's democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende, and the imposition of Augusto Pinochet), or to save a people from a cruel oppressor, revenge for 9-11, or that tired worn-out catch all excuse for invasion, ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Assassinations are always passed off as "crazed lone nuts" to obscure the real agenda.

The real agenda is simple. It is enslavement of the people by creation of a false sense of obligation. That obligation is false because the Private Central Banking system, by design, always creates more debt than money with which to pay that debt.

Private Central Banking is not science, it is a religion; a set of arbitrary rules created to benefit the  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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priesthood, meaning the owners of the Private Central Bank. The fraud persists, with often-lethal results, because the people are tricked into believing that this is the way life is supposed to be and no alternative exists or should be dreamt of. The same was true of two earlier systems of enslavement, Rule by Divine Right and Slavery, both systems built to trick people into obedience, and both now recognized by modern civilization as illegitimate.

Now we are entering a time in human history where we will recognize that rule by debt, or rule by Private Central Bankers issuing the public currency as a loan at interest, is equally illegitimate. It only works as long as people allow themselves to believe that this is the way life is supposed to be.

But understand this above all; Private Central Banks do not exist to serve the people, the community, or the nation.

Private Central Banks exist to serve their owners, to make them rich beyond the dreams of Midas and all for the cost of ink, paper, and the right bribe to the right official.

Behind all these wars, all these assassinations, the hundred million horrible deaths from all the wars lies a single policy of dictatorship. The private central bankers allow rulers to rule only on the condition that the people of a nation be enslaved to the private central banks. Failing that, said ruler will be killed, and their nation invaded by those other nations enslaved to private central banks.

The so-called "clash of civilizations" we read about on the corporate media is really a war between banking systems, with the private central bankers forcing themselves onto the rest of the world, no matter how many millions must die for it.

Indeed the constant hatemongering against Muslims lies in a simple fact. Like the ancient Christians (prior to the Knights Templars’ private banking system), Muslims forbid usury, or the lending of money at interest. And that is the reason our government and media insist they must be killed or converted. They refuse to submit to currencies issued at interest.

They refuse to be debt slaves.

So off to war your children must go, to spill their blood for the money-junkies' gold. We barely survived the last two world wars. In the nuclear/bioweapon age, are the private central bankers willing to risk incinerating the whole planet just to feed their greed? Apparently so.

Flag waving and propaganda aside, all modern wars are wars by and for the private bankers, fought and bled for by third parties unaware of the true reason they are expected to gracefully be killed and croppled for. […]

As long as Private Central Banks are allowed to exist, inevitably as the night follows day there will be poverty, hopelessness, and millions of deaths in endless World Wars, until the Earth itself is sacrificed in flames to Mammon.

The path to true peace on Earth lies in the abolishment of all private central banking everywhere, and a return to the state-issued value-based currencies that allow nations and people to become prosperous.

– Michael Rivero LINK: http://WhatReallyHappened.com/WRHARTICLES/allwarsareba nkerwars.php AUDIO: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33903.htm Recd. from: Stephanie McDowall [stephmcdo(at)telus.net] 

And Solutions for Our BANKruptured Societies…

Money for the People: Grillo’s Populist Plan for Italy by Ellen Brown

Default on the public debt, nationalization of the banks, and a citizen dividend could actually save the Italian economy.

by Ellen Brown, Featured Writer, Dandelion Salad, webofdebt.com, March 7, 2013 [EXTRACTS & LINK] Comedian Beppe Grillo was surprised himself when his Five Star Movement (M5S) got 8.7 million votes in the Italian general election of February 24-25th. His movement is now the biggest single party in the chamber of deputies, says The Guardian, which makes him “a kingmaker in a hung parliament.”

Grillo’s is the party of “no.” In a candidacy based on satire, he organized an annual “V Day Celebration,” the “V” standing for vaffanculo (“f—k off”). He rejects the status quo – all the existing parties and their monopoly control of politics, jobs, and financing – and seeks a referendum on all international treaties, including NATO membership, free trade agreements and the Euro. “If we get into parliament,” says Grillo, “we would bring the old system down, not because we would enjoy doing so but because the system is rotten.”

Critics fear, and supporters hope, that if his party succeeds, it could break the Euro system. […]

Steve Colatrella, who lives in Italy and also has an article in Counterpunch on the Grillo phenomenon, has a different take on the surprise win. He says Grillo does have a plat-

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form of positive proposals. Besides rejecting all the existing parties and treaties, Grillo’s program includes the following: • unilateral default on the public debt; • nationalization of the banks; and • a guaranteed “citizenship” income of 1000 euros a month.

It is a platform that could actually work. Austerity has been tested for a decade in the Eurozone and has failed, while the proposals in Grillo’s plan have been tested in other countries and have succeeded.

Default: Lessons from Iceland and South America

Default on the public debt has been pulled off quite successfully in Iceland, Argentina, Ecuador, and Russia, among other countries. Whitney cites a clip from Grillo’s blog suggesting that this is also the way out for Italy: The public debt has not been growing in recent years because of too much expenditure … Between 1980 and 2011, spending was lower than the tax revenue by 484 billion (thus we have been really virtuous) but the interest payments (on the debt of 2,141 billion) that we had to pay in that period have made us poor. In the last 20 years,  www.dialogue2.ca

GDP has been growing slowly, while the debt has exploded.

… [S]peculators … are contributing to price falls so as to bring about higher interest rates. It’s the usurer’s technique.

Thus the debt becomes an opportunity to maximize earnings in the market at the expense of the nation… . If financial powerbrokers use speculation to increase their earnings and force governments to pay the highest possible interest rates, the result is recession for the State that’s in debt as well as their loss of sovereignty. … There are alternatives. These are being put into effect by some countries in South America and by Iceland… .

The risk is that we are going to reach default in any case with the devaluation of the debt, and the Nation impoverished and on its knees. [Beppe Grillo blog]

Bank Nationalization: China Shows What Can Be Done

Grillo’s second proposal, nationalizing the banks, has also been tested and proven elsewhere, most notably in China.

In an April 2012 article in The American Conservative titled “China’s Rise, America’s Fall,” Ron Unz observes: During the three decades to 2010, China achieved perhaps the most rapid sustained rate of economic development in the history of the human species, with its real economy growing almost 40-fold between 1978 and 2010. In 1978, America’s economy was 15 times larger, but according to most international estimates, China is now set to surpass America’s total economic output within just another few years. According to Eamonn Fingleton, in In The Jaws of the Dragon (2009), the fountain that feeds this tide is a strong public banking sector: Capitalism’s triumph in China has been proclaimed in countless books in recent years… . But … the higher reaches of its economy remain comprehensively controlled in a way that is the antithesis of everything we associate with Western capitalism. The key to this control is the Chinese banking system … [which is] not only state-owned but, as in other East Asian miracle economies, functions overtly as a major tool of the central government’s industrial policy.

Guaranteed Basic Income: Not Just Welfare

Grillo’s third proposal, a guaranteed basic income, is not just an off-the-wall, utopian idea either. A national dividend has been urged by the “Social Credit” school of monetary reform for nearly a century, and the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network has held a dozen annual conferences.

They feel that a guaranteed basic income is the key to keeping modern, highly productive economies humming.

In Europe, the proposal is being pursued not just by Grillo’s southern European party but by the sober Swiss of the north. An initiative to establish a new federal law for an unconditional basic income was formally introduced in Switzerland in April 2012. The idea consists of giving to all citizens a monthly income that is neither means-tested nor work-related. Under the Swiss referendum system of direct democracy, if the initiative gathers more than 100,000 signatures before October 2013, the Federal Assembly is required to look into it.

Colatrella does not say where Grillo plans to get the money www.dialogue2.ca

for Italy’s guaranteed basic income, but in Social Credit theory, it would simply be issued outright by the government; and Grillo, who has an accounting background, evidently agrees with that approach to funding. He said in a presentation available on YouTube: The Bank of Italy a private join-stock company, ownership comprises 10 insurance companies, 10 foundations, and 10 banks, that are all joint-stock companies … They issue the money out of thin air and lend it to us. It’s the State who is supposed to issue it. We need money to work. The State should say: “There’s scarcity of money? I’ll issue some and put it into circulation. Money is plentiful? I’ll withdraw and burn some of it.” … Money is needed to keep prices stable and to let us work.

The Key to a Thriving Economy

Major C.H. Douglas, the thought leader of the Social Credit movement, argued that the economy routinely produces more goods and services than consumers have the money to purchase, because workers collectively do not get paid enough to cover the cost of the things they make. This is true because of external costs such as interest paid to banks, and because some portion of the national income is stashed in savings accounts, investment accounts, and under mattresses rather than spent on the GDP. To fill what Social Crediters call “the gap,” so that “demand” rises to meet “supply,” additional money needs to be gotten into the circulating money supply. Douglas recommended doing it with a national dividend for everyone, an entitlement by “grace” rather than “works,” something that was necessary just to raise purchasing power enough to cover the products on the market.

In the 1930s and 1940s, critics of Social Credit called it “funny money” and said it would merely inflate the money supply. The critics prevailed, and the Social Credit solution has not had much chance to be tested. But the possibilities were demonstrated in New Zealand during the Great Depression, when a state housing project was funded with credit issued by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the nationalized central bank. According to New Zealand commentator Kerry Bolton, this one measure was sufficient to resolve 75% of unemployment in the midst of the Great Depression.

Bolton notes that this was achieved without causing inflation. When new money is used to create new goods and services, supply rises along with demand and prices remain stable; but the “demand” has to come first. No business owner will invest in more capacity or production without first seeing a demand. No demand, no new jobs and no economic expansion.

The Need to Restore Economic Sovereignty

The money for a guaranteed basic income could be created by a nationalized central bank in the same way that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand did it, and that central bank “quantitative easing” (QE) is created out of nothing on a computer screen today. The problem with today’s QE is that it has not gotten money into the pockets of consumers.

The money has gotten—and can get—no further than the reserve accounts of banks, as explained here and here.  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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A dividend paid directly to consumers would be “quantitative easing” for the people.

A basic income guarantee paid for with central bank credit would not be “welfare” but would eliminate the need for welfare. It would be social security for all, replacing social security payments, unemployment insurance, and welfare taxes. It could also replace much of the consumer debt that is choking the private economy, growing exponentially at usurious compound interest rates.

As Grillo points out, it is not the cost of government but the cost of money itself that has bankrupted Italy. If the country wishes to free itself from the shackles of debt and restore the prosperity it once had, it will need to take back its

monetary sovereignty and issue its own money, either directly or through its own nationalized central bank. If Grillo’s party comes to power and follows through with his platform, those shackles on the Italian economy might actually be released. […] LINK: http://tinyurl.com/b7oyur3 Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private banking oligarchy has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her book “The Buck Starts Here: Restoring Prosperity with Publicly-owned Banks” will be released this spring. Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com , http://EllenBrown.com , and http://PublicBankingInstitute.org .

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/b7oyur3 

The Chavez Legacy and Paradigm of The Possible The Secret Rise of 21st Century Democracy Margaret Flowers & Kevin Zeese, Truthout, 20 Feb 2013 [EXTRACT & LINK] New economies based on greater democ-

ratic control, real representation and citizen participation are on the rise. There is much to be learned from countries like Venezuela that break from the Washington Consensus.

If Americans knew the truth about the growth of real democracy in Venezuela and other Latin American countries, we would demand economic democracy and participatory government, which together would threaten the power of concentrated wealth. The seeds of both are beginning to sprout in the US despite efforts to keep Americans ignorant about them. Real democracy creates a huge challenge to the oligarchs and their neoliberal agenda because it is driven by human needs, not corporate greed. That is why major media in the US, which are owned by six corporations, aggressively misinform the public about Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. […] READ IN FULL, LINK FOLLOWS. There are lots of lessons for Americans: Build from the

grassroots, keep building no matter who is elected, push your political friends farther than they want to go, don't trust the corporate media and do question the official consensus of the political and economic class that rules us. In the end, we need to build the two pillars of economic democracy and participatory government to overcome the concentrated wealth and corrupt government that rules through a mirage of managed democracy. That is our task. It is a path of proven success.

LINK: http://truth-out.org/news/item/14649-the-secret-riseof-21st-century-democracy (with many active links) You can hear our interview with Mike Fox and Maria Hadden on Participatory Democracy in Venezuela and the US on Clearing the FOG Radio (podcast) or view it on: UStream/ItsOurEconomy.

LINK to Part 1: http://truth-out.org/news/item/14489-liftingthe-veil-of-mirage-democracy-in-the-united-states 

Banking – Usury – and Cui bono? (Who benefits?)

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

Russ Vinden, Errington, BC [Although this article was received in January 2012, its message is still as important as ever!]

Waiting for my wife in a gift shop just before Christmas – one full of what are known as 'accessories' -- 'bling' in today's jargon -- I noticed that dotted around were a number of painted motto's and injunctions like" The worst day's fishing is better than the best day at work", & "Love me, love my dog"; you know the sort of thing.

One, which fairly jumped out at me, lay on the floor next to a tall narrow mirror leaning against the wall. It said simply "Mirror, mirror on the wall – What the hell happened?"

It put me into a prolonged questioning mode.

More and more often I look at the enormous debts, the crumbling systems, and failing services which used to function reasonably well, not all that long ago, and find myself

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asking the same question. Well, what the hell has happened? Why are so many things which we used to take for granted no longer available? Like major food supplies not genetically modified or sprayed with chemicals without our knowledge; like balanced budgets for governments, now an unreal expectation; like home processing of our raw exports by Canadian firms, not untouchable foreign corporations. In fact, so many core systems are now stumbling along on the edge of crisis, and so loaded down with unsustainable debt, that normality is now an expectation of partial or increasingly severe dysfunction.

The root of all this disturbance seems to me to lie in the huge debt load in which everything is entangled nowadays, and here one comes slap up against what appears to be the biggest single problem in all of politics - the total ownership of government debt by private banks and the associated establishment of usury as Standard Operating Procedure. This took place openly in Britain 200 years ago; covertly in the US 100 years ago; and – after a 40-year  www.dialogue2.ca

highly successful experiment with self-funding from our own national Bank – was quietly re-instated in Canada some 36 years ago. With some astonishment, we realise that this pernicious system has been cemented in place by almost every government in the Western world.

No other single policy has had such unchallenged adoption with so little public involvement – or even awareness. Indeed, it is a fair assumption that not one Minister or elected representative in any Parliament or Legislature in Canada has ever referred to the privatisation of government debt in any speech – let alone publicly questioned its use, or made any criticism of the ceaseless, relentless growth of intereston-the-interest which is an inescapable feature of this borrowing – and which is in fact the very life-blood of usury, a process condemned by generations of economists. It begs that hard, ancient question from the Roman Empire-- 'Cui bono? (Who benefits?).

Beyond doubt, the prime beneficiaries are the great international private bankers who have benefited to an extent hardly dreamt of even by that redoubtable figure, Amschel Rothschild, father of that bank, who way back in the early 1800's delivered the remarkable opinion that "If I can but create and issue a nation's currency, I care not what laws they pass".

Even before the banking system's more recent massive excursion into high-risk gambling through derivatives and hedge-funds, which almost brought the whole system of international finance crashing in flames three years ago, their total of deliberately constructed debt around the world was virtually beyond computation. Now, such calculation verges on the bizarre, and proposals to alleviate the exploding, multiple trillions of debt in Europe and the 'States in particular, by creating yet more multiple billions of bail-out money – at yet more interest – is to question sanity itself, and the meaning of words.

The whole driving force of these proposals of course is clearly not towards the elimination of the debts, for that would halt the gravy train, but to enable the continuation of the interest payments, and failing that, the expropriation of national assets. The prime marker for usury, in fact its main purpose, is the perpetuation of interest, and so far what has remained miraculously intact is the unceasing flow of interest on the interest, from nation after nation not yet desperate enough to renege on their now quite un-payable debts. This whole situation leads me to question the purpose of these hundreds of officials, trundling around Europe to conference after conference, seemingly unable to comprehend the sheer inanity of what they are doing, unable to adjust to reality.

No objective view can determine other than that these monstrous debts must be cancelled – a conclusion the Romans came to thousands of years ago when they instituted the Jubilee every 49 years, when all debts were forgiven, property restored, slaves freed, etc., etc. Iceland has already gone that route, and it is observable that the sun still rises and sets, nobody starves, and the wheels still turn. It will take time for such a fundamental to penetrate minds locked into the unassailable rightness of usury – but it will happen, bewww.dialogue2.ca

cause it must. The cliff has been reached and there are only two ways to go – backwards to sanity, or forward to catastrophe. Money is but a tool, to be used. It has been turned into an end product, the accumulation of which confers absolute power; but it can dissipate in a flash when a spark is applied, and drift away like smoke in the wind, as bankers around the world discovered three years ago when their crafty mortgage swindles blew up in their faces.

They are trying very hard to shift the fall-out back to governments and taxpayers, and have had some success. But there is a legal defence called "Odious Debt", already used

by Iceland, which allows the cancellation of debts carrying unacceptable levels of interest. And word is surfacing in the US about the unenforceability of mortgage debt when the Certificate of Title has been lost, as millions have in the scramble to divide and merge portions of mortgage debt into huge investment bundles. The key word used in this exposition (Harpers Magazine, Jan 2012 – a reputable publication) was 'cataclysmic', as case after case has been thrown out by judges when the banks were unable to produce an ownership document to the court. Things, it seems, are stirring.

This very form of escape however is being increasingly examined by desperate governments and initiated by not a few. Within the last several years, Argentina, Peru, Brazil partially – Iceland by decisive national plebiscite – have cancelled major portions of their debts. Even Canada (I) has moved significantly by the back door, little-publicised method of switching hundreds of billions of its private debt to its own national Bank at minute cost, to avoid the humiliating and damaging collapse of some private banks.

