Dialogue Vol.30, No.1 digital edition

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VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Mel Hurtig eulogy PHOTOS Salt Spring Island Money Baby Easton’s Birthday

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A word from the publisher and editor…

Dear Reader, This Autumn 2016 edition begins our 30th year of publication. We are so grateful for all the intrepid souls that dare to read and/or to put in print: thoughts, hopes, dreams and insights about our shared life, with all its challenges, on this beautiful planet. A special thank you to Susanne Lawson for sharing her evocative painting for the cover, about which she notes: "The animals got together to discuss the possibility of Maurice, Janet and Penny allowing the humans on Earth, some said that perhaps humans could help the animals, fishes, birds and other species but others like Raven thought better of it, saying that perhaps they would cause more harm than good. In the end, they decided to try it out as an experiment, hoping it wouldn't go horribly wrong." Hmmm…

To celebrate our 30th year and to give thanks for this moment in time – which also marks the halfway point in our trip through the alphabet! – we have chosen to make this a very special issue of Dialogue, with 28 extra pages of content, bringing the issue to 88 pages instead of the usual 60. So we hope your Autumn days will be conducive to reading! Thanks to a generous donation from David Foster – and maybe with a little help from others – we will be able to meet the extra cost for printing and mailing to subscribers. We hope you enjoy this special commemorative issue!

Janet has another reason for making this issue extra special, as she explains: “I have enjoyed a remarkable breakthrough in my winding path – thanks to many transformative experiences in the past year and a half, which seem to have lead to a deep inner peace and acceptance of myself as I am. So this issue is also in appreciation for the Gift I have received. Thank you for sharing your personal perspectives, creative insights, and proposed solutions – in poetry, art, and prose – both short and long – to help us all in our search for understanding of the mosaic of today’s world. And thank you for reading.”

We hope you will enjoy all of the contributions in this issue and will find many resonances and connecting ideas in the diversity of topics included.

In this issue, we remember Mel Hurtig, who, as Robin Mathews notes in his tribute (p.5), “gave of his most intense energies to shape an honourable, independent, and self-respecting nation Canadians could own and cherish.”

If you like reading Dialogue, please consider ordering Gift Subscriptions for friends or your local library, or a waiting room or a café? [Single copies of this special issue are $10.] And Thank You very much if you are able to help with a donation, so we can keep our subscription rate affordable for everyone but still meet expenses.

Thank you to everyone for contributing to this issue. We are most grateful for your support and your voices that give Dialogue life.

Janet

Maurice

volunteer publisher

volunteer editor

…& Penny & Lucky!

IMPORTANT: If you wish to continue receiving the magazine, please ensure your subscription is paid up! PLEASE LOOK AT YOUR ADDRESS LABEL ON THE BACK COVER of this issue to find your RENEWAL DATE. If your subscription is

due, you should find a renewal slip enclosed in this copy of Dialogue (See p.86). www.dialogue.ca

dialogue is... …an independent, Canadian volunteer-produced, not-for-profit quarterly, written and supported by its readers – empowering their voices and the sharing of ideas.

Now in its 30th year, dialogue provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and an antidote to political correctness.

We encourage readers to share with others the ideas and insights gleaned from these pages.

If this is your first issue, please let us know what you think of it.

If you would like to share your ideas and become a writer in

dialogue magazine Consider this your personal invitation to participate!

We also need your support as a subscriber, to help us continue (See P. 86 for details) We receive NO government funding and no advertising revenue.

We rely totally on the generous support of our readers & subscribers.

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was founded in 1987 and is now published quarterly.

Maurice J. King, Volunteer Publisher Janet K. Hicks, Volunteer Editor Date of Issue: Sept. 10, 2016

Annual subscription: $20.00 [including GST, # 89355-1739] Canada Post Agreement No. 40069647 Registration No. 08915 ISSN: 1184-7042 Legal Deposit: National Library of Canada (409731)

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From Near and Far

30 years of Dialogue…

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC

30 years of Dialogue, Wow! It has to demonstrate a kind of universal love I think.

Thank you for letting me be a part of it, for being open to the imaginative meanderings of my somewhat odd submissions. Also for accepting the expostulations of others and providing an arena for the sharing.

For being there as a forum for the artist and the erudite essay writer, for being dedicated in maintaining a public voice for others, and for the great and colourful covers, thank you.

Received from Paul: a beautiful piece of his calligraphy, “Love All Creation” – featuring the words of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (See P. 88, back cover) ♣

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CETA will undermine Canadian democracy: McQuaig Why is Justin Trudeau's government going along with the corporate-friendly protections pushed by his unpopular predecessor? asks Linda McQuaig.

The trade pact with Europe will hand foreign corporations a powerful lever for pressuring our governments to abandon environmental, health or financial regulations.

By Linda McQuaigColumnist, Sep 1, 2016.

Foreign investors, including some of the world’s wealthiest & most powerful corporations, typically generate little public sympathy and aren’t usually lumped in with groups deemed worthy of special protections.

So the Trudeau government, which is in the process of granting wealthy foreign investors extraordinary legal protections and access to public money, is probably hoping the public isn’t paying much attention.

The special privileges for investors are a key part of

CETA, the Canada-Europe trade deal, which Justin Trudeau is planning to sign in Brussels in October.

READ IN FULL AT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/ts-ceta-lm

Paul Hellyer in Vancouver: “With the announcement

that the prime minister plans to sign CETA in October, I have pulled out all of the stops to try and mobilize people across the country to write the prime minister and insist that he drop the whole idea. If he doesn’t, any plan like ours to resuscitate the economy will no longer be possible, and it won’t much matter whether the banks are rescued by bailing in or bailing out. We will be destined to another 10 years of austerity – or worse!”

Paul will be speaking in Vancouver on Nov. 1st.

For confirmation of the time and place, contact: Erik Andersen, twolabradors@shaw.ca Paul’s new book is: The Money Mafia, A World in Crisis ♣

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The Mystery of Life and Matter -- from ‘Magical Moon Lake’ Karl Backhaus, Holland Centre ON When we are looking at stones or when we touch them, no doubt they seem to be dead and without life, the way we know life. As a boy, I threw a lot of stones. Stones were all the toys I had. I was very partial to stones, but it never occurred to me that there was more to stones than the eyes can see. Through a number of peculiar personal experiences that I could not explain through logic, I began to search for some insights to have a better understanding of the world around me.

From a scientific point of view, all physical matter vibrates. Everything we can see or touch and even invisible things are made up of atoms. Atoms are made up of several parts with relative huge spaces between the central nucleus and the spinning electrons and protons.

Scientists calculated this spinning speed being so fantastic that in one millionth of a second, it (the number of spins) seven billion times (“Atom” by Knaur). This 4 dialogue

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great speed creates the illusion of a sold substance, which in fact is almost total empty space. A spinning propeller of an airplane can give us an idea of empty space looking solid: its blades seem to be everywhere at the same time, but when it stops spinning, we see the empty space. In other words, stones or any solid matter are only giving us the impression of being solid.

Scientists know that matter is not solid; it is a wonderful illusion. For instance: in Helium, two protons and two electrons are spinning; in Iron, 26 protons and 26 electrons are spinning; and in the heavier Gold, 79 pairs are spinning. Today we know all this, but can we deal with this kind of information when we live in a world that seems so solid?

The scientist Carl Sagan wrote in Cosmos: “Will we ever come to an end in our understanding of the nature of matter, or is there an infinite regression into more and more fundamental particles?” And further, he wrote, “There is much more to the world than we can see.” …/ www.dialogue.ca

(I will incorporate into the text some of the facts given in Cosmos.)

Temperature can play a trick on our perception, when our eyes can witness changes in matter. The same atoms of water, for instance, can create ice we can walk on, as a liquid we can drink or swim in, and then as

steam make the atoms seem to disappear altogether, only to reappear as clouds in the sky.

Karl Backhaus Reprinted with permission from Magical Moon Lake by Karl Backhaus (2006), Moon Lake Publishing RR 2B, Holland Centre ON N0H 1R0; Tel. 519-794-3140 Email: moonlakepublish@netscape.net ♣

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Tribute to a True Canadian Hero Mel Hurtig. 1932-2016

By Robin Mathews, Vancouver On Wednesday, August 3, 2016, Mel Hurtig shook off the chains of his mortality to find the place of peace that passeth understanding, and – as Shakespeare has it – ‘from whose bourn no traveller returns.’

On Wednesday, August 3, 2016, Canada lost one of its finest citizens. At once truculent, determined, irascible, warm, colourful, imaginative … and more, Mel Hurtig gave of his most intense energies to shape an honourable, independent, and self-respecting nation Canadians could own and cherish. In that work he was indefatigable.

For much of his adult life, Mel Hurtig wrote books to inform Canadians of their loss of sovereignty and to urge them to action. His last book, written for the October 2015 federal election, was a rich compendium of reasons Canadians should remove the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper … and Mel believed the book was, possibly, his most important one. Inasmuch as it helped Canadians to take the action that changed government, it may well be his most important book.

Mel Hurtig was a self-made man. Raised in Edmonton, Alberta, he is said to have gone for a year to university, deciding that was not the route for him to take. He created a bookstore in Edmonton that became famous.

Then he became a publisher and Hurtig Publishers had an impressive and significant life. He is remembered for creating the excellent Canadian Encyclopedia – enormously important in the years before the internet and its “research engines,” and still an on-going, important, research source.

The story is told that he gave speeches in schools, and would visit the school library each time… shocked and disappointed at the absence of research materials on Canada. Not only did he set about producing an www.dialogue.ca

Encyclopedia of the highest standard, but he also is said to have talked the Alberta government into supplying a copy for every school with a library in Canada!

A determined patriot, Mel Hurtig was early an important member of the Committee for an Independent Canada (1970). He was an admirer and friend of Walter Gordon who was the most important politician of the 1960s and 1970s working for the repatriation of Canadian economic sovereignty. The Committee disbanded in 1981, declaring (incorrectly) that its ends were mostly achieved. Perhaps that was because the (returned) Trudeau Liberal government appeared determined to effect greater Canadian economic sovereignty.

Instead, the Trudeau Liberal government faded away, to be replaced by the intensely pro-U.S. Conservative government of “lyin Brian” Mulroney, pushing for closer ties and “deep integration” with the U.S.A. The result was the founding in 1985 of the Council of Canadians – very largely the work of Mel Hurtig and Walter Gordon.

Many are the claims of those who declare themselves “founders” of the COC!! But the man who secured the Four Seasons Hotel accommodation for the founding meeting, who invited (or had the word spread to) all who came to that meeting in Toronto, and then who led the Council as Chair for the first years … was Mel Hurtig. Indeed, when (a year or so ago) a fantasy list of “founders” was published by COC, I was alarmed. Mel Hurtig’s name was not even listed!! In a telephone conversation with me, he remembered that a few months after the founding meeting (which she attended) he met Maud Barlow in Ottawa … and urged her to become involved with the Council….

But prickly as he was … Mel Hurtig would not speak publicly about the founding of the COC, refusing to discuss the subject. If there were founders of the Council of Canadians, they were two: Mel Hurtig and Walter Gordon. When I entered the meeting room in the Toronto Four Seasons Hotel, I recognized the dozens of people present as those who had a history of fighting for Canadian independence; it was almost a family …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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reunion and – at least as ‘older brothers’ - Mel Hurtig and Walter Gordon knew all the family members.

A few days later I met Mel Hurtig and he told me that when the meeting finished, he returned to his hotel room to find it had been ransacked and left so he would know it had been ransacked. The Mulroney RCMP, Mel surmised, leaving a calling card. Readers will remember that as prime minister Brian Mulroney was driven in a bullet-proof car – which, upon becoming prime minister, Jean Chrétien laughed at … and removed.

Mel Hurtig received well-deserved honours during his lifetime of tireless work. He will be sorely missed… and sorely needed in the coming years. If he could have a wish fulfilled involving his public life, it might well be that others, young Canadians, will materialize, will take up the task of gaining Canadian independence, and will fight on for it until it is won.

Rest in Peace. Mel Hurtig, 24 June 1932 – 3 Aug 2016 – Robin Mathews ♣

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TheTyee’s Farewell to Mel Hurtig, Canada’s Best Friend He stood on guard for the nation’s highest ideals and potential.

By David Beers, Vancouver, 5 Aug 2016, founding editor of The Tyee, at theTyee.ca DIRECT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/tyee-0816 [EXTRACT/LINK] Mel

Hurtig’s defence of Canada’s sovereignty, cultural and economic, was smilingly relentless.

On Wednesday Canada lost a mighty herald of the nation’s better angels. Mel Hurtig was a huge fan of Canada, a nationalist in the best sense. That is what made him such an incisive critic of leaders who sold short Canada’s potential – the potential to be a land of opportunity for all, and a beacon of tolerance and fairmindedness to the rest of the world.

Hurtig could make such a dream seem practical because, in various ways, he lived it. Born of Jewish immigrants, he became a highly successful bookseller, publisher and author, and even sought to lead the country as head of a short-lived experiment aptly named The National Party.

Here are some gifts Mel Hurtig gave Canada: At the high-rolling expense of millions of dollars, coordinating 2,500 creative contributors, he published The Canadian Encyclopedia in 1985. This was be-

fore the internet and so weaving a three-volume, information-rich narrative of Canada might be seen as the ultimate gesture of defiance against the U.S. cultural juggernaut. The Canadian Encyclopedia, lives on, by the way, on the internet.

Mel Hurtig helped found the Council of Canadians, a non-profit group dedicated to fighting for social and environmental justice. As national chairperson Maude Barlow said yesterday on the COC website: “Mel Hurtig loved this country more than anyone I ever met.”

Mel Hurtig wrote eight books. Among the titles: The Betrayal of Canada (in which he lambastes the NAFTA trade treaty with the U.S., 1991); At Twilight in the Country: Memoirs of a Canadian Nationalist (Autobiographical; 1996); Pay the Rent or Feed the Kids (poverty in Canada, 2000); The Vanishing Country (on foreign ownership eroding Canada’s self-sufficiency, 2002); Rushing to Armageddon (on the perils posed by the U.S. missile defence system and Canada’s participation, 2004); The Truth about Canada (on how Canada measures up in social and economic indicators against other OECD nations, 2008). […]

Read in full at http://theTyee.ca LINK: http://tinyurl.com/tyee-0816 ♣

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Beautiful Money — Salt Spring Island’s Community Currency VIDEO from Peak Moment Television:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUEcY1ucdXE An island (near Vancouver Island), BC has designed

its own form of currency. Salt Spring Island’s paper dollars and coins look and feel beautiful. For the Island’s tourists, they’re genuine souvenirs….they’re widely accepted by local businesses and banks, and easily redeemed. They’re purchased using national (Canadian) dollars and are spent at many businesses, including grocery and hardware stores. Michael shows 6 dialogue

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Image on P.2 us the intricately-designed multi-color bills featuring local artists’ work on the back, and historical figures and wise quotations on the front. He explains different models of local currency, as well as Bitcoin, an emerging revolutionary decentralized, non-politicized approach to money available via the internet. […]

[SEE IMAGE ON P.2] WEBSITE: http://saltspringdollars.com/ ♣

www.dialogue.ca

Plant a seed and watch it grow: Incubating farmers

By Lois Ross, Ottawa, at http://rabble.ca August 16, 2016: There's a lot wrong with the industrialized model of agriculture. Most days, not much of what is happening to family farmers is good news, unfortunately. But, sometimes, away from the "bigger is better" mentality, there are glimmers of a better future.

A few weeks ago, I attended a meeting at a branch of the Ottawa Public Library. The meeting was organized by a small non-profit called Just Food, whose mission is to "work towards vibrant, just and sustainable food and farming systems in the Ottawa region." The content and conversation made me smile. I ended the evening feeling rejuvenated, my sense of hope in how best to build community renewed. The small gathering was made up of pretty much every demographic -- two young woman, a middle-aged father and his teenage son, a person

working with new Canadians, and a few soon-to-be seniors wondering about a second career. On that Tuesday evening, I learned a lot about "incubator farms" and Just Food's work to encourage burgeoning farmers to follow their passion.

Alternatives to the corporate model After so many years of watching and writing about people leaving the land, sometimes in sorrow and frustration, other times in bankruptcy... And after so many years of watching rural young people run away from the farm, knowing that the deck is stacked against family farmers... organizations like Just Food are providing practical alternatives to the corporate model of farming. […] Continue reading at rabble.ca: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/R-ross-aug16 ♣

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Tools for Great Lakes Commoning work on our website, www.GreatLakesCommons.org "Activating the power of social cooperaDIRECT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/GLC-tools ♣ tion to get things done” ************************************************************** [EXTRACT/LINK] We are working to develop several Understanding the TPP 'tools' for pushing the Great Lakes Commons movement forward. Our hope is that these 'tools' will enable local communities to engage in the issues that matter to them through a ‘commoning’ lens. In keeping with our philosophy, we are looking to our commons community (YOU) to participate in the development of these 'tools.' You can find more details about this

CCPA - www.policyalternatives.ca “Foreign investor protections in the Trans-Pacific Partnership” – Report by Gus Van Harten, professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University: available online from the CCPA - Cdn Ctr for Policy Alternatives. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/ccpa-gvh-tpp-isds ♣ [MORE ON THE ISDS, P.40]

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The Secret of Canada’s Debt Don Harrison, Ladysmith BC, Aug 10, 2016 The story of COMER and Rocco Gilati suing the Bank of Canada intending to force the Bank of Canada to return to the reason it was established in 1934 has been a carefully controlled secret by the Canadian government in Ottawa. Rocco Gilati is a well-known constitutional lawyer and on the basis that our Bank of Canada is firmly part of the Canadian constitution he and COMER sued the Bank of Canada to force it to return to the original intended purpose our fore fathers established it for. When our forefathers established the Bank of Canada they gave it the legal right to print Canadian legal tender {money} to be loaned back to the various levels of Canadian governments at no or very low interest. The St Lawrence Seaway as well as the Trans-Canada highway were built using this method of financing. The result was Canada moved ahead with major infrastructure but little in the way of www.dialogue.ca

debt. Be aware that this bank belongs to the people of Canada and is therefore a section of the ministry of finance of the federal government.

This arrangement was successful up until 1974 when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was convinced by the huge foreign banks that he should join the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND for government financing.

Since that time the Canadian debt has been spiralling upwards and out of control.

COMER along with Rocco Gilati sued the Bank of Canada to force it to return to its intended purpose and won the case in the Supreme Court of Canada. The Canadian government of the time appealed the case and lost again. This whole situation has received meagre attention from our Canadian media and it has been suggested that the government has told the media not to report the case. It is presently sitting waiting for response from the government and the debt continues …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Don Harrison, Secret of Canada’s Debt, contd.

to climb. At present every Canadian citizen has a share in the national debt of more than $17000.00 which obviously saddles every couple with $34000.00. This should be a worrisome fact to every citizen in Canada because the interest being drawn out of treasury amounts to 6 million dollars daily.

When one does some research on world finance it becomes very clear where the financial power has been established. It is the ROTHSCHILD BANKING FAMILY that pretty well controls all of the world’s finance in every country including our Bank of Canada. If you ask any regular American citizen who owns and controls the American Federal Reserve Bank, most likely they will say the government of the United States of America and that would be a wrong answer. The American Federal Reserve Bank is a private bank controlled by Rothschild, Rockefeller and Morgan. This is a huge story in

this world and I would submit is not understood by the majority of the regular working middle class. It has recently been reported that the government of Hungary has evicted ROTHSCHILD’s influence from Hungary, and as well Switzerland has put heavy controls on the huge banks in that country. I have written E-mail messages to our finance minister about our Canadian debt as well as the Bank of Canada, but I doubt that he ever reads them. I get answers from one of the minions with pages of bafflegab. The citizens of Canada have to be aware of this problem or we will be facing the same problems Greece has been wrestling with. At least that is how I see Canada’s "MONEY" problems. ♣ *****************************************************

Rothschild Documentary – on YouTube Video tracing the history and influence of the Rothschild Dynasty (in 6 parts, 7-10 min ea.): LINK: http://tinyurl.com/YT-roth-dyn ♣

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Big Bank gouging and postal banking From Gerry Masuda, Duncan BC gerry.masuda@gmail.com

Re: ‘Canada’s Big Banks are richer than you think, and they are raising your fees.’

This is the first time I have heard of any movement to set up a postal banking system in Canada. This makes great sense for those areas not conveniently served by banks/ credit unions. Setting up a postal banking system would have significant costs but the benefits of providing competition to the private banks would have financial benefits to offset the initial and continuing costs. – Gerry LINK: www.deliveringcommunitypower.ca/banking

"The Leap Manifesto team supports the campaign for postal banking for its potential to address economic inequality and climate change in Canada. Affordable banking, investment in local clean energy projects, and better services for rural communities and First Nations…"

- Naomi, Avi, Bianca and the Leap Manifesto team [EXTRACT/LINK] The big banks have announced that they will hike their fees by over 30%. [1] We’ve just accessed their quarterly earnings reports, and guess what? The Big Banks are richer than you think -they’ve also recorded a giant surplus of almost 10 billion just this quarter alone. [2] Enough is enough! Please speak out against Big Bank price-gouging in this crucial moment. […]

LINK: www.deliveringcommunitypower.ca/banking

If the out-of-control price-gouging wasn’t bad enough, Big Banks lobbyists are also trying to block you from 8 dialogue

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using a new, more affordable option: postal banking. [3] […] Read in full at LINK:

www.deliveringcommunitypower.ca/banking Footnotes: 1. Source: http://tinyurl.com/FP-take-it 2. Source: http://tinyurl.com/TS-banks-9b 3. Source: http://tinyurl.com/cupw-postal-banking 4. Please see: http://tinyurl.com/postalbanking-ca ♣

Innovate and expand at Canada Post Larry Kazdan, Vancouver BC Canada Post’s strategy is to shift costs onto others. Post office Management wants municipalities to pay for the additional administration of super-boxes, the extra street lighting and sidewalks required, and any damages to cables, sprinkler systems, and trees. They want citizens to pay through privacy loss, inconvenience, theft through vandalism, and potential accidents on slippery streets.

And they want employees to pay through imposition of inferior pension benefits, and by loss of jobs.

Many European countries have successful postal banks that provide substantial profits. Postal banking would give our well-paid Canada Post managers an opportunity to innovate and expand rather than downsize and destroy.

– Larry Kazdan, lkazdan@gmail.com

PostalBanking.ca – A Bank for Everyone Canada needs a postal bank. Thousands of rural towns and villages, and some Indigenous communities, don't have a bank – but many of them have a post office that could provide financial services. As well, nearly two million Canadians desperately need an alternative to …/ www.dialogue.ca

payday lenders. A postal bank could be that alternative.

Many postal systems around the world operate banks that provide inclusive access to banking, fund economic development and help increase revenue to preserve both our public postal service and jobs.

We had a postal bank in Canada up until 1968. It's time to bring it back… explore postal banking through a series of videos, blogs and graphics that explain what it is, why we need it and how it could work for Canadians […]

MORE AT LINK: www.postalbanking.ca ♣

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Robin Mathews Uncut

Justin Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau…

Canada and Imperial Globalization. Part Six.

By Robin Mathews, Vancouver Reading Justin Trudeau’s Election-time book, Common Ground (2015) is not a richly rewarding experience. In the face of the Stephen Harper/Conservative Party incipient fascism, however, Justin Trudeau’s insistence upon democratic consultation and multi-racial equality in the book is important. But his depiction of Pierre Trudeau seems … simply unreal.

Did father and son never discuss politics, political philosophy, public service, Pierre Trudeau’s record?

Was it all about keeping physically fit and learning to paddle a canoe? Doubtless Justin Trudeau’s writing hand was guided by Election Strategy and Party Advisors. But … still ….

I thought back. Pierre Trudeau became prime minister in 1968. Justin was born in 1971. He was not sixteen years old until his father had been out of active politics for a few years. Those of us who were politically active nationally at the time of Pierre Trudeau’s arrival as prime minister know much more about the political Pierre Trudeau than Justin ever can, no matter how many of Canada’s bad historians he reads, no matter how many close colleagues of his father Justin consults.

Those ones will be sure to clean their recollections for the sake of their own reputations.

Pierre Trudeau began his Liberal career as an internationalist – only one of the reasons he was determined to abort the ‘monster’ of Quebec independence. (That subject should be a column, and a book of its own.)

In 1969 he appeared at Carleton University in Ottawa to engage with students. At that time Canadians were on a downward curve to becoming a minority holding university teaching positions in Canada. A ‘Canadianization’ movement had begun and was gaining strength across the country – to provide justice for bright young Canadians, to assure them majority place in the operation of Canada’s universities, colleges, art galleries, museums, etc.

A student asked Pierre Trudeau what he thought of the work being done on the matter. The student newspaper www.dialogue.ca

reported Trudeau replied that he didn’t care who taught in Canadian universities!

At about the same time word was abroad in porous Ottawa that Trudeau had said he didn’t care who owned Canada as long as they paid the taxes required to finance government of the country. No source for that statement can be named. But the man most effectively and determinedly working to repatriate ownership of the Canadian economy was Walter Gordon – and his relation to Trudeau tells much.

He began work on Canadian independence in the 1950s, became Lester Pearson’s minister of finance, and in a famous 1963 budget created a “takeover tax” and policy to begin regaining Canadian control of the economy.

The Stock Markets went berserk; Erik Kierans, head of the Montreal Stock Exchange, flew to Ottawa. Lester Pearson crumpled and “accepted” Gordon’s resignation.

But not before Pearson agreed the government would set up a Task Force to examine foreign ownership. It was created in 1967.

In his memoirs Gordon reports that Pierre Trudeau (campaigning to become Party Leader) seemed to convey sympathy for the work of the Task Force. When Trudeau became prime minister, however, Gordon (in his gracious way) suggests he was double-crossed by Trudeau.

The Report of the Task Force on Foreign Ownership and the Structure of Canadian Investment, called “the Watkins Report” was published in 1968. Pierre Trudeau was not sympathetic to it. That was so clear that following the creation of the Waffle Movement (“independence and socialism”) in the NDP (1969), Walter Gordon and others, less Left than Wafflers, created (1970) …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Robin Mathews, Justin Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau, contd.

The Committee for an Independent Canada. They did so, in fact, to push (as the Waffle was pushing) against Trudeau ‘internationalism’ and growing foreign ownership of the Canadian economy. (They were largely Liberals trying to force Liberal Trudeau to pay attention to foreign takeover.)

Then – public interest being high – two more Reports on foreign ownership (from government ranks) appeared.

The first was The Wahn Report (1970) gaining modest attention. In 1972 the (Herb) Gray Report caused much more discussion and did not please Trudeau (since the issue was insistently present).

Despite a large Committee For An Independent Canada petition and a gathering of members in the Chateau Laurier, followed by an 8 or 9 person delegation meeting with Trudeau, he refused to release the Gray Report to the public, saying (the delegates reported back to us) that to do so would upset the Markets.

Subsequently, the Report was leaked to the (Toronto) Canadian Forum which printed large parts of it. Only then did Trudeau release the Gray Report.

That was the ambiance of the Trudeau prime ministership for some years. For the 1970 Manitoba Centennial Celebration at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Trudeau arrived with Barbara Streisand (U.S. Movie Star) on his arm (probably the first time Ms. Streisand learned that a place called ‘Manitoba’ exists).

I wrote a letter about the inappropriateness of Trudeau’s companion, published in the Ottawa newspaper. As if to heighten the symbolism of ‘imperial globalization’, it was answered by a particularly bombastic U.S. citizen, a professor in Ottawa, to “correct” my idea of appropriate Canadian protocol … to which I replied. To cap the symbolism, our letters were featured in the Canadian edition of Time magazine. (Not in any Canadian publication.) A few years later, Trudeau didn’t like some of my lampooning (about his failure to resist takeover)… and said so. The editor to whom he made his remarks (in porous Ottawa) relayed them to me shortly after their utterance.

It was in that “internationalist” (?) milieu that the Bank of Canada (1974) gave up powers to the Bank of International Settlements and ceased providing interest-free loans to Canadian governments for Infrastructure and related undertakings.

The sale in 1970 to U.S. McGraw Hill of Ryerson Press, Canada’s oldest text book publisher, and publisher in the twentieth century of major Canadian 10 dialogue

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writers, brought people into the streets.

On one cold winter morning, demonstrating at a major Ottawa United Church (Ryerson Press was owned by the United Church), the demonstrators were surprised to see the arrival of Governor General Roland Michener for the religious service.

He had to wait outside for his welcomers to appear, and so I asked him if he had come to join the protest against the hateful sale of Ryerson Press. He replied that he had come to worship at the Church where his parents worshipped before him.

The committee of the Church, arranging tea and biscuits for the worshippers after the service, were (strongly) not antagonistic to the demonstrators and invited all in after the service … for warmth and refreshments.

When the matter of the sale of Ryerson Press was brought up in the House of Commons and the government was urged to keep Ryerson Press Canadian (at really very little cost), Pierre Trudeau, like Atlas, shrugged, and he refused even to consider the idea.

His conversion to Canada came late … and slowly. The 1975 creation of Petro Canada as part of the National Energy Program was a response to world conditions, a desire to increase revenues for Ottawa, and (finally!) the intention to have a major Canadian presence in the Canadian Oil Patch!

Pierre Trudeau’s attitude to Canada didn’t fully change until he had been in office almost ten years. (People forget that.) His attitude is especially strange since a strong push from Canadians existed all through the late 1960s and the 1970s for ‘Canadian Independence’ and a Canadian Industrial Strategy. The Canadian population was willing to try new and controversial measures. In fact, the Conventional Press and Media have created non-history concerning the National Energy Program. It was hated by international capital, of course (and so the Right press says ‘Westerners’ hated it). But a poll of Canadians at the time revealed 80% of Canadians supported the NEP – and 80% of Albertans did, too!