But why could not our own Canadian Bank have been retained as a regular provider of government capital, instead of being quietly abandoned all those years ago? It would certainly have avoided the build-up of our now stupendous and un-payable debts, as well as the ready balancing of budgets devoid of those massive charges. What colossal benefits were supposed to accrue from all that privatisation of debt anyway? We were never told, the deal was done with great discretion and almost no publicity or explanation.

And today there is only silence; neither government nor elected representatives will even acknowledge the question, let alone deign to reply. What other conclusion but that of fear can be drawn? What on earth are they so afraid of?

Exposure to what? You could hear a pin drop.

What is beyond dispute is that nation after nation around the world, funding their own debts from their own national Banks backed by the whole asset of the nation, are steadily forging ahead economically. China, India and Malaysia come readily to mind, while the consortia of S. American nations now banding together in mutual self-help associations is developing fast, creating their own debts, free of the crushing interest loads, and nationalising the enormous national assets previously owned by foreign corporations, with scant compensation because of the vast extraction of national wealth incurred over hundreds of years. Germany, using its own Bank, is a powerhouse in Europe on which the rest is now dependent for real money to bail out their  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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insolvent nations. A new era of national debt funding is emerging which cannot be ignored. Canada flounders under debts still rapidly growing from un-payable interest on the interest – and its discreetly never-mentioned sixty thousand million dollars of annual interest charges. New taxes, anyone? Or catch the bull by the horns and demand cancellation of these usurious debts?

In the spring of 2010 we were assured that 'the budget would be in balance by 2012’; then it became 2014; and the latest is 'perhaps by 2015’. Today, after generations of utterly accepted privatised debt, the mighty USA is totally dependent on Asian purchasers of its bonds, which of course buys right of entry for their goods no longer produced in America. Six European nations teeter in default; the powerhouses of France and Britain flounder under the weight of interest-induced debt and a faltering economy.

What a morass! What destruction, caused by decades of high interest at compounding cost from a private banking system while in Canada our own Bank lending facility which worked so well for 40 years at such low cost, lay deliberately abandoned. We are told condescendingly that It is now the 'Lender of last resort in time of dire emergency' with no explanation or provenance given. It has been decided.

‘Cui bono?' indeed. It is not some super-human feat to connect the dots, or figure out that wealthy donors will sustain any Party which cuts taxes to the wealthy and allows the transfer of earnings to tax havens abroad. This is a permanent insult to those who by law must have their taxes deducted at source and paid to government, while multiple billions fly out as Transfer Pricing to foreign owners, and the profits end up in Lichtenstein. And to think that we are currently led by a trained economist!

Anger mounts at this organised duplicity, so readily accepted by the governing Parties, and I do not anticipate that the "Occupy" movement will simply go away and cry in a corner… As the weather warms up again, the winter months of meetings and discussions particularly amongst students, will resurface and be far better organised than the spontaneous protests of last fall. The rather dismaying thought is that authority will meet this resurgence with extreme force, while we are told that 50 million handguns are in private hands in the US, plus millions more rifles and even AK47s. The notice by the mirror may then say – “What the hell is happening?” Hell, indeed.

An unconsidered fact is that Parliaments are increasingly ineffective, their Members reduced to mere voting bums on seats, while the unelected Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) grows steadily larger and less in touch with the people we choose to deliberate our problems. We know next to nothing about these people and have neither influence nor control over them. They are there at the PM's pleasure, beyond accountability, and we can neither question nor dismiss them. Quietly, power has been shifted from representation to unquestioned authority, while past statements that a better voting system will be addressed when government has a firm majority are simply ignored.

A very clear realisation is that when the State's main advisers are big business organisations; when electoral representation is weakened; and when the State controls a large modern military; then fascism becomes a disturbing possibility… Long live the Internet and 'Dialogue' style magazines, the so far unstoppable sources of information and reason, increasingly absent from governments.

Russ Vinden, Errington BC 

“From Down the 401”

My fellow Canadians, When you read this column in March, I am sure I will still be unemployed.

And yeah, no income is a bummer, and I have had to postpone acting classes, photo sessions and the like, but it’s not 100% doom and gloom.

For one thing, I know half a dozen people who lost their jobs since last summer. Some have found new employment and others are looking (and waiting) for opportunities.

For another, a potential girlfriend has made it clear she doesn’t give a damn whether I am working because the time we spend together brings her joy even if it costs us nothing.

And most weirdly, I have in some cases managed to engage some government bureaucrats… to fight on my behalf… against other… government bureaucrats. (Yes, it IS as bizarre as it sounds.) But many other people are without work today: Premier McGuinty and Pope Benedict have resigned. In Dalton’s case, I believe he mismanaged the province and pursued too much Frenchification for the vast majority of

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Lou Israel, Toronto

people to be happy with, alienated teachers and unions and basically ran his province into the ground. (Don’t for a second assume that this means Tim Who-dat will be better until he articulates his plan. We know what the Harrisites did.)

As for the Pope, apparently he either got a better job. Or was about to be outed as gay. Or a Nazi. Or something. I neither know nor care. I am just glad the Catholic Church is (maybe) starting to acknowledge and/or deal with its own problems and legitimacy. The less we hear about this grossly outdated organization, the better.

My nomination for pope? Bill Maher. He has consistently shown no desire for little children, or children of any age.

Me? No, I would demand Sundays off.

Lance Armstrong is losing jobs by the barrelful, and as much as I generally hate the corporate culture, I have to say in this case, he deserves every rotten thing that happens to him. I used to defend him and support him because of the whole “innocent until proven guilty” mentality, but now that he has admitted to cheating to win his titles (since revoked), he is paying the price.

It is one thing if the only person he hurt was himself, but when a colleague or friend libels you in the press and in  www.dialogue2.ca

court, ruining if not destroying your life, reputation and financial health, as Armstrong did for years to people who tried to get at the truth, you are the lowest of the low and the most despicable of human beings. I forgave Pete Rose a long time ago and would support him for the Hall Of Fame. I MIGHT even consider the same for Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and the detested Roger Clemens. (Although it can be argued that they hurt the careers of THEIR colleagues who did not dope or cheat.) But I cannot see myself EVER forgiving this lying, cheating, backstabbing turncoat with no moral integrity whatsoever. (There is no truth to the rumour that his new job will be as Dick Cheney’s media consultant.)

Oscar Pistorius (in South Africa) may lose more than his job. This is one story I cannot quite grasp. How does one go from being a double amputee Olympic champion to a murderer almost overnight? (Please note that as of this writing, the facts are still being gathered.) How could a double amputee have the dexterity to even commit a murder, never mind the motivation? Another St. Valentine’s Day massacre.

Rob Ford lost his job but got it back. Toronto’s hardlywinsome mayor was temporarily deposed because of investigations into conflict of interest allegations, and while found not guilty, perhaps on a technicality that (hardly) exonerates so many criminals, his reaction was one of typical Ford humility. He vowed to get the city back on track by closing down plans for public transit and homeless shelter beds, and also sent the guy who unsuccessfully sued him, a bill for $116,000 in legal fees. What a sweetheart. Makes you want to just hug him all over.

Senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin have jobs but are sort of homeless. Both former journalists appear to have disgraced their profession by claiming expenses for living in one area of the country while evidence, facts and bills do not seem to support those allegations. (Why would one claim to live in Saskatchewan anyway?) Another argument for abolishing the Senate, no longer the chamber of sober second thought but simply a silo of second mortgages. (Oh, don’t get me started on former National and Journal anchor Peter Kent, now Minister of Destroying Canada’s Environment.)

Of course, lots of people have jobs who should not. The most obvious are the brain-dead knuckle-draggers working for the OQLF (Office québecois de la langue française). In February alone, they cracked down on, and were embarrassed by comments made on behalf of, several Italian restaurants in Quebec. Apparently they decided the word “pasta” (while not English) is not French enough for them. After a deluge of complaints from inside and outside Quebec and derision and apoplectic laughter from around the world (you know, the people whose favour the PQ are trying to curry to support them when they separate into their own country?), they backed off on said restaurants and moved on to their next target, perhaps one more vulnerable and not as willing to fight back against their tyrannical discrimination and oppression of freedom of expression.

No news as to whether their own La Belle Province restaurants will now feature “hambourgeois”, “chien chauds” and www.dialogue2.ca

whatever “steamies” translates into. [LINKS: http://tinyurl.com/cqxugkj and http://tinyurl.com/cp7keve ] The really funny thing is, in the wake of this media disaster the OQLF is blaming media (especially Anglophone media) for telling the truth --- like that’s not their job? Speak truth to power: that’s one of the tenets of journalism. But as has been said so many times, when it comes to racist francophones, “you can’t handle the truth!” [LINKS: http://tinyurl.com/bv9xzk2 and http://tinyurl.com/c9h53cy ] I am proud to say that I took part in the Montreal rally against Bill 14, as did several hundred others (in the bitter cold no less). CTV estimated our attendance at 250, which would represent either 25,000 or 250,000 people, depending on which standard you use. The focus is to dial back the increased Frenchification of the province and the marginalization of Anglophones. You figure this is a motherhood issue, because who could be against fairness and justice, right? And of all people you would think would “get it”, it would be those Anglophone city councillors, right?

WRONG! In an unbelievable demonstration of ignorance, gall and insensitivity, Project Montreal’s Alex Norris is being criticized --- rightly, in my estimation --- because when an ENGLISHSPEAKING Elisabeth Faure (ironically, a member of the very same party Norris belongs to) asked him a question, he responded IN FRENCH. A long-winded explanation and answer, but ONLY in French.

And then a SECOND question from Faure, asked in English, was once again responded to ONLY in French.

When called on this, Norris weasels his way out of answering by saying that he “takes it for granted” that most English Montrealers also are fluent in French (that may be the case for some of us, but it hardly addresses the issue; are we then to believe that bilingualism is only supposed to go one way, and that francophones cannot be expected to learn, know or understand English?) and that “we’re not in the 1950s any more”. As if this mealy-mouthed response is at all satisfactory.

If we can’t get our own politicians to respect our language, I don’t know how we can persuade the few non-racist francophones to do so. I know I would have been furious had I been there. Norris then claimed the incident was blown out of proportion. I say the only thing that was out of proportion was the lack of outrage displayed by the anglophones in the audience. I am hopeful that he will be hearing from his constituents in the coming weeks and be forced to apologize, resign, or be defeated in this year’s election. With friends like these… [LINKS: http://tinyurl.com/bnqn5cn and http://tinyurl.com/bru6nn3 ] As for the federal Liberals, leadership failures show that candidates are not doing THEIR job, pointing out each other’s weaknesses and deficiencies. So we have veered from ho to hum, and all of a sudden this is a lopsided 2-3 person race (with Marc Garneau and Martha Hall Findlay lagging behind heir apparent Justin Trudeau), with not ONE WORD SPOKEN about Frenchification other than Justin saying Bill 14 goes too far. Sorry, Justin, so did Bills 101, 178, 86 & a dozen  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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others, and you failed to denounce THEM. Keep ignoring the English speakers of Canada and enjoy your third-place standing (unless the NDPQ under French citizen and separatist lackey Mulcair also collapses as English Canadians realize there is nothing there for them either).

Some other folks not doing their job include “Carnival Crap Cruise Lines” (where a normal Caribbean cruise was cut short due to an engine fire, which cut off the air conditioning, limiting water and food, and flooding the rooms with human waste); the people who failed to warn Russians about a meteor about to hit them; and JJ Abrams, agreeing to direct the next movies of BOTH Star Trek and Star Wars, an unwinnable task if ever there was one. However, scientists who told of the asteroid passing close to Earth managed to DO their job (a concept with which Stephen Harper is unfamiliar)

by INFORMING us about the asteroid without ALARMING us about it. (I didn’t even realize it until it had passed.)

This month’s Lou Laurel is no contest. It involves one, however, specifically a basketball game. In El Paso, Texas of all places. The Coronado basketball team is playing its final game of the season. Their manager, Mitchell Marcus, is developmentally challenged but with a ton of heart.

Coach Peter Morales actually dresses him for the last game, which would have been enough. (I feel the Hebrew song “Dye-ay-nu [enough for us]” coming on!)

Unbeknownst to all, coach Morales actually decided to put Mitch Marcus in the game. (Which ALSO would have been enough!) Sadly, despite several team-mates attempting to give him the ball, Marcus was unable to put it in the basket.

And yet…

With only seconds to go, the OPPOSING PLAYER, Jonathan Montanez (who was “raised to treat everyone the way you want to be treated”), called out Mitch’s name, PASSED THE BALL TO HIM, and watched as Mitchell sunk a basket. The crowd went wild with joy, and it made headlines everywhere. THIS is the essence of team sports and sportsmanship.

Kudos and my heartfelt respect and admiration, as well as the Lou Laurel, go to both coach Morales and player Montanez, who demonstrated the absolute best qualities one would ever hope to find on a high school basketball court. May they both find their way into the NBA or public life in their near futures. They are inspirations to us all.

LINKS: http://tinyurl.com/cwwz5g8 and http://tinyurl.com/ck8x9rf

Happy Easter/Passover, everyone!

Your Fellow Canadian, Lou Israel Multilingual proofreader/editor/Actor/singer/writer/MC "Do not let the perfect become the enemy of the good."

Email: angloo(at)rogers.com 

Column: Quebec Notebook

True voice of Anglo Resistance burgeoning on social media

By Peter Sauvé, Montreal Qc Thanks to social media such as Facebook, the breadth of Englishspeaking Quebecers’ deep dissatisfaction with successive Quebec governments’ attacks on their fundamental rights – and with Ottawa’s consistent refusal to defend those rights – is finally leaping out of the bag.

Thousands of federalists, many in their 20s and 30s, are fed up with decades of the Quebec state’s linguistic-cleansing legislation known as Bill 101. And they’re not shy to say so, and to blame your federal government as much as Quebec’s, for perpetuating abuses that have gone on for far too long.

“It’s amazing. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before,” says one veteran of the anglo fight for equality in Quebec. An educated woman who wants to remain nameless for fear of retaliation, “Jane” has been active in Quebec rights groups since the 1980s.

“If you go onto Facebook, you’ll see lots of anger against the feds for not protecting our rights, as well as against Quebec nationalists,” she says. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s great to see so many anglos who really get it, and who can’t be censored and misrepresented the way we were when our media had a monopoly on representing us to each other.”

Indeed. Unfettered by the highly-restricted, and denied,

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media access of yesteryear imposed on them by players such as the Montreal Gazette and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – institutions still far more directed to serve the Canadian establishment by keeping a tight lid on anglo anger over civil-rights violations here – today’s anglos are seizing the initiative by making themselves heard above the politically-correct drumbeat of their media.

The Facebook movement not only opposes the Parti Quebecois’s plans to strengthen Bill 101 with the new Bill 14, it wants Bill 101 all but completely scrapped. That’s 180 degrees away from The Gazette of former editor-in-chief oan Fraser, who now sits as a Canadian senator.

Of course, it’s a pretty sad reflection on your Canada when any of its citizens need to resort to Facebook to enjoy basic civil rights. But the timing couldn’t be better. Things are heating up in Quebec just as the Anglo Resistance forces are reforming, and who knows where events will lead?

For one, the Quebec department responsible for enforcing Bill 101, the Charter of the French Language, was reinforced with 69 new hirings under the Jean Charest Liberals. Of late, their zeal in harassing Montreal businesses is making Quebec look even more foolish internationally.

(Not that it’s their fault, mind you. The law is simply an ass, as are all those English Canadians, like federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and much of your Canadian media, who heartily support it and perpetuate the myth that French is threatened in Quebec.)  www.dialogue2.ca

As well, several new federalist unity organizations have sprung up, and there’s a movement afoot to recreate the defunct provincial Equality Party, and rebrand it as Equality 2.0.

The most credible and independent unity organization of all, the Special Committee For Canadian Unity, led by former EP leader Keith Henderson, McGill University constitutional law expert Stephen Scott, esteemed civil-rights lawyer Brent Tyler and CIT-CAN founder Dr. Don Donderi, is also in gear.

This is the group that can do the heavy lifting and can effectively raise the issue of Quebec partition, if need be. Its veteran members made all the specific arguments at McGill’s Moot Court rally in January 1996 that former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien later saw on CPAC, and which, after consulting with them, he and Liberal MP Stéphane Dion repackaged as the federal Clarity Act. Yes, you read that correctly. The federal Liberal leadership “stole” Canada’s Clarity Act from Prof. Stephen A. Scott, the Special Committee For Canadian Unity and Quebec’s Equality Party.

Of course, there are also the pretenders, such as the federally-funded (read: paid to sing from Ottawa’s tightlycontrolled songbook) Quebec Community Groups Network.

It’s another federally funded anglo group that supports Bill 101. It’s no different from the pre-1998 Alliance Quebec, which was created and paid for by the feds to misrepresent English Quebec’s interests while appeasing Quebec nationalism and promoting bilingualism outside Quebec.

A new group called Canadian Rights In Quebec (CRITIQ) has popped up out of nowhere, but the jury’s very much out here. This could be another front group for the Quebec Liberal Party. The last issue of Dialogue featured CRITIQ’s plea for cash by member Gary D. Shapiro, who, at an earlier meeting of local activists, surprised one and all by urging them to contribute to the Quebec Liberal Party leadership campaign of Raymond Bachand. Don’t send this group a nickel, at least not until they bend over backwards to prove they’re entirely independent of Liberal party lines. ***

Also imploding… The city of Montreal’s deep corruption scandals are grabbing national attention through the Charbonneau Commission hearings. Despite this, city taxes are up again this year. The interim mayor* of Montreal, the first Anglophone in that post in a century, has just accused the head of the Montreal police brotherhood (i.e. – union leader) of threatening to smear and intimidate him unless he extends a pilot program allowing police a three-day work week. The police union leader denied the charge. Former Liberal and Bloc Quebecois MP Jean Lapierre favours the mayor’s version of events.

After a year or so of whining, striking and disrupting the socio-educational peace, Quebec’s French student unions – the English ones either ignored or condemned the circus -are hinting at more civil disruptions unless their demands (such as free tuition) are met.

Quebec's recent two-day educational summit with the PQ government was largely for show – few thought Quebec's www.dialogue2.ca

grievously cash-strapped provincial government would capitulate to the extremist demands of the many who claim their rights are denied because they don't have free university education. This, you'll recall, in a province whose students already pay the lowest university tuition fees in the entire country.

Still, the battle-of-the-victims irony here is amusing. It's the perennially-persecuted mindset of the French Quebec nationalist PQ versus the world-owes-me-a-living mindset of Quebec-union-subsidized students who, it seems, do anything but study.

Not surprisingly, that weekend conference produced nothing and the die-hards are still at it on the streets. In fact, some of them likely participated in Montreal's recent annual demonstration against police brutality. That's the one where, each year, masked trouble-makers and their backpackcarrying buddies do their utmost to provoke Montreal police into taking any action, however restrained and limited, that can be posted, publicized and misrepresented anywhere in hopes of proving their anti-police ideology.

The protesters play the same old game every year. As one Montreal fireman who knows a few Montreal cops told me, the media never shows the abuse, including being spat upon, that all these media-savvy provocateurs direct toward police in order to paint them as violent.

If they are to be Quebec's future, all is indeed not well.

Finally, Quebec’s finances are a disaster, the PQ is running the government and the economy, and the chickens are coming home to roost. And soon it shall be spring. Can more tax dollars from Ottawa be far behind? ***

The Lighter Side… Like The Gazette, Montreal radio station CJAD 800 used to be notoriously politically correct in the 1980s and 1990s. Announcers like the late Neil McKenty and Royal Orr went apopleptic whenever anglo callers complained about Quebec’s language laws.

But things have improved considerably. Doubtless, the force of facts, and the loss of listeners through the angloexodus years, helped curb the denial. Though vestiges of CJAD’s correctoid past remain in the form of recentlydeparted Newfoundlander Kim Fraser and Ontario francophone staffer Anne Lagace-Dowson, a federal NDP candidate in the second-to-last election, top-rate announcers like Tommy Schnurmacher and Aaron Rand are helping to restore CJAD’s credibility.

Schnurmacher has routinely shamed the Montreal Transit Commission (STM) over its failure to condemn several recent anti-English acts by its employees. (One francophone female employee put an anglo client into a headlock following the latter’s failure to speak French to her).

In the wake of all that has beset Montreal of late, Rand asked listeners to suggest new tourism slogans for Montreal.

Among the replies (see Rand’s Facebook page for more): 1) Montreal – Gateway to Ontario 2) Que Pasta?

3) Scandalous!

4) Montreal --Yours to Uncover  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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5) Come for the Culture, Stay for the Corruption 6) Montreal -- The Only Thing in Canada That Makes Toronto Look Good!

– Peter Sauvé, Montreal: Comments…The Quebec Notebook

welcomes your comments and questions.

E-mail me at: petersauve@yahoo.ca  [* Nov 16, 2012 Michael Applebaum chosen to succeed ex-mayor Gérald Tremblay until the next municipal election in November.]

Independent M.P. Peter Goldring lampoons Quebec Separatists in Parliament over “Pastagate”

Ottawa – On March 20, 2013, Edmonton East Member of Parliament Peter Goldring stood in the House of Commons to speak out against the linguistic bullying done at the hands of the separatists, the Parti Quebecois as well as to raise awareness of a benefit event taking place in response to this governmental abuse of Constitutional rights.

“On April Fool’s Day, pasta lovers will gather at Buonanotte Restaurant with more lampooning of Quebec’s separatist government and their linguistic cleansing comedy of errors,” he said.

This event is sponsored in part by the Special Committee

for Canadian Unity (SCCU) whose aims are: One Canada / uni indivisible; To challenge unconstitutional actions in the courts of Canada; To organize and encourage Canadians everywhere to spread the message and benefits of Canadian unity Mr. Goldring encourages his colleagues – and all Canadians – to join in for “Even more comedic fun” and show support for the needy, Canadian Unity, the Canadian Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, linguistic fairness, and Canadians’ love for pasta!

The full text of Mr. Goldring’s statement in the House can be read in Hansard, online: http://tinyurl.com/7pbb5ja SCCU – Pastagate [March 20, 2013] 

“Your Health Matters”

HIGH CALORIE MALNUTRITION AND THE BRAIN Derrick Lonsdale, M.D., Strongsville OH This article centers on the relationship between behavior and diet. I spent 20 years at Cleveland Clinic Foundation as a pediatrician and, between May of 1975 and August of 1976, I kept a diary of “interesting patients.” Because of my fascination and experiences with what I have come to call “dietary mayhem,” I recorded some of the amazing diet histories and the nature of the associated symptoms. I will mention two only as examples.

A young adolescent was seen because of “nervousness and change of personality”. He had consumed (calculated) 95 gallons of a popular cola over a two-month period and was severely deficient in vitamin B1 (thiamine).

A 17-year old girl presented with “nervousness” and obesity. She had widespread bleeding into the skin of her thighs, numbness in one leg below the knee and a history of years of swelling in one knee joint. Her diet history was appalling. She consumed a half grapefruit for beakfast and 5-6 cups of coffee; 12 cups on a Saturday. For lunch, she had a half grapefruit and 16 ounces of pop. For “dinner” she had up to 4 candy bars, 2 cups of coffee before “dinner” and 2 cups after. She consumed (calculated) 28 gallons of cola in a two-month period.

At about this time in the seventies a newspaper reported a murder. A young man raped and killed a girl with countless stabs with a penknife, walked to his apartment leaving a trail of blood that the police followed to arrest him. He had not thrown away the bloody penknife and the coroner reported that it was “the most vicious murder he had ever encountered”. There was no attempt at evasion. A large

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number of empty pop bottles were found in his car when it was police inspected. Of course, the pop bottles were reported simply as a kind of signature of a wastrel personality and never thought of as being of potential importance in loss of civilized control.

I have often wondered whether O. J. really did commit the infamous murder “in blind rage” because of consumption of the “soft” drink that he enthusiastically advertized. Could it be that President Clinton’s lack of judgment in office was related to his well-known predilection for “junk” food?

There has been recent interest in coffee and dark chocolate as “exemplary foods” for their antioxidant content. Dr. Weil wrote an article in Time magazine advocating the consumption of 7 or 8 cups of coffee for everyone. There is a fundamental flaw in this reasoning. Yes, they do indeed provide antioxidants, but this benefit is overwhelmed by the caffeine in coffee and, in chocolate, by the ADDED sugar (the chocolate bean is bitter and it is the addition of sugar that provides its characteristic taste and makes it addictive).

For this reason, they are NOT the best sources of antioxidants. Caffeine excites brain cells to function and consumes cellular energy, thus giving a false impression of “I have more energy”. This consumption of cellular energy is often in a person whose cells are already struggling to provide that energy. I have seen hundreds of patients for whom these commodities are the CAUSE of their symptoms. It depends on the individual sensitivity.

I saw a polysymptomatic woman who drank 2 cups of coffee a day. I asked her to stop. She said, "that is absurd, my husband drinks 7 cups and he is fine". I said, "well you will never know unless you try it" and she did. During the next 48 hours an extremely severe headache kept her in bed.

The headache cleared and her symptoms disappeared.  www.dialogue2.ca

I admit that this was unusual but since we never know the individual biology, how many people suffer without anyone suggesting the possibility? I have seen hundreds of patients with PMS and 90% were addicted to chocolate/salt/ coffee. With withdrawal of non caloric nutrients the PMS disappeared. Unfortunately, this kind of "walking illness" is so common that many symptoms (e.g. allergy) are accepted as normal). Sweet tasting "junk" is responsible for producing the "walking sick" in millions because the "empty calories " produce a relative deficiency of vitamin B1 in particular. I have compared it to a choked car engine where gasoline is burned inefficiently; and I proved the issue by performing an erythrocyte transketolase blood test that is a superb and highly accurate test for thiamine deficiency (Dialogue: What is transketolase? 6/15/2012). Doctors still do not take much notice of diet in their patients and they are missing the very obvious symptoms that have long been forgotten: the vitamin deficiency diseases.

The mechanism is because of mild hypoxia (lack of the non caloric nutrients that enable the metabolic use of oxygen to create cellular energy) affecting the limbic system and brainstem. When this happens the limbic system (which is an obvious computer that organizes our emotional and physical adaptation) becomes much more reactive. Since this is the part of the brain that produces our emotional reflexes, monitored and advised by the cortex and higher centers, a "nursed grievance" in a grade school boy can explode in violence, perhaps the secret of school shootings. NOBODY has looked at this possibility. I consider it to

be an urgent necessity. An experiment was done in healthy human subjects in 1942 by giving them an artificially produced thiamine deficiency diet. They all developed typical so-called psychosomatic symptoms, including quarrelsome behavior, headaches, abdominal pain, etc.

The point is that we are still a relatively primitive animal. All animal brains are built on the same principle. We still have the primitive brain, sometimes called the “reptilian system” and our higher brain centers have evolved to monitor and “advise” the cave man that lies within us all. We all know that alcohol will upset this physiological arrangement and it is well known that thiamine deficiency is an associated factor.

Sugar in all its different and widespread forms also produces relative thiamine deficiency, thus inducing a mild degree of oxidative inefficiency. (Dialogue: Sugar is dangerous. 6/17/2010).

I noticed a very different concept about mass shootings in the Jan-Feb issue of Dialogue. I really do have some difficulty swallowing the idea by "Personocratia" that these shootings "are obviously programmed and their sole purpose is to disarm the population". I am trying to add a "new dimension" and would certainly hope that Personocratia will respond in the next issue.

– Derrick Lonsdale M.D. F.A.A.P. C.N.S. “Everything is connected to everything else.”

Derrick Lonsdale is a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a Certified Nutrition Specialist. www.prevmed.com / Blog: http://o2thesparkoflife.blogspot.com/ 

Citizens Demand Scientific, Academic and Political Integrity - CDSAPI

Why are Pharmaceutical ‘psycho-drugs’ mandated – and Orthomolecular Remediation shunned and even outlawed?

Inge Hanle, Vancouver BC We have known for more than 50 years that the orthomolecular approach to cell health – hence “overall health” – is far more effect than the drug medicines that are the backbone of allopathic medicine. In the past twenty years the escalation of drug prescriptions for every ill has taken on very ominous implications, but nowhere more ominous than in “mental health care.”

The Standard American Diet has become little more than “artificial food-for-naught” – so-o-o-o mineral and nutrient deficient; so-o-o-o laced with toxic additives, heavy metals, artificial sweeteners, genetically engineered ingredients – that the brain’s neurology can no longer function properly because it doesn’t have what it needs. Yet, given this reality, the allopathic medical paradigm decrees that nutrient deprived brain dysfunction must be treated with mindaltering psychotropic drugs that are turning a large segment of the population into operational zombies.

If the orthomolecular approach of biochemical balancing with corrective nutrition is so much more successful in returning people to health than pharmaceutical drugs, WHY does the Medical Establishment shun it, label it as quackery, instead of making it the “core” – making it the first and most important approach to health care and health restorawww.dialogue2.ca

tion, especially in mental health care?

With the present escalation in the use of psychotropic drugs for evermore “invented” mental illnesses, especially for children, we are destined to witness an entire generation destroyed by pharmaceutically-induced neurological dysfunction and pharma-induced mental illness.

Not only does it not deal with the nutritional deficiencies and toxicities that are at the root of the problems, but it spins brain chemistry into a downward spiral to permanent dysfunctionality.

The question of WHY is very simple. The “sickness industry” is first and foremost “an industry” - that makes billions and billions of dollars every year – and Big Pharma has no intention to permit anything to interfere with its “perceived right” to protect “maximization of profitability”. In short: HEALTH is not the driving engine of “health care” - MONEY IS, and Money talks. (The ‘side-effects’ are just ‘collateral damage’.)

So the medical TRUTH gets buried, propaganda and engineered pseudo-science reigns supreme, while the health of the population is sacrificial - as the sacrificial lambs at the foot of the altar of the Golden Calf of psychotropic and pharmaceutical drug profits.  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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Critical salmon viral situation

the survival of OUR fishing industry. This is OUR battle that she is fighting. Please inform yourself and support her in every way you can. Begin by spreading the word and informing the public. This 8 min video clip contains very important, critical information about the rapid spreading of the virus threat – and the total inaction by the government that refuses to protect the food supply or the wild salmon fishing industry from the serious disease threat from the European viruses that infests Fish Farms – that now continues to spread to the wild salmon up and down our coast. Please remember that these infected farm salmon are destined for YOUR market because both (Cdn. & US) governments refuse to protect the consumer from these diseasecontaminated fish. Follow the money – and sacrifice health.

Alex Morton’s YouTube Video

FILM – “SALMON CONFIDENTIAL”

If the escalation in the present rate of inflicting moodaltering drugs (and a host of other neuro-destructive technologies) on children continues, a healthy child will become a rarity within the present decade.

In warfare, if they want to destroy the “enemy”, they aim at destroying the children, thereby destroying the future of that society. War has many faces. We have to ask ourselves why we are permitting the destruction of our youngest generation, and who/what is waging the war against them.

Why do some governments mandate so many policies that destroy the health of its own population, especially the health of its children? Who are the Trojan Horses? And whom do they serve?

Inge Hanle’s added comment: Please listen to Alex Morton's short video (below). She is fighting a valiant battle to protect OUR salmon – the safety of OUR food supply and In the ongoing effort to communicate the critical nature of the threat to wild salmon from exposure to European viruses I made the video (link below). There is some breaking news contained within it.

VIDEO - AlexTalks#1: http://tinyurl.com/abfryp2 Alex: If you have questions, email me and I will try to answer them in the next edition. I will post these videos on my blog (link follows) so you can check back there.

Should I run in the BC Election?

Alexandra Morton, Sointula BC A website was posted recently asking for your opinion on my running in the BC election and I am considering this. I watched the disassembly of my town of Echo Bay as a result of government policies that favoured the salmon feedlot industry. We in Echo Bay knew what we needed to thrive, but we did not know how to help ourselves. My town is almost gone. I can see that what happened to tiny Echo Bay is happening elsewhere. What I have learned in over the past 26 years may be applicable.

Thank you for your enduring interest.

Alexandra Morton <gorbuscha(at)gmail.com> Join the conversation on my facebook page; Follow me on Twitter @alex4salmon; For all list information and functions, see: http://npogroups.org/lists/info/wildsalmonpeople

Inge Hanle, Vancouver (CDSAPI) cdsapi@shaw.ca - Citizens Demand Scientific, Academic & Political Integrity 

This film is the behind the scenes on the greatest environmental scandal in British Columbia. Please watch and then make sure all your MLA hopefuls watch this as they will be holding this ball as the issue breaks the surface, finally after twenty years.

The wild salmon of British Columbia need our participation in stopping the viral pollution. The Province of BC is charge of the land tenures for every salmon feedlot and thus they decide which wild salmon are exposed to this.

Please do what you can to spread this film.

FILM LINK: http://tinyurl.com/SalmonCon There are 5 crucial things you can do if this film concerns you: 1 - Write to the man who will most likely be the next leader of BC, Adrian Dix and tell him you take these viruses seriously and he is going to have to remove these feedlots from the wild salmon migration routes. adrian.dix.mla@leg.bc.ca 2 - Sign the petition above to the current premier, Christy Clark 3 - Go to http://www.salmonfeedlotboycott.com/ and join the boycott 4 - Share this film with everyone you know who cares about wild salmon, forests, whales, the economy of British Columbia 5 - Donate to help me get this film out there and make the changes we need to keep wild salmon alive.

FUNDING LINK: http://www.gofundme.com/FishFeedlotsOut We are now essential to the biology of wild salmon. Please take action. – Alex Morton 

“Have Computer Will Write”

My Presentation to the Pipeline Review Panel, Jan. 8, 2013

Jeremy Arney, Victoria BC First I would like to acknowledge the Songhees Tribe on whose traditional territory we are today, and secondly to acknowledge my friend, supporter and fellow human being here with me today Earl Claxton Junior of the Saanich Tribe, who told me that he felt compelled to be here with me today.

My name is Jeremy Arney and I thank you for hearing me. I came to Canada from England in 1967 and my first wife

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and I put down roots here in Victoria. I have travelled North America extensively as a truck driver and have to say that the northern BC I travelled, often on gravel roads back then, was spectacular to say the least. I last visited the tar sands north of Fort McMurray in 1989 and was amazed at the size; now I am appalled at that huge toxic scar upon the earth.

Earl’s main worry is that if the treaties with the first nations’ peoples all along this pipeline route are going to be ignored, how long will it be before the Douglas Treaty with his people is ignored and broken too. I share his concern.  www.dialogue2.ca

It has been requested that our testimony should not be on ideological grounds, and this seems to me to be imminently unfair as the entire project these hearings are about is based solely on the ideology of making money for shareholders with little regard for the land, waters and ocean which will be destroyed.

The history of the company wishing to build this pipe line does not inspire confidence that it is capable of maintaining a safe pipeline for the dilbit, or diluted bitumen, that it wishes to transport from Alberta to the port of Kitimat. In a way, this was borne out by the announcement from the federal Minister of Resources that we, the taxpayers, will be spending $163 million on developing a new pipeline technology to be in place for this line. Why is that?

Is it because he knows this company is not capable of doing it themselves, either financially or practically, and so we must do it? Why must we spend that kind of money when we will still get the bill for cleaning up their inevitable mess whilst they will still make a profit? Not one penny (of taxpayers’ money), say I! It is their pipeline and their cost to ensure the best or go home.

The advertisements seen over and again on television show that the company is only too willing to mislead by suggesting that the terrain for this pipeline is flat, with only a few trees, a river or two and no mountains, and that islands do not exist in the narrow channels between Kitimat and the Pacific Ocean. Even my 10- and 12-year-old grandsons, who know where I am today and why, have pointed this out to me, saying they had checked with Google maps and couldn’t understand why any company could make such claims on TV. [A good point I must raise with the Television Bureau of Canada who are supposed to approve all advertisements on TV for truth.]