When Pierre Trudeau returned to the prime ministership (after the brief Joe Clark, Progressive Conservative interlude) in 1980, a move was talked of again … seriously … to create an Industrial Strategy for Canada.

“There was” … the Canadian Encyclopedia reports “another attempt to formulate an industrial strategy, inspired by the government’s National Energy Program. This attempt also failed, partly because of growing American objections….” (Vol. 2, 1988, p. 1063) …/ www.dialogue.ca

What the Encyclopedia doesn’t report is that U.S. pressure to keep Canada a Resource Colony was intense.

And threats almost certainly were made and kept secret.

For Alan MacEachen, minister of finance and deputy prime minister, flew to Washington to apologize and record Canada’s submission to U.S. will. And almost at the same time Jean Chretien, minister of energy, mines, and resources, flew to New York to give a speech to assembled U.S. power merchants – the theme of his speech being ‘Canada is Open For Business’.

Until he left politics, Pierre Trudeau oversaw the growing dissolution of Canadian Independence. Through many of Justin Trudeau’s growing years his father was

an internationalist with contempt for independence seekers and for movements to unite Canadians around the idea of a Canadian-owned economy and culture.

We may not be surprised, then, that in his book, Common Ground, Justin concentrates on the domestic father urging his son to keep in good shape and learn to paddle a canoe through the wilderness of untamed nature – away from the wilderness of untamed political sell-out, betrayal, and colonial administration.

Robin Mathews, Vancouver ♣ [rmathews@telus.net] See other articles by Robin online at: www.dialogue2.ca/columnist-robin-mathews-uncut.html

♣

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My Love Affair with Justin Trudeau et al is over

By Betty Krawczyk, BC RE: “Trudeau is ‘pleased’ Canada will send troops to Latvia as part of a NATO force to threaten aggression against Russia.” LINK at msm.com: http://tinyurl.com/msn-vid-jt-lat

Okay, so my love affair with Justin Trudeau et al. is over. I voted for him but I wouldn’t do it again, even though he has already fulfilled some of the election promises he made.

Why? I turned away from the NDP in the last election because of their “balanced budget” that seemed more of the “same ole.” I did worry about Trudeau’s youth and inexperience in international matters, but I felt comforted that he had Jean Chrétien to advise him. Remember Jean Chrétien? When Prime Minster, how he was under enormous pressure from the Bush administration to join the US and Britain to help invade Iraq? And how he refused and kept us out of the horrible, disgusting illegal mess of invading Iraq?

Well, I don’t know where Chrétien was when Justin just caved to US pressure and decided to imitate the role UK’s Tony Blair played in the murderous invasions and bombings of Iraq. Trudeau has become the new lap-dog

on the block by sending Canadian troops and military equipment to Latvia. Blair will forever be remembered as the lap dog of the US. And I think Trudeau seems to be taking on this role, although a damming report has just been released in the UK on Blair’s role in the deaths of so many people in Iraq. Yes, our lovely young handsome prime minister has caved to Obama’s pressure and agreed to send troops and military equipment to Latvia.

Does Trudeau know that Latvia is smack on Russian’s borders? And that he has just dedicated Canadians to join in a war mongering that could very well bring on World War Three? This, at a time when countries like France, Italy and Greece are reducing their own NATO spending? They see the senselessness of threatening Russia which has few military bases outside its own country (in previous Soviet Union countries) while Republican Ron Paul in the US presidential debate (2011) said that the US military was in 130 countries and has 900 bases around the world.

How did Justin Trudeau come to the decision to send Canadian troops to Latvia? Has he fallen in love with his own Hollywood image? Does he want to help play John Wayne with nuclear weapons?

My God, I am disappointed in him. […]

LINK: http://www.radicalpress.com/?p=9682 ♣

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Petition: Help Canada Legislate Removal of Salmon Farms from our Oceans!

Alexandra Morton, Sointula, Canada, Aug 30, 2016

Over 112,000 people have signed the petition to the provincial government of BC. Now another push is needed.

Canada will be voting on a federal bill to remove salmon farms from the ocean, we need to speak louder than the Norwegian/Japanese salmon farmers. This is not easy because somehow the salmon farming industry has captured the loyalty of the Canadian government. www.dialogue.ca

Please considering signing this government-sponsored petition in support of bill C-228 to amend the Fisheries Act and require all fish farms be put in closed facilities. https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-463

This is a historic bill that could restore wild salmon and herring to the west coast of Canada. Thank you, Alexandra Morton, www.AlexandraMorton.ca ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Welcome to new writer, Jim Erkiletian of Nanaimo…

The saddest thing about the fish-farm fiasco Jim Erkiletian, Nanaimo BC The saddest thing about the fish-farm fiasco is that the Norwegian corporations deliberately placed their farms where they knew they would do the most damage to our wild salmon stocks. Especially the Broughton Archipelago where most of the salmon from the Salish Sea migrate. Their operations in Norway and Scotland had already destroyed wild stocks in over sixty rivers when they came to BC, with the blessing of NDP and Liberal governments.

Only the Greens spoke against importing a business that is in direct conflict with our fishing industry and the importance of protecting wild salmon stocks. But we should give the foreign fish farmers their walking papers. They’ve done more than enough damage.

There are few places in BC where fish farms can exist without impacting wild stocks. First Nations fishers know where they are, and should be allowed to operate on their traditional territories.

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REFLECTIONS, ON A SUNNY DAY Brexit, Sovereignty… and the Great Mystery Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC scribepoet@hotmail.com From my cane armchair on the deck I cautiously seek the peace of retirement, half-expectant of explosive mechanistic interruption at any time, the world around us does impinge. Up above, fluffy white mares tails pattern the blue sky, a pigeon, with a hooting call like a dull flute, keeps a steady motif of ‘Hu hoo hu’ – and a chirping thrush intersperses with her more complex melody. A hummingbird stopped in mid-air and looked at me before jetting away. Life was now full of meaning; man and nature have at least touched base. Where now, could the soul take me? – before someone starts their lawn mower and manages to expel my flirtations with the Great Mystery.

But who am I that suffers thus while safe here in Canada. My old country, England, has just elected to create for itself a cauldron to boil in. Brexit, an intriguing mess for those whose job it is to extricate themselves from a short circuited nervous system. Brexit, so called, has cost the P.M. his job; and the subsequent fall out in the political and economic world will be news for years to come. England will be hanging onto its shirt, and now Scotland has new impetus for independence from ‘Blighty’ by wanting to remain in the European Union.

So the ‘leave’ voters, even though seemingly to have voted emotionally and only now after the fact, intellectually pondering the consequences, could well have made a statement against the fetters of corporatism and control of affairs, from afar, for which they, the English would rather have the reins. The only thing is that they are the ‘People’ and not the politicians.

Do the ‘People’ know how to effect any reorganisation of their destiny? I am sure the ‘People’ would not have 12 dialogue

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chosen for the Pound to be devalued, and the ramifications of that has echoes even in Canada, since I receive an English pension.

But quite apart from the chaos of Britain leaving the E.U., in the long run perhaps English independence would rally a phoenix that could rise to set its citizens new standards of living and pride. Sovereignty has been lost since harmonisation with an ever-expanding Europe that took over control of Britain’s environment, health and safety, fishing, farming and trade policy. Britain has been held hostage by directives from Brussels. It was Winston Churchill who said Britain shall be with the E.U. but not of it; but slowly, Britain’s democratic rights were voted away by unelected bureaucrats of Europe.

English justice, or Napoleonic Law? Another aspect of discontent to consider is the fraud in the E.U. As Dominic Raab, England’s justice minister, pointed out, there has been a huge increase in the amount of E.U. money linked to fraud. The European Fraud Office identified 901,000,000 Euros. Maybe the ‘leave’ side knew something, or even if they didn’t, research after the fact may well seal their conviction that ‘out’ is better, in spite of the consequences, in order to regain faith in themselves once more to hammer out a better future.

But this is reflections on a sunny day, not a monologue on how the world decimates itself piece by piece. What then, can resurrect our faith in life itself, beyond the flailing desperation of humanity to control their fate?

A character like Socrates is needed in times like these, to consult and get to the bottom of it. When faced with his own fate he looks to a higher power.

“We have to invite the soul to be present to the body,” Socrates said, “We have to try to attract its attention …/ www.dialogue.ca

otherwise it may not be disposed to share its essence.

The philosopher who partakes of the soul’s presence and so makes his skills alive can be anywhere, so here we are today.” So says Socrates just prior to his death, thereafter expecting to blend with the source of his inspiration on a more ethereal plane than the realm of flesh and blood that he will leave.

Socrates alludes to this essence that is part of life and yet also beyond it. How it might be conjured by the mere mortal is possibly by the appreciation of nature, to step inside the wonder and make this mystery greater than the mayhem of our paradise lost.

The hummingbird alone, arresting our attention, might be a catalyst. All species have their role in the thriving of

the world’s life. Birds with their exquisite adornment and song, even microscopic bacteria… I believe we are full of it; the monsters of the deep, great elephants and rampant beasts of wild beauty, whirling galaxies of cosmic fire, expelling rays of power beyond our knowing. From the pulsing luminosity The Great Mystery, life, in multiple forms appears.

Redemption from toil and suffering is in the presence of the soul, in the mind and heart of mankind.

It might not seem to be an answer to complex problems, but from such an attunement a wellspring of answers might emerge. This could mean just sitting on the deck, trying for the peace which might be possible.

– Paul Bowles ♣

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The Sceptical Scholar

A Different (and More Scary) LSD Exploring the implications of the inequalities of late stage democracy Wilfred Cude, Cape Breton NS

It’s an acronym becoming more frequent in contemporary political discourse: LSD, meaning “late stage democracy” – and what that acronym implies is really quite disconcerting.

The modifier “late stage” in medicine usually indicates an advanced state of complication in disease, almost always moving towards termination, as for example “late stage malignancy.” Not at all pretty in medicine, and every bit as frightening in the context of what is happening among major western democratic nations today.

The symptoms are everywhere the same, throughout all our supposedly sophisticated systems of self-governance: A radical shift in income inequality, markedly favouring the wealthy; an unprecedented escalation in unemployment, predominantly affecting those lacking contemporary marketable skills; a faltering public education program, misdirecting resources at every level from preschool to university; an inadequate supply of decent affordable housing, compounded by restrictive regulation and insufficient appropriate investment; an expensive, inefficient, often inaccessible and sometimes counterproductive health care edifice, neglecting nutrition and other preventative measures while promoting pricey and limited forms of surgical intervention and drug therapy; a decline in essential public infrastructure, such as water conservation facilities, sewage treatment plants and fundamental transportation networks, all deteriorating while more grandiose and impractical schemes (huge dams or www.dialogue.ca

massive water-diversion canals) are given priority; an ever-intensifying concentration of media, newspapers, television, radio and internet, into an ever-dwindling circle of controlling interests. It all has coalesced to yield societies composed of diverse and often antipathetic elements: the privileged and comfortable separate from and oblivious to the underprivileged, uncomfortable and subsequently angry people who are their fellow citizens.

These are societies, our own societies, that are in real peril of self-damage or even conceivably self-destruction.

Perhaps most dismaying is the devastation all this has introduced into what many of us assumed was our common fabric of thought. Over the decades since the second world war, there has been among increasing numbers of the general public an accelerating contempt for rational discourse, an antipathy towards the use of logic in construing the significance of observable and verifiable fact. “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States,” chemist and author Isaac Asimov maintained in a 21 January, 1980 article for Newsweek, “nurtured by the false notion that democracy means ‘my ignorance is as good as your knowledge.’”

In truth, that cult of ignorance always had adherents in most of our western democratic societies, but it has only recently manifested itself with intimidating force and fervour across many of our cultures, introducing perverse and threatening consequences. Only a few instances will illustrate the problem: the strident rejection of the Darwinian theory of evolution, so central to an understanding of scientific progress in many fields; …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Wilf Cude, ‘Late Stage Democracy,’ contd.

much of print journalism has deteriorated, reaching for survival into inflammatory tabloid reporting, motivated the refusal to accept the concept of climate change due to human activity, despite the clear evidence of burgeon- far more by profit than a reasoned presentation of public concerns. As first the book, then the news magazine, ing worldwide tragedies such as crop failures, wildfires, and finally the family newspaper slowly vanished from floods and widespread species extinctions; and the many homes, the electronic realm of sound and visual spreading hysteria of the anti-vaccination movement, image moved from prominence into dominance, indicatraising the prospect of a horrific resurgence in deadly ing one intimidating prospect implicit in Marshall McLudiseases like measles and polio. All that is the more han’s trenchantly prophetic aphorism: “the medium is the remarkable since it has metastasized in defiance of the message.” We now find ourselves, all too often in the widely-reported consensus among respected experts public realm, like it or not, in a whirlwind flash world of about the folly of mishandling intelligence in this fashion. fleeting images, soundbites and tweets, none of which Such an overwhelming public repudiation of qualified invites even peripheral comprehension, much less expertise was unimaginable in the aftermath of world sustained reflection. News spills out from a profusion of war two. Then, the tremendous potential of scholarship, sources: websites, blogs and chat rooms, all accessible at for good or evil, had been unmistakeably revealed: the the click of a mouse, none accountable to a commonlytragic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki through held convention of verifiable fact. nuclear weapons, the optimistic opening of the ultimate And electronic entertainment is scarcely more encouragfrontier of space by the launch of Sputnik, and the being. Netflix and the DVD can introduce into circulation nevolent revolution in medicine with the discovery of films of greatly varied merit, from Shakespearean drama penicillin and the Salk vaccine. Each of these events to sadistic softcore porn: but a random sampling of what’s drove home the manifest advantages of open informed on offer will expose a preponderance inquiry. of near-mindless “…far too many of our So what happened, over just a few violence and crude exploitative sensudisadvantaged sit smolderdecades, to create that sweeping reality – none of it ing in resentment of bitter versal of public attitudes? In brief, it conducive to positive social developcircumstances they was a perfect storm of extremely ment. Living at home alone, culturally consider beyond either damaging anti-intellectual subvercomprehension or control.” speaking, wrestling with unemploysions. Most prominently, public ment, poverty and deplorable housing, schooling, focussed on a received and saturated 24/7 with such repellant stuff, far too many curriculum directed towards literacy, numeracy, science of our disadvantaged sit smoldering in resentment of bitand history, was challenged in several directions: a ter circumstances they consider beyond either compremovement towards parochial schools, Roman Catholic, hension or control.

Evangelical Protestant, Judaist, and lately Muslim, And exacerbating the socially destructive tendencies of which introduced dogma in opposition to a perceived each of these malevolent developments is the massive amoral secularism; a second movement towards home negative infusion of special interest money directly into schooling, which entrusted parents with a wide latitude the political dynamic. “Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko, in determining both content and scope of instruction, ofthe central character of Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall ten trending away from intellectual rigour; and a third Street repeatedly exhorts the viewer; and that phrase, so movement towards publicly funded alternatives to the succinctly encapsulating an emerging counter-altruistic regular schools, loosely termed “charter” or “magnet” schools, imposing further complexity as well as possibly ethos, resonates among us still. awkward diversity. The resulting reallocation of assets, Under the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Marinstitutional, financial and intellectual, left many of the garet Thatcher, corporate influences morphed aggrespopulation without adequate means of exploring, unsively throughout the public life of the United States derstanding and appreciating the cultural necessity of and Great Britain, first overtaking and then eclipsing informed analysis. other inclinations towards more inclusive social priorities. Contrary institutions were swiftly attacked, then More or less simultaneously, media became far more neutralized. The doctrinaire twins dealt paralysing polarized, partisan and concentrated under wealthy blows to the union movement, Reagan when the Amerinterests, both private and corporate: moreover, with ican aircraft controllers went on strike, Thatcher …/ the intrusion of television, shock radio and the internet, 14 dialogue

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www.dialogue.ca

prominent “Leave” spokesman Justice Secretary Mionce the British coal miners walked off the job. chael Gove sniped: “I think people in this country have Government spending was twisted remorselessly in had enough of experts.” So much was said with that favour of the “military-industrial complex” that Presipetty sneer. Mr. Gove had “faith in the British people,” dent Eisenhower had warned against, giving a grimly instead of snotty experts “saying that they know what is literal meaning to the term “overkill.” And as funding best” – an exultation of uninformed opinion underscordrained away from education, welfare and core infraing a rejection of disciplined thought. This was structure, siphoned off into high-tech weaponry firms Asimov’s summation of democracy’s false populist, and further diluted through tax breaks for other profitaintellectual premise, “my ignorance is as good as your ble industrial enterprises, commerce itself became knowledge,” writ large on an international scale. strangely diversified, with the financial sector extending And it inevitably got worse, much worse. Fellow promitentacles throughout society, while manufacturing nent Tory “Leave” campaigner Boris Johnson, former jobs were whisked away offshore in a mercantile mayor of London, then stirred outrage by arguing both “race to the bottom.”

Then the deregulation craze contorted the entire banking the European Union and Adolph Hitler were intent upon creating a European superstate. And Gove in turn picked disposition – towards a risk-acceptance casino mentalup on the theme, arguing that experts could not always ity, as Reagan’s “savings and loan” debacle generated a be trusted, citing the Nazi scientists stunning fiscal crisis, sinisterly forewho criticised Einstein. Two of the shadowing the later world-wide 1999 “Then the deregulation most senior Conservative politifinancial collapse. Faith in government craze contorted the entire cians, twisting deeper and deeper probity, to say nothing of faith in banking disposition -into viciousness, set a match to a financial stability itself, now struggles towards a risk-acceptance conflagration of false equivato survive against ever-more-virulent lences. Remember, the European casino mentality …” cynicism and chagrin.

Union was not in the slightest And so here we find ourselves, all of comparable to Hitler’s Third Reich superstate, nor were us participating in the directing of our respective democ- economists questioning Brexit anything remotely like racies, attempting to come to terms with self-inflicted Nazi intellectual thugs spinning fascist nonsense – but social alienation. The salient case in point, outstanding hey, why not suggest that, and see what happens? in magnitude, and in potential for national and internaNobody cares about fact anymore, or even St. Paul’s tional disharmony, and especially in suggestions of “whatsoever things are true.” where we might collectively be going, is Brexit. BeginAnd that, ladies and gentlemen, is the political methodolning as nothing more than a foolish political wheeze, it ogy with which Brexit was sold. Immigration and went freewheeling through British society, exposing security became the central “Leave” issues, building on tensions and instability and finally exploding into a those reliable standbys of fascist thought: hatred and fear manic disruption of not only British, but also European, and the fantastic restoration of a Glorious (albeit mythic) and perhaps even North American life.

Past. Polish plumbers were stealing British jobs, Muslim Prior to the parliamentary election of 2015, Prime Minextremists were plotting against British innocents; those ister David Cameron promised to hold a referendum on ‘others’ were coming in overwhelming numbers, and continued British membership in the European Union, Britain must retreat behind the English Channel. But once provided his government was returned to office. After severed from the constraints of unelected European Unhis Conservatives won the election, the influential Euroion bureaucracy, the fabulous Empire Upon Which The sceptic minority fringe of the party forced Cameron to Sun Never Set would rise again, as Elizabeth the Second’s honour that pledge, a move that gave Nigel Farage of the England would restore the glories of earlier times. right-wing United Kingdom Independence Party scope And from out of this stew of irrationality, the inescapato exploit all the social negativisms simmering among ble consequences emerged. A deranged fanatic named the nation’s underprivileged. In short order, the campaign became emotional, irrational and brutally vitriolic, Thomas Mair kicked, stabbed and shot Jo Cox, Labour MP for the riding of Batley and Spen who was campaignwith even Tory establishment figures from the “Leave” ing to retain Britain in the European Union: and as his side dismissing informed opinion in naked contempt. victim slumped down into death, her assassin shouted Challenged to cite a single independent economic au“Britain First,” naming a far-right paramilitary outfit …/ thority who thought Brexit was a good idea, the www.dialogue.ca

VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Wilf Cude, ‘Late Stage Democracy,’ contd.

pledged to take “direct action” against “global Islamic jihad.” He was arrested a mile from the scene shortly thereafter. And a few days later, the British electorate voted, 52% to 48%, to leave the European Union.

Jo Cox was martyred at age 41 for her quiet advocacy of reasoned public discourse. The first of her family to graduate from university, an aid worker in Sudan for ten years, a young woman happily married with two children, a novice Labour MP passionate about community, the European Union and the benefits of immigration, she is remembered in The Economist as “idealistic, diligent, likeable and rooted in her Yorkshire constituency,” a genuine “living rebuttal” to prevailing cynicism about politicians.

But Thomas Mair, appearing in court at age 52 to proclaim himself “death to traitors, freedom to Britain,” is only another living, frothing testimony to the LSD demonic that can be unleashed once rationality is suppressed. A search of his home revealed newspaper clippings about Cox and publications emanating from extremist right-wing and white-supremacist organizations: the usual underpinnings for such unbalanced acts.

And as for the collective unbalanced act of Brexit itself, the evidence isn’t encouraging. Only a few days after the vote, David Cameron had resigned, Nigel Farage had resigned, Boris Johnson had withdrawn his candidacy to become Prime Minister, and Michael Gove had soon thereafter followed suit. The fatuous architects of Brexit slunk away, revealed as politically impotent, bereft of the vaguest notion of what to do next. And some of the angry, impoverished regions like Cornwall that voted for Brexit swiftly experienced buyer’s remorse upon learning that they were also forfeiting hundreds of millions in European Union development funding. And the wreckage spread beyond divided England, first into Scotland and Northern Ireland contemplating separation from the United Kingdom, then into the European Union where the rebuffed leadership seemed resolved to make Brexit as difficult as possible, and then farther into North America with the Canadian-European free trade agreement placed in jeopardy.

At this stage, it’s not possible to predict how bad it will all get, or how anything can be done to put matters right.

Which can only emphasize the thoroughly terrifying scenario unfolding on the other side of the Atlantic, as LSD in America braces itself to respond to the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. It should in fact be modern democracy’s most classic no-brainer thus far. How could any responsible citizen ever 16 dialogue

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contemplate voting for such an utterly repellent human being? Never before has the United States come up with anyone so irredeemably unsuited in every conceivable way for the nation’s highest office. “There is something rotten at the core of this man,” Charles M. Blow wrote in the 22 August, 2016 New York Times, “that no length of script or turn of phrase can ameliorate.” Nevertheless, the arrogant, ignorant, obnoxious buffoon who first seemed such a joke entering the Republican primaries soon proved alarmingly adept at manipulating the triad of irrational fascist staples: hatred and fear and nationalist fantasy. “Build the wall” against invading hordes of Mexican rapists, drug dealers and killers. Deport eleven million (presumably) illegal immigrants, men women, children, all guilty of stealing (white) American jobs. Cancel international free trade agreements like NAFTA, eviscerate an international cornerstone of western security like NATO, repudiate national and international attempts to address climate change. Insist repeatedly that climate change itself is a huge Chinese scam to undercut American commerce (but don’t mention that while visiting flood-stricken Louisiana for a photo op.)

Dismiss scientists, economists, military and security professionals, experts: what do they know? Trust HIM, Donald Trump, “The Donald,” author of the (ghost-written) best-selling Art of the Deal, the business magician who squeezed billions (millions?) out of multiple bankruptcies, who will gesture hypnotically, wave his fable-inducing hands in the air, and “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” It’s all unbelievable political Looney Tunes. And to prevail, it must first somehow discredit or otherwise eliminate Hillary Clinton, who in a normal democratic election would be a formidable adversary. She is everything Trump is not: a former United States senator, a former Secretary of State, a skilled diplomat with considerable achievements, a dedicated champion of sustainable health care, realistic environmentalism, sensible gun control, equitable welfare, and minority and women’s rights. Her candidacy is supported by hosts of respected public figures: artists, scientists, economists, current and former diplomats, and military and security professionals. In this election, she is the only rational choice: however, in this LSD election, she is also both target and victim of an ever-escalating stream of mendacious and vindictive malice. The Republican-dominated House inquiry into her role in the Benghazi incident wasted millions of dollars, consumed years of futile investigations, and – after exhausting every ugly expedient – yielded nothing. The Fox News hysteria over assumed improprieties in the Clinton Foundation, a charity with an impeccable record, faltered when CNN reported that independent charity …/ www.dialogue.ca

watchdog groups rated the Foundation either “A grade” (Charity Watch) or “platinum standard” (GuideStar).

Nothing again.

So “The Donald” himself, of course, took smear down deep into a hitherto unimaginable cesspool of viciousness.

Nobody could stop an elected Hilary Clinton from abolishing the Second Amendment, he told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina: nobody except maybe “the Second Amendment people.” And that marks the nadir, the LSD lowest of the low, in this election. It really can’t get more ugly.

Thomas L. Friedman, with his 9 August, 2016 New York Times article, “Trump’s Wink Wink to ‘Second Amendment People,’” put the Trump statement in stark clarity. “And that, ladies and gentlemen,” he explained, “is how Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin got assassinated.” Just as an escalating stream of vicious propaganda mischaracterized Rabin as a Nazi for negotiating with the Palestinians, inciting hatred intense enough to encourage an unstable Jewish right-winger to actually shoot and kill his nation’s Prime Minister, so Trump’s increasingly incendiary rhetoric, in rally after rally, was moving a violent fringe of his adoring followers towards imagining a similar outcome. Al Baldasaro, a Republican state representative, declared Clinton should be “shot for treason;” and not only did Trump not repudiate Baldasaro, he coldly took the idea a calculated step farther, hinting that radical gun owners might do

something about Clinton. “People are playing with fire here, and there’s no bigger flamethrower than Donald Trump,” Friedman concluded. “Forget politics; he is a disgusting human being.”

We know from Brexit that hate-filled neofascist smears can end in assassination: Jo Cox died that way, like Rabin before her and, like him, a martyr for a more reasoned and peaceful way. Trump, the well-funded darling of the NRA, knew he must be speaking to untold thousands of well-armed right-wing fanatics, the very lunatic fringe generating the same social poison that tempted Thomas Mair into murder. He knew that, and he said what he said. Friedman is right. The man is a disgusting human being.

And so here we are, again so soon. Yet one more time, LSD is facing, in the American election of 2016, a test even more consequential than Brexit – as far-reaching and potentially cataclysmic as that has proved to be. We must hope that reason will win out in the United States, as it failed to do so recently in the United Kingdom. But if not, and Donald Trump against all rationality becomes President, think of his incendiary little fingers hovering over the nuclear codes.

And be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Wilfred Cude, BA (RMC), MA (Dalhousie) Cape Breton, Nova Scotia WEBSITE: www.wilfredcude.com ♣

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“Have Computer Will Write”~ Jeremy Arney

Brexit and Lessons for Canada -

Jeremy Arney, Victoria BC Many a "learned" piece has been written about what has happened in the UK, but what of the people?

The City of London and its financial, investment and insurance dealings around the world will not change; the currency may take a hit for a while – as long as there is money to be made by buying low, as with the stocks and bonds; but just like everything else financial in today's world, it will settle down.

Let us instead learn from this that we the people of Canada also have power if we so choose to use it.

We can change things in spite of our politicians who really want to stay as they are and not change the status quo, even if they come up with a different formula for getting there. It will still be your party against mine and whips will still rule the House of Commons and life will go on much as before.

UNLESS WE TOO STAND UP AND DEMAND THE REAL CHANGE WE WERE PROMISED.

The people have what they asked for; the end of a prime minister as a by-product is probably not a bad thing, as he could not or was not willing to change and work with the result. The people of the UK are a resilient bunch and will make it work, in spite of the doom and gloom of too many so-called pundits and the inability of their football team to score goals.

Pipelines and Refineries

www.dialogue.ca

According to the Calgary Herald, Alberta Editorial, 12 August 2016: It is imperative that Canada get its oil to tidewater, where it will fetch the world price instead of being sold at a steep discount to the United States.

Comments follow… …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Comments re Pipelines and Alberta Oil: ERIK ANDERSEN < twolabradors@shaw.ca >:

Refine in Canada! Could a refinery be called infrastructure investment? Publicly owned of course.

DEREK SKINNER < dandjskinner@shaw.ca >:

The Koch Bros prefer to sell bitumen to the U.S. at less than $30/barrel in order to refine it in Texas. The Chinese will do the same in China if they can get a pipeline to either coast. A purpose-built refinery in Canada for a few hundred million dollars would presumably benefit Canada and be more profitable. A refinery can be built in less than two years but who would sell the crude to a government? It would be interesting to know who all the participants are in the various producers of dilbit (is that the correct word?).

JEREMY ARNEY: Dilbit is the combination of the bitumen and diluent that travels through the pipes. There is something here that I have been asking myself for a long time: the FTA and then NAFTA both specified that the percentage of a raw product (i.e. oil or tar) that Canada ships to the USA can be increased but not decreased, so if we ramp up our production to allow for export to China, we must also allow more to flow south at a give-away price. How we can stop this is to refine this or any other product here in Canada and thus bypass this

absurd Mulroney give away. We could also cancel both FTA and NAFTA – a very good thing!

Since Petro Canada is no longer Canadian owned, we have no domestic oil company to invest in these refineries, thus we need to oblige all oil companies which wish to continue to exploit Canada's resources to refine here in Canada, as we will not grant them export licences for raw product. If they are not willing to build those refineries in order to continue to get huge profits from Canada (and would in fact actually make more by building those refineries), then so be it… adios. And that is the time to repeat what senior Trudeau did and create a new Petro Canada for just that purpose. Does China really care if they get tar, gasoline or diesel?

This is one of those problems that is made complicated in order to stop them from being solved. Whatever happened to K.I.S.S.? – Jeremy “What is physically possible, desirable and morally right, we can make it financially possible through the Bank of Canada.”

Thank you for reading this and for your passion for Canada.

Jeremy Arney is Interim Leader of the Canadian Action Party (Tel. 250-216-5400) http://actionparty.ca/ Email: iamjema@gmail.com ♣

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"War Dogs:" What Everybody Knows -- War Is All about the Money…

By Mike Rivage-Seul - OpEdNews 9/1/2016 [EXTRACT/LINK]"What do you know about war? They'll tell you it's about patriotism, democracy . . . You want to know what it's really about? War is an economy."