This only emphasizes the inability of the project instigator to be honest and truthful to those it wishes to influence into support for their project.

I understand, from the Minister Oliver’s dictate as a result of all those ‘US-backed radicals’ who wanted to address this review panel, that only those who are directly impacted by the project should be allowed to speak at panels like this in future, and so let me explain to you why I fall into that category.

This particular Canadian government is constantly referring to democracy and particularly to Canadian democracy, which by definition means that the people govern the country through their representatives, who in turn represent their needs to the common government. It is the people’s needs that are fulfilled in a democracy. So when the people are excluded from something happening within their jurisprudence, which they overwhelming do not support, then democracy is dead. It is the responsibility for all of us to ensure this does not happen any more than it already has under this government.

This does not mean corporations cannot make money for their shareholders, but it does mean they have to be responsive to the peoples’ wishes. It is up to us to stop the galloping consumerism to feed the false god called GDP. Measures of success should include the earth, our happiness, family life and health, not an accountant’s measure of debt. www.dialogue2.ca

In this particular case, the people who will suffer the most from the inevitable spills are those people who have been charged by their creator to look after the land, oceans, rivers, streams, forests, fish and wildlife and have done so successfully for thousands of years. They had done a remarkable job of doing just that long before we came here a relatively few years ago and tried, in our arrogance, to teach them a better way. Their very way of life will be turned upside down, once again, as their traditional lands and waters turn black from spilled tar, and the release of toxic gases from the evaporating condensate will poison them.

The Cree Nation have a saying from the 19th century about the white invaders which I think is apropos to this government and situation.

“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".

This Canadian government is trying to impose a corpocracy on our First Nations peoples – and all the people of BC and Canada for that matter, including my own grandchildren, and a great grandson now as well. A corpocracy run largely by foreign corporations who are now trying to dictate what will happen here in BC to our land and ocean for their own financial profit. We will inevitably be responsible for any clean up because to these companies 10% cleanup is success. To the First Nations peoples along this pipeline route and almost everyone in BC that is absolutely unacceptable.

I have recently learned that there is another option being discussed and that is to use rail to transport this bitumen either to Prince Rupert, or through the Yukon into Alaska to Valdez. This would be a whole lot better from an environmental point of view (hydro electric diesel exhaust versus the hydro need to heat the dilbit and run the pumps) and also has, I understand, the tentative backing of those First Nations along the route. They would expect jobs building the track, and running the rolling stock, and any spills would be solid cold hard bitumen without condensate in rail tankers which in the event of a derailment or accident would just churn up the earth, not poison it.

Provided the locomotives and rail cars are made in Canada by Canadians, what a boost to our manufacturing sector as well.

From a BC perspective, it would make even more sense if we still had BC rail though wouldn’t it? Profit to the people of BC not the CN private corporation. Modern version of Wacky (W.A.C.) Bennett where are you?

It has been suggested that this panel is irrelevant as this Prime Minister and his cabinet will override any negative decision you should make against this project because it has been promised to China, and I truly hope that is not the case.

When the number of people who have wanted to speak to you, almost all of whom, like I, are unfunded, because they sincerely believe that this project is not good for the environment, the people who live along the route nor for BC, I would suggest that they should be respected – as I am sure you have and will continue to do. And when you turn in your report, as I believe you must turning down this project as an inevitable environmental catastrophe, if the  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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cabinet still decides to go ahead anyway, then you will have done your job of listening to we the people, and it will be our turn to take matters into our own hands, and restore democracy to Canada for the future generations of all Canadians, first nations and immigrants such as I, alike.

Thank you for listening to me.

Jeremy Arney [EMAIL: iamjema(at)gmail.com ] Jeremy’s blog: http://jeremyarneysblog.wordpress.com/ 

Tossing the BC economy under the LNG train Natural gas not a pot of gold, China not a panacea.

Arthur Caldicott, Vancouver Island Last week, media headlines described the natural gas industry’s urgent need for a federal tax concession to enable it to build all those liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants on BC’s coast.

This appeal didn’t start last week. Last summer, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) had already prepared a presentation for the federal Standing Committee on Finance, aimed at the 2013 budget. In October, CAPP’s president David Collyer appeared before the committee with Shell and Encana to explain the dire necessity of a tax break. In December, Kitimat Council joined the lobby, at CAPP’s urging.

The committee has now recommended “that the federal government expeditiously encourage and support the development of infrastructure in relation to liquefied natural gas exports.”

We will know in just a few weeks if CAPP gets its wish.

Manufacturing ice cubes

CAPP wants the capital cost allowance (CCA) for investment in LNG facilities to be changed from eight per cent per year to the 30 per cent rate applied to manufacturing plants. By this rationale, your little freezer is “manufacturing” ice when you put water in it. LNG “trains” also refrigerate natural gas – much bigger, but not a lot more complicated in principle.

The accelerated write-down means the investment can be recouped in seven years instead of 27. Investors then won’t be concerned about the dicey long-term profitability for LNG in BC, and can look at LNG as a less risky, quick buck opportunity.

Here’s how we got here.

In the year 2000, natural gas prices in North America started to rise from historically low and relatively stable levels.

Conventional natural gas was in decline, and demand was increasing as a cleaner generation alternative to coal. The higher the price, the more investment poured into natural gas exploration. Across the continent there was a rush to coalbed methane, tight gas, and shale gas. LNG import projects appeared around North America – including Kitimat LNG.

Billions ‘sunk’

Governments encouraged it – especially Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government – with royalty discounts, tax credits, and regulatory clear-cutting. When the 2008 recession hit, billions of dollars had been sunk into shale gas in BC – both in tenure acquisition and drilling.

During this period, the technology had advanced. Horizontal drilling (multiple laterals from a single well pad) and hy-

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draulic fracturing (fracking) increased productivity, albeit with devastating consequences to water.

It was too much of a good thing. So much gas poured onto the market that prices collapsed, almost to pre-2000 levels.

North America was sated with gas. Return on investment dried up, and corporate debt became unsustainable.

However, Asian LNG prices were tied to the price of oil, and were now greater than those in North America. LNG exports became the panacea. LNG import projects switched direction, including Kitimat LNG, and new ones joined them.

‘Rainbow’ fades

Last year, Cheniere Energy signed an LNG export deal that was based on North American gas pricing, and not on the price of oil. Suddenly, the pot-of-gold differential evaporated. Apache, which by then led Kitimat LNG, delayed again an announcement to proceed with the project.

Incongruously, the frequency of announcements for more LNG plants on the coast of BC intensified. As with the rush to shale gas years earlier, the gas industry demonstrated that at its core of desperation and greed, it is no more sophisticated or complicated than dogs chasing after a bitch in heat.

Here’s where the CCA tax change kicks in. The Cheniere LNG pricing deal undermines, if not kills, the prospects for BC gas producers to capture the large price differential between North America and Asia. It has cooled Asian interest in signing purchase contracts. Industry and investors both know the easy money vision is not going to happen – even if governments haven’t yet figured it out.

A quicker write-down of the investment will make it possible for those investors to enter and exit these projects quickly.

Stephen Harper needs to give them the tax break. We’ll see how that plays out in just a few weeks.

Governmental desperation

Meanwhile, here in BC, resource revenues – forest products, electricity, natural gas – are in dismal shape. The provincial economy is in crisis. Both the BC Liberals and the NDP are pinning big hopes on LNG, and either is likely to do whatever it can to foster the construction of those plants.

Those plants need a LOT of electricity to liquefy natural gas, and it is BC Hydro’s mandate to provide the electricity.

Even if it is generated from gas by the same companies who will be using the power. The Liberal government has already declared that gas used to generate electricity for LNG is “clean”, and therefore allowable in BC.

Buy high, sell low

As independent power producers (IPPs), the LNG companies could enter electricity purchase agreements with BC Hydro, sanctioned by the BC government, that are just as lucrative for the generators as those in place with Alcan,  www.dialogue2.ca

Teck, pulp mills, and the other IPPs in the province. BC Hydro will buy the power for $100 per megawatt hour or more.

It will in turn sell the power to the LNG plants at the industrial rate – about $33/MWh – widely seen as a gift to industry. The difference in those prices will be a cost that British Columbians must shoulder.

LNG could be the place that our governments throw what’s left of the provincial economy under the train.

Arthur Caldicott describes himself as an energy gadfly. For a number of years he has been researching, writing, speaking, and working with communities on Vancouver Island and elsewhere in British Columbia on a variety of energy and mining projects. The proposed Raven coal mine near Fanny Bay is the current target of

his wrath. Contact Arthur at arthurcaldicott(at)sqwalk.com.

Article appeared as a Guest Editorial at The Flying Shingle on Feb. 18, 2013; reprinted with the author’s & publisher’s permission.

LINK TO THE ARTICLE: http://tinyurl.com/FS926024

Arthur’s article recommended by Erik Andersen, with his comment: Well said, Arthur. This time around let us hope that our politicians can resist the lure of deals that can only show a positive business case when they include public subsidies, direct and indirect. If the traditional political candidates are unwilling to deal in reality then perhaps it is time to give the independents the opportunity. [twolabradors(at)shaw.ca] 

The BC Election

The charge of the Christy Clark brigade

By Peter Ewart, Prince George, March 04, 2013 Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1854 BC Liberal MLAs can be forgiven for feeling that they, too,

like the British army’s doomed Light Brigade during the Crimean war (1853-56), are marching into their own “valley of Death” on election day on May 14th. Leading the charge, of course, is Premier Christy Clark, smile frozen on her face, teeth flashing in the sun.

The grand coalition of the so-called “centre-right” welded together under the BC Liberal banner by former Premier Gordon Campbell has been unravelling for some time now.

Part of that unravelling can be attributed to Campbell and his policies, especially the HST fiasco, but a substantial part has to do with current leader Christy Clark and her government.

In the last 60 years or so, the traditional leader of the “centreright coalition” (whether it was called Social Credit or, more recently, BC Liberal) has been either a conservative-populist, such as W.A.C. Bennett and Bill Vander Zalm or more outright conservative, such as Bill Bennett and Gordon Campbell. During this period of time, Liberals of the federal Liberal type have been a minority faction within the grand coalition, or, if outside during the Social Credit time in power, held minority party status. That is, until Christy Clark came along.

Tellingly, Clark ran for the leadership of the BC Liberals in 2010-11 with almost no support from the legislative caucus.

Yet she still won the race over a number of high-profile “conservative” contenders. How did she do it? It was not as if the BC Liberal Party underwent a sea change towards federal Liberalism. Rather, at least in part, it was because of a cunning delegate-gathering manoeuvre apparently devised by one of her key advisers, Patrick Kinsella (who also played a key role in the sleight-of-hand associated with the sale of BC Rail).

It is a fact of the party system in BC that riding associations that do not have MLAs in the Legislature tend to languish in a kind of electoral Siberia, their membership ignored and www.dialogue2.ca

inconsequential, even more so than riding associations with sitting members. Realizing that she would have great difficulty in obtaining votes in the ridings of sitting MLAs (who were almost all supporting rival candidates), Clark’s team actively courted the ignored membership in these other “Siberian” ridings. These member sign-ups, which were conducted under the radar, helped catapult Clark over the top to the great surprise and dismay of the rival leadership camps.

And so it is that someone of a federal liberal persuasion, i.e. Christy Clark, was crowned leader of the BC “centreright coalition,” with almost no support from sitting Liberal MLAs (except grudgingly near the end of the campaign).

But Clark is an anomaly. Like the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War, she and her government were doomed from the very start. Not because her main policies were different in any substantive way from those of the coalition, but rather because of the factional divisions within it.

As a result, barring some unforeseen disaster on the part of the NDP opposition, Clark will most likely suffer a triple whammy, i.e. lose her seat, lose the general election, and, in the aftermath, be toppled off her horse as leader of the BC Liberals.

Why? One reason is that she is, indeed, an anomaly, an accident of sorts, a federal Liberal-tainted leader of an essentially conservative party. Another reason is the unravelling of the grand centre-right coalition, which actually began under Premier Gordon Campbell, especially with his handling of the HST fiasco. Driving it all, of course, has been the growing opposition of the people of British Columbia to Liberal Party rule.

By attempting to impose the HST, the BC Liberal government alienated a broad section of the population, including some of its core supporters. In addition, by failing in this endeavour, it ultimately disappointed its big business backers, especially the resource-exporting monopolies. After Premier Campbell resigned, Clark could have distanced herself from the hated HST but instead championed it all the way to its humiliating defeat in the referendum.

Since then, the speed at which the BC Liberal centre-right coalition is unravelling has accelerated dramatically,  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 39

helped along by Clark’s fickle and capricious style of leadership, as well as unfolding scandals. As in Tennyson’s poem, the Clark government faces cannons on all sides as it marches onward into the “valley of death.” Of course, it is under withering fire from its traditional political opponents such as the NDP and others. But increasingly vicious opposition is actually coming from within the centre-right coalition, whether in rural areas such as Prince George, or in the Lower Mainland, as well as from high level civil servants deep within the bureaucracy.

Some of this fracturing is out in the open, such as the bitter, acrimonious fight between Clark supporters and the newly resuscitated BC Conservatives, but much has been just below the surface at least until now. And so it is that, in place of flags of victory for the BC Liberals fluttering in the wind, we see dirty laundry and leaked emails being hoisted by former supporters both inside and outside of government.

The centre-right coalition will, of course, be rebuilt. But the main obstacle now is Christy Clark herself. Thus, a temporary commonality of interest exists between the traditional opponents of the BC Liberals (like the NDP) and growing factions within the centre-right coalition, to bring Clark crashing down.

From the ashes of the May election, so the thinking goes, a new coalition will emerge and a new leader. And not a few potential leaders are waiting in the hills overlooking the impending battle scene of May 14th.

To be successful, the new leader, riding down from the hills afterwards, will need the dictatorial will of a Bennett or Campbell to shoot the weak and wounded still groaning on the battlefield, and weld together the disparate parts of a new coalition. Not an easy task given its fractured state.

In the meantime, ever pragmatic, the big business establishment of the province will focus on getting what it can out of a BC NDP government, and there are already signs of this happening.

In his jingoistic poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, Alfred Lord Tennyson, poet laureate of England, tried to put a patriotic gloss on what was actually a colossal blunder and failure of military leadership. Thus, in regards to an epitaph for Christy Clark and her Light Brigade, perhaps it is fitting to end with the high-sounding, but hollow, last lines of that poem: When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wonder’d.

Honor the charge they made! ~~~ Peter Ewart is a columnist and writer based in Prince George, British Columbia. He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca Reprinted with the author’s permission. First published at: www.250news.com/ LINK: http://tinyurl.com/9w8d2gn  Recd from: Stephanie McDowall [stephmcdo(at)telus.net]

Smart meters and illnesses induced by these microwave radiation technologies

Letter to all B.C. MLAs and prospective politicians who want to be elected in BC Inge Hanle, (CDSAPI) Vancouver BC Be forewarned that the citizens of BC will not vote for any candidate who refuses to acknowledge the incalculable threat to health of the Smart Meter program and the wireless programs in schools – and, once informed of the irrefutable scientific facts, agrees responsibly to advocate the reversal of the present BC Hydro policy to mandate the installation of Smart Meters, with smart meters for gas on the drawing board.

The Public is becoming very informed and will no longer swallow, nor tolerate, the calculated-to-mislead disinformation, propaganda and outright lies that stream endlessly from government quarters and agencies. Be hereby notified that you are dealing with an informed public that is prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect their health and the health of their families and children.

Also be cognizant of the reality that the Health Care/ medical budget is totally inadequate to deal with the avalanche of persons needing medical attention for the illnesses induced by these microwave radiation technologies. I call this the “Economic Noose”. But apparently fulfilling the corporate and globalist agendas is more important than protecting the health of BC citizens.

Europe, after 20 years, has witnessed the aftermath of widespread wireless microwave radiation exposure, and is

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MAR.-APR. 2013, VOL. 26 NO.5

rapidly introducing policies to reduce that exposure, especially for children. They have come to realize that just because these frequencies are “not visible", they cannot be arbitrarily "declared to be" safe and harmless, This, apparently is an inevitable lesson that we, in North America, still have to learn - hopefully not after it is too late for an entire generation of young, developing children.

Consider the implications of a brain-damaged population!

In the meantime, instead of learning from the European experience, North American Governments, including BC, seem to be blindly and irresponsibly determined to plunge full steam ahead, full throttle, to create the Smart Grid, with no escape provisions.

For your own condensed “Smart Meter 101” information course, may I suggest that you take the time to read the following “summary” article by William Thomas that explains the essentials, in his article, “Blame it on Captain Kirk,” March 02, 2013: LINK: http://helpfreetheearth.com/news730_wireless.html

Inge’s postscript: I suggest that we barrage MLAs with an avalanche of similar individually written "Don't expect my vote if....." letters.

– From: Citizens Demand Scientific, Academic and Political Integrity (CDSAPI) – cdsapi@shaw.ca 

www.dialogue2.ca

Hera’s Child

“Wavelet Whisper”

Denny Z. Petrik, Lower Mainland BC It was a quiet day in heaven’s spheres when Goddess Hera realized that, on her charming lips, she had given birth to a lovely child. Immediately she called out to Zeus to give him the news. And grump old Zeus did come and take a look and he was somewhat impressed.

“The child of your lips looks nice,” he said unexcitedly.

“I think I will call him Smile. What do you think?”

“Well Hera if that name suits you, why should I oppose a lady?”

“But he is not only nice,” Hera added, “I also think that he will make a wonderful god helper.”

“God helper, what do you have in mind?”

“Well Zeus, you and I both know that Earth Goddess Gaia is having all kind of problems with looking after that neighbourhood. I thought by your will little Smile could be placed at her service and hopefully things on Earth might improve.”

“I will assign him as you wish but frankly from what I see down there, I am beginning to wonder if there is any help for them.”

The tutorship of Smile was handed over to Gaia. Gaia liked Smile and appreciated the assistance as her patience with Earth was growing a bit thin. She quickly gave Smile some lessons about the world below. When she talked of religious battles, Smile shivered, when she mentioned the vicious growth of greed, Smile shivered some more, when she described political situations here and there, Smile threw up. Even god’s children are not immune to that.

Alas, lessons finished, Gaia asked Smile if he was ready to go down and serve. Smile was a bright child. He knew he would need some assistance to help him to help Gaia.

“Goddess Gaia I will gladly go down soon, but first I believe I will need a brief moment to make two rounds around the planet Venus.”

“And for what purpose?”

“The sphere atmosphere whispers to me that two circles around Venus will make me contagious and I am sure I will need that.”

Gaia waived her hand in approval of his plan and with the speed of which only gods and their children can travel Smile made the two desired circles. Having returned, slightly out of breath, he announced: “All right Goddess, I am ready to go.”

Again with the great speed he found himself on Earth. Well, first as he passed through the atmosphere he gave out a splendid light show and made a lot of people wonder what it was they saw. But then he was down and had no idea where, his navigational skills had not been honed too well www.dialogue2.ca

yet. He ended up in a small line of people waiting for service at an office counter. And there stood a lady with a young baby in her arms. And the baby’s face was frowned in seriousness. Smile immediately thought that there was a good place to start. He snuggled up onto the child’s lips and instantly the frown turned into a smile. The baby’s smile appealed to the old man standing behind and he responded with a happy smile. Then the mother was going to be served and the clerk noticed the smile on the child’s face. And she smiled with a comment on a lovely baby.

That made the mother smile warmly. As she was leaving the office a gentleman saw her arm load and quickly held the door open. Her thank you was accompanied by earlier smile. The door holding gentleman smiled in return. He felt good about his gentlemanly deed and loved the happy smiles. So as he walked down the street he whistled a happy tune unaware that the messenger of Gaia was following him. He found his car, it started easily and off he went only to be stopped by a road block little ways up.

“Good afternoon officer,” the man said when the policeman approached his vehicle.

The policeman quickly noticed the driver’s happy smile and so he added one of his own.

“May I see your driver’s licence, please.”

The man noticed that he was dealing with a more senior officer who seemed to be in a good mood, so he risked a little jest.

“Driver’s licence, what’s that?”

And the magical moment carried on.

“Sir that is a small piece of plastic, bit bluish, has your picture on it.”

“Oh that, I think I got one of those in my hip pocket but to get it I have to undo my seat belt. You won’t give me a ticket for that, will you?”

“Not as long as you keep the car stopped, but you move it a foot, it’s hundred and sixty bucks.”

Seat belt undone, licence produced and inspected, seat belt done up and the man drove on. Officer did his duty, driver obeyed the law and both felt a little better. Smile was proud of himself and also he switched locations and stayed with the policeman until the officer stopped the car of a local doctor whom he knew.

“Hello doctor, I know you and I will not ask for your licence, you would get even next time I needed a shot of something, you would use a dull needle. Carry on and have a fine day.”

Smile quickly jumped into the doctor’s car and got himself a ride to the cemetery. A friend of a friend of the doctor was being put to rest. Smile saw all the sad faces and the weeping widow by the grave. Her son standing by her side looked as if his face were made of marble. Smile wondered, what can I do here? This is hopeless! Just then they started lowering the coffin into the grave and the family’s world appeared to be ending. What can I do, thought  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 41

Smile in desperation and leapt to the lips of a young girl on the opposite side of the grave. And the girl looked at the marble faced son and let him see the gentle smile that wordlessly said “you are not alone”. There was not much else that could be done, her smile could not be returned but its healing power would be forever remembered.

Smile left with the girl who went to the drugstore to pick up some shampoo. She knew all the girls there and told them about the funeral. They in turn told her about the old man she also knew. He had just become a widower and they were sorry for him. That was when Smile realised there was much work to be done and he immediately injected the lips of all of them. And he managed it just in time, for the widower just came in for some medication. All the girls greeted him with cheerful smiles and waves and as he was leaving he realized that he had left all the blue thoughts somewhere back there. Even old Smile joined him and went home with him. When in the house the man stood before a picture of his late wife and with Smile’s help he smiled. It was Smile’s doing that a happy memory came forth to top the day.

Then Nyx the Goddess of night darkened the sky and bejewelled it with sparkle of stars. The old man went to bed. Smile stepped out on the porch and looked towards Olympus.

“Well Gaia, how have I done?”

“You have done well dear Smile. Even if you are Greek, just remember that Rome was not built in a day! Stick with it and keep helping people to smile, hopefully your trip around Venus will spread the contagious smile and spread some more. One of you alone cannot do it all, but thousands could easily change the muddy path of humans.”

“It sounds like I will be stuck here a while, does it not?”

“It may take a good while to make the needed repairs”.

“But I feel rather lonely here; there are no goddesses to feast one’s eyes upon.”

“Can you not find a pretty lady down there? Gods have been known to dip into the human pool at times, you know.”

“The older ones look all right. But the young ones, they are odd, they keep shaking and wiggling as if they just came out of a cave and were trying to get rid of the fleas. I

Re Mike Harvey’s column:

MY HAUNT

I dreamt I was in heaven pearly gates stood open and the light was golden warm beneath my feet misty floor undulated much as ocean's swell does at the end of slack sweet silence rang played on stringless harps by angels who had left to aid the mortals distant clouds stood gathered miming mountains and hills their subdued mauve lending comfort to hesitant newcomers wakening tide touched my toe I was in heaven and the light was golden warm French Beach lay berthed to sunset dzp 1989

FEEDBACK ON THE LAST ISSUE I just started reading the latest issue of Dialogue and came across the “How do we unravel.....” (page 5) As I read the accented part referring to understanding, my memory brought forth a quotation I read quite a few years ago. It was in a book written by a Czech writer. But even a few years ago I was a forgetful old man and I do not remember the name of the book or the author. My attempts to identify the writer through my sister in Prague failed, so far. But the quote I remember well, as I made myself a sign of it for my “office”. Perhaps the unknown author would not mind were you to print it in the magazine. It goes:

“Foolish words I do not believe you, I believe silence – above beauty, above everything – the triumph of understanding.” ~ Denny Petrik 

More Feedback

‘Reincarnation and the history of religions,’ [Nov.2012] which ended with the following paragraph: “I doubt if anyone reading this will be convinced that all life upon this tiny planet of ours is part of the great spirit of our Creator. Nevertheless, I still wonder how these delightful dreams of utter love are conjured up by the mind if this dream-created person never existed. Does anyone out there have another explanation?”

Response from Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC: I just had to reassure you that at least I am out here in the woods of the Kootenays that sees it like you do; good for you that you said that. I reckon your heart chakra must have opened, eh, and you connected with the Great Earth

42 dialogue

thought the cave age was long gone.”

“It is, but old Ares had to fiddle with things and invented the boomerang. Look take care and stay away from the wine Dionysus spills around, bad for your liver, you know. I will have a chat with Aphrodite and see if we can find you a goddess somewhere. And I shall also speak to Athena and see if she could help by sending down a couple of armloads of wisdom. It seems like they could use it, right?

Anyway, good night.”

MAR.-APR. 2013, VOL. 26 NO.5

mother. . . Just so you know I'm with you on the Spirit beyond, within, without, and with the reincarnation too. 

Re: Robin Mathews Uncut [JAN.-FEB. 2013]

Ernest Semple, QC – ernestsemple@aol.com Robin Mathews seems to have a firm grasp on the ills that transfix the street people of Vancouver. There must be others with similar knowledge who can give expression to a variety of approaches that would lead to an even more positive exposé of how Canada’s sad condition has come about. Two pages definitely are not enough to bring out a timely exposure so well expressed, however briefly, by Mr. Mathews.  www.dialogue2.ca

“Reminiscence and Revelation”

Reflections on Spiritualism

Mike Harvey, Langley BC I returned home after a service at the Lighthouse Spiritualist Centre this Sunday and remarked to my wife that the talk was inspirational. “What did Mary (a student Minister) talk about?” my wife asked. Briefly I informed her facts as I remembered them.

“How do they possibly talk so knowledgeably without copious notes?” my wife inquired and then, Mike Harvey answering her own question, said, “They must be guided by a spiritual source.”

I conceded this must be true. I have spoken publicly on a subject with which I was conversant, but not without notes to outline my talk. Unless you are most knowledgeable about a subject and all its facets, it is all but impossible to speak extemporaneously with detailed analysis about statements you have just heard quoted from an oftenunfamiliar book.

For, that is the way these spiritualistic service go. The first part is the Minister giving the talk will read passages from a book that they claim was spiritually inspired. In about 15 minutes later, after hymns of praise have been sung and general information dispensed, the psychic minister, after a short trance-like state, mounts the pulpit and gives a summary and explanation of the passages read.

None of these ministers, however, give themselves credit for their usually profoundly excellent talks. They claim that they are merely the conduit for the spirit guide speaking through them. This can be discounted by disbelievers, of course, but then I should like these doubters to explain how a woman’s voice can suddenly take on the timbre and sound of an old man?

I am a doubter by nature and am always sceptical of such demonstrations. Lately I have witnessed too many inspiring performances, centring upon realms that are often beyond human comprehension, that stir the inner feelings of faith in a continuum of life after death. The theme is always centred upon the belief that our body is merely a temporary abode of an eternal soul.

But we human beings are not exclusive in eternal life. For our animal brethren and all life is included, which is delightful information for all of us who love animals.

Some reading this will scoff and say that I am a gullible (as I would probably have said myself a few years ago.) But during a recent time frame I have seen too many lives changed, for the better. Too many despondent and lonely existences transformed into joyfulness in the assurance that those who have died have been transferred into a glorious existence which is awaiting all life.

Who are some of these individuals that this has happened to? They come from all walks of life, are female or male www.dialogue2.ca

and can be ordinary folk, like me, or highly educated professionals who do not suffer fools lightly. Like all religions, spiritualism is a faith that points to a great Creator. But, unlike the others, teaches that we are part of that great creative force already and in this particular earthly realm are learning lessons for the betterment of our understanding.

There is no better way to quote the tenets of spiritualism than to quote what is written in their information pamphlet.  A divine source recognized as God  The unity of all life  The communication and guidance from the spirit world  The continuous existence of the soul  Personal responsibility for every thought, word and action  Reward and consequences for all deeds according to God’s natural laws  Eternal progress open to every soul.

Mortality Beckons…

The Great Creative Force and Eternal Souls

Although most of us realize that death awaits us, it is very difficult indeed to picture this terminal event. There are some times in your life, however, when the shadow of death falls upon you and you realize it may extinguish your light: Going into battle, for instance, where the moan of death is increasingly loud and personal.

As you age, more and more the reminder of your mortality is driven home. Your parents pass away and friends begin losing fights with lethal diseases. Organizations to which you belong send out messages that say ‘we regret to inform you that’…In my organizations it is referred to as The Last Post or Jumper Down.

For a number of years I called Calgary home. I served in the army there and in the newspaper industry. We moved to Langley in 1971 and if I went back to Calgary I wouldn’t know a soul as all my pals are dead. As a matter of fact I would not know the city either as all the buildings I was familiar are torn down and replaced; even Currie Barracks and the Calgary Herald building in which I spent years.

Aching bones and muscles begin to announce the fact that your faithful old body can’t perform the things it once enjoyed. Disruptions in body functions become the norm and such pleasures as walking your dog become a chore. Then the memory starts to fade… you know that face but cannot think of the name. With a rush of insight it is apparent that you will soon join those in the obituary column you faithfully peruse each day.

Two comforting thoughts you may consider: The first being that it happens to all life and not to you exclusively and the second one, that more scientists are going the way of those who believe in a great Creative Force: That all creatures are eternal souls and that their bodies are just a covering for a trip through life.

– Mike Harvey, Langley [templetownharvey@shaw.ca]  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 43

“Reminiscence and Revelation” contd.

The Sea of Life Life is like an ocean, Washing on the shore, Each wave a new generation, Of countless gone before.

Each wave has its contours, Its valleys and its peaks, Every wave unique in shape, As the shore it seeks.

The restless tide flowing on, Like ranks of marching men, Rushing to the waiting sand, To disappear again.

How like mankind travelling on, Each wave a revelation, Sparkling, roaring, fresh and brave, A modern generation.

The new wave smashing on a beach, The only one that matters, Hurling its fury on rock and sand, Then slinking back in tatters.

The next wave sweeps from seaward, Note its swelling pride!

Boiling, crashing to expunge, The preceding wave that died.

Again it crashes on the land, Its moment in the sun, Once more its glory dissipates, Its moon-led journey done.

So it is with all who live, Are young and filled with might, A brief span of glory that quickly will, Disappear from sight.

But not our souls, They carry on, To improve with every life The Creator’s plan for learning, In spirit’s eternal life.

Mike Harvey, Langley BC

Ramblings

BESIDES THAT, HOW WAS THE CRUISE?

various reasons each one cancelled or postponed their Randy Vancourt, Toronto ON voyage, thereby ensuring the safe future of candy, radio Now that 2012 is in the past we can and rubber tires. Just think about that the next time you’re finally put behind us the multitude of driving along the highway while listening to the traffic report documentaries, special reports and and chomping on a chocolate bar.

TV miniseries about the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the One of the reasons I am captivated by their stories is that I Titanic. It was a horrible tragedy and had a similar experience back in 2007. It also involved a 1,514 passengers lost their lives that cruise ship, an iceberg and a sinking, and I too survived by night of April 14-15, 1912, so it’s not being on board. understandable that our fascination with the story seems to I had been offered a job playing piano aboard a tourist ship. keep growing with each passing year.

Many of my friends have made great money entertaining Of course I share an interest in the story of the Titanic and aboard cruise ships, spending their winters sailing through its passengers; who perished, warmer climes, playing in who didn’t, and the various reapiano bars or performing in sons why. But the people who musical reviews common really fascinate me are the ones on such trips. However the who survived by missing the boat M/S Explorer, nicknamed that day. The famous people who, the Little Red Ship, was by for one reason or another, didn’t no definition a luxury cruise get on board that infamous liner. voyage and no doubt lived to be Designed for sailing the very thankful. waters of the Arctic and Inventor Guglielmo Marconi, Antarctic, the boat looked chocolate mogul Milton Hershey, more like a low-rent ferry financier J. Pierpont Morgan and than the Pacific Princess.

Goodyear Tire founder Frank To be fair it was intended Seiberling, had all booked for adventure tourism, passage on the Titanic. For M/S Explorer sinking taking a small group of 

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MAR.-APR. 2013, VOL. 26 NO.5

www.dialogue2.ca

100 passengers across the Drake Passage and on to the South Pole.

As I contemplated accepting the contract, I had visions of experiencing the thrilling voyage of a lifetime. Me, a modern day Roald Amundsen or Robert Scott, albeit one who had to spend each evening entertaining passengers with singalong versions of American Pie and Piano Man. But think of the adventure! I planned to keep a journal and turn my experiences into a book. I even had the title ready: “Playing At The Bottom Of The World.”

A month before we were to set sail, my brother casually pointed out that the ship would have to cross the Drake Passage, the body of water that separates the southern tip of Chile from Antarctica, twice each journey. I was scheduled to make 8 trips, for a total of 16 attempts to navigate what is known as one of the roughest stretches of water on the planet.

I am not what one would call a good sailor. I get queasy on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World, so needless to say I was a bit concerned about tackling such an infamous expanse of ocean – particularly 16 times. I decided to do a bit of research and was horrified at what I discovered.

Articles with names like, “Waves Of Terror” and “Horror On The High Seas” did nothing to dispel my fears, but when I eventually stumbled upon video clips taken by other adventure tourists, my stomach started to do flips. Waves of up to 30 metres (almost 100 ft) tossed ships back and forth at 45-degree angles. And the trip can take up to 2 days!

My mind was made up – I couldn’t accept the contract. Let some other poor guy be squashed behind a rolling piano.

Every musician knows the story of how the orchestra played “Nearer My God To Thee” as the Titanic sank. Call me a coward but my Musician Union card makes no mention of going down with the ship; that’s the Captain’s job. First to the buffet and first to the lifeboats – that’s the musician’s motto.

November 11, 2007 the M/S Explorer set sail from Argentina, without me, on a 19-day trip that was meant

Obey – the film

VIDEOS / DOCUMENTARIES

WATCH AT: http://vimeo.com/59002146#

[Dandelion Salad from Studiocanoe] This is a film based on the book “Death of the Liberal Class” by journalist and Pulitzer prize winner, Chris Hedges.

It charts the rise of the Corporate State, and examines the future of obedience in a world of unfettered capitalism, globalisation, staggering inequality and environmental change.

The film predominantly focuses on US corporate capitalism, but the viewer can recognise the relevance of what is being expressed with regards to domestic political and corporate activity. “Hope in the hands of realists spreads fear into the black heart of the corporate elite; but hope, real hope will remain thwarted by a collective self-delusion unless we choose it to be otherwise.” 

Dr. Colin Ross on Mind Control

VIDEO: www.brasschecktv.com/page/22682.html 

www.dialogue2.ca

trace the route of famed British explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Saturday, November 24th I sat down with my morning newspaper and noticed to my surprise the M/S Explorer was on the front page. The headline blared, “CRUISE SHIP SINKS OFF ANTARCTICA.” Apparently the ship had hit an iceberg that tore a 25 X 10 cm (10 X 4 inch) gash in the hull. While the initial damage was being examined it then drifted into a second iceberg.

Its fate was sealed, certainly better than the supposedly watertight compartments in its hull. Thankfully all the passengers and crew made it safely off the sinking ship and into the lifeboats, where they drifted for 5 hours until a Norwegian vessel came to their rescue.