That's the way director, Todd Phillips' "War Dogs" begins. It's the (mostly true) tale of two bumbling stoners from Miami Beach who become wealthy arms dealers supplying weapons to the U.S. military and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The story line reminds us that money is the major reason for the endless wars the U.S has waged across the Muslim world since 9/11. It also reminds us of our moral duty to oppose the corrupt war system that is eminently reformable with a few simple measures -- if for no other reason than saving money that is currently wasted.

To begin with, it's true: war has nothing to do with patriotism, democracy or freedom. It's simply good for the economy. In fact, war is the economy -- or at least its heart where the military budget consumes 57% of the U.S. budget's annual discretionary spending -- $3.8 trillion to be exact. (That's very nearly as much as the rest of the world combined spends on "defense.")

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In other words, our economy is dependent on blood sacrifice. Pope Francis said as much last September when he spoke to members of the U.S. Congress. He remarked, "Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money -- money that is soaked in blood."

At the conclusion of "War Dogs," Todd Phillips echoes the pope's phrase, "as we all know." For as the credits roll, Leonard Cohen sings his own "Everybody Knows."

And what is it that everybody knows about war? At some level, we all know that it has fundamentally corrupted our society. Our way of life is largely based on murder. Yet we refuse to put a stop to the killing. It's as if we see no alternatives, though they're staring us in the face.

We've become so inured to permanent mayhem that we rarely ponder what it all means for the defenseless poor of the world who (rather than the rich) habitually end up on the wrong end of the guns, bullets, drones, bombs, missiles, air planes, tanks and ships with which our government and U.S. corporations greedily supply the entire world. […]

READ AT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/OEN-0901-542 ♣ www.dialogue.ca

The New Immoral Age – by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay How Technology Offers New Ways of Killing People and of Destroying the World “It turns out … that I’m really good at killing people.”

– President Barack Obama (1961- ), (as reported in Reed Peeples, ‘A President and his Drones,’ June 29, 2016, — a review of the book ‘Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone,’ S. Shane, 2015) *****

“Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.” – Hannah More (1745-1833) English writer *****

and philanthropist

“A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.” – Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian sychiatrist and philosopher *****

Interview with Dr. Tremblay re the principles of humanism: http://tinyurl.com/YT-rt-hum

“We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do.

“Governments are only machines, created by the individuals of a nation for their own convenience; they are only delegated bodies, delegated by the individuals, and therefore they cannot possibly have larger moral rights of using force, or, indeed, larger moral rights of any kind, than the individuals who delegated them.

“We may reasonably believe that an individual, as a selfowner, is morally justified in defending the rights he possesses in himself and in his own property – by force, if necessary, against force (and fraud), but he cannot be justified in using force for any other purpose whatsoever.” – Auberon Herbert (1838-1906), British writer

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By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, Quebec (Author of the books “The Code for Global Ethics”, and “The New American Empire”)

We not only live in the computer and digital age, we also live in a profoundly immoral age, in which the use of violence against people has become easily justifiable, nearly routinely, either for reliDr. Rodrigue Tremblay gious, military or security reasons.

Let us recall that the Twentieth Century was the most politically murderous period ever in history. It is estimated that political decisions, mostly made bypsychopaths in various governments, resulted in the death of some 262 million people – a democide or political mass murder, according to scholarly works by political scientist Rudolph J. Rummel. It remains to be seen if the Twenty-first Century will regress from this barbarism or exceed it. So far, things do not look too good. Human morality and empathy is not increasing; it is declining fast. And with nuclear weapons in the hands of potential psychopaths, the next big step toward oblivion will not be a cakewalk.

Indeed, a new brand of immorality has permeated into some political minds, according to which what one individual cannot morally do on his own, i.e. coldblooded murder of another human being, a head of state, a government or a group of public officials can do, in his place. Under what moral code can individuals delegate to governments or public officials authority to do crimes that they themselves cannot do without being immoral? www.dialogue.ca

Wouldn’t that be extremely hypocritical and a parody of morality?

According to basic humanitarian or humanist morality, as the Auberon Herbert’s quote above illustrates, what is immoral for one individual does not become moral because one million individuals do it, under the cloak of a government or any other umbrella organization. In other words, a head of state or a government cannot enjoy a wider choice of moral rules than the ones that apply to every individual. The agent (the public person) cannot have looser moral rules than the principal (the people).

There cannot be one morality for an individual in private life, and another one for an individual acting within a government.

For example, it is widely accepted under basic moral rules that an individual may only use deadly force in self-defense, when his own life or the lives of his family are threatened. Therefore, the delegated morality to a state by its citizens to use deadly force cannot extend beyond the requirements of self-defense against actual or imminent attack, of the maintenance of order, and of the implementation of justice. Any unprovoked act of deadly aggression, resulting in the untimely and extrajudicial death of people, by a head of state, a government or its officials against other people becomes automatically immoral, if not illegal, notwithstanding in what legal mumbo jumbo such an aggression is couched.

It is true that the current chasm between individual and official morality has been long in developing. When the Roman Emperor Theodosius (347-395), in 380, adopted Christianity as its official state religion, it was difficult to apply Jesus Christ’s pacifist and non-violence admonition that “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”…/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, The New Immoral Age, contd.

Christian theologians such as Augustine of Hippo (354430) were thus obliged to develop the argument that moral rules designed for individuals did not necessarily apply to an individual becoming an emperor, a king or a head of state who must administer justice or wage wars.

In particular, the Commandment “Thou shall not kill” was redefined to exclude heads of state involved in socalled “just wars,” waged by a ‘legitimate authority’. It was spelled out, however, that such wars could not be pre-emptive, but strictly defensive to restore peace. Otherwise, such a war would become immoral.

Nowadays, there is a basic public morality inscribed in the United Nations Charter and in the Nuremberg Charter. The latter clearly prohibits crimes against peace, defined as referring to the “planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of wars of aggression”… A war of aggression is defined as is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation. The U.N. General Assembly adopted these definitions, on December 11, 1946, as part of customary international law. Such was the core of public morality after World War II. However, over the years, public morality has steadily declined, most recently illustrated in 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush launched a U.S.-led war of unprovoked aggression against the country of Iraq, assisted by British Prime minister Tony Blair. The latter unnecessary and disastrous war, launched on a mountain of lies, has been thoroughly investigated in the United Kingdom, but hardly at all in the United States, the center of it all.

Therefore, notwithstanding that no serious post-administration inquiry has been carried out in the United States regarding the mischief caused by the George W. BushDick Cheney tandem, at the very least, future historians will have the 12-volume Chilcot Report to assess how some British and American politicians fooled the people, in 2002-2003, and launched a war of aggression against an independent country, with no direct consequences for themselves.

More generally indeed, in the Twenty-first Century, it can be said that killing technology has advanced at the same time as public morality and personal accountability have declined.

In the U.S., for instance, it has long been suspected that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), (a sort of secret government within the government created by President Harry Truman in 1946), was involved in covert illegal activities, especially when it came to 20 dialogue

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sponsoring terrorist death squads in various countries.

In 1975, for example, the U.S. Senate established a Select Committee to study governmental operations with respect to illegal intelligence activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID). That important committee investigated illegalities by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Among the matters investigated were the covert activities of the CIA involving attempts to assassinate foreign leaders and attempts to subvert foreign national governments. Following the reports and under the recommendations and pressure by the Church committee, President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905 (ultimately replaced in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12333) with the express intent to ban U.S. sanctioned assassinations of foreign leaders.

Now, let us move fast forward. The most recent instance of a public official known to have assigned to himself the task of targeting some people, even American citizens, to be assassinated with unmanned drones or other means, without charge and outside of judicial procedures, and without geographic limits, is under President Barack Obama. Indeed, Mr. Obama seems to be the first American president to have institutionalized what is called the “Terror Tuesday” meetings, during which the American president, with the help of the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), decides about the assassination or the capture of individuals deemed to be enemies of the United States around the world.

Last July 1st, the Obama administration released its own assessment of the number of civilians assassinated by drone strikes in nations where the U.S. is not officially at war. It claimed it has killed between 64 and 116 “noncombatant” individuals in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, between January 2009 and the end of 2015.

However, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has estimated that as many as 380 to 801 unarmed civilians have been recorded to have been killed with the new technology of unmanned drones.

Drone killing may be the most controversial legacy that President Barack Obama is leaving behind. To my knowledge, this is without precedent in U.S. history, at least at the presidential level, that assassinations of people, including some Americans, are carried outside of the legal framework, under direct supervision of a U.S. lethal president. In a democracy based on checks and balances, this would seem to be an example of executive overreach.

With such an example originating in the White House, www.dialogue.ca

it may not be a surprise that an American military officer has recently requested the “authority” to assassinate people without presidential approval, in his geographical area of responsibility, in Africa.

It is very disturbing to empower a government, any government, with the power to execute people without trial or due process. This may be a sign of our times, but this is not what we could call a progress of civilization or of human morality. It seems rather that as killing technology has advanced, and as power has become less constrained, humanitarian morality has badly declined.

It is a sad truth that advances in military technology over time have always been used to kill people. Even the dreadful atom bomb has been used to kill hundreds of thousands people. It is only a matter of time before it could be used again. It would only take one psychopathic madman in power to destroy humanity.

Addendum: All this immorality permeates into the management of the economy, under the motto “greed is good”. As I assessed at the beginning of this year, the world economy is ripe for a huge awakening. A mixture of wars of aggression and of financial market crashes could shake the world in the coming months.

That is because the people who fan the flames of war are the same ones who are pushing financial markets to their

limits and created a huge asset bubble.

Barak Obama’s little known neocon-inspired goal has been to expand NATO to Russia’s borders and to isolate Russia. This mischievous brinkmanship policy is being played out to the fullest. Indeed, there is presently a suspicious and dangerous buildup of NATO troops at the Russian border, with the obvious intent of provoking Russia into some sort of conflict. These professional warmongers may get their wish and they may soon plunge the world into chaos.

Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, QC Read article at theNewAmericanEmpire.com: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/tnaeRT-1179 Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles”, (2010) and of “The New American Empire”.(2004) Please visit the book site at: http://www.thecodeforglobalethics.com/ and his blog at: http://www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.htm Posted July 11, 2016. Send contact, comments to: bigpictureworld@gmail.com To receive free alerts on new articles, send an email with the word "subscribe" to: bigpictureworld@gmail.com © 2016 by Big Picture World Syndicate, Inc. ♣

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US-NATO-Turkey Invasion of Northern Syria: CIA “Failed” Turkey Coup Lays Groundwork for Broader Middle East War?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 29 2016 www.GlobalResearch.ca In mid-July, President Erdogan pointed his finger at the CIA, accusing US intelligence of having supported a failed coup directed against his government. Turkish officials pointed to a deterioration of US-Turkey relations following Washington’s refusal to extradite Fethullah Gülen, the alleged architect of the failed coup.

Erdogan’s Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag was categorical: “If the US does not deliver (Gulen), they will sacrifice relations with Turkey for the sake of a terrorist”.

Public opinion was led to believe that relations with the US had deteriorated. This was a hoax. (…)

Extract: The Erdogan-Jo Biden Meeting From Washington’s perspective, this ground invasion sets the stage for a possible annexation of part of Northern Syria by Turkey. It also opens the door for the deployment of US-NATO ground force operations directed against central and southern Syria.

Erdogan meets up with Vice President Biden on August 23, following the influx of Turkish tanks into Northern www.dialogue.ca

Syria. The invasion is carefully coordinated with the US which provided extensive air force protection. There is no rift between Ankara and Washington, quite the opposite: It [is] difficult to believe that Turkey truly suspected the US of an attempted decapitation of the nation’s senior leadership in a violent, abortive coup just last month, only to be conducting joint operations with the US inside Syria with US military forces still based within Turkish territory.

What is much more likely is that the coup was staged to feign a US-Turkish fallout, draw in Russia and allow Turkey to make sweeping purges of any elements within the Turkish armed forces that might oppose a crossborder foray into Syria, a foray that is now unfolding.

Media reports convey the illusion that the Biden-Erdogan meetings were called to discuss the extradition of the alleged architect of the failed coup Gulen. This was a smokescreen. Jo Biden who had met Erdogan back in January, gave the green-light on behalf of Washington for a joint US-Turkey-NATO military incursion into Syria. (…) LINK: http://tinyurl.com/CRG-5542921 ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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The U.S. Election Notes on US election – What can be hoped for?

By Peter Ewart, , July 26, 2016, Prince George Published online, at 250news.com – LINK: https://www.250news.com/2016/07/26/notes-on-us-election-what-can-be-hoped-for/

A choice is being put forward in the upcoming US presidential election – some might call it a trap – between what is presented as a so-called moderate, progressive, and peaceful Hillary Clinton and an extreme, reactionary and war-mongering Donald Trump. But does this choice really reflect reality?

Indeed, it can be argued that Hillary Clinton is the creature of and chosen war candidate for the US defense industry (1) (2). It is a fact that her campaign has collected more donations from defense corporations than any other Democratic or Republican candidate, not to speak of the millions of dollars donated to the Clinton Foundation over the years by these same corporations and their client states such as Saudi Arabia (3).

Then there is her track record of support for US military intervention and aggression abroad. She was a cheerleader for the bombing of Serbia when her husband Bill was president and is said to have played a key role in convincing him to undertake this aggressive action. She supported George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq.

And, when she was Secretary of State in the Obama administration, it is well known that she led the charge to commit aggression against the sovereign country of Libya, resulting in the torture and murder of its leader Qaddafi, and plunging the country with the highest standing of living in Africa into chaos and disorder. Cackling in a notorious media interview, to this day she shows no regrets for the disaster she wreaked upon the country (4).

In addition, she supported Al Queda and ISIS linked terrorist forces in their ongoing attempts to overthrow the Assad government in Syria (5). This is not to speak of her active support, as Secretary of State, for coups against elected governments in both the Ukraine and Honduras. Nor of her ongoing war mongering rhetoric and ramping up of tensions against Russia, China, Iran and other countries.

It is not surprising that, in this election, a number of prominent Republican neo-conservatives, notorious for engineering and promoting the invasion of Iraq, have moved over to support her (6). Unfortunately, some prominent “peace” activists have also.

The irony in all this is that, unlike war hawk Clinton, 22 dialogue

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Donald Trump has, at least to some extent, questioned the “regime change” efforts and endless foreign wars of both Republican and Democratic administrations that have plunged the Middle East into chaos, prompted an immigration crisis in Europe, and heightened tensions everywhere.

This is not to suggest that Trump, as president, would necessarily be less dangerous than Clinton. He also makes extreme chauvinist and war mongering statements, along with actively promoting racism against the millions of undocumented Latin American immigrants in the US, people of Muslim religion and so on.

But it does highlight the danger of claiming that Clinton is the “lesser of two evils” when it comes to launching unjust and aggressive war.

It also highlights that the issue of aggressive war is not a “left” or “right” position. What has become clear is that there are many Americans voting Republican and many voting Democratic who are sick of the endless wars and foreign interventions of the US government and the Defense industry. Whole countries and regions have been devastated, and, in addition, many US soldiers killed or wounded. All the while, health, education, transportation, and other infrastructure in the US suffers from an acute lack of funding.

Nor is the issue of aggressive war a matter of being proor anti-business. Even a U.S. business leader like Peter Thiel is fed up with the huge resources being handed over to Defense industry and war-profiteering corporations and the resulting ballooning of the national debt. “Instead of going to Mars,” he said at the Republican Convention, “we have invaded the Middle East. … It’s time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country.”

Whatever the result of the US election, a positive factor will be the emergence of a strong antiwar movement that will provide a check to the war mongering of whichever party ends up in power.

And we need a strong antiwar movement in Canada also.

The Trudeau government and the other parties in Parliament gave standing ovations to Obama (who despite all his “peace” rhetoric has escalated war preparations, drone assassinations, and other interventions) when he visited Canada recently and to his requests for more Canadian troops being sent to Eastern Europe and Syria.

Will the parties in Parliament also give standing ovations when a new US administration (which may www.dialogue.ca

very well be headed by Hillary Clinton) calls for the even further ramping up of war preparations and “regime change” in the world?

The world is closer to a major, potentially catastrophic war than many politicians and media pundits will admit.

The main factor that can avert such a war is a strong antiwar movement. In the wake of the US election it seems that is what needs to be built everywhere – for the sake of the planet and future generations.

Footnotes: (1) Vlahos, Kelley B. “Hillary Inc. The military industrial candidate.” The American Conservative, Nov. 20, 2014.

Link: http://tinyurl.com/TAC-mic (2) Cohen, Alexander. “Defense contractor employees give the most to Hillary Clinton.” The Center for Public Integrity, April 1, 2016. http://tinyurl.com/PI-money-hc

(3) Schatz, Bryan. “Hillary Clinton oversaw US arms deals to Clinton Foundation donors.” Mother Jones, May 28, 2015.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/05/hillary-clintonfoundation-state-arms-deals (4) “’We came, We saw, He died,’ Revisiting the incredible disaster that is Libya.” Zero Hedge. January 2, 2016. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-07/we-came-wesaw-he-died-%E2%80%93-revisiting-incredible-disaster-libya (5) Baldwin, Chuck. “Hillary Clinton admits US created Al Queda, ISIS.” NewsWithViews.com. May 26, 2016. http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin910.htm (6) Khalek, Rania. “Robert Kagan and other Neo-Cons are backing Hillary Clinton.” The Intercept. July 25, 2016. https://theintercept.com/2016/07/25/robert-kagan-and-otherneocons-back-hillary-clinton/

Peter Ewart is a columnist and writer based in Prince George, BC; peter.ewart@shaw.ca ♣

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The End of Protest, A New Playbook for Revolution – book by Micah White From: Micah White, Oregon US Never protest the same way twice. “The end of protest, a new playbook for revolution” from the former editor of adbusters. Is protest broken? Micah White, co-creator of Occupy Wall Street, thinks so. Disruptive tactics have failed to halt the rise of Donald Trump in the upcoming US presidential election. Movements ranging from Black Lives Matter to environmentalism are leaving activists frustrated. Meanwhile, recent years have witnessed the largest protests in human history. Yet these mass mobilizations no longer change society. Now activism is

at a crossroads: innovation or irrelevance. Rigorous, original and compelling, “THE END OF PROTEST” is an exhilarating vision of an all-encompassing revolution of revolution. [Publisher: Knopf Canada (March 15 2016) ISBN-10: 034581004X]

“The End of Protest is nothing less than a new paradigm for resistance. It will be sure to initiate a heated and necessary debate about how to confront oppression, and what constitutes victory.” – Douglas Rushkoff, author of “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus.” Micah White, PO Box 71, Nehalem, Oregon 97131 USA ♣

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Stein or Johnson? Weighing the Options: Third Party Candidates

By Carl Milsted Jr., OpEdNews Op Eds 8/15/2016 Which candidate should (U.S.) progressives support in 2016? It depends a bit on your priorities. If you care more about socialized medicine than you do about peace, honesty, and civil liberties, vote for Hillary. The rest of this essay is not for you.

If you long to bring back the blue collar heyday of the 1950s by forming a national picket line, and can live with bringing back some of the racism of the 1950s, vote for Trump. The rest of this essay is not for you either.

But if you really care about civil liberties, if you want to end the Drug war, if you want black lives to matter to the government, you need to go third party.

The question is which party: Green or Libertarian?

Jill Stein or Gary Johnson?

Ideologically, I assume most of you reading this are closer to Stein. I will not attempt to change your mind.

(I will, however, call attention to the substantial overlap in positions.) www.dialogue.ca

PHOTO: Jill Stein (Green) and Gary Johnson (Libertarian); (image by Secular Talk, Channel: Secular Talk) License DMCA

Political campaigns are not shopping trips, however. You don't get exactly what you want. Political campaigns are about building coalitions to affect laws. Some compromise is inevitable.

In a typical election year, a third party campaign is mainly about sending a message. The metric of a campaign is thus: (quality of message) * (loudness of megaphone) Dr. Stein is getting plenty of news hits. I assume that she is as good or better a speaker than Governor Johnson (this isn't hard!). So, for most of you reading this, …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Stein wins handily by this metric.

But this not a typical election year! Both major party candidates are incredibly unlikeable. Hillary Clinton would be in court or in jail if she were a notch or two less powerful. Donald Trump has serious personality issues, and has basically led a Know-Nothing takeover of the Republican Party. A third party candidate could actually win

this year. So for this year the metric has an additional term: (quality of platform) * (probability of victory).

In a later section, I will make the case that the probability of victory factor is easily an order of magnitude higher for Johnson than for Stein. But first, let us look at the quality of platform. […] Continue reading at OpEdNews.com: http://tinyurl.com/OEN-815-697 ♣

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Lies, oligarchs, and superficial differences…

Nine Reasons Why It Doesn’t Matter Who Is President From Patricia White, pwhite.red@gmail.com and David Creighton [Link at the end]

posted July 30, 2016 by Kevin Ryan The excitement and furor over presidential nominations in the U.S. helps to demonstrate why those nominations don’t matter. Here are nine reasons why.

1. In videos once held secret by the U.S. government, firefighters told us that there were explosives in the WTC buildings.

2. Survivors and first responders also told us that there were explosives in the WTC buildings.

3. Everyone who sees WTC 7 fall knows it looks like a demolition.

4. The government reports on the WTC destruction were false and unscientific.

5. The U.S. government was later forced to admit that WTC 7 was in free-fall.

6. Citizen scientists have published peer-reviewed scientific articles showing that incendiary materials were present during the destruction of the WTC buildings. Such articles can be found [at links in the *************************************************************************************

A ‘choiceless choice’

By Kali Tal, in Bern, Switzerland “Now, we are exactly where progressive scholars and activists and radical economists predicted we would be: democratic institutions are crumbling, human rights are being trampled, corporations determine which political candidates will be elected, and wealth is so concentrated in the hands of the 1% that today inequality rivals the imbalances of feudalism. The US has the largest prison population in the world, unarmed citizens are shot down in our streets by a heavily militarized police force, we execute innocent men based on admittedly flawed DNA evidence, we openly run an assassination and illegal detention program, we condone torture, and we protect corporations over our own citizens, and the citizens of any other nation.” […] Read in full at swissinfo.ch: http://tinyurl.com/SwInfo-9847 ♣

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article online, below]. No one has been able to dismiss that research or the evidence supporting it.

7. Thousands of degreed and licensed building professionals have seen the evidence and risked their careers in calling for a new investigation.

8. There has been no response to the seven facts listed above from the government, academia, or law enforcement.

9. None of the presidential candidates, or the current president, will say anything about the facts listed above.

If nearly 3,000 people can be murdered in a terrorist event and no one cares how it happened or who did it, then it does not matter who is president.

Americans will not remain safe or free by pandering to superficial differences between oligarchs while ignoring real threats to freedom and social consciousness. […]

LINK: https://digwithin.net/2016/07/30/president/ ♣

Keep It In Perspective…

Rec’d from J.C. McCullough

A new business was opening and one of the owner’s friends wanted to send him flowers for the occasion. They arrived at the new business site and the owner read the card, “Rest in Peace.” The owner called the florist to complain; he had told the florist of the obvious mistake and how angry he was.

The florist replied, “Sir, I’m really sorry for the mistake, but rather than getting angry you should imagine this… Somewhere there is a funeral taking place today, and they have flowers with a note saying, ‘Congratulations on your new location!’ ” ♣ www.dialogue.ca

More Canadian Politics…

Articles of interest to British Colombians, Canadians First, thank you for your magazine – The Dialogue! I am a freelance broadcaster and thought to mention a recent article around which I have produced a broadcast. Rafe Mair (below) brings to point the very issue we face with politicians and government as a whole… Rafe has published a follow up with solutions (P.27) that again seem important, particularly at this time, and I intend to

produce another broadcast around these solutions.

Cheers Mic, Micheal Rasberry micheal.rasberry@gmail.com Micbery Multimedia Ink, Ladysmith BC Canada http://micbery.wix.com/mthepodcast Dialogue thanks Rafe Mair for giving permission to share the articles below…♣

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‘Responsible Government’ and how it blocks democracy – Pt.1 Posted May 31, 2016 at CommonsenseCanadian.ca LINK: http://commonsensecanadian.ca/responsiblegovernment-blocks-democracy-pt-1/

Rafe Mair, Lions Bay BC What I’m about to say is not about nit-picking technicalities or shades of meaning but demonstrates that Canadians are governed by a fraudulent charade called a “parliamentary democracy” and I challenge any educator or politician to debate me on that assertion.

(Throughout I refer to the federal system, it’s equally applicable to provincial and territorial governments).

Not so responsible We operate under a system known as “responsible government,” where the word “responsible” is not meant to describe the behaviour of politicians but has a very technical meaning, namely, that the government (the prime minister and his cabinet) are responsible to Parliament and can be removed by a majority of the House of Commons upon a vote of non-confidence, whereupon the government must resign and either a new government is formed which can win a vote of confidence, or an election is held. That is an excellent technical description which bears very little, in fact no, resemblance to reality.

“Responsible Government” developed over many centuries in Britain. Indeed, until around the middle of the 19th century, it was not uncommon for a government to lose confidence and resign, whereupon the sovereign would call on the Leader of the Opposition to form a new government from all members of parliament – even those who had been part of the defeated government – and see if he could get the House’s confidence.

This was, as we will see, before party discipline took hold of the system and strangled it.

Prime Ministers don’t like losing We’ve had this system throughout Canada since 1867 www.dialogue.ca

and, looking at all the governments since then – federal, provincial and territorial – there has only been one example I can locate of a government with a majority losing confidence and being forced to resign. That happened in 1873 arising out of the “Pacific Scandal” when Sir John A. Macdonald, with a very slim majority, was forced out over charges of bribery involving the Canadian Pacific Railway. This was at a time when party discipline was much looser than today. In fact, during the Charlottetown Debates of 1864, premiers took their opposition leaders along as delegates not because they were good sports but they knew that even with a majority they couldn’t be sure of winning a vote.

That changed - big time. Prime Ministers didn’t like losing.

Neither did the party bosses that were responsible for raising the necessary money. Most importantly, neither did the donors, many very powerful, who gave the money.

What to do?

It wasn’t rocket science to note that if you had the majority of MPs in your party, and they always voted for you, you’d never lose a confidence vote and never have to resign. Duh. But MPs were often individualists, had their own beliefs and political obligations – it was like herding cats.

Impossible!

Well, no. MPs are also human. They don’t like fighting elections once they’re safely in. They respond to rewards and Prime Ministers have bags of them. These can be little goodies such as the PM speaking for you in your constituency or perhaps making sure that your constituent, Mr. Warbucks, gets an appointment with the Finance Minister over that little favour he’d like.

Perhaps it’s a bit more personal. The PM knows about your sciatica and about that conference next Winter in the Bahamas that he needs a delegate for. Or he knows you like to travel and the Commons Special Committee on Tourism has a vacancy. The list of that sort stuff is endless. …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

dialogue 25

Rafe Mair, Responsible Gov. blocks Democracy, contd.

Buying loyalty Let’s get more serious, There are 35+ Parliamentary Personal Secretaries to Ministers to appoint. This is half again more money, often lots of first class travel and prestigious tasks like taking the Minister’s place in the House when he’s away and taking his questions in Question Period or even piloting a bill through the House.

Now we get really serious because next comes the big spot itself – cabinet! Double the money. “Honourable” in front of your name for life. Chauffeur-driven limousine, prestige, travel and, by no means least, an assured, cushy position when you leave government.

All these things bounce before your eyes and you’re just Charlie Harkenfarker, a car salesman representing the “great constituency of Lower Yahk” out there in BC. The carrot and the stick But, it turns out, Charlie is a bit of a rebel by nature.

Always the guy with the opinion. By the lord, Harry, no party whip is going to tell Charlie what to do, no sirree!

Well, in that bag on the PM’s other shoulder, next to the carrots, is a big stick. He’d rather use a carrot, however …

If Charlie votes against the whip’s instruction, he can and will, in any but a minor misdemeanour, be chucked out of caucus, expelled by the party and denied the right to run under the party banner in the next election. Wow, Charlie, how do like them apples? Sure sands off those rough edges of independence, doesn’t it?

And just on the say-so of the PM – no presumption of innocence or trial by your peers. Out the door. Now Charlie must run as an “independent” and while independents occasionally win – we’ll meet John Nunziata in a moment – that’s very rare.

The prime minister doesn’t have to remind his MPs of this power. But how does he maintain it?

On a day to day basis, the PM uses a judicious blend of the stick and the carrot. The carrots include appointment to cabinet, as parliamentary secretaries, as whip or deputy whip, as committee chairs and so on. The stick here, of course, is that the PM can unmake these jobs too.

The lure of promotion amongst backbenchers is very strong, for as Napoleon said, “every foot-soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack.” Backbenchers badly want into cabinet and, once there, to stay there. Yes, technically, they could rise against the PM but somehow that never happens.

A heavy punishment Let’s meet John Nunziata, a Liberal from Toronto.

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During the Mulroney governments he was part of a Liberal “rat pack” which made the government miserable, especially over the hated Goods and Services Tax (GST).

In the 1993 election, Nunziata, following the official Liberal platform, promised his constituents that the Liberals would abolish the GST. So did their leader, Jean Chrétien.

The Liberals were elected, in part on this pledge.

After they won, Finance Minister Paul Martin tabled his first budget, and there, sticking out like a sore thumb, was the GST alive, and well!

Nunziata warned the PM that he had been elected on his pledge, along with his party’s, to abolish the GST – how in all conscience could he vote for the budget?

He voted “No” and all hell broke loose. Nunziata was instantly turfed out of caucus and the party, thus unable to run again as a Liberal. This last penalty is a very serious one indeed. In Nunziata’s case, astonishingly, he actually won the next election as an independent – a very rare case indeed – but they got him the one after that.