There were some subsequent reports that the story of the sinking didn’t make sense, as the M/S Explorer was specifically designed for navigating through ice. Of course the Titanic was also unsinkable, so it’s difficult to cast aspersions. The whole affair was eventually ruled an accident following an investigation by the good folks at the Liberian Bureau of Maritime Affairs.

Why Liberia, you may ask? A huge number of the cruise ships that rake in millions of tourist dollars annually are actually registered in Liberia, a small West African country where there is no minimum wage and less-stringent labour laws. “Flags of Convenience” is what the industry calls it, which anyone thinking of booking a cruise might want to consider.

Even though I never got to write my book or play piano at the bottom of the world, I don’t regret my decision to decline the trip any more than Messrs. Hershey or Marconi probably did. For 5 hours in 2007 the terrified passengers of the M/S Explorer no doubt wondered if they would survive. If I want to experience that sort of terror, all I have to do is go on stage without rehearsing. ~ Randy Vancourt, Toronto, www.randyvancourt.com 

“Wash Your Brain”

Occult Symbols and Hollywood Mind Control From BrasscheckTV: Two investigators reveal how popular culture is used as a tool for societal mind control.

VIDEO LINK: www.brasschecktv.com/page/22683.html "Magic is the art and science of causing changes in consciousness – and therefore change in your environment…" 

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, Electric Universe 2013

Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jan. 3-6, 2013 Part 1: http://tinyurl.com/bozj55l -- Many scientists like to think that science already understands the ways of the natural world… But recent research has revealed unexpected problems at the heart of physics, cosmology, biology, medicine and psychology. Dr. Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than 80 scientific papers and 10 books, including Science Set Free (September 2012). For much more information on Dr. Sheldrake, see: http://www.sheldrake.org Part 2: www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/page/22092.html  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 45

Personocratia’s Path THROW YOUR TELEVISION OUT THE WINDOW! Media Control Schooling plays a big role in programming the population, but the most potent and prevalent educational tools are the mass media. These are devised to reach a large audience via the broadcasting of information through natural means (spoken or written language, posters) or technological ones (radio, television, cinema, the Internet). With time, the elite controlled all the important mass media and were able to dictate its contents.

The trick is easy. All the elite need to do is repeat the same simplistic lies in all the media and the population will believe them without a doubt. This is how lies acquire an irresistible aura of credibility. A specialist of mass brainwashing, L. Wolfe, explains it further: “As Tavistock's researchers showed, it was important that the victims ofmass brainwashing not be aware that their environment was being controlled; there should thus be a vast number of sources for information, whose messages could be varied slightly, so as to mask the sense of external control.” Wolfe specified that the contents had to be entertaining and leave the impression that the person always had the choice between various messages and sources.

Therefore, the same repetitive information remains hidden behind different and appealing guises.

Tavistock Around 1920, the Tavistock Institute became the centre for the study of human behaviour, mind control, propaganda, and manipulation. Created in London, it spread overseas with the financial help of the Rockefeller Foundation. Its influence increased when it combined the study of anthropology, economy, organizations, politics, psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and sociology. For example, Tavistock organized social phenomena such as the hippie counterculture and the use of mind-altering drugs. Its primary objectives were and still remain the organization of cultural changes through the imposition of chaos and the occult manipulation of special groups. With a 2012 budget of around 6 billion USD, it is now made up of 10 institutions, 400 subsidiary companies, and 3,000 study groups. In secret, Tavistock guides powerful multinationals such as the Rand Corp. (media, politics, commerce, health, education, defence), the Mitre Corp. (defence, revenue, national security), the Standford and Hudson Institutes, etc.

After 90 years of reasearch, Tavistock’s main discovery concerns child sexuality. This has a great influence on the development of personality. Early sex stimulation produces adults whose emotional development is similar to that of a neurotic child. Their second discovery is related to stress. Tavistock researchers found out that people under controlled stress became more infantile and gave up strongly held beliefs under group pressure to conform to popular opinion. That explains why the mass media insist so much on sex, violence, and fear-inducing messages. We are being turned into scared, submissive children who try to evade from their daily stress through emotional masturbation – television, radio, CDs, DVDs, movies, and video games.

Television Westerners spend four hours a day, the equivalent of two months a year or nine years in a lifetime, being hypnotized by a television screen, without being conscious of the effects this activity has on them. They have stopped interacting with friends, neighbours, community, and even family. Their free time is spent in imaginary relationships with fictitious characters on the screen.

A few US statistics will show us the extent of the phenomenon: 99 % of households own at least one TV; there are 2.24 TVs per family; the television remains open 7 hours a day; 66 % eat in front of their television sets. The addiction starts right after birth, since 30 % of kids who are 0 to Family Life in the 21st Century 1 year old and 47 % of the 5 to 8 year-olds have televisions in their rooms.

A typical US child spends 3.5 minutes per week in meaningful conversation with a parent, but 1680 minutes per week in front of TV. Is this why television is called the “one-eyed babysitter”? By the time they are 65, most people have seen 2,000,000 TV ads. This phenomenon is becoming global.

The earth population has become addicted to television. If one decides to quit the TV habit, she experiments withdrawal symptoms that are as severe as those related to drug or alcohol abuse. There is a direct relationship between child obesity – which is severe for 11 % of 6 to 17 year olds in US – and advertisements, since the most popular types of commercials are related to junk food. A study counted more than 200 junk food ads during four hours of cartoons on Saturday morning US television.

When compared with radio listening, the good side of television is that there are pictures. The more there are to accompany a special news report, the more tangible it will seem and the lesser the chance of people questioning its accuracy.

Media expert Hal Becker once said: “I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to.

Just let me control television…You put something on the television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the TV set contradicts the images, people start trying to change the world to make it like the TV set images.”  46 dialogue

MAR.-APR. 2013, VOL. 26 NO.5

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Personocratia, contd.

How can the elite succeed in reaching full control of television? Through government control! Politicians vote and impose laws that favour large TV stations over smaller ones. Better still, most countries have their own sanitized and free State television station.

Mass Hypnosis and Mass Violence Tavistock hastened to study the effects of television on human behaviour as early as the forties. Its researchers discovered that 30 seconds after one starts watching TV, the brain automatically begins to produce alpha waves, a modified state of consciousness. The viewer goes into a trance-like mode, a type of light hypnosis. All her attention is now concentrated on the screen, to the detriment of the rest of her environment. In this semi-conscious state, she becomes highly sensitive to the messages contained in the programs, especially the commercial ads. These are created especially for that purpose.

Television started becoming popular in the fifties. The elite have now accumulated more than 60 years of experience spread over three generations of viewers. The results are staggering. People are no longer logical. Their opinions and ideas come directly from television. The images validate what they hear. This filter of tele-opinions gets automatically superimposed over their daily reality. They have become passive members of a plugged-in society, and can no longer think, talk, or write logically. For them, images and knowledge are synonymous. They have become tele-idiots!

In Europe, violence on television is as critical as in America. Specialized stations such as Baby TV and Baby First broadcast programs for babies 24/7. When toddlers are one year old, they are already watching one hour of television a day.

Statistics from 1988 showed that during one week of TV watching, viewers witness 670 murders, 15 rapes, 848 fights, 419 shootings or explosions, 11 armed robberies, 8 suicides, 32 hostage takings, 27 torture scenes, 9 defenestrations, 13 strangulations, and 11 war scenes. Nowadays, these types of event are not reserved to late hours. For example, Quebec’s popular TQS station presented the movie Terminator at 6:30 pm – just in time for kids.

And It’s Getting Worse!

Ever heard of Silent Sound Spread Spectrum or SSSS? It is a secret Pentagon psychotronics technology that has been operational since 1990. In 1991, it was used during the first Gulf War to force Iraqi troops to surrender en masse. Like compliant children, 200,000 men came out of their desert bunkers and fell to their knees before approaching US troops.

The SSSS is now available in your neighbourhood – free of charge. It is carried to your brain with the use of several technologies, including chemtrails, cell towers and high definition digital television (HD-TV). In this way, the elite is aiming for total mind control to insure the compliance of its sheeple. Now you know why the government was so enthusiastic about letting us get digital converter boxes for a cheap price. After all, they want us to have access to high-quality television images. So thoughtful!

Big Brother goes even further with digital streaming video that allows any person with a personal computer linked to the Internet to access and watch popular television programs. This is available for free through companies such as Hulu. In this way, computer monitors and HD-TV screens broadcast SSSS and combine it with subliminally-pulsed images to bring about specific emotions and physical responses to all listeners or a selected type of DNA (Blacks, Orientals, women, etc.). If the elite has a sample of a person’s DNA, it can even target selected individuals. Experimentation has shown that it is efficient – with various levels of efficiency – with about 85% of the population, while the remaining 15% seem immune to such mind control attempts.

What Should We Do? What should we do now that we know? Well, truth is useless if we do not change our actions. Number one: throw the television out the window! Even without this new mind-control technology, the television has always been a “box of lies”.

Watching TV makes you stupid. All statistics are there to prove it. Forget the “good educational shows” that are simply there to misinform you. Number two: limit the time you spend in front of the computer and never, never watch TV shows from the Internet. Number three: do not use cell phones. Basically, it is like putting your head in the microwave oven and pushing the ON button. It is difficult to avoid chemtrails, but living a TV-free and cell-phone-free life is possible – and you get so much more time to read, think, meditate, exercise, cook, and keep good company.

The elite has hijacked our brains with their technology, but we still have our free will. We can choose to use it or not to use it. Which one will you choose?

Personocratia* More information is available about education and the media in Personocratia’s Booklet #8, titled EDUCATION towards… Innate Knowledge, which is still hot off the press. You can get it on the following site ( www.personocratia.com ) and watch videos on www.dianedares.com . __________

* Personocratia: The person who knows that she is the Supreme Creatrix incarnated in a body and who acts as such in her daily life.

Info: www.personocratia.com Videos: www.dianedares.com www.dialogue2.ca

VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

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dialogue 47

“Stirring The Soup”

THE THING YOU THINK YOU CANNOT DO Marie Gaudet, Edmonton AB Florida is not just being pretentious when it calls itself the boating capital of the world, you know. No idle claim this, as I found out on a recent trip out there.

Never having been much of a boating enthusiast before -or more particularly, not a big fan of water in general – I decided to see if my body could still produce adrenalin these days, by deliberately rousing my previously whipped aquaphobic nature (whipped because I never dare to provoke it), leaving my comfort zone and embracing all things aquatic on my annual vacation. Well… and the fact that there’s really no choice but to deal with water most of the time out there anyway aided me in this decision.

Still, never let it be said that I am a slouch in the “face your fears” department, as I intentionally booked (and prepaid for) a 4-day cruise, thereby defying both my aquaphobic and motion sickness tendencies; as well as a first-time snorkelling endeavour (because just the thought of deepsea diving was giving me panic attacks). I then raised the stakes even further by scorning my acrophobia (fear of heights) with a parasailing activity… over water! Hah! Take that, Fear, I said contemptuously.

OK, so it’s a bit like when you’re really hungry and you go to a restaurant. You order a large meal because you think you can manage it, but inevitably you can’t finish it because you’re obviously not as hungry as you thought you were (although at least in that scenario, you get to take home a doggy bag). But seriously, in order for me to get the most out of my vacations, I tend to set myself up for multiple failures ahead of time.

This is because a) once I have paid for the activity, I’m too embarrassed to back out; b) the fact that I’d lose money by cancelling at the last minute keeps me motivated; and c) once I have conquered at least one of my ambitious targets, I have the added bonus of knowing I’ve also totally dominated atychiphobia (fear of failure), which I can then add to my resume. Hey -- no one can say I don’t know myself.

Needless to say, the week prior to my departure, my stomach was in knots (no nautical pun intended), thanks to my nemesis Fear. So I begged my doctor for the controlled-release anti-nausea patch which I didn’t even know existed and which, by the way, should qualify as a miracle cure!

I then convinced myself that snorkelling would be at least as exciting as scuba-diving because the coral reefs were probably just a few feet below the surface anyway, right?

And I had long conversations with myself about how you’re not a chicken-shit if you don’t go parasailing, you’re just being rational and smart.

In the end, the good news is that I didn’t drown (victory #1);

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I didn’t have to deal with seasickness despite having a lovely stateroom with a huge window overlooking the constantly rocking Atlantic Ocean (victory #2); and I am no chicken-shit (victory #3) because parasailing 300 ft. above the water in Key West was an incredible experience in every way and something that I will not be afraid to try over and over again in the future. Unfortunately, I missed out on snorkelling due to the waters being too choppy in the Bahamas, but that’s an excitement I can look forward to on another trip.

Besides the awe-inspiring cruise ship Majesty of the Seas (one of the Royal Caribbean line’s 20 or so ships), there were plenty of other types of water transportation awaiting me -- whether I wanted to or not. For instance, you can’t be in the Ft. Lauderdale area without taking a leisurely afternoon cruise down the Intracoastal Waterway so you can see how the other half (as opposed to Canada’s 1%) lives.

The man-made Intracoastal is a whole community of streets, back lanes, harbors and marinas, with vessels of all varieties and sizes as far as the eye can see. For those of you who know Edmonton, imagine, as a miniature version of the Intracoastal, driving down Jasper Avenue from 97th to 109th Streets. Now imagine that you’re actually navigating your favorite boat, the concrete has become a river, the cars parked along the side are boats and even the streets you pass are in fact liquid roadways where people park their commuting vessels of choice.

All along these streets, where we of the other 99% would normally park our cars, you instead find docks with watercraft of all sorts tied to them. Some are just left in the water to gather barnacles while others sit high on hydraulic boat lifts. All of them have had well-thought out names affixed to their transoms, ex. Last Resort, Utopia, Charisma, Desperado, Due Process or Getting Jiggy (some of the boat names I saw in FL). Of course, in Alberta they’d probably be named Aqua-holic, Go Fish or This Side Up, but still, this gives you a general idea about how people live in the sunshine state. The climate is tropical and boy, is your skin going to love it! Tons of people from all over either winter there, or live there year-round.

Another venture out on the Intracoastal was aboard the Lady Atlantic, a charter yacht operation from Delray which takes you out on a “three-hour tour”, just as Gilligan and the Skipper did. My time aboard a glass-bottomed boat did not, as I had anticipated, produce claustrophobia (fear of being closed in)… What would that be… pre-fear? I seriously gotta see a shrink! It was actually quite fun though to view marine life this way, especially because the sharks were on the other side of the window.

I trembled a bit more, though, on the airboat ride in the  www.dialogue2.ca

Everglades, where the crocodiles kept wanting to climb aboard to say hello and where I experienced a resurgence of my agrizoophobia (fear of wild animals). After that, I thought I’d take a tour on a land-based vehicle for a change, just to be at one with city-dwelling critters again.

That funky machine picked me up on a downtown street all right, but then transported me directly to the marina, where it turned and splashed down right into Biscayne Bay without a by-your-leave, for a seafaring tour of the homes of the rich and famous! There’s just no getting away from it!

So, lots of wild and wet fun can be found in Florida for sure, especially if you do not have ablutophobia (fear of washing or bathing). On the terrestrial side, when I opted for a few final days trying to find my land-legs again, I was lucky enough to be in downtown Miami on January 27th to be inspired by the approximately 35,000 runners participating in the 2013 ING Miami Marathon. Can’t picture that many people swarming a downtown core? To put it into context, see www.ingmiamimarathon.com/Home.htm/ It was also pure enchantment to visit the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center in Boca Raton, a 20-acre protected barrier island which is committed to environmental education,

research and conservation and provides refuge to many varieties of plants and animals – some rare or endangered.

It’s like a rainforest area for coastal and marine animals.

Just walking around it is soothing to the soul. Check it out at: www.gumbolimbo.org/Home .

However… and I say this with the utmost respect to water lovers everywhere… there’s absolutely something to be said about being home on good old solid ground after so much travel by H2O. And that’s a statement I can make despite the fact that Mother Nature welcomed me home with -43C weather and snow which didn’t quit for two weeks. But the groundhog says spring is just around the corner…

Anyway, the moral of my story and the upside of this trip for me is that my old opponent fear has been, if not eliminated, at least reminded who’s boss. It has been reduced to a lower case “f” from a capital F, no longer worthy of the power I had given it over me. I guess it’s true what another rational and smart lady once said, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” (Eleanor Roosevelt).

– Marie Gaudet, Edmonton AB 

More Poetry

Introducing a poet and writer in Ontario

From John Woodsworth, Ottawa I'd like to introduce you to Charles Matchett, a poet and writer from Owen Sound (Ont.). I think you might be interested in considering some of his poetry for publication in "Dialogue". You can see his profile at poetry.com [LINK: http://tinyurl.com/bpyqgh7 ] From Charles Ferquet Matchett Hi, My name is Charles Ferquet Matchett. I have been writing poems since I was 9 years old. I am also a member of the Grey/Bruce writers club in Owen Sound, ON. My published book is called “Mind Expressions,” published in 2000. I would like to submit a poem to your magazine. This one is called "The reaper."

The Reaper

I awoke one night in an awful fright in the cold raw grip of fear I turned on the light an’ beheld such a sight, that never my eyes had seen At the foot of my bed stood the walking dead with eyes that glowed like fire From his mouth when he spoke came a cloud of smoke and his body was covered in mire By the stench of his smell he was a demon from hell backed up by the devil’s choir As I looked agape, he changed his shape, and his face formed in a grin He looked real proud as he said out loud, I'm here your soul to win I'll give you wealth, I'll give you fame, what ever you want to be The only thing I ask from you, is to will your soul to me www.dialogue2.ca

He said with a frown, as I turned him down, what would your one wish be?