The Liberals weren’t through. In order to keep the monster, child-killer Clifford Robert Olson, from having a chance to taunt his victims with the hearing he was entitled to under the “faint hope” clause in the Criminal Code, Nunziata tabled a private member’s bill to prevent this. It actually won the ballot it takes for a private member’s bill to be debated and it then was passed by the House. It was referred to the Justice Committee for clause by clause approval, which should have been a slam dunk – except Justice minister Allan Rock ordered the committee not to pass it and it didn’t. Olson got his chance to taunt his victims and, thereafter, Rock brought in virtually the same bill that Nunziata did and, of course, it passed.

Why didn’t the Liberal government just let Nunziata’s bill pass? Part of the penalty for his sins. Jean Chrétien wasn’t going to let Nunziata look good; Chrétien had to show all his MPs who was boss. Thus, even Olson’s victims paid for Nunziata keeping his word!

No questions asked Believe me, there is much more to the Prime Ministerial diktat – especially note the absence of any real voice to an MP in the budget process, the basic reason we have a parliament in the first place.

But can’t a Member of Parliament simply stand up and ask questions? What about Question Period! What about something critical to his constituency? It doesn’t work that way. Question Period is dominated by the major opposition parties and who does the actually questioning …/ www.dialogue.ca

is determined by the leader, as are the questions themselves!

In debates, there are limited numbers of speakers and whether or not an MP gets to speak at all is a matter of permission from his leader and being recognized by the Speaker; then he’s confined to the Bill being debated.

When MPs are criticized for not speaking out, they invariably take refuge in the assertion that they really let the government have it behind closed doors in caucus.

Bullshit, pure and simple! When the Prime Minister is in the Caucus room, I can assure you everybody behaves like good little boys and girls will when they want a favour. Every backbencher sees themselves as cabinet ministers or, at least, parliamentary secretaries and aren’t about to piss off the PM. Ever.

Your MP is irrelevant Here’s how utterly irrelevant your MP is. In the kerfuffle over the Trudeau government’s decision to approve an LNG decision in Squamish, our Liberal MP in West Vancouver Sea-To-Sky-Howe Sound, Pamela GoldsmithJones, wasn’t even advised, much less consulted. Her choices were three – speak out against the government and be tossed out of caucus, resign, or keep her mouth shut and go along. She went along, is Parliamentary Secretary to the Foreign Minister and a sure thing for cabinet – if she keeps her skirts clean. And she will.

The Canadian MP likes you to believe he’s integral to the system of government. He’s a nothing. Which is

why our system is no closer to democracy than North Korea is. A bit more polite perhaps, but sure as hell no democracy.

Here is the one line bottom line: In a parliamentary democracy the voter transfers his rights to his member of parliament to exercise on his behalf – the trouble is, by running for his political party, the MP assigns your rights to the leader for his exclusive use! As the famous US Speaker of the House, Sam Raeburn said, “Under our system, to get along, you must go along.”

Editor’s FOOTNOTE Re: Current Liberal policy re government whip In case anyone thinks that the current government has a much more enlightened policy toward free voting by MPs… 1) Former army commander Andrew Leslie appointed Liberal Party whip (Nov 21, 2015), LINK: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/andrew-leslie-liberal-partywhip-trudeau-1.3328269 2) From Huffington Post article, Feb 17, 2016): “During the election campaign, Trudeau promised that his MPs would have a free vote on everything except matters related to the Liberal platform, traditional confidence measures such as the budget, and anything to do with "our shared values and the protections guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms." LINK: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/02/17/doctor-assisteddying-liberals-whip-charter_n_9256610.html SOME SOLUTIONS FROM RAFE MAIR, PT.2 NEXT…

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PART 2 – Sequel to Responsible Government

Rafe: A wild idea to fix Canada’s broken democracy LINK: http://commonsensecanadian.ca/rafe-wild-ideafix-canadas-broken-democracy/

SOLUTIONS WHICH DON’T REQUIRE ANY CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE Posted June 7, 2016 by Rafe Mair

Last week I talked about “responsible government” – this is the sequel to that piece.

I’m horrified that we’re not taught that “responsible” has nothing to do with civilized behaviour but in fact means that government, i.e. the prime minister and cabinet, are responsible to the House of Commons, which can dismiss them on a vote of non-confidence.

What’s even more horrifying is we’re not told that this simply doesn’t happen to governments with a majority because prime ministers have created ways to nullify parliament’s ultimate power and become virtual dictators.

I stated “in a parliamentary democracy the voter transfers his rights to his member of parliament to exercise on his behalf – the trouble is, in Canada, by running for his www.dialogue.ca

political party, the MP assigns your rights to the leader for his exclusive use!”

Facing up to the truth Most of us are in denial and don’t want to believe it and find it far more comfortable and feel warm all over when prime ministers pretend that our MP is critically important to the running of the government.

In order to begin the process of reform, we must disabuse ourselves of this nonsense.

To learn just how bad it is in Canada, I urge you to read a book called Tragedy in the Commons by Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan (Random House, 2014).

Based on interviews with retired MPs, it tells how useless and powerless MPs have become, down to being ombudsmen for the bureaucracy, ensuring that pension cheques arrive on time and that sort of thing.

Government MPs have absolutely nothing to say about how the country is governed. The committees upon …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

dialogue 27

Rafe Mair, How to Fix Broken Democracy, contd.

which they sit, which are supposed to hold government departments accountable, are stacked by the prime minister. If they do show a bit of independence, the PM removes the uncooperative ones and replaces them with obedient ones, often done just before any vote where the prime minister fears the outcome!

As the book makes tragically clear, MPs are ciphers and the government is run by the prime minister and unelected advisors in his office.

No such thing as a “free vote” One regularly suggested solution is the “free vote” – it’s an illusory remedy. Occasionally there are true free votes on matters of conscience, such as was held on capital punishment some years ago. When, however, the “free vote” is on something that the prime minister wishes passed, the Government MP feels just as compelled to vote for the government as when the whip is on. After all, the MP’s real worry is that the PM records who’s “reliable” and that’s far more important than voting as you wish.

Proportional Representation Another solution presented is Proportional Representation (PR), which has been demonized by First Past The Post (FPTP) fans because it invariably produces a minority or, more likely, a coalition, as if that were a terrible thing – they say we would have one election after another and nothing would ever get done.

In fact, that’s not the history of PR, with a 5% requirement for a seat, as a glance at 21 European countries, including Sweden, Finland, Germany – plus New Zealand – demonstrate. I support PR but I have another idea which involves no more than altering a parliamentary tradition.

The secret recipe In the present system – where the PM has the carrots and sticks that ours does – you can understand why the lowly MP, with his eye on the cabinet benches and fearful of ejection from caucus, thinks twice about doing or saying anything that might offend the boss.

If this could be changed, Canada would then greatly enhance its national unity by governing itself in a manner much more suitable to all segments of the nation.

For all that, it’s essential to cogitate carefully on what we want so as not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

We don’t want a dictator, yet we must have a strong executive. We’ve seen in the United States what happens when Congress cripples a president like Obama. I believe there’s a way to get the best of both worlds.

The Mair solution – here’s something to chew on! Are you ready for this? Perhaps a shot of 28 dialogue

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single malt at the ready is in order!

This doesn’t require any amendment of the Constitution and not a nickel spent. It is a very simple solution.

What if we made votes of confidence secret ballots?

You and I as citizens wouldn’t dream of giving up our right to vote privately. If the government tried to invade that privacy we would rise as one. A secret vote is the very essence of our democracy!

Why is it different for MPs? If you think about it, if the PM is going to watch how his MPs vote, why bother voting at all?

The only way to hold the prime minister to account is to deny him certainty of how any MPs will vote on a House of Commons vote of confidence.

This notion is so contrary to the discipline we’ve permitted to be imposed on our MPs, thus on ourselves, it takes the breath away. Yet I haven’t heard a decent, logical argument against it!

This isn’t as dangerous for the PM as appears at first blush. The chances are excellent that the prime minister’s caucus will support him. It will act on the PM like the old strap when we older folks were in school – it was the fact it was there, in the principal’s desk, that kept us on the straight and narrow. In other words, the ability to punish has an effect often more efficient than the punishment itself. It would provide a brake on the PM and an ever present warning.

The back room boys I am not through, however! What if we made the budget vote secret? The back room boys will throw up their hands in horror! Do you mean that a government can’t even pass its budget without the danger that it could lose by a secret ballot?

I’ll answer a question with a question. Why should a government automatically get its budget passed, just because it has a majority that the prime minister can force to obey? Shouldn’t the wisdom of how a government spends our money be the responsibility of every Member of Parliament?

The end of omnibus bills Before we pay too much attention to the back room boys – let’s examine what would probably happen. I know that’s a novel notion but let’s give it a try anyway.

If the budget bill was by secret ballot, there is no likelihood is that a PM would do as Stephen Harper did in his famous C-38 in 2012, when 70 unrelated bills were bundled into one as part of the budget. Not only did the …/ www.dialogue.ca

multiplicity of bills make any sort of rational debate impossible, but, because it was part of the budget, government MPs dared not say a word of criticism, even outside the House.

Today, the Finance Minister can table a budget saying “Like it or lump it, this is the way it’s going to be. Oh, of course you’ll be allowed to fart against thunder and make some speeches to make it all look good, but here’s the budget and, with our majority, it will pass.”

What if he had to say, “Here is the budget that you all had a say in while it was being prepared, for your consideration and secret vote?”

All MPs know there must be a budget, or nothing, including their salaries, gets paid, which would assure responsible behaviour.

What if the vote failed? The Finance Minister would have to try again, with provision mandated to provide interim supply in the meantime. If it failed twice, that would be taken as a vote of non-confidence and the government, whose members were likely part of the dissidents, would have to resign.

How can that be bad? What are we afraid of? That our MP might actually participate in governing the country?

The same protection as the public has The original idea of parliament was its members’ control of the public purse. It was certainly not intended that one man with unelected back room boys would make those decisions, to be rubber-stamped under duress by government MPs. Some lament that they want to know how their MP voted. Surely, this is ridiculous! We know how our MPs vote — exactly as they’re instructed to by the party whips on orders from the Prime Minister!

Would we rather see our MPs meekly do as they are told or go to a ballot box and do what they think is right? All I suggest is that the MP have the same protection when voting that we the public does.

I doubt that any budgets would be lost. The majority of all budgets in made up of routine expenses that don’t

change from year to year. It’s the discretionary spending that’s invariably the issue.

Parliament would very quickly get used to this idea. It wouldn’t be the huge danger that traditionalists fear. In fact, it would make governments careful to be sure that proposed policies would be supported by a majority of MPs, including its own members – meaning consultation with all MPs in its preparation.

A real threat No party wants an election before it’s time. MPs want to serve the full term for the same reason everybody wants to keep their job. For the party, elections are enormously expensive and the people who finance them aren’t impressed by premature elections.

What would happen is that the present, illusory threat that Parliament might rise against a prime minister now becomes a real one – perhaps remote, for the reasons I have just mentioned, but, nevertheless, very much there and something that no prime minister could afford to overlook.

There we are. We now have a parliament truly involved in decisions that are now entirely made by the Prime Minister. He would retain considerable power but, for the first time, would have to care what we, the voters, think. Your democratic rights would remain entrusted to your Member of Parliament and not assigned to the Prime Minister for his exclusive use for four years.

Perhaps, most importantly of all, your Member of Parliament would now have a real role, bringing with it respect. How can that be bad?

About the Author: Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, was Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. In 1981 he left politics for Talk Radio becoming recognized as one of B.C.'s preeminent journalists. An avid fly fisherman, he took a special interest in Atlantic salmon farms and private power projects as environmental calamities and became a powerful voice in opposition to them.

Rafe is the co-founder of The Common Sense Canadian and writes a regular blog at: http://rafeonline.com ♣

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“Prévoyance”

Observations from Erik Andersen, Gabriola Island BC

Government Manipulating BC Hydro Finances, Says Former Civil Servant Richard McCandless Comments re article by Andrew MacLeod, in The Tyee, 15 June 2016, LINK: http://tinyurl.com/Tyee-16-06-15

Comment from Erik Andersen (23-8-2016): Yes, yes, yes, yes. In Brazil the talk is of jailing the www.dialogue.ca

President for the irresponsible handling of taxpayer money; mostly to do with the building a $30B US hydro dam; yet to be finished and in a hopeless search for more financing. Can it happen in BC? …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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“Prévoyance”

contd.

Understanding the manipulation of accounting practices Where the divide in accounting happens is the separation of what happens in the current fiscal year and when matters get brought into the construction of the balance sheet.

Pre-2005, BCH (BC Hydro) typically closed out all "regulatory asset" accounts. These accounts were and are Erik Andersen supposed to carry amounts of investments made that have been added to the amount to be collected from customers. Typically BCUC (BC Utilities Commission) would adjudicate on the needed rate increases that would cause the "regulatory assets" account to end the current fiscal at zero.

Because BCH is a utility that is "supervised" by a utility commission, changes in accounting rules in North America allowed investments to be carried forward as "accounts receivable" when more than one year was needed to make these investments.

Because of this removal of an arbitrary date (end of a fiscal year) supervised utilities were permitted to carry over investment amounts into the next fiscal year. This multiyear expensing is normal when buying new aircraft and ships. Progress payments need to be sent so there needs to be a way of expensing and entering for multi-year contracts. The difference for BCH is that its IPP contracts do not give BCH ownership of an asset so none of these contracts ever get into a balance sheet entry, all IPP payments are expenses in the current year as operating costs.

If BCH had fully expensed the IPP payments in the past few years there would have to have been a huge increase in rates. Because there are other operating costs that have to be paid, like salaries, repairs and a gasping provincial government it must have been decided to exploit the "regulatory asset" accounts option beyond what is prudent. The former AG, John Doyle, was not happy with this practice and delivered a somewhat critical report about 4 years ago or so. Nobody I know took much notice, even when I made representations to the Finance Committee that went around the province getting prebudget suggestions from the public.

Some while ago I asked John Doyle why the IPP contracts did not show up in the BCH annual reports as liabilities. His reply was to point out that in pure accounting terms these contracts cannot be called debt. After that I dropped the use of debt replacing it with liabilities.

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So, for example, an IPP contract has a short-term cost and is also a long-term liability. The short-term is where the stubble in accounting happens because taken together IPP contracts must be very expensive in each year, particularly when there is no offsetting asset entry other than to park "receivables" in the regulatory asset accounts. There is a gross irony here. BCH counts these amounts as "receivables" as assets but at the same time they are liabilities for its customers.

For the first time fiscal 2016 was not termed an annual report. Even though the "Accountants" did have a very brief participation I was left with the impression they were unwilling to endorse this as an annual report. In the accounting world folks still remember Enron and the fate of its accounting firm.

To help bring into focus where BCH has been transformed consider the following. Prior to 2006 total revenues from BC customers (other than in the period when BCH was gaming with Enron) was about 22% of total Liabilities. I am not sure how much IPP was around then but I am assuming so little to be negligible. If you do the same calculation today total revenues from BC customers is 5% of total liabilities. The total liabilities includes what the 2016 statement shows, plus the about $6 billion of "regulatory assets" we customers have still to pay plus the $50 billion former BCH executives admit is the amount owing on IPP contracts. Nothing is added for Site C. This kind of measure is how the credit rating services look at country ratings. Today I noticed for the first time a departure from using GDP as the revenue value and relaxing it with total tax receipts. This new to me development suggests credit rating services are feeling uncomfortable with revenue being the GDP number and I think it is understandable why. Cash flow is always the bottom line when it comes to issues of solvency. The absence of adequate cash flow for the BC Government and very particularly BCH is where things stand today.

If BCH were to go after rate increase that would mean a change in the ratio above it would mean residential customers would be looking at paying 50 cent a KWhr rather than our now 12 cents. I suspect this could be reason Minster Bennett is leaving his job at the next election.

One last thing to leave you with. It was evident by 2008/9 that people running BCH were either financial/economic illiterates or something more sinister was happening. I as well as others spotted this and wrote about it just like the former Auditor General. I am not sure what can be done now but I sure know more of the same is like Reagan said, "a definition of insanity."

I hope this helps a little and I would love to read of …/ www.dialogue.ca

others if they have refinements that would aid everyone’s understanding about BCH. …

Yes there needs to be an "accounting" for misuse and abuse of accounting regulations. For the last couple of decades governments have gamed the financial reporting system. The motivation is to bulk up the GDP number without having to book much new "debt". A few years ago John Doyle helped me understand a critical way governments can get their way with not much penalty.

GDP is calculated two ways. The first is to add together all spending/investments made in the year. It is obvious the more a government borrows and contracts P3s and IPPs the greater will be the GDP. The second way is to calculate all the values added, more of a totalling of revenues, real or declared. The two ways should total the same in the end.

For a long time the credit rating agencies looked at the ratio of GDP divided by the "debt". You can easily see that if a government wants a good credit rating then they work to get more GDP while at the same time keeping "debt" as low as possible. John explained to me that "debt" was a narrow term describing interest and principal repayment only driven by the calendar, not by any performance term. Because of the narrow definition, our Provincial "GDP to "debt" ratio appears good by comparison with other jurisdictions. However, if you open up the Comptroller General Annual Reports and turn to the

section contributed by the Auditor General, specifically the note to the balance statement and titled "Contingencies and other liabilities," you will find the amount the province is carrying as a liability, apart from "debt." The last fiscal year this was about $102 billion, a large share coming from the BC Hydro IPP contracts. If you go back into recent history you will see how this total has grown.

These liabilities are overlooked when determining the "GDP" to "debt" ratio; at least that is my impression from a few years of asking folks about this matter.

Credit rating agencies and maybe the auditors are getting nervous about this reporting gaming. So, for example, when the Minister said the mining industry could have a deferment on electricity bills until commodity prices rebounded, I expect this deferral is reported as a receivable

by BC Hydro even though there is no cash from the sales. Doing that can only go on so long before people get upset providing the shareholders of the mining companies a subsidy or free ride..

I think the Enron story provides a number of lessons in accounting that relate to the BC/Hydro story. The establishment suppressed those declaring the "king (Enron) is not wearing cloths" yet in this he/they were not. I know of a few who said so before the collapse who were summarily fired. It is a good thing I am no longer in a job as an economist.

Erik Andersen, twolabradors@shaw.ca ♣

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A Series Exploring Alternatives to the Monopoly of Corporate Power and Networks PART III – “Chaining The Beast” John Olsen, Parksville BC, August 2016 This series began in Dialogue Vol. 29, No.2. In Part III, John Olsen traces the rise of uninhibited corporate power and explores what will be needed in order to restore democratic governance.

The Asian elephant is a strong and useful servant of mankind but, should his mahout lose control, the animal can become a threat to the community he serves.

He must then be chained. The modern corporation is such a beast. it “Corporatocracy.” To introduce the course, I pointed Not long before he retired, Ed Finn, then the editor of the CCPA Monitor, out that capitalism and the new nation, The United States of America, were born in the same year: 1776 for wrote a strong article on the subject both Adam Smith’s opus and the 13 colonies’ founding. of reasserting controls on corporations. He titled it, I reckoned that the confluence was significant for both “The Charge of the Left Brigade.” (Loved the title, Ed: parties to those coincidental births. it evokes both the heroism of the brigade and its futility in charging the enemy’s guns head on.)

When I later looked up what Ed wrote about corporaIn 2006-07 I wrote and delivered a course for Vancouver tions, I saw that his treatment reflected his seasoned journalistic style and was more direct and parsimonious Island University called “Capitalism: the Second Coming.” After delivering it to the Nanaimo and Parks- than my more academic treatment: to each his own métier. Nevertheless, to introduce this contribution to …/ ville campuses, the next year I re-wrote it and re-named www.dialogue.ca

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John Olsen, Alternatives to Corporate Power, contd.

the issue, let me cherry pick generously a few key quotes from Ed’s work of April 1, 2011.

“Canada has been under corporate rule for at least the past 35 years. [i.e. a ‘corporatocracy’] All our governments since the mid-1970’s, federal and provincial, have been committed to implementing the corporate agenda … The pretense of democracy has been maintained, but the reality is that all governments in Canada … have been taking their instructions from the country’s top CEO’s. There is an urgent need to restore democracy in Canada, but it will never happen as long as most Canadians fail to realize that the present system is no longer democratic… in fact both major contenders in the next [and the next, and the next…] federal election are equally subservient to Big Business. … there’s no evidence that … the NDP would dare to challenge corporate rule in any meaningful way… “[Some] revelations have started to break through the wall of secrecy … but the mainstream media, owned and controlled by big corporations … hide or minimize their misdeeds… [Over decades, legal decisions gave] corporations the status and rights of “personhood… free to extend their power into the political process, into the schools and universities, into the purchase of newspapers and radio and television networks. …Democracy … was transformed into a corporate oligarchy. The latest and most appalling extension of corporate power was the U.S. Supreme Court decision(1) … that gave that country’s corporations the right to spend unlimited sums during elections…[However] they have not proved invulnerable to public opposition when it is properly and strategically focused…. their weakest point is … the [government-granted] charters. ” Ed recommended restoring time-limited charters.

That last thought is what brings me into the discussion.

Before going on, I want to remind the reader of the date appearing early in Ed’s piece: “[Change started in] …the mid-1970’s…” When I began to research the initial course, “Capitalism: The Second Coming,” that date period recurred so often that it struck me near dumb: as if I had discovered a political lost tablet. Over and over, when tracking the resurrection of the neo-capitalist beast, that date period came up. On searching for the reason, what I uncovered was a series of possible contributors fixed around the transition from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of the 20th Century. Some of them were (in no particular order): 1. Establishment of OPEC* and severe price changes and embargoes on petroleum; 32 dialogue

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2. Creation of a host of new countries recently emerged from colonialism; 3. Rise of Third World nationalism and cohesion, making them candidate client states of either of the two super powers and giving rise to a group of socalled “non-aligned” countries; 4. Emergence of a virulent, free market rationale, developed and promoted notably, but not exclusively,

by Milton Friedman of the Chicago School, and other academic handmaidens to neo-liberalism; 5. An emerging recognition by world capitalists injured by the 1929 classic collapse that they are a ‘class’ and have common purposes and goals, leading to their growing co-operation via Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, etc., culminating in the World Economic Forum in 1971; 6. Growing sophistication of miniaturized, internationalized global telecommunications, particularly the internet; 7. The abandonment of the Bretton Woods system that was motivated by the idea that governments should spend during economic downturns and save when the private economy was strong.

In trying to pin down the beginning of an emerging era, it is almost impossible to define all possible contributors, and I invite readers to add their own favourites to this list. But I suggest these half dozen events and waves are mostly necessary and probably sufficient to explain the rise of corporatism and the failure of what many of us thought was a spasmodic but resilient growth towards democracy during the second and third quarters of the Twentieth Century. That movement stalled and began to die just about the end of the third quarter: it continues to die at an accelerating rate into this first quarter of the Twenty-first Century.

What all of these events contain though is evidence of the rising prominence of corporate power since the midseventies. My exploration of the return to prominence of that pre-eminent instrument of capitalism, the corporations, tells me that they have so insinuated themselves into all the workings of international society, especially so-called free trade agreements and the WTO, as to constitute a severe deviation of democracy – so severe as to cause us to re-name our form of government. We live in a corporatocracy!

As Ed suggested in his essay, we need to curb the beast.

To do that though, we need to do much more than re-call their charters. I offer with minimal comment the following list of tasks to restore government by the people. …/ www.dialogue.ca

In order to effectively administer the following suggestions, it will likely be necessary to establish categories of corporations so as to distinguish between major and minor actors. One possible distinction might be to separate private and public but there would still need to be a cap on profits and earnings.

1. Set limits on the share of any market under control of a single corporation or network of corporations. (This condition did exist in the special case of media concentration in the US until it was undermined during the Bush II administration unilaterally by the appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission.) In cases where the private sector does not provide competition, democratic governments should fund government initiated businesses and/or co-operatives to do so.

(A variation of this tactic occurred in Sweden early in the historic labour government term when Swedish light bulb manufacturers formed a cartel. Instead of adopting anti-cartel legislation, the government financed a worker-owned co-operative to provide the missing competition and broke the cartel.)

2. Restore the use of fixed duration of incorporation, subject to review by a citizen-appointed tribunal with renewal dependent on past performance in serving ALL stakeholders (as is done, at least in theory, for CRTC broadcast licenses). Such a regulation may require some means of auctioning off assets of terminated firms so as not to unduly punish minority shareholders.

3. Prohibit by statute civil suits alleging failure of managers to maximize return on investment to shareholders and lenders. An alternative might be to include stakeholders in the body of affected participants; e.g., workers, communities and the environment. (I believe Costa Rica already has a provision for protection of the environment built into their constitution.)

4. Restore a defined, possibly partially limited, personal liability of officers, directors and majority shareholders (to be defined) having the capacity to direct company policy; smallholders (to be defined) would be exempt.

5. Separate management from ownership for public firms having more than $10 million (?) in capital investment, e.g., prohibit managers and other key officers from owning shares in their own companies or any business effectively linked to them; establish conflict of interest criteria in criminal, not only civil law. www.dialogue.ca

6. Make corporations and their officers liable for criminal acts; use the same procedure of trusteeship that is now used for company bankruptcy.

That is, put offending firms into some form of social control or trusteeship and auction off assets in open bidding. (Revocation of charters is the corporate equivalent to a life-time prison sentence.)

7. Require corporations to employ life-cycle accounting (prohibit externalizing of costs, e.g., nuclear waste); where appropriate, require the posting of clean-up bonds, as was once done for some strip mining or land fill projects.

8. Prohibit corporation ownership of shares in other corporations; disallow so-called holding companies.

9. Establish a cadre of professional, publiclycompensated forensic accountants and a special citizen tribunal that can hear complaints about corporate misconduct. (Current auditing practices are meant to address matters of fraud. Terms need to be extended to encompass willful harm to communities, governments, stakeholders, individuals, the environment, and society at large.)

10. Implement a Financial Transaction tax and use the revenue to restore balance between the 1%'ers and the rest of us.

These initiatives are not ranked in priority and will need to be examined in terms of the practicality of implementation; except that, as Ed argues in his earlier piece, we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stand a snowballâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s chance unless we first take back the media from corporate ownership. For example, it is not generally known that General Electric is a significant owner of broadcast media south of the border. There have been incidents in which officers of GE-owned media have disallowed critics of nuclear energy to participate in election debates. As significant owners and designers of nuclear power plants, that puts GE-controlled media clearly in a conflict of interest. All jurisdictions that allow private ownership of media have similar examples.

It seems abundantly clear to me that, if we want to strip the massive control of society embodied in the corporations, the place to start is with corporate-owned and controlled media. Orwell's vision of Big Brother was almost benign, at least simplistic, in comparison with the gross mind control that we are now cursed with by modern media. And they are almost all corporationcontrolled beasts that need to be chained before we take on the rest of the predators. â&#x20AC;Ś/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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John Olsen, Alternatives to Corporate Power, contd.

With a still barely functioning public broadcaster, Canadians may feel they are less threatened by the business/ media alliance. We should understand, particularly when we are governed by political parties that are dependent on corporations for their funding, that their political agendas are designed to send us down the American road to corporatism.

There is a further complication. To promote a popular uprising against corporatocracy, we can’t avoid trying to do so in a changing media environment. While I strongly believe the collective progressive left should be starting our own print, radio and TV cable stations, clearly the falling fortunes of private media in the face of rocketing personal communications technology indicates that this is at best risky. As for those who believe the internet can save us, I can only repeat the truism: seeking information from the internet is like taking a sip of water from an open fire hydrant.

Clearly, as much as corporations need to be curbed, it is going to be difficult to fit the first chain on the beast. As I explore this challenge in a planned sequel to this essay, I will try to suggest how that might be done. Until we the people find ways of constructing and controlling our own media, the prospect of holding corporations responsible seems dauntingly difficult.

Short of a revolutionary dismantling of a complex and

interlocking body of statutes, there seems little point in starting such a campaign without first building some kind of metaphorical wooden horse for mounting a campaign to defeat corporate media in Canada.

FOOTNOTE:

1. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010.

SOURCES: • Corporations Are Not People, Jeffrey D. Clements, BK Publishers, 2012. An excellent description of how a former tobacco Industry lobbyist and US Supreme Court Justice, Lewis Powell, engineered a campaign that resulted in the Citizens United ruling. Clements lays out a strategy for amending the US constitution to deny corporations personal standing in law. Given the influence of corporate America on Canada, that may be enough.

• The Vanishing Liberal: How the Left Learned to be Helpless, Harpers, April 2010. An effective description of the rise and fall of opposition to corporatization in America, yielding the second coming.

• Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy, Donald Gutstein, 2009. A perceptive account of how corporate advertising influences North American citizens to accept policies that support corporate influence of governments. ♣ * Editor’s Note: The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded in Baghdad, Iraq, with the signing of an agreement in Sep. 1960 by founding members: Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. ♣

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Canada’s Israel-Palestine and BDS Issue Elizabeth Rightly Dismayed Peter Goldring, Edmonton AB August 12, 2016: Elizabeth May who practically singlehandily built the Green Party nationally to a respected political entity is dismayed.

At her party assembly, members voted to boycott Israel as a party policy. Policies such as this will ensure that the number of elected Green Party members elected to the House of Commons will never crowd a phone booth.

All her hard work and credibility shattered by the fringe element of her party who could never themselves be elected let alone form a government.

But they may not have to be elected.

Under a proportional representative government, a number of these unelectable persons could simply be appointed as Members of Parliament.

The Green Party nationally received 3.4% of the votes.

This might convert to 5 or 10 or more being appointed, maybe even receiving official party status with extra 34 dialogue

AUTUMN 2016, VOL. 30, NO. 1

funding to help them push egregious, thoughtless agendas such as anti-Israel.

However, the 1982 Constitution Charter Rights and Freedoms under Democratic Rights Section 3 is very clear: Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of House of Commons.

Unelected Members of Parliament being appointed by non-elected party hacks contravenes our democratic rights.

We need to have all Canadians vote in a national referendum if changes are proposed.

Then follow the constitutional amending formula to be further approved by the Parliament, the Senate, and all legislation assemblies of the provinces and territories.

Peter Goldring was Member of Parliament, 1997-2015; Email: petergoldringmp.retired@shaw.ca ♣ NOTE: Green Party is scheduled to revisit the BDS decision at Special General Meeting in Calgary, Dec. 3-4, 2016

www.dialogue.ca

CJPME: Green Party BDS Resolution Supports Human Rights Montreal, August 8, 2016 - Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) enthusiastically applauds the Green Party’s decision to support the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. “By voting overwhelmingly in support of this BDS resolution, Green Party members demonstrate their deep concern for the human rights of indigenous Palestinians,” asserted Thomas Woodley, president of CJPME. BDS is a movement applying economic pressure on Israel until it respects the human rights of Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.

The BDS motion had wide support at the Green Party convention over the weekend. During the debate on the motion, members speaking in support of the BDS motion outnumbered the opponents by approximately 10-to-1. When the vote was taken, the resolution was so overwhelming approved that the chair did not even find it necessary to count the votes. “We are thrilled at the support for the resolution,” enthused Woodley.

“This Green Party decision reflects the growing base of public support for the BDS movement and Palestinian human rights.”

The BDS movement is aligned both with international law and existing Canadian policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The goals of the BDS movement are, literally: “1) Ending [Israel’s] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling [Israel’s] Wall,

2) Recognizing the fundamental rights of the ArabPalestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and 3) Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”

CJPME observers at the Convention distributed a flyer [LINK: http://tinyurl.com/cjpme-bds-flyer ] to Green Party members which cited the international law and Canadian policy which support the demands of the movement.

CJPME has observed that opponents of the BDS movement try to smear it with false accusations of anti-Semitism. Despite this misinformation, however, CJPME believes that more and more Canadians understand the human rights abuses suffered by the Palestinians as a result of Israeli government policy.

CJPME has compiled a list of Canadian church denominations, unions, and other organizations which are increasingly signing on in support of the movement. “The BDS movement will inexorably succeed in addressing the injustices suffered by the Palestinians,” asserts Woodley. “BDS will soon become a national debate involving not only the Green Party, but all Canadian political parties.”

For more information, please contact: Thomas Woodley, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East; Tel: 438-380-5410; http://www.cjpme.org ARTICLE LINK: http://www.cjpme.org/pr_2016_08_08 ♣

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Principals are not the path to political power Comment on Linda McQuaig article re Green Party and BDS Ed Goertzen, Oshawa ON Comment re: “May Shouldn’t run away from Boycott,” by Linda McQuaig, 2016-08-22, Toronto Star (LINK: http://tinyurl.com/TS-mcquaig-8-22 )

The Green Party under the leadership of MP Elizabeth May has taken a principled stand against Human rights abuses committed by Israel’s Zionist government by supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement which targets imports from the illegally occupied territories.

Unfortunately that same government has succeeded in convincing millions of Jewish people, both in Israel and worldwide, that Zionism and Judaism is one and the same thing, it is not.

Any perusal of the German media of the 30’s will attest to the Zionists advocating pogroms against German Jews to persuade them to migrate to www.dialogue.ca

Palestine, and only to Palestine. Those efforts culminated in the holocaust.

Historians know this; the media continues to censor public knowledge through omission.

Columnist and author Linda McQuaig is to be complimented for supporting principal over political expediency.

Perhaps with a more proportionally-divided House of Commons, through Electoral Reform, we will see more principal and less partisanship. Principals are not the path to political power.

Ed Goertzen, egoert@interlinks.net ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Three Canadian Women on the Women's Boat to Gaza From: Eva Manly, Nanaimo BC

internationally and is distributed by VTape (Toronto) &

[ejmanly@islandnet.com] SEE PHOTO, P. 87

VIVO (Vancouver); she has worked with First Nations

“I will be one of the Three Canadian Women on the Women's Boat to Gaza,” – Eva For immediate release: Three Canadian women are joining the Freedom Flotilla's current campaign to break the illegal blockade of Gaza. The mission highlights the indomitable spirit and women's role in the struggle of daily life under occupation. They join other women from around the world who will set sail from Barcelona September 14 to reach the shores of Gaza by early October.

Crew member Marilyn Porter is a retired university faculty member who worked for many years as an activist/academic, focusing on women's rights especially in the developing world. She has served on many Boards, both locally and nationally, including Oxfam and the Canadian Institute for the Advancement of Women. She is currently co-chair of the Social Justice Co-op, which works in the areas of environmental and tax justice. She is also working with a refugee group in St. John's, Newfoundland. Marilyn is an experienced sailor, having cruised and raced mostly off the UK and eastern Canadian coasts, as well as in the Mediterranean.

Wendy Goldsmith, an organizer with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, is a mother of three, a social worker and an advocate for justice who lives with her family in London, Ontario. As a social worker, she has supported many survivors of childhood trauma and abuse, including within First Nations communities. As a mom, she identifies with the suffering that Palestinian women feel as they endure the injustice of supporting their families under an illegal blockade and within an open-air prison, constantly under threat of attacks by the occupier.

Eva Manly, Canadian Boat to Gaza’s delegated participant, is a retired documentary-maker and photographer, whose work has been shown nationally and

people in Canada, on peace & justice issues in Central America, including accompaniment of Mayan refugees and human rights workers, as well as in women's rights.

Devoting time to the work for Truth and Reconciliation and to refugee sponsorships on Vancouver Island, she is active in Mid-Islanders for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, (MIJPME), the United Network for Justice and Peace in Palestine & Israel (UNJPPI), and the Canadian Boat to Gaza working for justice in Palestine and Israel.

The three will be joined by noteworthy international participants such as Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead MacGuire (Northern Ireland), Marama Davidson, Green Party MP (New Zealand), Naomi Wallace, screenwriter and playwright (USA), Gerd von der Lippe, professional athlete and academic (Norway), and Çiğdem Topçuoğlu, professional athlete and coach (Turkey), who sailed on the Mavi Marmara in 2010 and whose husband was among the 10 people from that voyage killed by Israeli forces. Names of more participants will be released over the coming weeks.

For more information please contact: Wendy Goldsmith at: wendygoldsmith21@gmail.com or (+1) 519 281 3978.

You can support the Women's Boat to Gaza by donating online: http://canadaboatgaza.org/donate/ (For those who can benefit from a U.S. tax receipt, the link is at:

http://tinyurl.com/wbg-nvi ) To find and support other campaigns that are part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, please see LINK: https://freedomflotilla.org/about Other ways to get involved: Follow us at www.canadaboatgaza.org and freedomflotilla.org or www.facebook.com/FreedomFlotillaCoalition/ and www.facebook.com/CanadaBoatGaza/ Twitter @GazaFFlotilla @CanadaBoatGaza

Thank you for your support. Together we can end the blockade of Gaza!

In Solidarity, the Canadian Boat to Gaza team ♣

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The Warrior’s Spirit Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC scribepoet@hotmail.com I hope we get more on De growing Capitalism by John Olson… Now I have Dialogues scattered all over my floor and wondering which article to re-read first. I would also like to know more of how Jessica Ernst is doing with her fight with fracking abuses and corporate immunity from complaints. She is an admirable warrior for justice. That reminds me of a quote that I used as an inspiration last night when at a Toastmasters meeting: 36 dialogue

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The warrior’s spirit is not geared for indulging and complaining Nor is it geared for winning or losing, The warriors spirit is geared to struggle And every struggle is the warriors last battle on Earth, As the warrior fights his last battle on Earth He laughs, knowing that his will is impeccable.

(That was from Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda.)♣ www.dialogue.ca

“Conspiracy Theories” – Freedom of Speech in Canada

By J.W. Schnarr, Lethbridge Herald, June 19, 2016 [EXTRACT-LINK] The University of Lethbridge is defending a professor’s right to use his position to promote conspiracy theories online, including the idea that the 2014 Parliament Hill shooting in Ottawa was a scheme to keep Stephen Harper in power; the Sandy Hook massacre was staged to promote gun control; and Jewish Zionists are waging a secret war to demonize Muslims around the world through control of western media. Anthony Hall is a tenured member within the U of L’s Faculty of Arts and Science. He has a history of activism that includes being arrested during protests at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, protesting wars in the Middle East, and battling for the rights of First Nations people.

Since late December, Hall has been a co-host on a weekly YouTube program called “False Flag Weekly News” with fellow conspiracy theorists Kevin Barrett, an Arabist-Islamologist, and James Fetzer, a professor of Philosophy Emeritus. FFWN promotes the idea of a global Zionist conspiracy to create hatred against Muslims by promoting an alternative narrative of Muslim extremism through global “false flag” terror events. These events include just about every large-scale terror attack and mass shooting since the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, which is seen as a sort of “Ground Zero” for this secret war. Both Barrett and Fetzer are noted Holocaust deniers, and Hall has questioned established facts which happened during the Second World War.

In a prepared statement, Craig Cooper, Dean of Arts and Science, stated the U of L does not dictate research areas to faculty members and supports Hall’s right to “pursue the research topics of his choosing.”

“The university doesn’t always agree with the opinions expressed by faculty members but recognizes their rights to express them,” the statement read. […]

Hall referenced the book “Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil” by Gerard Menuhin, which claims to show proof the Holocaust is a myth. He stated the book causes a “very dramatic re-looking at what happened in Europe in World War 2. So I’m reading that text and having to reassess a lot of ideas,” Hall said. “So maybe Tay is actually on to something here.”

During a discussion on the March 2016 Lahore, Pakistan, terror attack that left 75 dead and hundreds injured, Barrett discussed how more Muslims than Christians were killed, but CNN was reporting it as a Muslim attack on Christians. […]

In defending Hall, Cooper noted the role of universities in “ensuring our societies are free and improve through the critical analysis undertaken through research and the tenet of academic freedom. Academic freedom is necessary so that all topics can be fully explored in the absence of external influence, popular opinion or conventional wisdom.” […] Read in full at Lethbridge Herald: http://tinyurl.com/LH-jws-ct ♣

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No Conspiracies, really?

From Herb Spencer, Surrey BC [spsi99@telus.net] Aug 31, 2016

Of course the government never lies, does it? That would be a conspiracy, right? No one really believes in conspiracies, do they? Well, one history prof got hold of some revealing documentation that the CIA forgot to destroy: Read the Conspiracy Theory Narrative

by Paul Craig Roberts (at GlobalResearch.ca): LINK: http://tinyurl.com/CRG-5543367

With six mega-corporations owning the main US TV channels, we have all the freedom & compassion to access all the Truth, don’t we? ♣ *********************************************

Before 9/11, Bush and Cheney Made Sure Plot and Saudi Gov. Role Would Not be Exposed.

U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, in interview with Paul Jay: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/TRN-17225 ♣

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The Language Fanatic Industry Ernest Semple, Quebec, September 3, 2016 The language fanatic industry is no longer as high paying as it once was. Quebec's language fanatics are 99.9% entrenched in union protected, mostly government based, jobs in Quebec. In other provinces the profession is followed mostly from university positions.

As new ministers appear in Quebec, some have courage and reason enough to abandon Quebec's "traditional www.dialogue.ca

demands", formerly financed openly by the business clique that has dominated Quebec politics since time immemorial. The several dozen billionaires that abandoned Montreal for Toronto – during the exodus triggered by "Quebec INC." – were pursued by language fanatics that sought equal influence on Bay Street and Calgary. They succeeded on Bay Street, but are still struggling for complete control of language of work in Ontario. …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

dialogue 37

Ernest Semple, contd. There is no need to mention the

names of the Quebec-based corporations that shifted their attention to Bay Street as being more effective than the financial wasteland that Quebec became. The "Little Guy from Bay Street," as Jean Chrétien became known in Quebec, is but one prominent example.

Much of this history is recorded in the following books (see my ‘short list’ – at the end).

The book by Maurice King, "The First Step," (1993) was an early expression of the reaction of many Quebecers: that life is too short to relive the horrors that Fascism brought to Europe in the form of the Second World War. It may be available through Amazon or directly from Dialogue Magazine's Publisher, Maurice King.

Each of these books tells part of the story of Quebec's present descent from financial prosperity, wasted because of a preoccupation with trying to preserve ineffective language of commerce by means of laws.

Language laws did not succeed after the Norman Conquest and greatly encouraged the social revolution in Britain brought by the Magna Carta.

Each of the books listed below are focused on problems gradually disappearing relative to the preceding years.

The hopes expressed by each author or authors and editors, have still yet to be achieved only after restoring respect for the Magna Carta principles in Canada that are contravened by Canada's present complex web of language laws.

The short list of books I have selected: 1998: Robert Sauvé - "THE QUEBECOIS ELITE, Patriots or Scoundrels," 244pp; 1996: William Weintraub - "CITY UNIQUE, Montreal Days and Nights in the 1940's and '50's," 332pp; 1996: Guy Bertrand - "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, An Attorney's Struggle for Democracy in Quebec," 190pp; 1995: Marcel Coté / David Johnston "If Quebec Goes. . .

The Real Cost of Separation," 237pp; 1995: Monty Berger "LAMENT FOR A PROVINCE, The tragic costs of Quebec's flirtation with separatism"; 1991, 1992: Mel Hurtig "The Betrayal of Canada," 402pp; 1988: "With a Bang, Not a Whimper Pierre Trudeau Speaks Out" Donald Johnston, Editor, 168pp; 1986: DONALD JOHNSTON "UP THE HILL," 304pp; 1980: William F.Shaw, Lionel Albert "PARTITION The Price of Quebec's Independence," 205pp; 1968: Pierre Elliott Trudeau "FEDERALISM AND THE FRENCH CANADIANS," 212pp ♣

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The Truth about Sharia Law From John C. McCullough, Richmond ON <sjmccullough@sympatico.ca>

This article on Sharia Law (link below, from Kim McConnell) is quite long, but it is a really necessary read.

Here is an example of a really extreme (and dangerous) organized religious dogma." We must fight this by insisting that our government leaders do not allow any inroads by them to weaken our society, all for the purpose of obtaining votes. We must look to what is Good for Canada and its people, i.e. on a national scale, not allow stupid party views. I appeal to the female fifty percent of our people to stand up and insist that the government take action at all levels. They are the ones with the most to lose.

A new national "Canadian citizens party" might be a start.

The current models are too narrow and in several cases corrupt. Perhaps it is revolution time, to make everyone sit up and take notice before this cancer destroys us. Why am I concerned? I am eighty-nine, -- BUT -- I have great grandchildren to think about.

– JCM Link forwarded by Kim McConnell, kimlian@bellnet.ca The Truth about Sharia, Aug 19, 2016, from: Shabnam Assadollahi, sassadollahi@gmail.com

Note from Kim to Shabnam: Your courage in exposing the evils of Sharia law is commendable. For those who are not aware of how far-reaching this policy is – please 38 dialogue

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read Shabnam's essay in the MacKenzie Institute's publication on Sharia law… LINK: http://mackenzieinstitute.com/islamic-sharia-law-vsliberty-equality-and-democracy/

Shabnam came to our organization's St. Patrick's Brunch this year – see the attached videos. Feel free to ask Shabnam any questions you like – she's knowledgeable & will clarify anything you don't understand. – Kim ♣

End of Canada?

Kim Lian McConnell, Ottawa This link (below) was sent to me (by a Westerner) and I think that all of you out west should link to it and see if this person is telling us anything new (about Western separatism). LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw5LjZ3Q7j4

After that, read Howard Galganov's latest editorial on Socialism and why we should not keep ignoring this philosophy which is destroying any country that tries it. Canada has been on this track ever since P.E. Trudeau brought in the 1982 Constitution which essentially set the path to socialism. Nearly half a century on & the USA is now on the same path. As Orlin said, "chickens & sheep like being looked after - what they don't know is what they're being looked after for." ♣ www.dialogue.ca

“One Man’s Opinion”

A picture is worth a thousand words Ken Clark, Fergus ON Earlier this year, in June 2016 to be precise, my wife Helen and I took a fourday Coach Tour to the Mackinac Island area. While shopping in one of the many souvenir stores my eyes fell upon the pictured T-shirt. Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words, I knew immediately, I just had to buy one of these T-shirts. The wording expressed to a “T” (no pun intended) my feelings concerning Canada’s Language Laws.

Anyone familiar with my past writings knows that I have, right from the beginning, disagreed with the approach taken by our government to try to appease Quebec and keep Canada united using the Official Languages Act. This Act may declare that English and French are the official languages of Canada and the Province of New Brunswick, but this in no way should imply that Canada as a whole is a ‘bilingual country;’ there are 9 other Provinces, and three Territories involved.

Between 2006 and 2011, the number of persons who reported being able to conduct a conversation in both of Canada’s official languages (English and French) increased by nearly 350,000 to 5.8 million. The bilingualism rate of the Canadian population edged up from 17.4% to 17.5% in 2011. Surely this rate should be closer to 50% for Canada to be known as a bilingual country.

By far, the vast majority of friends or strangers that I meet, while wearing my T-shirt, give me a ‘yes’ nod or a ‘thumbs up’ sign for telling it like it is.

If Canadians in general truly want real Democracy in Canada then they must more actively fulfill their role in this partnership and get more involved. Unfortunately, Democracy cannot survive over time without the peoples’ total and constant involvement. We must speak out louder and more clearly. We have nothing to lose but much to gain back if we do just that.

Never forget, “He who is silent consents.”

This is our country! ♣

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Anglophones in New Brunswick need to work together for their rights, says NB Daily Star reader Received from Ron Bubar, Fredericton NB

By Ted Ross, Miramichi NB For years a few groups have been aware of the subtle erosion of English rights in New Brunswick. But, the general public remained in a trance-like state, either choosing to ignore or totally unaware of their changing world.

Meanwhile the Acadians were organized and singleminded in their quest to take absolute control of the government, civil service and in general, and all provincial services. You have to admit that for a group representing 30 per cent of the province, they have achieved much.

Some would say, as I do, too much.

Fortunately the sleeping giant has awakened, thanks in part to the draconian, heavy-handed approach taken by the (French) language commissioner. As an example pushing for French to be the language of the workplace, costly duplication of services, and separate school busing. Causing job loss or menial relocation for some.

The list goes on.

Well, folks. it is time to take a stand but this time it will be different. Remember the CORE Party, they were unfairly branded as bigots, rednecks, anti-French, etc. They fell www.dialogue.ca

apart because of internal bickering and negative press coverage. Then, the Anglo Society of N.B. was formed and have worked tirelessly to inform the unaware public of what has been happening on the language front.

Kris Austin May 2016A few years ago in the midst of the Liberal Party’s attempt to “Give away” N.B. Power to Quebec, Kris Austin organized and formed the Peoples Alliance of New Brunswick (PANB).

You will note that a Progressive Conservative MLA shooting for leadership of that party has taken portions of the PANB policy as part of his platform. A wise move on his part.

Another voice is the Anglo Rights Association of New Brunswick (ARANB) They are working tirelessly to inform the public of where our tax dollars are being wasted by duplication of unnecessary services, also CAT, Citizens Action Team, who publish one-page zingers on a regular basis.

With these groups on our side prepared to back us we can bring common sense back to our province. Support them, work with them, it’s your future.

That’s the way I see it. – Ted Ross, Miramichi ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Links from Stephanie McDowall

Dam lie – Site C is a recipe for financial, cultural and ecological disaster [EXTRACTS SELECTED BY S. McDOWALL, LINK AT END.] many eagle trees and cleared so many deer and moose

By Joe Foy in CommonGround.ca, Sep. 2016 birthing areas that the damage will be un-repairable.

“Here’s the thing: electricity demand in BC has been “The Prime Minister of Canada could have put an end to flat-lining since 2005. There is no rising demand for elecall this waste, destruction and human rights abuses, but tricity, and BC currently produces a massive overabunhe has chosen to allow federal permits to be issued aldance of it. Export energy prices are averaging lowing the ongoing Site C debacle to continue.” $45.10/MWh, which is much lower than the $100/MWh that Site C Dam power would cost. If Site C Dam were to Prime Minister Trudeau should get a backbone and own up to his election promises of environmental protection be built, BC would need to export its power at a staggerand First Nations reconciliation. He still has the power ing loss. It’s a recipe for financial disaster and good reato stop this damn dam and should do so now – while he son to not flood this huge, productive valley. still has a shred of honour left.

“You could say, that instead of bedrock, Site C Dam The premier’s dam lie is powering billions of dollars of would be built upon Premier Clark’s lie. This is no little public money into big business bank accounts. The Site C lie. This is a big, nasty lie, which is already causing severe damage. The BC government likes to say the Site C Dam would blow a hole in BC Hydro so large it would wallow in red ink, making it all too simple to sell off the Dam would power-up more than 450,000 homes when indebted public power utility to the private sector at some completed. But the fact is it will power-up no homes in point down the road. But the dirty deed is not yet done.

BC because we already have more than enough power to do that for decades, far into the foreseeable future. […]

As more and more people become aware and engaged, hope grows that Premier Clark’s dam that was built on a “They have good reason to worry. Premier Clark has lie will come tumbling down. said she will get the Site C Dam project past the point of no return. What she means is she will sign so many conEver wonder what the C in Site C Dam stands for? I say tracts with construction companies and material providers it stands for crumbling. that no court would be able to overturn her dam agenda. It LINK: http://commonground.ca/2016/09/site-c-a-dam-lie/ also means that tree clearing crews will have cut down so ***********************

The transatlantic trade deal TTIP may be dead, but something even worse is coming ISDS: Investor-state dispute settlement – A secretive super-court system both sides of the Atlantic from legislating. […] ♣ From: Richard Averett, raverett@frontier.com

ISDS language has nothing to do with trade tariffs and closed markets - just giving the top 1% more power & wealth to use against the rest of us. It is the pathway to having a One World Order, The Global Oligarchy – a long held dream of our Neocons (and apparently our Corporate Democrats as well)! The Europeans just killed our other trade deal (TTIP) because of this – and more, but they are about to replace it with something similar and even possibly worse…

George Monbiot in The Guardian: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/TG-ttip-c-eu

“The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is ostensibly a deal between the EU and Canada…. it allows any corporation that operates (in signatory countries), wherever its headquarters might be, to sue governments before an international tribunal. It threatens to tear down laws protecting us from exploitation and prevent parliaments on 40 dialogue

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*******

The Invisible Prison & Subjective Servitude

By Michael Tsarion (& The Deception of The Press)

How we are all manipulated in some instances by esoteric means. No honest opinion in our media. None.

We live under a secret government. Council of Foreign Relations. Psychic dictatorship. Mind manipulation. We are not free. We are not aware. We can’t take the “muggers” off the streets. “The galaxy is intelligent.”

LINK (21 min): http://tinyurl.com/YT-tsarion1 and (18 min): http://tinyurl.com/YT-tsarion2 ♣ *******

How the TPP Special Court Crushes Domestic Laws and Plunders the Public Article by David Dayen, Huffington Post, Aug 30, 2016

When it comes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, financiers will push lawsuits, while taxpayers foot the bill…. “the court that rules the world.”

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/AN-tpp-sc ♣ www.dialogue.ca

John Pilger Exposes Australia’s Shocking Secret in Utopia filmmaker talks to Australian Times about the devastatTwo years in the making, John Pilger’s controversial ing inequalities suffered by the Aboriginal community. new film Utopia reveals a shocking national secret behind the postcard image of the “lucky country”. As it LINK: http://tinyurl.com/ICH-36877 premiers in the UK, the award winning documentary [END OF LINKS FROM S. McDowall] ♣ **************************************************************

Dying to Save Taxpayer Dollars: How outsourcing hospital cleaning is costing lives in BC – and across North America RE: Article in TheTyee: June 6, 2016 – LINK: http://thetyee.ca/Culture/2016/06/06/Saving-Taxpayer-Dollars/ COMMENT BY JEREMY ARNEY:

Yep, back then my son worked in the kitchen at the Victoria General, doing the special needs meals there. He loved it as he visited the patients and found out what they could/could not eat, and what they really liked. He was well paid with benefits and the patients loved him.

When Campbell outsourced it – to Compass, I think it was – they offered him the same job at $10 per hour with no benefits at all. As did almost the entire kitchen staff at Vic General, he said, thanks but no thanks (actually a bit more colourful than that, as you might imagine).

At the same time, I was working in the laundry getting ready to set up an all Vancouver Island service which the laundry there is perfectly capable of handling, but as

per usual, Campbell decided that it was too much money to run a 24-hour operation (even though the laundries all up and down the island would have been scaled back to emergency operations) and so my job was unneeded, the system was never set up and the Vic General laundry is still only running at 50% capacity - that is two shifts a day except at weekends when it is one on Saturday and none on Sunday.

So the meals are trucked in from Edmonton, the cleaning us undone through inefficiency allowed by contractors, and the Vic General laundry, built for perfection, is misused. That's typical of today's corporate world. Who cares about collateral deaths as long as there is a profit, eh? ♣

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CPAC.ca – Watch your Government House committees (and other gov’t affairs) in action At www.cpac.ca (‘created by cable for Canadians’) Recent Committee activities include the Special Committee on Electoral Reform (during the summer & ongoing), and the Government Operations and Estimates Emergency meeting (July 28, 2016) on the Harper-implemented Phoenix pay system which has been ************************************************************************************

Canada’s ‘Corporate’ Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans - another example of ‘regulatory capture’ From Patricia White, BC, pwhite.red@gmail.com DFO works for corporations. They joined fish farms to sue Alexandra Morton for her work raising awareness about the destruction of the oceans. We are the government. we have no functional ministries protecting anything anymore. The sooner people wake up and realize that WE HAVE NO FUNCTIONAL GOVERNMENT the better. They all serve Corporate Capitalism. And are paid to shut people like us up so they can get paid to look like they have some use. ♣ MORE ON REGULATORY CAPTURE FROM DAVID FOSTER, Pp. 47-49.

www.dialogue.ca

malfunctioning, resulting in many federal employees being either not paid or underpaid for their work.

Watch (in English): http://www.cpac.ca/en/ For a schedule of broadcasts, see: http://www.cpac.ca/en/full-schedule/ ♣

I am a Seenager.

(Senior teenager) I have everything that I wanted as a teenager, only 60 years later.

I don’t have to go to school or work.

I get an allowance every month.

I have my own pad.

I don’t have a curfew.

I have a driver’s license and my own car.

The people I hang around with are not scared of getting pregnant and they do not use drugs.

And I don’t have acne.

Life is great.

Rec’d from J. C. McCullough ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

dialogue 41

Electoral Reform – Proportional Representation Letter to the PM regarding the current process for reform From: K. Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) Broadcaster/writer, Lions Bay, B.C. Canada V0N 2E0 Email: rafe@rafeonline.com / Web: www.rafeonline.com

Dear Prime Minister, Permit me to introduce myself. I live in Lions Bay BC, and have lived all my life in British Columbia. I left the law for politics in1975 when I became MLA for Kamloops and, for five years, a cabinet minister under The Honourable William R. Bennett. For four years I was responsible for constitutional affairs and represented BC in the run-up to the patriation of the constitution. I was a member of Prime Minister Trudeau's Committee of Cabinet Ministers on the Constitution.

I left Government in February 1981 and became a talk show host for the next 24 years. Having had experience in the field, I've been invited to participate in national organizations involved in the discussion on changing the voting system, but I have refused because they would not commit to a referendum.

I'm told that a referendum would help the Conservatives because it would take too long to accomplish, thus mean the 2019 election would be FPTP, their choice. I am certainly no Tory supporter, but Tories are Canadians and entitled to vote on what sort of an electoral system we should have.

The underlying assumption is that the House of Commons speaks for the people. This is technically true but far from accurate in reality. My MP certainly does not speak for me on the method to be used for electing MPs! With respect, I believe that Parliament is overlooking a strong feeling, certainly in BC, that they no longer represent the people, only interests.

But there is an even more serious issue. MPs have a conflict of interest which they tendentiously deny, but is no less real for that. While my interest is a fair way to express my opinion as to how my MP should be elected, the MP's interest is not just getting themselves elected but getting their party a Majority or substantially improve its position. The Prime Minister, who rewards his MPs or punishes them unto expulsion, will want to see a system that is best for them in Central Canada which may or may not be what I want. He runs the Liberal caucus and, absent a secret ballot, will have all Liberal MPs voting as he demands. To pretend that one whose job depends upon the outcome of a deliberation of which they're a part will appear even-handed in making that decision, is naive at best but more likely not telling the truth.

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There's an active feeling amongst the establishment, or dare I say the elite, that the great unwashed aren't able to make serious decisions. Interestingly, these same great unwashed are not nearly so stupid when these same MPs seek their votes.

It's a denial of the very basis of democracy to say that people are unable to decide matters for themselves. The criterion is my right to vote not whether the decision pleases (in that wonderful phrase from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer) "those set in authority over us."

To one who energetically fought the Charlottetown Accord, it's clear that the establishment has never forgiven ordinary folk for voting against their wishes, especially in BC, where the "no" vote was 67.9%. You might think that an expression of opinion that strong would carry some weight with the elite. Instead they've concluded that the public just demonstrated how stupid they were. I would argue, with a lot of academic support, that the defeat of Charlottetown saved Canada.

There's a very practical aspect to this. If the Commons makes the decision, it will never really be accepted, no matter what it is.

When New Zealand went through this process in 1992 & ’93, it held two referenda, one asking whether or not people wanted to change from the first past the post (FPTP) method. When the decision was a clear yes, a second referendum posed the three logical alternatives with the one getting the most votes, Mixed Member Proportional (MMP), the new method I was in New Zealand a lot in those days and audited the process. It was interesting that about five years after they had changed to MMP, almost everybody I spoke to said they hated the new system, yet when I asked if they would return to FPTP they threw their hands up in horror.