I said, with a sigh, that when I die, my soul be free from thee He said with a rage, from the birth to the grave I take my toll you see Then, down from his back, he removed a sack, and opened it for me As I looked inside, I almost cried, at the sight that I did see, A most auspicious crowd, I said out loud, of politicians I've ever seen He said, with a grin, I pack them in, I give them wealth and fame Lawyers, politicians and big rock stars, I treat them all the same He said, for you I can bring fame too, just sign on the line I looked at him and said, Thanks again, but, I'm just doing fine He said, oh well, I'm off to hell and thanked me for my time - Charles Ferquet Matchett Owen Sound, Ontario [charlesue(at)msn.com]  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 49

“Observations from Lithuania”

What doesn’t kill you: makes you strong

by KR Slade, Lithuania PART TWO

Ken Slade

[Note: Part I described my long descent of health - resulting in a week of hospitalization for ‘double pneumonia. Part II discusses the psychological aspects/affects of the illness, as well as issues of the currently-accepted practice of medicine regarding ‘medicine.’]

* * * After the hospital * * *

It is Thursday, 5 April 2012 at 11 a.m.: upon my discharge from the hospital. Before my second foot is out of the door, I come to realize that everything that the discharge order suggested, as well as common-sense for after a week in a hospital, will be completely ignored. The notion of bed-rest is met with the reality that we walk (!!) from the hospital to the shelter. The notion of staying warm will be impossible.

The notion of some kind of normal diet will meet the reality of ‘whatever available, if available, and prepare it yourself.’

The follow-up medication will not be available. Drink plenty of ‘fluids’ means tap-water, 50 feet away.

After a few hours, in early evening, I go to spend the next four days with friends at my former university-dorm. In two days, I will have to make the two-hour trip to get some of the medications that were ordered by the hospital at my discharge, and which my personal doctor will provide.

On the fifth day after discharge from the hospital, I am back at the shelter, spending the day in bed. I am visited by my priest, who enquires whether I would like to have ‘the sacrament of the anointing of the sick’. I agree. I am aware that the sacrament is for the seriously ill or aged -- as part of the ‘Last Rites’ of the church. I am old enough to remember the former name: Extreme Unction (‘last anointing’), which prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1968) was the sacrament given at the point of death. The words ‘last’ and ‘extreme’ have some sense that can be quite opposite from solace and comforting . . .

On the seventh day after my discharge from the hospital, having been able to spend a total of one week mostly in bed, I receive some surprise news. “You cannot stay here during the day. You must Get-Out-of-Here during the day ! We are not a hospital !”, said the worker at Catholic Charities. The five others who were his co-workers, all nodded in agreement. Moreover, the Director agreed; she refused my written request to meet with me. The Director’s boss knew, and did nothing -- because it was a collective decision of his workers, according to the rules and regulations that those workers had established.

Thereafter, my personal doctor orders, at his personal expense, extensive testing for tuberculosis. After the multiple cultures, taken over the course of several days, are grown in the laboratory for weeks, all results are negative.

My personal doctor also orders examinations for bloodcirculation problems in my right leg. I spend about 25 hours, in many attempts, trying to get the examinations; however,

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the examinations are not available, because such funding was eliminated in the government’s budget cuts to meet European Union directives. However, if the circulation problems require that the leg be amputated, such amputationservice funding is available.

The Currently-accepted Practice of Medicine * * * * * Regarding Pneumonia * * * * * About Pneumonia [source: Microsoft Encarta (Encyclopaedia) 2008] “In the United States, about 5 million cases of pneumonia are reported each year and about 63,500 people die from the disease; influenza and pneumonia are among the nation’s ten leading causes of death.”

“Pneumonia has more than 30 different causes. Most cases of pneumonia result from infection with microorganisms, primarily viruses, bacteria, mycoplasmas (i.e., small, free-living particles with characteristics of both bacteria and viruses), and fungi.

About 50 percent of pneumonia cases are caused by viruses.”

[NOTE: the treatment that I received was with antibiotics -- for bacterial infection, not for virus or fungi infection, no consideration that may be more than one cause, especially after such long incubation period of many months; no consideration to the Night-house conditions of filth, mould, mildew, unsanitary toilets, residents’ physical conditions… ‘blind treatment’?]

“To determine the cause of pneumonia, a physician takes a sample of the patient's sputum. Analysis of the sputum in the laboratory may identify the particular kind of microorganism causing the infection.”

[NOTE: in my case, no sputum samples were ever taken for treatment determination (i.e., the only sputum samples taken were after hospital treatment and discharge, for a thorough testing for tuberculosis, as ordered by my private physician.)]

“Antibiotics can cure bacterial pneumonia and speed recovery from mycoplasma pneumonia and PCP [Pneumocystis pneumonia]. Antibiotics rarely have an effect on pneumonia caused by viruses. However, patients with viral pneumonia often receive antibiotics to prevent bacterial pneumonia from developing during the course of their illness. In addition to drug treatment, a patient with pneumonia should stay in bed, eat healthy meals, and drink large amounts of liquids.

“In the 1970s, tuberculosis seemed to have been nearly eradicated in the developed countries, although it was still prevalent in developing countries.”

[Note: tuberculosis is far-more common in Lithuania than in Canada/USA.] ***

About Delirium, Hallucinations, States of Consciousness [source: Microsoft Encarta 2008] “Delirium, a condition common in many illnesses in which the sufferer is temporarily disoriented and incoherent and may have hallucinations and delusions. Any disease causing high fever may bring on delirium. In severe cases, the victim may be maniacal and require physical restraint. Delirium is a symptom rather than a disease, and hence is not treated by any specific

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measures other than those used to combat the causative disease and to reduce the patient's fever. Delirium may be due to causes other than high fever, such as exhaustion from nutritional disturbance, unusual excitement, psycho-sensory impairment, severe head injury, and drug addiction.”

“Hallucination (is the) false perception in any of the five sensory modalities when no external stimulus exists, as when a nonexistent object is seen. Hallucinations may occur in the twilight state between sleeping and awakening, or in delirium, delirium tremens, or exhaustion; they also may be induced under hypnosis. The visual sense is most often affected. Persistent hallucinations are characteristic of schizophrenia. In one type of schizophrenia, victims believe that they hear accusing or commanding voices, to which they may react in panic, with abject obedience, or with attempts at self-protection or even suicide.

Hallucination is distinguished from illusion, a false perception of an actual stimulus, and is common following self-administration of certain drugs such as mescaline, marijuana, and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Both illusions and hallucinations can be drug induced.”

States of Consciousness.

“No simple, agreed-upon definition of consciousness exists. Attempted definitions tend to be tautological (for example, consciousness defined as awareness) or merely descriptive (for example, consciousness[s described as sensations, thoughts, or feelings). Despite this problem of definition, the subject of consciousness has had a remarkable history.”

“During the 1960s, an increased search for “higher levels” of consciousness through meditation resulted in a growing interest in the practices of Zen Buddhism & Yoga from Eastern cultures.

A full flowering of this movement in the United States was seen in the development of training programs, such as Transcendental Meditation, that were self-directed procedures of physical relaxation and focused attention.” “ … researchers found that persons could control their brain-wave patterns to some extent … ” “ … until recently, most cognitive scientists ignored consciousness, as did almost all neuroscientists. The problem was felt to be either purely 'philosophical' or too elusive to study experimentally.”

* * * Reflections * * * Experiencing Altered Senses Faced with delusions (i.e., false beliefs) and/or hallucinations (i.e., false sensory perceptions), humans decide (i.e., whether or not consciously) which interpretation(s) of the ambiguous visual input(s) to adopt. However, we may not recognize the fact of delusion and/or hallucination. I remembered the message of Carlos Castaneda, and the other druggie-culture writers of the 1960’s through 1970’s: ‘enjoy it’; and also, ‘you can control it’.

During my hospitalization, whether my eyes were open or closed, for many hours every day, I could see only shadows and all-dark hues of various colours. At the bottom of my viwww.dialogue2.ca

sion, there were more-solid forms, and they moved. I changed the forms to be dinosaurs; I certainly did not want spiders. Later, when I told my personal doctor that I was having delirious hallucinations, he asked, “what do you see?”

When I told him ‘dinosaurs’, he asked “Why ?” I told him, “I like dinosaurs, they amuse me; besides, unlike spiders, dinosaurs can’t hurt you; dinosaurs have been dead for 1,000,000 years.”

He said, “When people are delirious, they see all kinds of things. However, they usually don’t remember what they see; and they are often frightened. I had never thought about that a person in delirium could consciously change what he is seeing; and, certainly not be able enjoy it. In addition, most people do not know when they themselves are delirious. Anyway, the delirium is partially the abnormal temperature, and somewhat the particular antibiotics. But, these antibiotics have several advantages over others, and you seem able to tolerate this adverse effect.”

Therefore, we maintained those antibiotics, until after my discharge. With no Internet, and no television, some of the visions were quite entertaining . . .

However, there were some unpleasant and scary memories … like a slideshow: the accidental freak amputation of my finger when I was 15... several bad automobile accidents... several mountainskiing accidents... a night when I was stranded in the dessert in south-west USA... the night I fell overboard from a yacht 800 miles from land... military remembrances...

Some other elements were not unlike ‘Alice in Wonderland’ falling down the rabbit hole; or like the ‘Wizard of Oz’ characters Dorothy and Toto, after the tornado, finding themselves in Oz . . . although, Alice and Dorothy seem more-entirely disjointed from reality.

I remember some repeating thoughts: “a mind is a terrible thing to loose” ... “of all of the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most” ... “I may be delirious, but I’m not (at least yet) stupid” ... and, Jefferson Airplane's 1967 psychedelic anthem ‘White Rabbit’, and some other heavy-metal music.

Most memorable, were a couple of visits by everyone’s mostunwanted visitor. Mr. G. Reaper, always silent; that guy dressed in a grey sheet, carrying a staff, and wearing the hood hiding his grinning skull; pointing his finger, indicating ‘Come with me. Now’ ... and I telling him, “No; Go away” . . .

Observations from Lithuania continues 

VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 51

* * * Quotations * * * Sleep, once considered a passive state, was instead “...an active state of consciousness...” René Descartes (15961650), French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, sometimes called ‘the father of modern philosophy’.

And several attributed to Voltaire (1694 - 1778), French writer and philosopher:

● “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while Nature cures the disease.” ● “A physician is one who pours drugs of which he knows little into a body of which he knows less.” ● “Who are the greatest deceivers? The doctors? And the greatest fools? The patients?” ● “Regimen is superior to medicine.” Dictionnaire philosophique, Physicians".

“Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets; More needs she the divine than the physician.”

- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1; the doctor’s lines.

“When a man lacks mental balance in pneumonia, he is said to be delirious. When he lacks mental balance without the pneumonia, he is pronounced insane by all smart doctors.”

- Martin H. Fischer (1879-1962), German-born U.S. physician and author.

- Ken Slade, Vilnius (Lithuania) All Rights Reserved [2013]: Ken-Russell Slade, B.S., M.Ed., M.R.E., J.D E-mail: kenmunications@gmail.com 

THE FOLLOWING ADS ARE FROM DIALOGUE READERS (sometimes in an exchange of services)

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Fran’s Kitchen

From Fran Masseau Tyler, Lacolle QC This month I am giving recipes for maple syrup. It is sugaring time in the province of Quebec. The traditional ‘sugar shack’ (Cabane à Sucre) as they call them, will be open in mid March; some of them sit hundreds of people at a time – for mapledrenched meals and treats. So I received from my good friend May Darbyson from Stanbridge East, Quebec, these two recipes which I know are from years gone by, especially the Steamed Maple Cake. My mother used to make Plum Pudding for the holidays in this way. We have to preserve the old recipes of yesteryear, as some of the new recipes have things in them I’ve never heard of. But this is an oldie talking. You can serve the Baked Beans with this cake, as I was told.

Bon Appetit!

STEAMED MAPLE CAKE

Ingredients: 2 cups oatmeal 3 cups sour milk 1 cup maple syrup 2 cups whole wheat flour 2 cups cornmeal 2 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. salt 1 cup raisins 1 cup chopped nuts 2 Tbsp flour 1. Mix together: 2 cups oatmeal, 3 cups sour milk and maple syrup; Allow to soak 20 minutes.

2. Add; 2 cups whole wheat flour, 2 cups cornmeal, 2 tsp. baking soda, and 1 tsp. salt.

3. Mix 2 Tbsp. flour with the raisins, nuts; then add to the mixture and stir gently to work in.

4. Pour into equal sized coffee tins, filling 2/3 full.

5. Wrap two thicknesses of aluminum foil around the top and

wrap tightly.

6. Fill kettle 1/2 full with water. Bring to boil and let simmer constantly for 3 hours. After uncover and bake 20 minutes in 300F oven. Serve slicked and buttered with baked beans.

BAKED BEANS

1. 1 quart yellow eyed beans: Wash and pick over beans, cover with cold water. Soak overnight with 1/2 tsp baking soda.

2. Next morning: rinse beans and par boil in fresh water until skin wrinkles. Drain off bean water (and retain water to add later if needed).

3. Place l medium sized onion, peeled and minced on bottom of pot.

4. Add beans, 1-1/2 cups maple syrup, 1/2 tsp dry mustard, 2 Tbsp. prepared mustard.

5. Score the top of 1/2 pound of salt pork. Add to bean mixture.

6. Bake 325F in slow oven for 6 hours.

7. Check periodically. In the last hour, check to see if water needs to be added.

Try these recipes. You will not be disappointed! Maple syrup is sold through Canada. The 3 top North American Maple Syrup producers are: Quebec: 7, 989,000 gallons; Vermont: 890,000 gallons; Ontario: 400,000 gallons.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Grandma’s cookies didn’t need preservatives; they never lasted that long. [franskitchen74@gmail.com] 

“Hannah’s Hobbies”

My Grandparents’ Journal

Dorothy Hannah, Lacolle QC For years I have had nine little books that we always referred to as Grampa’s diary. In the beginning it seems as if my grandfather was the one doing the writing and the first three volumes had lots of details. As the entries went on, they got a bit shorter and then part way through the third book the writing seemed to change. Not just the writing, the style was less personal and the entries more factual. I have a feeling my grandmother took over at that time. She was a very methodical person and as they lived on a farm, the little books seemed to become more a record of what they did each day, and when they planted what crops, etc.

There was never much reference to world events anywhere, although things like war being declared, etc. were mentioned. Usually a one-liner. I always hoped that someday I would find an easy way to make copies of the journals, so they could be shared with family members. The thought of typing them word for word made me shudder and the books didn’t fit in my scanner. My nephew came to the rescue last year with a scanner that could handle little www.dialogue2.ca

books. He offered to do the job and started out in fine style.

He scanned the first book, and then due to a computer glitch, promptly lost the whole thing. At that point I took pity on him and offered to do the job if he would lend me his scanner. He did, and came and set me up so all I had to do was turn the pages, click on scan and then keep repeating that operation. I am definitely in the ‘kiss’ category, i.e., “keep it simple stupid”.

At first the operation was a little rough; I managed to scan the pages upside down, sideways, etc., and had to keep turning them. Finally things smoothed out and I was under way. Then I ran into a serious difficulty. I had read all the journals at one time, but had pretty well forgotten what I had read. Now as I turned the pages different entries would catch my eye and I would be stalled while I read.

For instance one line really grabbed me. All it said was, “Shot Jerry”. Now I ask you, is that an attention getter or what? I tried searching before and after that entry for more information, but no luck. My poor brain spun in circles until out of the blue I remembered my mother telling me about their horses and, you guessed it, one was named Jerry.  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 53

Poor Jerry must have been old and ailing with no hope for a further happy life. In those days you took care of problems like that by yourself.

There was one page with several entries that made me think Lacolle was suffering a “crime wave.” It started when I read, “Mrs. M and Mrs. K’s suitcases found in F. Brault’s woods.” Not being able to figure out why somebody would put their suitcases in the woods, I backtracked to see what I could find. An entry a week earlier stated that “Mr. Masten’s office robbed of typewriter and safe spoiled.” That wasn’t the answer, but four days later I found, “Mrs. Masten and Mrs. Kemp’s suitcases stolen from station.” That was just the beginning of what I called a ‘crime wave’. The next entry read, “Maurice Blain and Belair arrested for beating up a man in Napierville. Mr. Wilfred Girard, farmer, implicated, too.” That wasn’t the end, because then we had, “Larivière’s barber shop robbed of tools and young Benoit’s bicycle stolen.” Poor young Benoit was the unlucky one, because the next entry is the one about the suitcases being found in the woods and the next says, “Larivière’s tools found in Bob Boudreau’s shed” but no mention anywhere about Benoit’s bicycle turning up. That was it, no further mention of crimes and in its frustrating way, no more information about any of those happenings.

At this point I have to mention an entry that I found hilarious. It read, “Etta changed underwear.” Etta being the

name of my grandmother and not wanting to be disrespectful I wondered if I should just ignore that entry. Of course I couldn’t, too many questions came to mind. One being, when was the last time she changed it? I checked further and found that my grandfather, Cyril, had also changed his underwear, because the diary said so. It read, “Cyril changed to light underwear”, and that also solved the mystery. For some reason my grandmother liked to record the day they were able to give up their winter underclothing. I have a very good friend I often go to for advice when I am trying to write something, and I decided to ask him if it would be disrespectable to write about my grandparents’ underwear. He said he thought it would be fine if I did it in the right way.

As I mentioned, I was scanning the diaries while having fun reading bits and pieces and had done about 60 pages of book three. While I was trying to think how to write about my grandparents’ unmentionables, I accidentally kicked the power plug of my computer and shut the whole thing down.

Disaster! It blew away my 60 pages. I hadn’t saved them because I didn’t know how; my son had been doing it for me each time I finished a book. After I had stopped moaning and groaning I sent my friend an e-mail telling him what had happened and that I figured I was being punished for my disrespect. Did he give me much sympathy? No way, his reply was simply, “That’ll larn ya.” 

A Story About A Boy and His Dogs…

What’s in a name?

Jalan Woods, Ottawa ON Once upon a time a couple named Norman and Barbara had a little baby boy, and they called him Douglas. Douglas, it turned out, was not a child of the gregarious sort. In fact, he kept pretty much to himself and didn’t easily make friends with other children.