My ad hoc survey was confirmed in 2011 when a further referendum asked if people wanted to stay with MMP and 59% said they did, more than voted for it in the first place.

What's clearly noticeable is that no matter how they voted people accept that the decision was fairly and democratically made. If Parliament had made any of these decisions, the controversy would be raging still and it would have little respect of the electors.

I've taken up too much of your time and close by simply posing this question "how can you make a decision about creating a democratic system without doing democracy in making that decision?" ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Links and Articles from June Ross

Suggested by June Ross, Nanaimo, jross12@telus.net

Proportional Representation: Introducing VoteBetter.ca If you have questions about the government’s plans to change our voting system, we’ve got answers. Today we are launching VoteBetter.ca – a new website in support of Leadnow’s campaign for proportional representation.

VoteBetter.ca is a hub of information on proportional representation (PR) - what it is, why we need it, and what you can do to help make it happen. It’s a one-stopshop for anyone who wants to know more about the potential upcoming changes to our voting system and join the movement to make every vote count. […]

Visit the new website: www.votebetter.ca/

We know that there’s been a lot happening on voting reform in the last few months, and we wanted to make it easy to get caught up. That’s why VoteBetter.ca has resources explaining different voting systems, including more information on why PR is a fair, inclusive and collaborative voting system. It also lets you know how you can help support this work online and offline in the coming weeks and months. – VoteBetter.ca ♣

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Voyage for Salmon: Sea Shepherd comes to help! https://www.voyageforsalmon.ca/ Alexandra Morton, on the Sea Shepherd In a stunning development Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd offered me a ship and crew to further my work protect wild salmon from salmon farms! The launch of Operation Virus Hunter began July 18, 2016. Salmon farm audit continues. Every time I take a close look at a salmon farm I learn things that deepen my understanding of how salmon farms are disrupting and damaging the BC coast. At the website (link above) you can keep track of us and, most importantly, help! I don't think the Liberal government is being properly briefed on the impact of this dirty industry and so I set sail on the Martin

Sheen on a research and public awareness mission.

This will be a peaceful journey, no harassment of the workers, no disruption of the daily operations of the farms, but we will be taking a close look at these farms. They thrive on secrecy, however they are using public waters... If you see the ship go by please photo and share. This is our chance to speak to the world about the destruction of one of earths rare places that still makes clean water and food. – Gilakas'la, – Alexandra Morton, Gwayum'dzi,

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gorbuscha@gmail.com [See also p.11, 41, photo p.2] ♣

CLIMATE PLAN SUBSIDIZES FOSSIL FUELS! Read this one and weep! – June Ross (Fwd from Kenneth S. Pearce) LINK: http://tinyurl.com/ds-ca-subsidize

B.C. Climate Plan Subsidizes Fossil Fuels (Yes, You Read That Correctly)

By James Wilt, www.desmog.ca, August 30, 2016 The B.C. government has quietly slipped subsidies for the natural gas sector into its climate plan, which has been panned as “cynical” by leading experts. B.C.’s socalled Climate Leadership Plan, quietly released on August 19, includes a vague pledge to subsidize the electrification of upstream natural gas facilities in the northeast of the province, using “renewable” power from BC Hydro projects.

“I just could not believe the audacity of it when I was reading the plan,” Alex Doukas, senior campaigner at Oil Change International, told DeSmog Canada. “We’re using public dollars to help them reduce their emissions, when that should be the responsibility of the natural gas www.dialogue.ca

producers. That’s why B.C. ostensibly has a carbon tax: there’s a principle called the ‘polluters pay principle.’ Taxpayers shouldn’t be picking up the tab for big polluters.”

The hidden subsidies come on top of B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s many concessions to the natural gas industry, including more than a billion dollars in royalty breaks, a freeze on the provincial carbon tax and taxpayer-subsidized promotion and marketing.

BC to Pay for Natural Gas Infrastructure and Subsidize Power Costs Natural gas production and processing, which requires a great deal of energy, has historically been powered by natural gas or diesel. “Full electrification” – which would include building new transmission lines, compressors and pumps to move gas through the system – would cut carbon emissions by an additional 2.4 million tonnes, according to the B.C. government. Maximilian Kniewasser, analyst at the Pembina Institute, describes such reduction numbers as “fairly significant,” requiring a bit more …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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James Wilt, DeSmog.ca - Climate Plan Subsidizes Fossil Fuels, contd. initial investment stage. Despite bleak economic prothan 6,000 gigawatt hours of energy (20 per cent more electricity than the Site C Dam will produce). spects for B.C.’s LNG industry, Clark is clearly doubling The climate plan, which failed to implement the recomdown on her LNG dream. At this stage it wouldn’t mendations made by B.C.’s climate advisory team, also come as a surprise if B.C. taxpayers found themselves mentioned that programs are in development to “close fully on the hook for the transmission infrastructure to the gap between electricity and natural gas costs.” electrify future natural gas production.

Doukas says this suggests that public dollars will be Huge Emissions Associated With LNG, Includspent not only to subsidize construction of the infrastruc- ing Methane Leakages and Liquefaction ture but to “ratchet down the cost of electricity delivered A key component of the government’s push for LNG is to these natural gas producers so they’re not taking any the idea that the product is “the cleanest burning fossil kind of financial hit.” fuel.” Clark once said that developing the LNG sector “None of this gas expansion is compatible with acting on would be the “greatest single step British Columbia can climate change in line with science,” he said. “On the take to fight climate change.” one hand, they’re trying to greenwash that gas expanThat’s a seriously contested point. Natural gas is ession. On the other hand, they’re promoting it actively by sentially methane, a greenhouse gas that has 25 times the giving a handout to natural gas producers by offering to global warming potential over a century than carbon diinvest public money into new infrastructure to electrify oxide, meaning you really, really don’t want it released their operations,” he says. “It’s a double whammy.” into the atmosphere. That’s not a contested point.

Clark Promised LNG Would Create 100,000 Jobs In fact, both Canada and the U.S. have committed to reducing upstream methane emissions from the oil and Kniewasser notes there are no real details on what is being proposed, and that there is a big difference between a gas industry by 45 per cent, in large part by cleaning up oil and gas operations that routinely vent and leak medirect subsidy that pays for the entire cost of electrificathane into the atmosphere. That venting and leaking is a tion compared to a program that provides upfront costs part of the reason why the natural gas industry in B.C. is and eventually gets recouped. estimated to have such a significant climate impact.

But Clark has set quite the precedent for making intensely generous offerings to kickstart her LNG dreams A 2013 DeSmog Canada investigation revealed B.C.’s (which she once promised would create 100,000 jobs methane emissions are likely seven times greater than and $1 trillion in GDP). These commitments accompareported, meaning the CO2 equivalent of the natural gas nied federal subsidies from former PM Stephen Harper, industry is around 25 per cent higher than estimated. which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cemented until In May, an open letter signed by 90 scientists concluded 2025 in his government’s first federal budget. that constructing the Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal — one of twenty proposed terminals — would inMartyn Brown, former premier Gordon Campbell’s crease B.C.’s total emissions by between 18 and 22.5 per chief of staff, wrote about her 2015 legislation that locked in tax breaks and subsidies for 25 years: “We will cent, spouting upwards of 11.5 million tonnes of carbon per year (most of the emissions are related to the liqueall pay for the government’s failings on this file forever. faction process, which involves burning gas to run comWe will one day live to regret them for all they will cost us in lost revenue, in lost sovereignty and in their lack of pressors to liquefy gas). any guarantees for Canadian workers, skills training or Government Agreed to Pay Exporters local suppliers.”

If It Raises Carbon Tax While B.C. is seeing renewable energy alternatives Kniewasser stresses that emissions reductions don’t even struggling or even abandoning the province, other places require public investments, just a predictably increased are benefitting from the emerging clean energy econcarbon tax. omy. Ontario has created more than 5,000 full-time jobs But due to the aforementioned 2015 legislation, the govfrom the solar industry alone and California, which has ernment must compensate natural gas exporters if it inaggressively pursued its emissions reduction plan, has creases its meagre $30/tonne carbon tax (in other words, seen $48 billion flood the economy while creating an it voluntarily signed up to pay corporations if it requires estimated 500,000 jobs over the last decade. them to innovate and cut pollution).

In the meantime Clark has effectively pinned her entire In the plan, the government also expressed an interest in political career on the LNG industry, which, up to this “developing regulations to enable carbon capture and point, has yet to see a single project get past the storage,” a technology that has come at enormous public 44 dialogue

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www.dialogue.ca

expense in Alberta and Saskatchewan; the Boundary Dam CCS project near Estevan has been riddled with design flaws and cost overruns.

All up, it’s abundantly clear that Clark has zero interest in meaningfully addressing emissions via an increased carbon tax and public investments in technologies like geothermal, solar and wind.

In the words of Mark Jaccard, one of the most respected climate policy experts in the country, the plan represented “Olympian heights of political cynicism.”

There’s a good chance that status will only be solidified as more information about the natural gas electrification plan comes out.

LINK: http://www.desmog.ca/blog/james-wilt ♣

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The ‘Carbon’ Debate

Why some of us remain unconvinced about ‘carbon-caused’ climate change Richard K. Moore, Wexford Ireland [Extract from Climate Change & Mind Control, link below]

Concern over climate change has become the existential issue for activists and citizens all over the world. The level of concern, the desperation, is very much like the feelings we had during the Cold War, when we believed we were always just a radar-blip away from nuclear extinction.

I suppose the beginning of the widespread concern began with Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. From there the concern has been fed by countless nature documentaries, and by frequent media reports of rising sea levels, desperate polar bears, hottest days on record, and heartless oil companies. What’s there to talk about, the science is settled. Either you’re concerned about climate change, or you’re a head-in-the-sand climate denier, or you don’t believe in science, or else you’re in the pay of the oil companies. End of story. But as they say in my favorite song from Porgy and Bess, “It Ain’t necessarily so.” […] As for the so-called science, it’s all bogus. In Gore’s film, for example, he shifted the graph, so that it showed CO2 increasing prior to temperature increases.

In fact, temperature increases precede CO2 increases, in the long-term record.

LINK to full article, “Climate Change & Mind Control” – http://tinyurl.com/RKM-ccmc P.S. Here are two articles I published on the subject: Climate Science: Observations versus Models (2010): www.globalresearch.ca/climate-science-observationsversus-models/16865 Climate Variation & its Cosmic Origins (2014): www.serendipity.li/climate/cosmic_climate.htm

Comment re Climate Change & Mind Control From Bob Hansen, Nanaimo BC Richard Moore, great article – Climate Change & Mind Control (see link) – and the question and your answer at the end are a nice touch of reality.

Let's face it, we have HAARP, chemtrails, and the Mayan 26,000 year calendar that points to our times to be an era of great change. And then the ancient ice cores, www.dialogue.ca

for true perspective on the relationship between CO2 and warming. The carbon taxes and trade opportunities will not help billions of people now experiencing 'austerity' imposed by the thieves involved with the housing collapse in the U.S. in 2008 and subsequent shakedown of the global economy.

This is the real purpose of 'smartmeters', especially when they are so conveniently hackable by other criminals, and can completely take down an entire grid, let alone having individuals' home electrical power shut off by 'inexplicable situations', etc. Otherwise, how did such an incredibly worthless and even dangerous piece of technology, smartmeters, become such an international movement so quickly, and all the while violating almost every health and engineering standard set in place over the last 100 years?

Yes, mind control equals political control, equals social supremacy and the maintenance of the 'established order' of oligarchs and psychopaths.

Cheers, Bob - “The Corporation IS the Enemy.” (hansen.bob5@gmail.com) Host, Altered Egos Radio News Magazine, CHLY 101.7FM (Nanaimo, BC) ♣

Other comments on the above-referenced article, Climate change and mind control: Message of May 2016 from Peter Meyer to Richard K. Moore: You might be interested to hear that in Australia the CSIRO (govt. research organization) is planning on shutting down the section that studies ice core data, eliminating 74 jobs.

The ice lab was set to partner with NASA in looking for million-year-old ice. The CSIRO will still, however, do research on preparing for expected climate changes and the prevention of further climate change (ha!ha!).

This sounds like a political move — eliminate the scientific work likely to disprove AGW and thereby maintain the profitable (for the banks) carbon trading schemes.

A search on "csiro paleo-climate science unit" will bring up relevant articles.

Richard replied: Here we see more evidence for the …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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coming of technocracy: society ruled by science, and science ruled by manufactured orthodoxy. Ice cores are out because they contradict AGW orthodoxy. AGW orthodoxy is in because it enables a certain societal agenda (ie, 21). In general, real science must be suppressed. In Canada whole swaths of public-sector science have been cut from the budget over the past few years, including those who monitor marine life in BC. In this case the relevant orthodoxy is: there’s no need

to worry your head about Fukushima.

Carbon trading isn’t the reason for AGW orthodoxy, rather it’s a motivator for the lower echelons. The real reason for Big Agendas is always social control, and social engineering, not money. Those who call the shots can always access more money than they need, given that they control most of the world’s currencies and directly own a considerable fraction of the world’s resources. ♣

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Robert Koehler says “It’s Time to Grow Up” Reflections on the Anthropocene

By Robert C. Koehler, August 31st, 2016, http://CommonWonders.com / EXTRACT/LINKS “However these debates will unfold, the Anthropocene1

represents a new phase in the history of both humankind and of the Earth, when natural forces and human forces became intertwined, so that the fate of one determines the fate of the other. Geologically, this is a remarkable episode in the history of this planet.”

This is a little too big to simply call “news.” Indeed, I can’t move beyond these words — especially that heartstopper, “intertwined” — until I’m able to summon sufficient inner quiet and humility. Geologically, the paradigm has already shifted. How about spiritually?

The words are those of four geologists and climate scientists, including Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen, writing in 2010 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology (and quoted at phys.org) — making the point that the human phenomenon has become, for better and for worse, essentially partnered with nature, a co-creator of the planet’s future.

This hypothesis has returned to public attention, as the International Geological Congress meets in Cape Town, South Africa, and a working panel has voted that the Anthropocene Epoch — a planetary shift to a new geological state of existence — be officially acknowledged by the world’s scientific community. That is to say, the planet has moved beyond what has been called the Holocene: some 12,000 years of climate stability, which emerged after the last ice age. In this window of opportunity, human civilization created itself and, in the process, seized hold of, and began changing, the planet’s geological infrastructure. […]

The primary cause of the geological shift, the Guardian2 reports, are “the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken 46 dialogue

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were now under consideration.”

None of this is good news. Short-sighted human behavior, from nuclear insanity to agribusiness to the proliferation of plastic trash, has produced utterly unforeseen consequences, including disruption of the climate that has nurtured our growth and becoming over the last dozen millennia. This is called recklessness. And mostly the Anthropocene is described with dystopian bleakness: a time of mass extinctions. A time of dying.

But I return to the words quoted above: “. . . the Anthropocene represents a new phase in the history of both humankind and of the Earth, when natural forces and human forces became intertwined. . . .”

What I hear in the silence of these words is something far more resonant than mere pessimism or cynicism. I hear awareness. I hear urgency. I hear hope.

I hear the largest challenge that humanity has ever faced or imagined — a challenge that transcends religion, politics and science, indeed, everything we believe and everything we know, or think we know. This includes a belief in our own reckless immaturity.

Consider: “Human occupation is usually associated with deteriorated landscapes, but new research shows that 13,000 years of repeated occupation by British Columbia’s coastal First Nations3 has had the opposite effect, enhancing temperate rainforest productivity.”

The story, also at phys.org, talks about research data showing that the trees growing at sites formerly inhabited by the tribal peoples “are taller, wider and healthier than those in the surrounding forest,” thanks to various practices, including the burying of the remains of intertidal shellfish over thousands of years, enriching the soil.

“For more than 13,000 years – 500 generations – people have been transforming this landscape,” environmental scientist Andrew Trant is quoted as saying.

“So this area that at first glance seems pristine and wild is actually highly modified and …/ www.dialogue.ca

enhanced as a result of human behavior.”

There are many, many examples of how “primitive” cultures have been true stewards of their environment and enhanced its health and eco-diversity, but such stories are easily dismissed with a despairing shrug: This isn’t how the modern world works. Nor has eco-stewardship been the force that has brought on the Anthropocene.

That has come about, rather, by a combination of extraordinary technological breakthroughs and cold indifference to their consequences: human evolution, you

might say, outside the circle of life. But here we are nonetheless. http://commonwonders.com “. . . when natural forces and human forces became intertwined. . . .” It’s time to grow up. …

Robert Koehler’s website: http://commonwonders.com FOOTNOTES: 1. http://tinyurl.com/phys-org-anthro 2. The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/TG-anthro-epoch 3. http://tinyurl.com/phys-org-enhanced ♣

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“Ideas”

Intriguing Ideas from David Foster…

david.foster2@powergate.ca

The Invisible Society… “Regulator Capture” David Foster, Port Perry ON

We need a global Gaian accounting system I’ve noticed that everything that matters that people have made happen world-wide is deliberately made invisible of its most important ingredient... the Economic System that made it happen. Not a hint from Space. It is as if we all agreed to practice invisible stealth.

This, in a modern scientific awareness of what goes on at the one part per million level and smaller (yet we tell no one). Atlantic Monthly Author Ed Young’s book, ‘I Contain Multitudes... the Microbes Within Us,’ tells us what is too small to see. But the accounting systems and the public information systems act as if the knowledge doesn’t count). There is also the problem of what we choose not to see: Regulator Capture How far out is Far Enough?

David and Goliath Where do Activists come from?

An anti-Nuclear Activist in my part of the country suddenly discovered that ‘Regulator Capture’ is a strategy even the Environmental Protection Agencies in both the USA and Canada suffer from. The pathway to her discovery was from discussion on Autism and its phenomenal growth. A change in mass inoculations using a poison is the perceived culprit. But digging deeper, it is really Regulator Capture. Regulators being hired from the very industry they are meant to control. So of course massive corruption and massive damage occurs in the pursuit of corporate profit. (More below) Dr. Thierry Vrain convinced me that the war on our gut microbes through Glyphosate in crops was an equal culprit... there again, Regulator Capture, still allowing what we know is bad. www.dialogue.ca

How far out is far enough? I was a Systems Analyst in my work career... Look at a Corporation’s problems from the point of view of profitability. Find what is loose.

Tighten it. Then go away. Except I didn’t go away. I asked what else was affected, all the way out to the distant parts per million... I didn’t get paid for that part, and so there was always doubt as to how much damage I had done in trying to solve one problem by creating others from the loose ends... So I began a campaign of ONE to create a Global Gaian Accounting system... Count everything we can as a plus or minus as to how it affects Gaia, the Earth. I’m not doing too well... Each day I wake up with two goals in mind... do some good, and do no harm. And that ‘no harm’ is the tough one...

Where do Activists come from? Green-Peacers getting between harpoons and whales... out where the danger is.

It takes only a few, a precious few. They become heroes to generations.

“David and Goliath” is a book by Malcolm Gladwell telling how the underdog finds people and strategies to upset the apparent balance. To challenge the Overlord and win. It doesn’t need God... it just needs a more complete understanding of the setting.

Kurt Hahn was a teacher from the Hitler era who created a School for Activists in Scotland. It was called ‘Outward Bound.’ A tame form of it still survives, but it has been co-opted by the very fascist corporate culture it sought to free us from. So I looked for a likely successor founder for a modern School for Activists... those few who will live poor and take great risks (buoyed by an uncommon sense of humanity). Haven’t found the Founder yet.

Toronto has ‘activist groups’ that teach young people the organization skills, but they have no venue …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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David Foster, The Invisible Society, Regulator Capture, contd.

for testing their courage, their endurance. Facing down Kinder Morgan shipping in a small kayak, as many Vancouverites did, is promising.

‘Lead Now’ takes on Regulator Capture by e-mail and phone calls. It is a mild form of Activism, especially in the current threats to the Peace River indigenous lands where permits to build an enormous dam have been issued by Harper era agencies co-opted. Bigfoot needs to appear and stomp all over them. Which of our valuable myths and folklore can we build on?

Where I live, we used to have billions of Monarch Butterflies. Now gone because Regulators thought it would be a fine thing to spray poisons on road verges so the nasty milkweed plant wouldn’t interfere with Bayer’s business. Add to that an accident or two of climate, and poof... the Monarchs are gone. The Niagara Parks Commission has a ‘Butterfly Conservatory’ where a small team breeds various kinds of butterflies to release into their hall where the public can walk through and wonder. They claim to have kits to send to schools and to private citizens so outsiders can raise both milkweed and Monarchs in the wild, but somehow they ran out before they sent me mine.

I like the Monarchs on two levels... their incredible program of flying from Mexico to mid-Eastern Canada over two generations, following paths only their parents knew. So I collect milkweed pods that release seeds with tiny soft umbrellas to float off to find an unpolluted roadside and make the heady perfume of the plant in flower. It calls to monarchs far, far away. And one of those calls is to our own Monarch... Please, destroy Regulator Capture before it destroys both you in the Monarchy and us.

The Invisible Society is what we are, (in that there is no evidence of what Regulator Capture has done). No evidence of the cost of a Kinder Morgan Pipeline right on the pipe and the land it passes through. No evidence of the cost of Capitalism. No evidence of the cost of simply paving a road. We keep it all hidden from public view (and that makes us the mass of people ignorant and unaware). How can democracy work in that?

Where is there even one village where the cost of everything is right out there on the item at the time it was acquired, and we can gauge its own change? Then we’d have some idea of ‘value’ and wannabe ‘Activists’ might have a ready reason to get worked up because the evidence is out where we all can see. But no... it is the Invisible Society 48 dialogue

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What is the true cost of group vaccination? Of no insects along roads, of no awareness by the mass of the Public, and deceit by Captured Regulators?

‘Osprey & Ignorance’

It is really about ‘Received Wisdom,’ ‘Regulator Capture,’ ‘Awareness,’ & ‘Belief ’

Where I live, an osprey built a nest near a shallow lake using trash near at hand, and a 50 foot stout steel pole erected recently for holding three massive microwave transmitters. I watched it for weeks as the young developed, wondering if the EMF would affect the birds.

Backround Electro Magnetic Frequencies on the Earth are normally around 7.8 Hertz. That is about the range where Yogis chant ‘OMMMMM’ as they relax into normalcy. That is according to researcher W.O. Schumman in 1956. Others postulated that all sentient creatures on Earth developed within that range. And it stayed stable until the last few years... Then it shot up to average 16 Hertz where it is now. Did mankind cause it? Or is it part of a deeper natural cycle? How much of the ‘Canary in the mine’ is an Osprey? Since we don’t measure this stuff directly, is the osprey an ‘indicator species’?

Apparently not. Globally Ospreys are among the hardiest, widely distributed fish eagles.

‘Barry’ was a researcher hired by the British Military to summarize all that is known about EMFs for purposes of war, crowd control, and innovation. The program ran from the 1930s into the 1970s. Then the topic had been exhausted, and the public was given access to old former secrets (in government jargon, called ‘de-classified’).

Only people like Barry could make sense of what was released, and when he retired, he blew the whistle. The trigger was a school in Owen Sound where a group of mothers grew alarmed when a simple change was made from computer optical feed and electric cables to Wi-Fi. Almost immediately the mothers noticed odd and alarming behaviour changes in some of the children. The ladies went the usual route of asking a lot questions about safety (unaware of the pervasive strategy of ‘Regulator Capture’ that Industry has successfully pursued right up to the Health Canada Ministry level that was providing all the reassurances).

But eventually they asked Barry the Brit to come and explain the world of EMF Research and behaviour change. EMFs actually damage cells at the gene level, and no one back then knew what either ‘genes’ or the microbiome really was. Some political awareness emerged briefly when the Russians had beamed EMFs …/ www.dialogue.ca

David Foster, Regulatory Capture, contd.

at the US Embassy in Moscow in the mid-1960s and caused confusion and disruption, and much ill health. So the Press made a brief reference, and then in ignorance drove on. ‘Barry’ did a visit to Ontario and explained to the mothers (and several hundred others in Toronto) what was happening. (Part of the strategy of ‘Regulator Capture’ is to dump 15,000 pages of historic documents on the researcher who has made an Access For Information Request, and hope there is no knowledgeable Barry the Brit around to wade through it).

So I wondered about the Local 50 foot microwave transmission tower and who locally actually approved erecting it there by a busy mall? All those people checking their cell-phones and having no idea what damage they were doing. Ospreys can live as long as 30 years, so it may take a while to see if they are immune. We know certain people are not. A Professor at Trent University took pictures of the damage to cells before, during, and after a cell phone call. And busy women carry cell phones at their waists 4 inches from their own developing fetuses. It is the Profit motive within the Free Enterprise system that creates this endless lunge into secrets and innovation too new to be properly safeguarded by Government Agencies. Useless in our case since the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the USA has long ago been subverted to serve Industry rather than the public.

‘Received Wisdom’ is the body of theory the Regulators (and the especially the Medical and Chemical Industries) work within. Again, stemming from original research in the 1930s, some pioneers followed the investigative path that cancers may in fact be part of the body’s own first response to genetic damage. Cancers are part of the Immune System. Some researchers found they can be controlled by measures other than the current Cut, Poison and Burn solutions now meted out by the thriving Cancer Industry. Further ‘Received Wisdom’ assumed the main controller of Health was ‘germs,’ ‘cleanliness,’ ‘diet,’ exercise, and miracle antibiotics. So a whole Health Industry grew up with those assumptions. Only in the last 10 years have we discovered that it is the ‘microbiome’ that

controls health. (That is the complex mix of billions of bacteria within the digestive system, especially the lower gut where ‘essential nutrients’ are made. It is actually they that control our minds, our moods our immunity (so says current theory, fighting hard against Received Wisdom).

So what can you believe? What should you believe?

Whom can you trust (with all the pitfalls from the past to mislead us?) Is the electronic ‘miracle world’ the primary universal danger? I think the greater danger is over-population... too many people striving for a better life on too small a homeland. Therefore march ‘boldly into the unknown...’ unfettered innovation, freedom from any controls. The idea appeals enormously to the young. They never watched the loons in the lower lakes die off, continually calling for 20 years after they had become infertile.

The Indigenous people know. ‘Don’t overpopulate your homeland’. Be cautious about change. Its effects can’t be safely known for 7 generations. So I’m interested in what my own Grandfather had to say. He was a Country doctor (when doctors made visits to the afflicted in their own homes), and people died from wounds and infections in as little as 10 days. What good are all the old people in their 80s and ailing? I’m one of them. I’ve cost the Health System over $50,000 in medical ministrations by ‘Received Wisdom’. I didn’t know the alternatives.

So my job now is to apply the brakes and give back ‘value’... Dr James Lovelock’s discovery that the Earth is a cooperating biosphere of interdependent agents, and we are fools to fiddle with it without full understanding.

Overpopulation is the immediate problem: 2 billion when I was born, to 7 billion now and no limit in mind. That sets in motion the cycle of war and migration, the race for leading edge technical innovation, and rape of the Earth.

My deepest regret is that our Public School Systems missed understanding that the primary purpose of ‘education’ paid for by the public is to create the next two generations of citizens capable of governing their homeland in happiness and health for the next 1000 years (not just through the next Corporate Quarter, not just to get a ‘job’).

David Foster, Port Perry ON (Aug 4, 2016) ♣

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A thought about fiduciary duty Richard Ebbers, Cobourg ON “Former” ministers know that “Best Wishes” come from God and good countries. Fiduciary duty is more than a Microsoft Cloud.

A fiduciary duty is a legal duty to act solely in another party's interests. Parties owing this duty are called fiduciaries. The individuals to whom they owe a duty www.dialogue.ca

are called principals.

Fiduciaries may not profit from their relationship with their principals unless they have the principals' express informed consent.

A fiduciary trust is a fiduciary relationship in which a trustee holds the title to assets for the beneficiary.

The trust's creator is called the grantor. ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Ontario Residents Losing Control over Personal Health Care Choices UPDATE FOR DIALOGUE READERS: Impact for Canadians Everywhere

Competition Bureau Response to Complaints of Pharmaceutical Anti-Competition Behavior: Tough Luck!

By: G. Joubarne/C. Massey, Ottawa, Ontario Stop Psychotherapy Takeover’s (SPT) most recent initiative – in the fight to stop the elimination of holistic, traditional, energy and spiritual care treatments and practitioners in Ontario – was a new Submission, roughly 700 pages, sent by courier to the CompetiGrace Joubarne tion Bureau on July 17th, 2016.

Our Submission requested a thorough investigation of Ontario’s corrupt and deadly healthcare system. It detailed how and why Ontario residents are all in grave danger on many healthcare flanks – including, (a) psychotherapy legislation that is slated for proclamation any day now, (b) a more recent initiative to eliminate thousands of holistic healthcare clinics and wellness locations, and (c) the fact that unaccountable, medical/pharmaceutical-front corporations are inappropriately dictating healthcare policy for the people of Ontario.

We also sent copies of our Submission to: Ombudsman of Ontario, Canadian Constitution Foundation, Commission of Revenue, Integrity Commissioner, Fairness Commissioner of Ontario, Minister of Government and Consumer Services, Minister of Justice, and Attorney General of Canada. If you’d like a copy of this highly informative Submission document, please contact us at info@StopPsychotherapyTakeover.ca

You can help our efforts to preserve holistic healthcare options, not only for ourselves but for future generations, by contacting these organizations, referencing our Submission and demanding a full investigation.

For contact information, please see: LINK: www.stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca/demand-investigations-ontarios-corrupt-health-regulation-system/

We thank the Canadian Action Party (CAP) for conveying their concerns about this issue, in writing, to the federal Minister of Justice.

Disappointingly, but to no great surprise, we received a resounding ‘tough luck’ from the Competition Bureau by telephone. (Hear the conversation, online at LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tiM5uBxRgc ),

followed by written confirmation that they will not be pursuing any enforcement action.

It seems to us that the Competition Bureau officials 50 dialogue

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had not read our entire Submission. But more importantly, they stated that provincial politicians and government are not subject to any Competition Act provisions. The clear implication is that cartels are free to create monopolies in CanChristine Massey ada simply by inserting representatives into key government positions (such as Minister of Health).

Interestingly, the Bureau Officers failed to comment on their ability to investigate the non-governmental front corporation called FHRCO, which you will read about further below.

Are provincial governments really immune from investigation and prosecution, even when anti-competitive behavior is undertaken under the cover of invalid laws, as is the case in this healthcare scandal? Our investigation continues because according to the Competition Bureau’s own website, regulatory conduct under valid laws are not the jurisdiction of the Competition Bureau …which means the Competition Bureau acknowledges there is a distinction.

Regardless, Competition Bureau staff have a creative name for this sort of anti-competition corruption: Regulatory Capture.

Regulatory Capture is a form of government failure that occurs when a regulatory mechanism created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is intended to regulate.

It is the process by which regulations and agencies eventually come to be dominated by the very industries they were charged with regulating.

Regulatory Capture seems to be an art form for the Wynne provincial government and we are paying a high price for not recognizing this early enough.

The Competition Bureau officials indicated that they may eventually ‘advocate’ on this issue. However not only do they claim that they are unable to take enforcement action against any government, but in this case, they won’t know for quite a while if this issue will be considered important enough to ‘advocate’ about.

Of all the remaining agencies that we sent our Submission to, we have received only a form letter www.dialogue.ca

acknowledgement from the Minister of Government and Consumer Services.

Ontario's Health Regulatory Colleges are Unaccountable Corporations Research for the Submission uncovered many complexities in our corrupt Ontario healthcare legislative scheme.

For example, regulatory colleges, like the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, are corporations (‘bodies corporate’), unaccountable to the residents of Ontario, not remotely transparent (except when using 'transparency' as a way to remind everyone who is boss... for example, by posting on their websites the names of practitioners that don't conform to their whims and incessant demands). They are not subject to FIPPA (FOI requests and privacy requirements), not subject to the Corporations Act, and soon will not be subject to the Not-for-Profit Corporations Act. More recently, we learned they are also not subject to the Competition Act. Nevertheless, contact your MPP about your concerns and they will probably tell you to 'talk to the College'... even if your concerns are about the College!

More Corporate Influences on Ontario's Regulation of Healthcare Practitioners Yet another private corporation, one that goes by a government-sounding name but is completely outside the legislative framework with no government mandate whatsoever, has been for years heavily influencing the Ministry and individual colleges but never registered as a lobby group. This private corporation is called Federation of Health Regulatory Colleges of Ontario (FHRCO) and is run by Registrars of the various colleges.

These Registrars are often strategically-employed advocates of the medical/pharmaceutical cartel, and they use their association with the colleges to project an undeserved air of legitimacy and authority onto FHRCO. Few of them have any experience in the actual provision of healthcare.

FHRCO's agenda seems focused on eliminating all unregulated practitioners and any inconvenient regulated practitioners (the non-biomedical or independentminded ones) through unlawful and fraudulent/invalid legislation. It doesn’t stop there, as FHRCO openly engages in smear campaigns disguised as ‘education’: propaganda designed to turn the public against natural treatment practitioners.

FHRCO promotes the design and use of unjustified registration and membership requirements that they pressure individual colleges to adopt. Shenda Tanchak, former Executive Advisor to the medical doctors (College of Physicians and Surgeons) and ringleader of www.dialogue.ca

the Ontario Clinic Regulation Working Group discussed below, currently presides over FHRCO as President.

We brought the actions of this private corporation to the attention of the Competition Bureau in our Submission.

Since the FHRCO is not a government agency or mandated by the government, we fully expected an investigation…but again, the Bureau seems to have given FHRCO a free pass on anti-competition behaviour.

Ontario Clinic Regulation – it doesn’t get more fascist than this The Ontario Clinic Regulation Working Group's 'consultation report', and their 'recommendation report' are now with the Minister, ready to be rubber-stamped and moved to the next stage, which will most likely mean more unlawful legislation buried in yet another huge Omnibus bill. The clinic regulation project is a group of 13 College Registrars working outside their mandate with the express intent of outlawing all places where health and wellness services are provided by unregulated practitioners, such as Reiki, mediation, yoga, hypnosis services.

In other words, this group proposes to eliminate thousands of holistic services from Ontario for no particular reason, except that it is clear they are interfering with pharmaceutical profiteering.

These regulations would, in effect, make everything from Reiki to hypnotherapy, pet-assisted therapy to counsellors, meditation and holistic education to spiritual care, illegal. Worse, the group wants to impose mandatory moral character evaluations on all regulated practitioners, except of course, dentists, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists and nurses…the ones so often cited for questionable ethics and morality.

This is yet another angle from which our fundamental freedoms are under attack and it traces back to FHRCO at least as early as 2008. The Ontario Clinic Regulations Working Group is headed by none other than FHRCO's current president, the above-mentioned Shenda Tanchak.

Their project is force-funded via the fees extorted from the Members of the Registrars’ 13 colleges.

For more info visit the following LINK: http://www.stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca/ontario-clinicregulation

College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) Webinar Recently a Stop Psychotherapy Takeover supporter took part in a webinar hosted by the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO), recorded it and sent it to us. It contained quite a number of revealing declarations that show CRPO's dictatorial and unlawful …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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attitude on issues relating to the controlled act of psychotherapy.

We created a compilation video and a transcript of some highlights of that webinar (at the following LINKS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_UQ9bhY2F0&feature=youtu.be and, for the transcript, at LINK: -- www.stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca/transcript-crpowebinar-highlights-april-21-2016 ).

Note CRPO’s admissions that their registration process and the legislation are causing terror, nightmares and panic among practitioners of all types.

Final Thoughts Assuming that the Competition Bureau’s claims are accurate, and provincial governments really are immune from investigation and prosecution under the Competition Act, this begs the question: Was the Competition Act framed to allow anti-competition and monopolizing behavior via the provincial government?

It seems plausible that whoever framed the Competition Act might have deliberately allowed wiggle room for big corporations to eliminate their competitors through corrupt and/or ill-informed politicians and government bureaucrats who can, without penalty, pass legislation and enforce policies designed to monopolize entire industries.

However this situation came about, we now have a morally and ethically bankrupt Ontario government and its

front corporations designing all manner of anti-competition legislation and policies that violate our Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, without any worries of being held accountable for the horrific financial and emotional distress they are causing Ontarians.

It seems that the ONLY avenue left for turning this situation around is Court. And we need to raise the money now, before more innocent healthcare providers are ruined and their clients left with fewer and fewer healthcare options.

Friends, freedom isn't free, and neither is defending it, so please consider making a regular, recurring donation to support our mission at: www.StopPsychotherapyTakeover.ca .

These corrupt provincial actions are the template being used right across Canada. YOU and/or your loved ones will be affected…the only question is HOW SOON. The Stop Psychotherapy Team, Grace Joubarne and Christine Massey Contact Info: Grace Joubarne and Christine Massey are Holistic Practitioners and Co-founders, Stop Psychotherapy Takeover admin@stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca LINK: www.stoppsychotherapytakeover.ca/#unique-identifier1 - Tel. 613-422-7027 - graceplacewellness@gmail.com ♣

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“Your Health Matters”

“Why I Left Orthodox Medicine – Healing for the 21st Century” Book by Derrick Lonsdale, M.D. – Excerpt* “I believe nutritional medicine to be the mandatory medicine of the next century. It is extremely effective, particularly in the early stages of disease, where modern orthodoxy fails miserably. Its preventive approach is a guaranteed benefit; and last but not least, it is economically effective.” – Derrick Lonsdale. M.D. ‘Dedicated: To my wife Adèle’ Table of Contents Chapter 1, What Is Wrong With Orthodox Medicine?

Chapter 2, Inborn Errors of Metabolism

Chapter 3, Intermittent & Vitamin-Responsive Disorders Chapter 4, The Case of J.V. Chapter 5, Where the Experience Led Chapter 6, Adaptive Mechanisms Chapter 7, When the Adaptive Mechanisms Fail Chapter 8, Crib Death and Hyperactivity Chapter 9, Oxygen Drives the Adaptive Machinery Chapter 10, The Three Circles of Health Chapter 11, What Is the Correct Fuel?

Chapter 12, How Does the Laboratory Help?

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Foreword by James P. Frackleton, M.D. This book is must reading for this period of time of great con-fusion in the delivery of medical care. It takes the reader through the changes in philosophy experienced by a physician in an academic setting, based on his discovery of the logic of natural self-healing.

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In this chemically polluted world, drugs in general only add to the body's burden of poisons. The "new medicine" of the 21st century must be a paradigm shift from what was done in the 20th century under the title of "scientific medicine." …/ www.dialogue.ca

The presently accepted traditional or orthodox medicine has taken on all the characteristics of a religion, and any threat to its status quo is unfortunately treated as heresy.

Our present course will bankrupt our country without having the desired results of good, effective medicine.

Though the developing science of nutritional treatment

may appear, at first sight, to be an oversimplification, it actually influences body repair at the cellular level. Nutrition works, and this book provides a foundation for understanding why.

James P. Frackelton, M.D., Past President, The American College for Advancement in Medicine

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Why I Left Orthodox Medicineâ&#x20AC;? Healing for the 21st Century discovered the circulation of the blood. Obviously, Introduction Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, M.D. This is not a do-it-yourself book. It does not tell the reader what nutrient supplement to purchase from the health food store. Hundreds of books like that are in existence. This book is different because it tells you why nutrition and nutrient supplementation represent a paradigm shift in concept. It describes why I believe that nutritional medicine is a paradigm Shift. The last one occurred when germs were discovered as a common cause of many different disease conditions.

In order to understand the nature of this book, it is necessary to review recent history in the development of medical science. Hippocrates, generally conceded to be the father of modern medicine, actually operated on principles which were far removed from our present approach. The foundation of his treatment was based upon rest and diet. One of his most important tenets was the simple statement "Thou shalt do no harm," essentially meaning that if the attending physician does anything at all for the sick patient, it must never be actively harmful.

In this statement is implicitly the concession that the approach used by a physician might fail, but that it must not make things worse.

This tenet would appear to be something which is so obvious that it barely needs stating, but we shall see why this approach may easily be lost with our present attitude in modern medicine. Hippocrates also said, "Let your medicine be your food and your food be your medicine." In the modern era, that remarkable piece of wisdom has been almost totally lost, and it is worth examining why this is so.

Consider the development of medical thought over the centuries. The ancient Chinese people proposed and used advanced techniques for centuries, but by language and geography they were necessarily isolated, and their wisdom was never easily accessible to the Western world. In the meantime, development of scientific thought was proceeding at a painfully slow pace in Europe.

For example, we think of Harvey as the genius who www.dialogue.ca

Harvey was indeed a genius, for his discovery was brought to light in a time when current thought in Europe had no idea of the functions of the complex machinery now known as the cardiovascular system. Yet this concept was understood fairly well by the Chinese for as long as 4000 years before and was incorporated into their techniques as a matter of course.

The real problem is the accumulation of collective wisdom in a cohesive and retrievable form. This is seen sharply with the obvious background of the short human life span. Consider the vast quantities of literature that has ever been written; it is impossible for anyone individual to grasp even the smallest part of it. Hence, we develop our concepts in relatively small groups and easily become convinced that our own is the "only truth."

It is a painful reiteration of the story of the blind men and the elephant. A group of blind men were asked to describe an elephant that each had examined to the best of his ability. One described the animal as a "long tube"; another as a "flat piece of material," and so on. Of course, each was describing a very limited view, depending upon whether he had touched the trunk, the ear, or other organ of the whole animal. It is paramountly human that each of these blind men was equally convinced that he had described the whole elephant. Of even greater importance, each was convinced that the others had made fundamental mistakes in their ability to observe the animal. It is also obvious that each was making an accurate assessment of his observation. The failure to perceive the big picture was the error common to all of them.

This universal problem of mankind creates the collective failure to see the big picture. So we must now examine the development of our own particular "blind man" concept. That is, we must look at the mechanisms that led to our present views of the medical science that has come to be known as allopathy. The medieval period in Europe was associated with such nebulous things as evil spirits and witchcraft. There was no particular plan which referred to medical thought. No really good or practical ideas came until relatively recently when microorganisms were discovered to be a cause of a great many â&#x20AC;Ś/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Dr. Lonsdale, Healing for the 21st Century,â&#x20AC;? contd.

different diseases. Allopathy is defined as a medical technique which deliberately induces inflammation. This approach arose from the-fact that research showed that a fundamental response of the body to infection was inflammation. What was more natural than to attempt to find ways and means of inducing inflammation as a defensive response? Physicians no longer do this, but the concept of killing the enemy has remained as the dominant theme that guides our collective thought patterns.

Every effort was then made to find ways and means of killing the germs without killing the human being who was attacked. Penicillin did two things. It gave doctors a useful and practical approach to infections for the first time ever, at least with reasonable safety. But it also reinforced the "game plan," which was to kill the enemy.

Nobody will contest the fact that the discovery of penicillin was dramatic, perhaps the most dramatic moment in the history of modem medicine. Like so many things, however, it had its "flip" side, unfortunately. It gave us the idea that Mother Nature had provided an inexhaustible supply of harmless germ killers. A vast research program was initiated to find other substances that had the same kind of effect as penicillin. Now we have a very large number of antibiotics, as they all came to be called. But not all of them were benign: far from it. Indeed, some of them were so toxic to our own cells that they were diverted to the treatment of various forms of cancer.

In fact, the idea of antibiotics was so transparently supportive of collective modern medical wisdom that it blinded us to a whole array of associated factors. It is remarkably akin to the error that has been made in agriculture, in attempting to find ways and means of killing insect pests. Everyone, including the farmers, knows now that this approach perpetrated an ecologic phenomenon which threatens our very existence. The insects became resistant to insecticides and bred resistant strains in their progeny. As quickly as the ingenious chemist found a new chemical, the insect population adapted and became resistant to the lethal attack. Now we have hundreds or thousands of chemical substances and whole generations of insects that are unaffected by the array of chemicals.

Ironically, however, our cells have not adapted to these chemicals, and we are the organisms that are feeling the effect of this barrage of chemical brinkmanship. Our water is heavily polluted, and our food is tainted with them.

Nobody is yet able to assess the amount of disease in humans which is directly related to this use of pesticides.

The idea of "kill the enemy" spread to the treatment of 54 dialogue

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cancer. If the maverick cells that represent the cancer could be killed, then the disease would be cured. We are faced with the same problem. Can we kill the cancer without killing its owner? We are back at the conundrum that faced us when we were trying to find agents to kill germs. Unfortunately, we had forgotten that the body has its own defensive machinery, and no thought was given to finding means to improve or support it. In fact, our therapy often damages the situation to such a degree that we offend that fundamental rule preached by Hippocrates: Thou shalt do no harm.

We have run into a very distinct and important mistake which permeates the whole range of crisis disease. We have become arrogant since we have come to believe that the modem era of medicine is the scientific bonanza of all time. Physicians are trained, and patients are taught, that this modem medicine is fantastic and dramatic and can produce miracles of healing that have never been dreamed of before. So gulled are we that it is sometimes extremely difficult for a physician to observe that his treatment is making things worse. In the excitement of the intensive care unit (terminology which glorifies the active participation of the physician as a healer), he sees the clinical decay of a patient and says to himself: "What a devastating disease this is. Even with the powerful medicines that I have at my disposal, I do not seem to be able to correct this inevitable decline. I must add yet another pharmaceutical miracle drug."

He (the male gender is used for convenience only) has been duped. He has forgotten that he is not a healer. He is the servant of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;machineâ&#x20AC;? that is able to heal itself, and he needs humility, not aggression. His training is against him, for the power of the drug companies teaches him constantly that he is in charge of a battery of miracle makers that must be used with increasingly honed skill. It is difficult for him to see that each drug compounds the clinical situation and that it is not the natural course of the disease that is the problem.

This attitude has also given way to the idea that clinical observation is old-fashioned and of no value in the presence of modem technology. The diagnosis is made by finding evidence of structural changes in the body and this is the work-up which must be set in motion in every case. When no evidence of disease is found from this work-up, the patient is placed in a classification of "functional disease," tantamount to an accusation of fraud. This judgment has infiltrated into the patient's consciousness in the form of "the doctor said that it was all in my head." It is not particularly surprising that this classification, rightly or wrongly, has given rise to latent or explicit resentment, www.dialogue.ca

Dr. Lonsdale, Healing for the 21st Century,” contd.

since the patient is convinced that the physician considers him to be a fake. Unfortunately, this is often exactly the opinion of the physician who believes that the physical symptoms are some kind of psychological protection for the patient, who is unwilling to face the world.

If this is the model that we have set up and it is wrong, then we have to replace it with a better model. This book is to introduce the reader to such a model. It demonstrates why preventive medicine, which uses nutrition as its core therapy, has to be the medicine of the 21st century. Although a relatively simple model, it is built upon basic science which is well-known and understood. It is only a matter of moving this knowledge out of the laboratory into the clinic, a procedure which can take many years unless the physician is willing and able to be conversant with the patient's problem in both clinical and biochemical terms. It will show the reader that health can be maintained remarkably easily if the human machine is properly serviced and that the fuel that it receives is the most important of all health measures.

I have tried to trace my own development as a physician.

I was educated in the most orthodox and austere atmosphere, in a famous London teaching hospital. My early training is remembered with gratitude because it taught me how people tick. Progressing through family practice to the heady atmosphere of a major American subspecialty clinic, I became deeply involved with the fascinating complexities of biochemistry. It was there, in the

mill race of hard-won experience, that I began to see the body as a biochemical machine which can repair itself when provided with its nutritional needs. I found that this principle applied to all illness, not just rare and exotic conditions.

To make such a change in personal perspective is just as difficult as changing from one religion to another and demands repeated self-examination and confirmation. In a thousand different ways, I have put my model to the test in my own mind. It has yet to become unglued. I hope that, by tracing a personal event of such magnitude, as I see it, that I have provided the reader with a blueprint that enables that perspective to become visible to others.

– Derrick Lonsdale, M.D., Strongsville OH “Everything is connected to everything else.”

Dr. Lonsdale retired in 2012 at the age of 88 years; he is a retired Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a Certified Nutrition Specialist.

Website: www.prevmed.com/ Blog: http://o2thesparkoflife.blogspot.com/

* EXCERPT FROM DR. LONSDALE’S 1994 BOOK, “Why I Left Orthodox Medicine” ISBN: 1-878901-98-2, Hampton Roads Publishing Co., (available from amazon.ca) are reprinted with the author’s kind permission.

Dr. Lonsdale is also author of: “A Nutritional Approach to a Revised Model for Medicine – Is Modern Medicine Helping You?” [ISBN: 978-1-61897-092-3] See also: http://sbpra.com/DerrickLonsdale ♣

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Myths, Manipulated Science, Medical Tyranny, Programmed Mayhem – and Money

By CDSAPI – Citizens Demand Academic, Scientific, Political (and Media) INTEGRITY Inge Hanle, Vancouver BC "When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we, in essence, accept that the state owns our bodies." – U.S. Representative Ron Paul, MD

"Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the bastille of medical science." – Benjamin Rush MD, Physician to George Washington, Signatory to the Declaration of Independence

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I www.dialogue.ca

reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine." – Dr. Marcia Angell, MD

Of all the Existential Issues that we face today, individually and humanity collectively, none is more critical than the Medical Mafia Dictatorship that is being legalistically entrenched, nationally and internationally, whereby the Agenda of the Siamese-Twins of Multinational Corporate vested interests and hijacked Government complicity and agendas demand legalistic “Ownership and the Rightof-Control” over the individual’s body, Public Health Policies and Medical Practice - under the false pretenses of fabricated pseudoscience and relentless propaganda and fear mongering. Mandatory Vaccines are the holy cow in the forefront. They are the “vehicle” for implementing a much bigger agenda. When you understand the “takeover modus operandi”, you will see through the present ZIKA VIRUS fraud. …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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CDSAPI: Myths, Manipulated Science, Medical Tyranny, Programmed Mayhem – and Money, contd.

Why did Rockefeller take out a patent on the formerly fairly harmless Zika, and what “genetic engineering” was done under the secrecy of “a patent” – and to what end?

Over the last 30 years of agendas, policies and legalism inherent in Globalization, Harmonization and Privatization, we seem to have blindly followed along in a nondiscerning sleepwalking trance while the “public domain” and the “individual domain” were being stolen, and legalistically transcribed into “proprietary domain”.

When it come to “Who Owns YOUR Body”, it is high time thwt EVERYONE WAKE UP before it is too late.

With the demolition of the “honest-science paradigm,” not only has “officially-acknowledged” science become based on irrevocably corrupted research, constituting a cesspool of fiercely defended “fabricated fiction,” but “honest” scientists who dare to challenge the “official myths” with valid research are summarily and mercilessly denounced, attacked, and fired, (no matter high highly educated, experienced or tenured) accompanied by denigration, vilification and character assassination by the gullible/compliant (corporate owned and info-fed ) mainstream media. Increasingly we find that those who stand their “scientific ground” are mysteriously “suicided”.

Just a few examples: It took only 24 hours for Dr. Arpad Pusztai to be fired after he reported (with pictures and data) that the rats fed GE potatoes developed all manner of health abnormalities.

When Dr. Andrew Wakefield, together with 12 topnotch medical colleagues, published a paper saying that “further research was needed” because their medical observations had indicated that the MMR vaccine appeared to be problematic, and could be associated with several chronic medical problems, all hell broke loose, his Medical licence was fraudulently pulled, and the character assassination and vilification, that followed the Brian Deer article of blatantly fabricated lies, was indescribably malicious. The message: “Don't ever challenge the Vaccine Doctrine, or you will pay the price.” … “And a newspaper article is all the “science' we need to convict.”

When Dr. Gilles-Eric Seralini's team showed that the animals fed GMO corn for 2 years developed grotesque cancers and medical problems, Monsanto and the GMO Corporations immediately demanded that the scientific paper be withdrawn. Message: “Don't ever challenge the “Safety of GMOs” or you will pay the price.”

When alternate cancer specialist Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez was about to report that nagalase, an immune inhibitor 56 dialogue

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produced by cancer cells and some pathogens, was found in some vaccines, he suddenly died of mysterious causes.

When Dr. Bradstreet, a pediatrician who was treating autism with above normal success, also found that vaccines contained nagalase and immune inhibitors, he was investigated by the FBI, and shortly thereafter was found dead in a river/swamp, with gunshots in his chess - officially declared “a suicide.” Message: “Don't question or call into disrepute any vaccine composition, policies, practices, or schedules, or you will pay the price.”

The overriding Agenda seems to be “to legalistically produce and protect an unchallengeable dominance and supremacy” of the “secretly-protected proprietary domain” and the “present and future profitability potential” of the corporate vested interests and agendas”, which now reign supreme and determine what is to be permitted in scientific discourse. The so-called Trade Agreements are all designed to protect this corporate 'domination' over public policy and permissible scientific research.

Now to the significance and importance of the presently unfolding sage of Dr. Judy Mikovits' research.

Dr. Judy, as an experienced research scientist of several decades, reported that both the blood supply and vaccines were contaminated with retroviruses. and that these retroviruses have a causative association with a long list of chronic illnesses, “officially” of unknown causes, including chronic fatigue syndrome, autism, neurological disorders, AIDS, Lyme’s, ....

The “retrovirus” is the darling of Genetic Engineering and /pharmaceutical/medical research. Why? Because retroviruses have the unique ability to integrate their DNA into the DNA of the host cell. They therefore permeate modern science and medical research “to import alien genes into cells”.

However, when used in the production of GE foods, or modern medications, or if injected via vaccines, or blood transfusions, retrovirus contamination can predictably results in altering the genome, permanently, and the retrovirus gains a permanent home from which to wreak havoc and cause illness.

For years the Government has denied that retroviruses exist. Interesting: in the mid-1960s Kissinger gave a research team the assignment “to find a pathogen to which the immune system would have no defence.” In the early 1970s we were faced with the first cases of AIDS – a retroviral condition.

Genetic Engineering Vested Interests and Big Pharma will not tolerate anyone exposing and/or challenging the safety of the modern GE or …/ www.dialogue.ca

CDSAPI: Myths, Manipulated Science, Medical Tyranny, Programmed Mayhem – and Money, contd.

Vaccine-science doctrine. Google “Retroviruses” for a detailed explanation.

Of particular concern are the Mandatory Vaccination laws and policies, Public Health Medical Policies and Laws – that are not only based on fraudulent “Science by Declaration” rather than scientific research data, but these misguided, dictated policies have become one of the primary generators of illness in the exponential explosion of the chronic and debilitating illness pandemic, from autism to cancer, to diabetes, to allergies, etc., etc..

Mandatory Vaccinations and Mandatory Medical Policies are being used as vehicles to implement dictatorship over populations and have no credible foundation in actual science. Vaccinations have never produced healthier children or “healthier populations,” and Big Pharma's reductionist medications cause hundreds of thousands of proven deaths annually.

Here are several links, so that you can research these truths for yourself. LINK: http://healthimpactnews.com/2016/as-government-deniesexistence-of-retroviruses-big-pharma-prepares-to-makehuge-profits-from-treatment/

As Government Denies Existence of Retroviruses, Big Pharma Prepares to Make Huge Profits from Treatment Dr. Mikovits spoke the truth about the fraudulent use of government research money, the marketing of inaccurate retrovirus tests, Medicare fraud, the contaminated blood supply, and the harm that is associated with vaccines and their schedule of administration. Her research showed how retroviruses are linked to the plague of modern illnesses that are bankrupting the U.S. healthcare system.

She was arrested without a warrant and held in jail for 5 days without the opportunity for bail as a fugitive from justice. Her career was destroyed.

Dr. Mikovits’ story is documented in the book, Plague: One Scientist’s intrepid Search For the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Autism, and Other Diseases.

LINK: www.plaguethebook.com/plague---home.html

Interview with Dr. Judy Mikovits, PhD, 11/22/15: https://vimeo.com/146831570 - from Candyce Estave, most compelling evidence of vaccine injury and contamination LINK: https://vimeo.com/user46166340

Vaccine Truth. Lies and Corruption Audio: Millions Infected with Retroviruses from Contaminated Vaccines, LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqqDF_KI5yI www.dialogue.ca

The Awakening Liberty Show with Sean Caron.

Dr. Judy Mikovits PhD and Kent Heckenlively, authors of the book PLAGUE Governments and their agencies. They did not want to alarm you. They didn’t want to induce a panic, or a rebellion against the use of vaccines. They didn’t want to send shock waves through the conventional medical care system and the pharmaceutical industry that would threaten their profits. They didn’t want to risk a public panic among people needing blood transfusions. They didn’t want to disturb the resolve of Big Pharma and political leaders working to pass mandatory vaccination laws. They didn’t want to interfere with the full implementation of genetically engineered crops. They didn’t want to lay the groundwork for numerous class action lawsuits from people who were harmed or who will be harmed in the next 20 to 30 years as the retroviruses continue to multiply in the bodies of infected persons.

They just wanted to cover up the whole mess and act as if it never happened – because Vaccines are a central component of their agenda strategy in biowarfare. ******* ALSO RECEIVED FROM CDSAPI:

What you are NOT being told VACCINES, and for some purposes for which they are being secretly engineered.

Leaked Pentagon Video Shows Vaccine Designed to Modify Behavior – Using aerosolized stealth vaccines as tools of behavioral control and mind alteration. This 4-min.

YouTube video – LINK: http://tinyurl.com/funvac – described as a "leaked Pentagon video," features a scientist explaining in cold, calculating language how engineered vaccines can be used to "eliminate behavior" (fundamentalist) that is considered undesirable by the government, by infecting and altering/destroying targeted brain cells. (Department of Defense 149AZ2, Loc: Pent Rm BC232) ♣ *******

MOVIE: Silent Epidemic The Untold Story of Vaccines… What’s in Your Vaccine?

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/in-vaccines (1 Hr 48 min) ♣ *******

Big Pharma’s dirty little secret trick…

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/ttac-bp-med-schools

In this interview with G. Edward Griffin, I ask him the simple yet complex question of, how does Big Pharma influence our medical schools… He goes into detail how Big Pharma has infiltrated our medical schools and he shares exactly how this affects you and I. – Ty Bolinger, https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/ ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Justice and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada PART 4 - THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING FUNNY GOING ON Anecdotes revealing the intrinsic sense of humour of Indigenous people everywhere Norm Zigarlick, an itinerant senior based in AB/SK [Series began in the Winter issue, Vol. 29, No.2]

Something that regularly gets missed in discussions about, or the typical portrayals of, indigenous people, is the role that natural and abundant humor plays in everyday life.

I've had the privilege and opportunity to witness this many times during the course of my life. It doesn't matter if it’s a serious politNorm Zigarlick ical discussion, a hunting trip, a social gathering, a work environment or just discussion over a cup of tea, humour always slips into the conversation somehow.

In the course of my 70+ years, I've spent time with indigenous people from the high Arctic and on down to the Great Plains, people from the northern woodlands and from the Rocky Mountains. I've yet to get to know one that didn't have a well-developed sense of humour.

There is no style of “aboriginal humour” that might be considered standard, it comes in all forms from sarcasm to flat out off-the-wall bizarre and everything in between. There are few boundaries.

I've decided to give a few examples of how humour has manifested its self in circumstances I have been directly involved in. My story telling abilities may not be able translate these circumstances well. It would be hard to explain how edgy things are when a polar bear is wandering around a tent or when a fight is about to break out in a public place and how anything would seem to be funny at the time. I’ll give it a shot, in no particular order. ≈∞≈

During the spring of 1977 I was flying a ski-equipped Cessna 185 on a wildlife survey in the northwest corner of Hudson's Bay. Wager Bay was the center of the survey, in part because it was near a proposed natural gas pipeline route from the high Arctic, and in part because it was going to become a park. Our operating base was actually at Baker Lake (now in Nunavut) but we had a fuel cache at Wager Bay so that we could fly well to the north without having to burn up time going back for fuel.