When he was three years old, his parents took him on a motor-trip to a distant city to pay a visit to Barbara’s brother and sister-in-law. Her brother and sister-in-law had a little boy named John, just a year older than Douglas, and John in turn had a little dog named Rolf. Rolf, as his German name might suggest, was a German Shepherd.

During Norman and Barbara’s three-day stay with their relatives, they noticed that Douglas, who had never had a play-pal in his life, seemed to have struck up a rather close relationship with John. In fact, he hardly ever left his cousin’s side. Indeed, Douglas and John appeared inseparable. But Norman and Barbara soon became aware that the real attraction for Douglas was not so much John himself as John’s German Shepherd Rolf, and since Rolf was always by John’s side, during the whole visit Douglas and Rolf were constantly in each other’s company.

When the time came to head for home, it was all Norman and Barbara could do to pry their son away from his cousin John and especially Rolf the German Shepherd. The journey home was accompanied by sounds of ‘wailing and gnashing of teeth’, interrupted only by Douglas’ plea, repeated over and over: “PL-LEASE, Mummy-Daddy, I want a

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MAR.-APR. 2013, VOL. 26 NO.5

DOG!” And even after arriving home, not a day passed that

this plea was not heard, at least once.

By and by the calendar rolled around to Douglas’ fourth birthday. This year the question of what to get him for his birthday did not seem to present any alternatives. The answer, in fact, had been clear ever since their visit to John and his family. On the morning of his birthday, as Barbara drove Douglas to his half-day junior kindergarten, she told him that his birthday present would be waiting for him as soon as he got home.

This day the three-and-a-half hours in the kindergarten classroom seem to drag on endlessly. Douglas fidgeted the whole time and had a very hard time paying attention to the usual fun activities going on around him. When the bell rang at 12.30 sharp he literally tore out the door and threw himself into the front seat of the car beside his Mum. Needless to say, Douglas was overjoyed to hear a loud bark from the direction of the front door as the car pulled into the driveway. His wish had finally come true! Out of the house to greet him came running a new German Shepherd puppy. The only question now remaining was: What were they going to call the new arrival in the family?

When the question was put to Douglas, the immediate reply was: “I want to call him Rolf!”

“Do you think that’s such a good idea?” asked Norman.

“After all, Rolf is the name of John’s dog. What if John and Rolf came for a visit? Then we would have two dogs with the same name!”  www.dialogue2.ca

Barbara agreed. “Try to think of another name, dear! What about Spot, or Fido, or Rover? Those are all good dog names!”

“I don’t like those names!” exclaimed Douglas. “I know, I’ll call him John! I like John.”

And no amount of persuasion to the effect that nobody had ever heard of a dog named John could dissuade the new four-year-old from his decision. And so, John it was.

So Norman and Barbara and Douglas and John went on living as a happy family. Whenever Douglas was home, John was constantly at his side. And Douglas took John twice a day for a walk in the park at the end of the street, always accompanied either by his Mum or his Dad or by one of the parents in the neighbourhood. And John would always sit very still and listen as the family read aloud from the Bible every day, especially the Gospels. ~~~

A year later the calendar had rolled around again and Douglas’ fifth birthday was on the horizon. By this time he was already enrolled in the senior kindergarten class at school, though still only for half-days. As the special occasion was approaching, Douglas told his Mum and Dad: “You know, I think John looks lonely. He wants a pal to play with when I am at school. PL-LEASE, Mum and Dad, John wants another DOG!” After some deliberation, Norman and Barbara decided that a dog by himself could get rather lonely, especially since Douglas would soon be going into Grade One and would be away at school for six hours a day. And so on the day Douglas turned five, he got a new dog and John got a new play-pal — another German Shepherd.

Again the question arose: what would the new dog’s name be?

This time Douglas gave the question some careful thought.

He thought about it the next day as he walked to school, accompanied by three other neighbourhood kids and his next-door neighbour’s mum (the parents took turns on escort duty). He thought about it during kindergarten class whenever his mind was not otherwise occupied. And he thought about it on the way home. He still hadn’t made any close friends, but he had recently gone with his parents on another visit to see his cousin John, and this time the two cousins and the two dogs had been an inseparable foursome.

Douglas thought about this, too, and by the time he reached home he was ready to announce his decision to his parents.

“I’m going to call him John too,” they heard him say.

“But you can’t have two dogs with the same name!” Norman protested.

“It won’t be the same,” Douglas insisted. “The old John will be John One, and the new will be John Two. Just like at school: I shall be first in Grade One, and then in Grade Two.” His logic defied any attempts at contradiction. So time went on, and Norman and Barbara and Douglas and John One and John Two lived together as a happy family. They soon began to make at least one of their daily walks to the www.dialogue2.ca

park a family outing. Norman, too, went along, whenever he wasn’t delayed getting home from work. And John Two liked listening to the family read the Bible (especially the Gospels) just as much as John One. ~~~

A few years later, when Douglas was ten, his father Norman came home and announced that the company he worked for was transferring him overseas for a couple of years, and that meant the whole family would be going, too.

(He and Barbara had seen this coming for some time, and had agreed it would be a good change for the family.) But no sooner had the announcement been made than Douglas piped up: “The whole family? John One and John Two, too?”

Norman and Barbara’s faces fell. In thinking about the good change for the family, they hadn’t realised that because they were going overseas, they might have difficulty in taking two German Shepherds along with them.

“We’ll have to see about that,” said Norman. “I’ll look into it first thing tomorrow.”

The next day he rang up the High Commission of the country where they were going to live. Good news and bad news. The good news was that the dogs could go. The bad news was that they would have to spend the first six months in quarantine. That meant that John One and John Two wouldn’t be able to live with them until a quarter of the way through their two-year stay. And who knows? — the same thing might happen when the time came to return home.

After Norman and Barbara talked it over between themselves, they tried explaining the situation to Douglas. At first he was crestfallen. But his ten years of life with loving parents had also added a layer of maturity to his character, and he finally agreed that it would be better not to make John One and John Two go through six months of quarantine in the company of a host of strange dogs they had never met. The alternative was to give John One and John Two, at least temporarily, to a neighbourhood family they knew that really wanted a dog but couldn’t afford to buy one. That way John One and John Two would still have a good home on familiar territory, and their neighbours would be so happy to have two German Shepherds to take care of. And both dogs would be there when they got back.

But before the discussion closed on a note of agreement, Douglas made an announcement of his own: “On one condition!”

“And what condition might that be?” asked Barbara.

“I want to have another German Shepherd as soon as we get to our new home.”

Norman and Barbara looked at each other, and ever so slightly nodded in each other’s direction.

“All right,” said Norman. “We’ll see about that directly we get settled.” ~~~

No sooner were they comfortably ensconced in their rented house overseas than the promised addition to their family was secured. As it turned out (by one of those little  VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 55

miracles some people ascribe to a ‘law of synchronicity’), their new next-door neighbours dropped by for tea and a ‘get-acquainted’ chat the very next day after they moved in.

These neighbours, a couple well past retirement age, let slip during the conversation that they had a pair of German Shepherds they were getting weary of caring for, and they were asking around to see if anyone would be interested in giving them a good home. It wasn’t only Douglas’ eyes that lit up at the news: Norman and Barbara, too, couldn’t believe their ears!

“What are their names?” asked Douglas.

“Oh, we call them Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” the new neighbours said. “But that’s us oldsters for you! You can jolly well give them any names you like!”

After tea the visitors departed, and Norman and Barbara’s eyes focused on their son with eager anticipation.

“Well, Douglas?” enquired Norman. “You heard what they said about names. Do you have any ideas?”

“Well, Dad, this may sound funny, but I’d really like to continue the John tradition. It’s my cousin’s name, plus John’s in the Bible. I’d like to call them John Three and John Four!”

“This is beginning to sound like a dynasty!” exclaimed Barbara. “You’d better start writing their designations with Roman numerals!”

Indeed, not long after the new arrivals joined the family, they all went down to the local engraver’s to order two new tags for their collars. One of them was clearly marked “John III”, the other “John IV”, with their brand new Roman numerals. But they still pronounced their names as “John Three” and “John Four”.

So Norman and Barbara and Douglas and John III and John IV spent two years as a happy family in this country far from home. Douglas got accustomed to a somewhat different school system, Barbara got accustomed to shopping in a different currency, and she and Norman got accustomed to driving on the other side of the road. And the whole family got accustomed to looking the other way first before they crossed the street. But the Bible they read from every day was the same, even though it had two new listeners. ~~~

It seemed as though they were just getting nicely accustomed to all these differences when they suddenly realised that the two years were nearly at an end, and that soon they would be going back home (to the same house they had lived in before, since they had only rented it out, not sold it). And it turned out that the new tenants that took over the house they were renting overseas were only too happy to take over John III and John IV as well.

Upon returning, they discovered that the neighbourhood family had grown so attached to John One and John Two that Norman and Barbara and even Douglas didn’t have the heart to ask for their two original German Shepherds back. So, gracious people that they were, they agreed to let the grateful family keep both dogs. After all, Norman’s job certainly brought in enough supply so that it was no

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MAR.-APR. 2013, VOL. 26 NO.5

hardship for them to trot off to the local pet shop and pick up a couple more. Of course, they had to be German Shepherds and, of course, there had to be two of them to keep each other company, especially since Douglas was at school all day and Barbara had started full-time work again.

And, of course, there was no question this time about the names. John V and John VI were duly registered with the city’s licensing office. Being young pups, they couldn’t wait to go to the park and play. And even the older John One and John Two were not reluctant to play with their new namesakes.

So Norman and Barbara and Douglas and John V and John VI went on living in the house as a happy family. Before long, Douglas found himself in high-school, and then in university. It turned out the university he attended had an animal husbandry department and Douglas eagerly pursued a bachelor’s degree in a field he felt he had been training for all his life, under the watchful tutelage of six furry instructors with the same name. ~~~

Douglas’ first job took him far across the country, far away from his home city. Since John V and John VI stayed behind to keep Norman and Barbara company, Douglas soon acquired two new companions: yes, John VII and John VIII (again, both German Shepherds). But these had to be resettled in new homes when marriage to a girl named Tamara and a new job with a promotion took Douglas and his bride way up north, where many of the local dogs, known as huskies, had part-time jobs pulling sleds — at least once a year during the annual cross-country marathon. Much as he admired these huskies, however, Douglas couldn’t bring himself to part with the German Shepherd tradition, and Tamara had no choice, it seemed, but to go along. In fact, Douglas wouldn’t have tied the knot if she herself had not been partial to constant canine companionship, or if she hadn’t also been a lover of the Bible (especially the Gospels). And so their family of two quickly increased to four with the arrival of John IX and John X. A few years later, however, another move brought them back down south — an event accompanied by the arrival of their first human offspring: a delightful little girl they called Norma (after Douglas’ father Norman) and, of course, two more German Shepherds — named, of course, John XI and John XII. The second summer after that brought a second birth: this time a baby boy whom they christened Glen (after Tamara’s mother Glenna).

And for many years after that the family simply stayed put with no further moves. So long in fact, that Norma and Glen were both in university when John XI’s earthly days came to an end. John XII, heartbroken at the loss of his life-long companion, soon followed. Douglas and Tamara were approaching retirement age. But somehow, their lives didn’t seem complete without a couple of German Shepherds nuzzling up to their faces every morning as they lay in bed. And so not many weeks passed before they decided it was time to find themselves a John XIII and John XIV. Their latest companions stayed with them well into their senior years. Even in their seventies, Douglas and  www.dialogue.ca

Tamara still found it no chore to take their Shepherds for their daily walks (most often twice a day). They found it no chore even with the strict ‘stoop-and-scoop’ rules that were now the law for all city dog-owners. But that was simply part of being a good neighbour in a civilised society. And these Shepherds enjoyed the daily Bible-readings, too (especially the Gospels), just as had all their predecessors.

Douglas and Tamara were many years past retirement and Norma and Glen had both married and were raising families of their own when John XIII passed on. The shock was too much, however, for John XIV. He became distraught and refused to eat. The next thing they knew, he was nowhere to be found in the house. The neighbours organised a search of the local streets and even the nearby woods, but to no avail. Several days went by.

Then one night Douglas had a dream. He dreamt that he

From John Shadbolt:

could hear John XIV calling out to him, even calling him by name — in a German accent (because he was, after all, a German Shepherd, which made perfect sense in the dream), so that his name sounded more like “Dog-lass”.

And he heard, in the dream, John XIV calling out to him, paraphrasing one of the family’s beloved Gospels, with a little pawse between each word: “I…will…not…leave…you…Dog-less — I…will…come…to…you!” (1) And the dog came home the very next day.

So Douglas and Tamara and John XIV (as the last of his proud and noble line) lived happily ever after.

(1)

Compare: Gospel of John XIV: 18.

Ottawa, Canada, Jalan Woods 21 Nov. 2004, © John Woodsworth 

Laughter & ‘Lightenment

Hot and Cold Sex

After an examination, the doctor said to his patient: 'You appear to be in good health. Do you have any medical concerns you would like to ask me about?'

'In fact, I do.' said the old man. "After my wife and I have sex, I'm usually cold and chilly; and then, after I have sex with her the second time, I'm usually hot and sweaty."

When the doctor examined his wife a short time later he said, 'Everything appears to be fine. Are there any medical concerns that you would like to discuss with me?' The lady replied that she had none.

The doctor then said to her: 'Your husband mentioned an unusual problem. He claimed that he was usually cold and chilly after having sex with you the first time; and then hot and sweaty after the second time. Do you have any idea about why?'

"Oh, that crazy old coot'' she replied. "That's because the first time is usually in January, and the second time is in August." 

From David Foster:

Puns for Educated Minds

1. The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

1. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

2. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.

3. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

4. No matter how much you push an envelope, it'll still be stationery.

5. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

6. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

7. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.

8. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

9. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

10.Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

11.I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

12.A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

From Don Parker/Jean Layman: 13.The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small Acts 2:38 medium at large.

A woman had just returned to her home from an eve- 14.The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now ning of church services, when she was startled by an a seasoned veteran. intruder. She caught the man in the act of robbing her 15.A backward poet writes inverse. home of its valuables and yelled: 'Stop! Acts 2:38!'

16.In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your (Repent and be Baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ, Count that votes. so that your sins may be forgiven.)

17.If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you'd be in Seine.

The burglar stopped in his tracks. The woman calmly 18.A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carcalled the police and explained what she had done. rion allowed per passenger.'

As the officer cuffed the man to take him in, he asked 19.Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the burglar: 'Why did you just stand there? All the old the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you lady did was yell a scripture to you.' can't have your kayak and heat it too.

'Scripture?' replied the burglar 'She said she had an 20.

There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the axe and two 38s!' hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh.

Never underestimate the power of the Bible!  No pun in ten did.  “You don’t stop laughing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop laughing!!” www.dialogue2.ca

VOL. 26 NO. 5, MAR.-APR. 2013

dialogue 57

Contributors in Andersen, Erik, BC………..5,39 Arney, Jeremy, BC…….7,36-37 Backhaus, Karl, ON………. 09 Bowles, Paul, BC………….. 42 BrasscheckTV (links)…..….. 45 Brown, Ellen (extract, link)… 26 Caldicott, Arthur, BC………. 38 CBC (links)………………… 04 CDSAPI, BC…………...4,35,40 CHLY, 101.7 (Ad)………….. 52 Clark, Ken, ON…………….. 22 Climenhaga, David J., AB… 14 Colangelo, Paul (photos)……. 60 Davis, Wade (reprint, video) 23,60 Doehring, A-C, BC (Ad)…… 52 Energy All Around (Ad)….… 52 Ewart, Peter, BC…………… 39 Faulknor, Ed, ON…………. 04 Flowers & Zeese (extract, link) 28

dialogue, Vol. 26 No. 5

Foster, David, ON………..13,57 Gaudet, Marie, AB………… 48 Global Research, QC…..…. 15 Goertzen, Ed, ON…………. 17 Goldring, Peter (MP), AB…. 34 Grignon, Tsiporah, BC…….. 08 Hanle, Inge, BC……..…4,35,40 Hannah, Dorothy, QC……… 53 Harvey, Mike, BC...……7,43-44 Hellyer, Paul (et al)………… 05 Hutchinson Art Studio……… 52 Israel, Lou, ON………….…. 30 Kellington, Ken, AB………… 04 Layman, Jean (from)………. 57 Lonsdale, Derrick, US….….. 34 Masseau Tyler, Fran, QC…. 53 Matchett, Charles F., ON….. 49 Mathews, Robin, BC………. 16 McConnell, Kim, ON………. 21

McCullough, J., ON…...…… 12 McDowall, S., BC………….. 06 Morton, Alexandra, BC……. 36 Munro, Margaret (extract)…. 05 Neilly, Michael, ON…….…. 21 Nickerson, Mike, ON……… 10 Ostermann, Gunther, BC…. 10 Parker, Don, ON (from)…… 57 Personocratia, QC……..46-47 Petrik, Denny, BC………41-42 Porter, J.S., ON…………… 59 Real Food Channel (link)…. 59 Rivero, Michael (online)…… 24 Ross, Colin A., US (link)….. 45 Sauvé, Peter, QC………… 32 Semple, Ernest, QC………. 42 Shadbolt, John (from)…….7,57 Sheldrake, Rupert (link)….. 45 Slade, Ken, Lithuania…..50-52

“Thank you to everyone for making this another inspiring issue!”

Please Subscribe to dialogue!

Read, write, have your say… in Canada’s unique, national volunteerproduced magazine, written by its readers.

Synergy Magazine, BC(Ad) 52 Taylor, Jim, BC……………. 11 Tracy, James (extract, link)… 15 Vancourt, Randy, ON…….. 44 Vinden, Russ, BC…………. 28 Woods, Jalan, ON………… 54 Woodsworth, John, ON 49,57

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