There were three of us on the crew. I flew and navigated, Judy was the wildlife biologist who planned the routes 58 dialogue

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and the daily tasks, Larry was a young Inuit guy of about 20. He was a paid observer and a guy who could keep us alive on the land if that became a requirement.

The month of May at Wager Bay is still what most of us would call winter, not terribly cold, but lots of ice and snow and nobody wearing Bermuda shorts. One afternoon we landed on the ice next to the fuel cache to top off our little airplane. This took a half hour or more because fuel drums had to be dug out and rolled down to the 185, then hand pumped up into the tanks.

Wager Bay has steep and spectacular cliffs all around it, some in the order of 500 meters high. While we were fueling, an intense spring snowstorm arrived over the cliffs and in a matter of minutes visibility was down to near zero. After a couple of hours or so, it was clear we were there for the night.

It doesn't really get dark there in May, night is just an expression. During my first night at Baker Lake, a week or two earlier, I woke to a hell of a racket with kids laughing and people cheering. I checked the time, it was 2:30 AM. There was a game of scrub baseball being played on the road in front of our accommodations.

In any case, Wager Bay was home for the time being.

We were well equipped for this type of thing. We set up our tent, rolled out the sleeping bags and cranked on the Coleman stove for food and heat. Twelve hours later the Cessna 185 was only partly visible under a wall of fresh drifted snow and we were still going nowhere.

Did I mention Wager Bay has a very high polar bear population?

About noon of day two, Judy left the tent to do what people have to do sometimes. She was back inside in about 15 seconds. She said, “Larry there are new polar bear tracks just outside the tent.” He said, “uh huh.”

He wasn't the least bit worried.

Judy was. As part of our kit we had a government Winchester 30.06 rifle. She asked Larry if he would show her how to use it. He asked why, and she replied that in case he and I were both out of the tent, she would like to know how to use the rifle if there was an emergency.

Larry took a sip of tea but said nothing. Judy asked again. He said, “no.” She said, “why?” He said, “I thought about it, and I'd rather get eaten by a polar bear than shot by a woman.” He never so much as cracked a smile until both Judy and I were laughing. We never …/ www.dialogue.ca

did have a problem with bears, and when the snow stopped and after a fair bit of shoveling, off we went. ≈∞≈

I used to do some work with a young fellow from Japan, he had a strong interest in North American Aboriginal cultures, and over time he had forged some strong friendships. I was in the Vancouver area one evening when he called me and asked if I wanted to join him and his friend for dinner at the ‘Great Wall.’ I don't know if it’s still there, but at the time it was located near the west end of Robson Street downtown. It was small, with very plain decor, but served up fantastic Mongolian food. I couldn't turn that down. Nob was about 5 foot six with his boots on, Robert, his Northern Manitoba Cree friend, was near 6 foot five with his boots off.

Robert was in good physical shape and weighed in somewhere around 250 pounds. He had some experience with the prison system as a young man, but had turned his life around and become a community worker and human rights activist. He was very well spoken and soft spoken. He also wore glasses.

Just across from us was a fellow about 35, clean cut, fair haired, perhaps 5 foot 11 and 180 pounds. He was just finishing his dinner, and he seemed to have been drinking more than he should have. When they delivered his fortune cookie he couldn't read it. He patted his pockets looking for his glasses but had no luck. He looks straight at Robert and says, “hey, gimme your glasses, I wanna read this.” Robert very softly said “I can’t do that.” The guy asked again, and then again. In his last try he said “give me your glasses I wanna see my future”. Robert very slowly stood up and quietly said “I'm not giving you my glasses but if you don't f#$k off, I can predict your future.” The guy left without further predictions. ≈∞≈

Billy Borque was also a very large Cree fellow, who also happened to be my boss for several years. He was the owner/operator of Loon Air Ltd, a small charter company based in Fort Smith, NWT. It was unusual to see Billy without a smile. If you did, it was a good time to not be the focus of his discontent.

Billy was an excellent business man and an extraordinary bush pilot. He was able to blend his traditional skills with his love of flying. He was fair, generous and funny. He became a legend in the North.

He and I both had trips scheduled for early Saturday morning departures. At 6:30 AM, he phoned and said meet me at the Pinecrest for breakfast at 7:00. As we were walking across the parking lot, a very ragged-looking guy popped out from around a corner and said, www.dialogue.ca

“Billy lend me 20 bucks, I'll pay you Tuesday.” Billy handed over a 20 and away the guy went. I said “you know that's 20 you won't see again. He said “yep but now he owes me 20, and I won't see him again for two years either.” ≈∞≈

My Japanese friend noted earlier was named Nobuo. He had picked up the nickname Nob and he was comfortable with it. He came along on a fishing trip to the NWT one summer, and I had made arrangements to have Billy's company fly us out. Billy was at the float base when we arrived. Naturally I introduced the two. I used Nob's nickname.

Billy reached out his hand to Nob but looked at me and said “what's his real name, I ain't calling anybody knob unless I am looking for a fight.”

In a small remote Dene community on the shores of Great Slave Lake, a young fellow had gone to school then eventually worked his way into a government job.

Along the way he worked in the field of economic development. He was a handsome and fit guy who played hockey, rode snowmobiles and hunted on the land.

He left for bigger things and rose up the government food chain. Several years later he visited the community, as an influential bureaucrat, to be involved in some serious negotiating regarding a development proposal. In true government fashion, he arrived late in a grand and self-important manner.

The Band Council was already sitting in the Board room. The Vice Chief was a young guy; he looked up and the first thing he said was, “holy shit you got fat.”

Mr. Government said, “hey but I am still quick as a cat.” Without looking up, another council member said, “ya... a D-8.” It set the tone for the meeting in a hurry, there was to be no hat-in-hand bargaining happening. ≈∞≈

Mickey is a fellow with Cree roots. Under his given name he is now a well-known BC artist that sells his pieces for thousands of dollar. He is also talented musician and has a super quick wit.

Back in the 60s it was still legal for employers to ask job applicants for their “racial origins.” Mickey applied for a position in Edmonton. He wrote down Canadian. The employer said no I need to know your racial origin.

Mickey said “I am Cree, French and English you don't get more Canadian than that.” He didn't get the job – something about being uncooperative. ≈∞≈

Charlie was a big man, very near the same size as Robert whom I mentioned earlier. For a while he was a longhaul trucker. Other times he was a forest fire fighter …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Norm Zigarlick, Always Something Funny Going On, contd.

or a heavy equipment operator or whatever else he chose to do at the time. He seemed a bit rough around the edges, but he really was a gentle giant.

In the 1980s there was a very demeaning joke going around. I happened to be there when it was raised, so was Charlie. The question was, “what’s long and hard on an Indian?” The answer was grade three.

Charlie just laughed and said, “well they got that one right, it took me two tries.” ≈∞≈

Max was from Metis roots; he and I were heavy equipment operators at an open pit mine in the north. After working the midnight shift, at 8:00 am on a fall morning he suggested we go moose hunting. Off we went and soon we were in the thick of an NWT muskeg when Max noticed new tracks. He said “there is one around here somewhere.” He figured the best strategy on this dead calm morning was to sit very still and quiet until we got a sense of what was going on in the neighborhood.

Off in the distance we finally heard some rustling in the branches and what seemed to be the sound of a breaking twig. He whispered, “let’s hope it’s a bull, I'll try calling and see.”

In the fall a bull moose looking for a date is pretty aggressive. If he thinks another bull is trying to cut in on a date, he'll come thundering along with battle as the plan.

Max told me to be ready to shoot before 1200 pounds of male mammal showed up, because they traveled fast and took no prisoners. He didn't want me fumbling with a rifle while trying to run backwards.

Max had a “moose caller,” basically a megaphone shaped from birch bark. For anybody that hasn't heard a moose being called, it sounds pretty much like something very big and in desperate need of a laxative.

Max did his best dating pitch, and sure enough we heard a grunt and the sound of movement. It lasted about five seconds then all went silent. We waited quietly for a minute or two and still nothing. He handed me the date caller and said “here you try one.”

I made a sound like an accident victim and immediately there was movement in the bush. That bad news was that it was moving in the wrong direction. Max stood up and said “we might as well go home, he ain't coming back, you probably sounded too sick to screw!” ≈∞≈

When I met Eddy he had just snuck up on 40 years old; he was very small and he had some issues with FASD.* He was my helper on a project for six months. A lady 60 dialogue

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friend was visiting me and we were about to have lunch, one Sunday afternoon, when Eddy dropped by. He is a very happy-go-lucky guy who functions well at many levels, but in some areas his judgment is a bit clouded. It never interfered with his sense of funny.

He sat down and had a coffee with us, he is quite the lady charmer and was soon telling his life story. He said, “I was born really small, I was one of those uh ummm what do ya call them”? My friend said, “Were you a preemie?” He said, “That's it! There I was swimming around in there (as he made swimming like motions) and I decided I gotta get out of here early, way toooooo much alcohol.” He managed to find humor in his own difficulties. ≈∞≈

Pauline is from a large family. Some of her relatives became quite well known in Alberta politics. When I met her, she was just finishing up a Master’s Degree in Education.

We had been discussing a board game (TOPONA) that I had worked on developing with a couple of Dene ladies.

Somehow along the way we got talking about ambition, ability and work ethic. That brought up the name of a community that was a bit famous for having not much of any of the above. I said I would like to have a go there at creating some job opportunities, and getting some local folks involved in grassroots projects. She looked me in the eye and said, “Unless there has been a culture change since I woke up this morning, that isn't going to happen.” ≈∞≈

A friend of mine was Chief of a Dene Band in a very remote northern community. He had to deal with bureaucrats from many agencies on a regular basis. His wife wasn't fond of the government folks that were always coming or going. She simply called them “necktie people.” – the rationale being if they were all Indians because they looked alike to an outsider, then the tag necktie people was appropriate for the bureaucrats because they all seemed alike as well! ≈∞≈

For the most part, in my experiences, the humour was always in the moment, not planned, but always expected.

That doesn't mean they can't deliberately deliver a thought out funny story.

One of my Cree friends, going all the way back to late 1960s, went on to become a well-known broadcaster, performer, stand-up comedian. He has just completed a stint as the Commissioner for the Northwest Territories.

The position is on par with being a Lieutenant Governor www.dialogue.ca

in the provinces. I defy anyone to sit down with George Tuccaro for 10 minutes and not laugh.

When Prince William, and his new bride Kate, visited the NWT, there were many TV clips of them walking along and laughing. The guy walking alongside making them laugh, was George. ≈∞≈

There are many Aboriginal people in remote areas that grew up sharing two languages. Often the two came together and formed a dialect quite unique from any others in the country. A fairly common trait was to drop the sound of an “h” from many words. For example shoes would become sues. A fairly common related quip went like this “Custer's last words were, “I can't walk out of here, these Siouxs are killin’ me.” ≈∞≈

I saw a cartoon in Arizona that depicted a little Aboriginal boy walking along with an old man. A comment from the boy was, “Grampa is it true that it only takes a few words to speak the truth?” The old man replies, “Yes it is.” The boy then asks, “Why do politicians talk so much?” ≈∞≈

The point I hope to make here is that humour plays a constant role in Aboriginal life. These are only a few examples that I hope will point that out. Big, small, educated or not, funny is always there. A lifelong burden, a screwed up hunting trip, over-controlling bosses, uppity bureaucrats and negative stereotyping – along with pretty much anything else you want to add to the list – is a source of spur-of-the-moment humour.

This is not a new behavior, it is one I have witnessed for a lifetime – and if I were a tree I`d have a lot of rings.

For some reason, humor has been left out of the generic portrait we have painted of these people.

I've been very fortunate in that I have shared laughs with Indigenous people from the Navajo Nation in Arizona to the home of the Inuit well above the Arctic Circle and from Alaska to Ontario. If there is any place that generalizations should be acceptable it is in the statement that in general these are people who are truly funny right to the core.

– Norm Zigarlick, (normzig56@gmail.com) * FASD - Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder SERIES WILL CONTINUE IN THE NEXT ISSUE ♣

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From Susanne on the Wild West Coast

The Impact of the Destruction of Westcoast Old Growth Forests Increasing dieback of trees on the edge of the Pacific Susanne Hare Lawson, Tofino BC Following is a transcript of an interview I did on Gorilla Radio (University of Victoria Radio – Aug. 3, 2016) regarding increased dieback on the coast. A lot of trees are suffering and where the west winds are affecting the exposed areas, these plants and trees are not faring well.

More than I have ever seen before, these first 6 months of 2016 are the hottest on record and despite last year being the hottest on record, this year is looking like it might break that record.

Interview; 1:30, Wednesday, Aug. 3rd, 2016; Susanne Hare on Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook ...22 minutes I have lived on the west coast of Vancouver Island, out on the edge between the Pacific Ocean and the land, mostly on an island, for over 50 years now. When I first moved here, the coastal environment was a rainforest, with a balance of rain throughout the year. Rains and storms cleansed everything and the moss and forest was moist and lush.

The old growth forests of the coast have been harvested for the past century at a rate unprecedented in history, even faster than glaciation, and we are reaping the www.dialogue.ca

effects of the negligence and total annihilation of this once complex and nurturing ecosystem. The evergreen forests, particularly old growth, maintain temperatures at least 10 degrees less than in exposed areas. Last year during the drought, the trail to hot springs cove, all old growth, was perpetually lush and green and healthy while other areas were suffering... yet there is little of this amazing blueprint left to know and experience let alone bring us back from the brink.

Winds are taking a toll in buffer zones on the edge that have endured coastal forces for eons. With the increase of land temperatures from deforestation, the difference between land and sea creates more winds. I am noticing extreme dieback of trees and bushes on promontory rocky areas, islands, wind tunnels and exposed areas.

Last year and the first 6 months of 2016 have been the hottest on record according to NASA. The drought last summer and this year is causing extremes of soil degeneration. Microbes in the soil are dying off and not regenerating. Water runs off the dry soil. Needles from the evergreens rain down in the winds and these stressed trees are producing masses of seed cones for reproduction. I am noticing increased disease, especially …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Susanne Lawson, Destruction of Old Growth, contd.

aphids, in both native plants and garden plants as well as dry soil plants like thistle becoming prominent. With the dieback of these buffer zone plants and trees, it is like a domino effect leaving the next green areas exposed and on it goes. While there are areas of increased drought and dieback, there are also areas that are sustaining themselves and some plants are doing ok in the sun. It is in the exposed areas where trees and brush are suffering.

Fires are raging in Siberia where over 7 million hectares have burnt or are burning and smoke can be seen from space. Here in California and Nevada, fires are taking their toll in both grasslands and forests.

In the waters, both ocean water and sweet water, warming temperatures are creating algal blooms that are poisoning marine species and affecting human water supplies over vast areas.

We are living in an eggshell environment and denial or avoidance leads to more destruction. If we become numb to the destruction, we also become numb to the potential of positive living and our own potential. Our emotions pick up on the feelings of the environment and if we dumb these down, we are feeding the dark. Those that don't want to rock the boat must know that the boat is already rocking, we need to feel, speak and act on what we are experiencing in order to effect change and feel good about our lives, our home and planet and leave a legacy we can be proud of for future generations of all species. This can be done in a good way but we must tell our stories and be responsible....able to respond.

I have noticed increasing drying trends for over 12 years now and according to NASA, it has been getting warmer since 2001. We have an unstable environment

where so much has been altered that many balances have been eroded. It has become increasingly difficult to determine weather patterns and it seems whimsical and unpredictable. Extremes seem to be much more the norm which leaves us in doubt as to just what normal might be anymore.

Like Vine Deloria Jr. said, "The future of mankind lies waiting for those who come to understand their lives and take up their responsibilities to all living things."

Addendum Some thoughts on climate change (after Trudeau spent two weeks in Tofino on vacation): With the approval of Site C by Trudeau's government, a global outcry has resulted, with Amnesty International calling for a halt and people everywhere outraged. It is an appalling situation where Native people of Canada have been trampled by the Federal Government, to the point of being a treasonous act against First Nations people here who are a federal responsibility.

Dams across the globe cause heat with the back up of the flow of water that is obvious when flying over the country in winter. Places where dams exist never freeze around them, they heat up like a fever in the human body where blockages occur. The hottest place in the Americas I ever experienced was around the Colorado Dam near Las Vegas, hotter than Death Valley.

Approving more dams (this one is a mile long) and logging like there is no tomorrow may just might mean there may be no tomorrow.

Sincerely, from Susanne, Tofino BC ♣ A Special Thank You to Susanne for her beautiful painting “Council Fire” featured on the cover.

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“That’s My Take On It” – John Shadbolt

Has anyone else noticed?

From John Shadbolt, Acton ON Every summer, up ‘til now, when the lights go on in the evening all kinds of bugs are banging on the screens, trying to get in to the light. Not this year.

Every summer, ‘til now, during the hot weather we get all kinds of fruit flies. Since we eat a lot of fruit, and there is usually fruit out, I have always thought they are a nuisance, but its nature. Not this year.

Every summer, ‘til now we used to get all kinds of ants in the garden. Toads used to use them for food. This year, we still have a few ants, and I have only seen one toad.

So my question is, are we allowing the pesticide 62 dialogue

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companies and of course our government to start a mass extinction, which will soon include us?

Has anyone else noticed this? I would like to find out.

Here are a few of the replies I have received so far: When was the last time you were in a gas station and had to scrub the bugs off your windshield. Remember the window cleaners they used to have with the nylon webbing that you used, and scrubbed hard to remove the many crusty bugs from your car. I don't think I have had to scrub my windshield in 3 years.

Some responses: • Yes, yes and yes!! I first noticed this a few years ago in Campbell River. For a number of years where …/ www.dialogue.ca

we were living we had a huge amount of little bees that loved some of our bushes, loads of ants, earwigs, beetles, etc. Then, over the course of just a couple of years about four-five years ago, there were virtually no more of these friendly little bees and the insect population plummeted. Used to have some snakes around the place - rarely saw one anymore. Mentioned it to a few people but no one seemed to give a shit. Mostly they thought I was somehow imagining it.

• Considering the Campbell River area and the fact that it isn't much of an agricultural area, I don't blame pesticides and herbicides as much but we sure as hell have been nailed by chemtrails for years. That crap that they are raining down on us constantly and have been for years is what I think the main culprit is.

CAP: The only party standing politics on its head. http://actionparty.ca/canadian-action-party/ ♣

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Don’t let boys grow up thinking violence is manly Missing from the discussion around terrorism is the elephant in the room: gender.

By Helen Forsey, Aug. 21, 2016, The Toronto Star The proliferation of terrorism and other bloody attacks has spurred speculation on “root causes,” in the hope of finding ways to slow or stop this terrifying international phenomenon. Racism, mental illness, gun culture, generalized anger, poverty, marginalization – all these have been highlighted, and rightly, as probable contributing causes. But missing from the discussion is another crucial factor, one we must acknowledge if we are ever to find remedies. The elephant in the room

is gender – more specifically, the link between masculinity and violence.

Hidden in plain sight through the careful use of gender-neutral terms like “shooters,” “perpetrators” and “suspects,” is the stark fact that almost all of the agents of these attacks – terrorist or otherwise – have been male. (…) READ IN FULL AT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/TS-forsey-aug21 Sent by S. McDowall/Hugh Jenney

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Where Will the Grandchildren Live?

An Alternative View of Retirement Mike Nickerson, Lanark ON

Dear Lillian: When your mother was the age you are now, she deeply changed my world view by wrapping her little arms around my neck and calling me "Daddy." Having watched her come into the world, before dawn, one windy November day, it was already clear that I was a father. Yet, until she spoke that word, it hadn't sunk in that I had grown into the responsible role of parent.

Early in January, two years ago, your Mom, now grown up, changed my world again with the words "Dad, you're a Granddad." Another landmark. Her Mother and I had managed, one way and another, to maintain a home and provide what she needed to grow up and get an education. When she married your Dad, my responsibility to launch her into the world was fulfilled. The responsibility to raise the new generation is now theirs.

As a Grandfather, I'm finding a new role. Playing with you is the fun part. Taking a broad view of the world and looking for problems that might interfere with your parents' ability to provide for you and further, with your ability to provide for your children, is more ponderous.

The last few generations have seen much change. Your www.dialogue.ca

parents will recognize more of it when they are not so busy securing your home and providing the care you need to grow. It is we Grandparents that have the time and perspective to see the big changes that are shaping up.

At two years of age, you cannot yet read what I want to share. I write to you through your parents and through other parents and grandparents who, together, are witnessing the emergence of an historic challenge.

I remember my Grandfather telling me about getting his first car when he was still a young man. Cars didn't exist much before then. Public air travel was still a novelty when I was born in 1951. Ever more and faster transportation spawned the experience of a shrinking world.

Little did we know how small the world would become.

No longer does the Earth appear huge in comparison to what humans do.

Even so, it is hard to imagine how powerful the human family has become. With language, tools and the ability to cooperate in their use, we can accomplish feats far in excess of anything an individual can even imagine. We are so good at mutual provision that our numbers have mushroomed and our activities expanded to the point that collectively we are capable of overwhelming the Earth.

This is where the historic challenge arises. When I …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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M. Nickerson, Where Will the Grandchildren Live? contd.

was young, very few people had any notion that the Earth was limited. I was 17 before anyone had personally witnessed the Earth as a finite ball in empty space.

Before that, calculations could prove that our planet was round, but for most people and throughout times past, the Earth was experienced as a limitless expanse thriving with life.

Our forbearers spent thousands of years pushing back natural forces to secure their own place under the Sun. It was clear from ancient times that the more people there were to share the work, the better off we were. "Go forth and multiply" echoed through the ages. As our commercial economy evolved out of feudalism, the benefits of expanding commerce became apparent. More goods and services amounted to more wealth and more wealth has, for many, meant more opportunities in life. The very long period over which such customs and institutions have encouraged expansion has deeply ingrained the value of growth into our understanding of the world.

The problem is that, while growing has served us well for thousands of years, we have now grown to the point where the human family fills the Earth. Collectively, we are stretching the ability of our planet to provide the materials needed to continue growing and to absorb our waste.

In some cases, like the supply of fossil fuels and the absorption of carbon dioxide from burning those fuels, the Earth will not long be able to continue at present rates, let alone feed growing demand. Problems associated with our size and continued expansion will increasingly affect our world until our societies choose to address the underlying cause. Even though it has served us well for a very long time, growing is now the biggest threat that civilization faces.

By the time you are raising a family of your own, the need for new systems of mutual provision will be very clear. As your parents and grandparents we have the responsibility to forecast the circumstances and prepare a suitable foundation upon which new ways of living can take place.

For those who want to see, details about unfolding ecological and economic problems are easily found. So are solutions, if one looks for them.

I spent the fifteen years before you were born gathering such information, organizing it and writing "Life, Money & Illusion." That book provides the background for understanding the challenge we face.

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few people grasp the magnitude of our expansion.

At a 3% growth rate, considered until recently to be a minimum for economic health, it takes 24 years for the economy to double. You could be a mother by that time. The economy would have to double again by the time you might be a grandmother. The implication of repeated doubling is well illustrated by a tiny plant called duckweed. Duckweed floats on the surface of ponds. It consists of a single leaf, the size of a match head, and a few tiny roots that dangle down into the water. When it has been growing for a while, it splits into two separate leaves, thereby doubling the area over which it captures sunshine. Under the hot summer Sun, duckweed can double in a day.

Often seen as a green fringe along the edge of ponds, the tiny plants can double and double again many times, yet not cover more than a small amount of the pond. Even though they are growing exponentially, they seem inconsequential. However, when the community of plants grows to cover 1% of the pond surface, consequences are not far off.

1% becomes 2% becomes 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and then, in less than a week after reaching 1%, the entire surface of the pond is covered, cutting off the Sun from everything living below. Only four days before the Sun is totally blocked off, more than 90% of the pond surface remains open. The last four doublings bring the duckweed to total dominance.

Human activity has reached the later stages of such exponential acceleration. We are rapidly filling our planet's ability to accommodate us. If the conventional order keeps to its ideology of expansion, we will seriously damage Earth's life supporting systems before we can again double in size; before you might have children of your own.

Over my lifetime, I have seen the emerging problems move from theoretical predictions of trouble to come, to accounts of actual problems occurring here and there, to the present situation where every day, serious problems, resulting from the stretching of planetary limits, affect people's lives. The ever more apparent crises testify that the present, business as usual, system is not serving our long-term interests.

As parents and grandparents, what can we do to assure that today's young will be able to raise families of their own?

Where will they live? How will they manage to provide for their children? There are abundant opportunities, but they are not the same as those found by generations past.

Laying the Foundation for a New World The surest way to secure the grandchildren's future is â&#x20AC;Ś/ www.dialogue.ca

to build a foundation upon which they can assure their children quality nutrition and comfortable homes, come what may.

My proposal is a retirement plan which, rather than focusing exclusively on aging pensioners, would seek security in the well-being of younger generations.

At present, most retirement plans consist of regularly putting money into a fund. Such funds then invest the money in whatever will make it grow fastest. Some is invested in productive enterprises that turn materials from the natural world into consumable products. Some is used to speculate in commodity futures, mortgages, national currencies, hedge funds and all manner of other derivatives. Both sorts of investments often depend on pressing further upon the Earth's limits.

While this has seemed to work quite well for at least a couple of generations, the ability of these plans to continue to provide sustenance to support retirees for the rest of their lives is now dependent on ecological stability and public confidence in the system.

Unfortunately, as I write this, (Spring 2008) financial markets are shacking seriously. Reassurances that it is only a passing phase would be more soothing had I not spent more than a decade studying the long term implications of exponential growth. Remember the duckweed. Of particular relevance is the observation that, if the financial pyramid does fall, it will not be like in the 1930s where, with the exception of the drought stricken prairies, there were no physical shortages of natural resources, energy or ecosystem resilience to inhibit recovery. While that generation had only to deal with a lack of confidence in the economic structure, after 90 years of exponentially increasing consumption and waste, we have additional concerns.

The bottom line is that conventional, finance based retirement plans are only as viable as the system of growth economics. If that system falters, we will need another way to support ourselves in old age.

Ours is a period of great transformation. During your lifetime Lillian - the lifetime of our grandchildren - civilization will metamorphose into new forms, or pass away.

I have little fear for the human species, because we are very adaptable in the short term. We can eat almost anything and we can live successfully in deserts, the Arctic, rain forests and almost anywhere else on this bountiful planet. Whatever comes to pass, there will be humans around to recreate communities and even societies. What is endangered is planetary organization and the majority of the population that is totally dependent on it. www.dialogue.ca

All organisms are subject to aging and death. Billions of years ago, however, life learned to outsmart time by reproducing new versions of each life form. Human societies, like individual organisms can produce new versions.

Each generation recreates human culture in a slightly different form. They gather information from past generations and apply it to new circumstances and new understandings. The change required in your lifetime the lifetime of those presently learning to walk and talk will be huge.

Thirty five years ago I became fascinated by the idea of domestic ecosystems. I have always thought that it would be personally fulfilling to live within a community that could provide for its basic needs through interaction with sunshine and the local land and life. With the basics assured, trading over distances would be a matter of choice rather than critical necessity. As problems of environmental overshoot continue to emerge, with little or no sign that the established order is prepared to address the underlying causes, I write this with a sense of urgency.

Seeds for the Future If we were to create a "seed" to see civilization through a coming drought, to spring forth again when the harm done is mostly healed and past, what would it contain?

It would hold the necessities of all life; a Sun powered process by which nutrient elements can cycle enabling successive generations to build their physical forms. It would also have the means to capture sunshine for warmth and to cycle the materials that we need for clothing, tools and other material parts of our collective body.

To make it all worthwhile, we would also want to carefully cultivate the remarkable ability that people have to enjoy life. Indeed, it is this ability that makes the future bright. There are so many ways to enjoy life, through friendship, knowledge, art, sport, and all the other manifestations of Learning, Love and Laughter, that one might consider enjoyment (the propagation of joy into the universe) to be our purpose as a species.

Such a pension plan offers far more than those based on money. As outlined by a philosopher from millennia past, when one loves one's neighbour as one loves one's self the result is everlasting life. While we pass away as individuals, if we make our communities strong and identify with them, they will last, practically, forever. ================

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Where Will the Grandchildren Liveâ&#x20AC;? introduces a proposal for developing Eco-Villages. That is, domestic ecosystems with the capacity to support multiple families, enough to enable sufficient division of labour for the mutual provision â&#x20AC;Ś/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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of the things that community needs for secure satisfying lives. If you are interested in such development, contact Mike Nickerson through his web site at: LINK: http://www.SustainWellBeing.net

"The goals we pursue are the seeds from which our future grows." The above visions in the context of the philosophy at: www.SustainWellBeing.net ♣

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Life, Money and Illusion - Living on Earth as if we want to stay Book by Mike Nickerson In recent years, unchecked growth has brought us to the brink of economic and environmental collapse. Life, Money and Illusion was inspired by the dilemma of having an economic structure that has to grow to remain healthy, while facing the finite limits of our planet. This revised and updated edition launches a review of economic expansion. It examines how growth came to be a goal and how that goal, though once beneficial, is now the propellant for catastrophe.

Then, by showing how the economy can be restructured to remain within planetary limits, it points the way to a sustainable future.

Life, Money and Illusion advocates change by shifting the dominant economic paradigm from growth to sustainability. Techniques include:

• Measuring progress with social and environmental indicators, along with economic ones • Encouraging investment in community • Practical changes such as full cost accounting, tax shifting and monetary reform • Honoring the Golden Rule instead of the Rule of Gold • Focusing more on living than on stuff.

An engaging and empowering vision of a future that celebrates humanity's extraordinary ability to adapt and evolve, Life, Money and Illusion will appeal to social activists, business people, students, environmentalists, financial planners, economists, parents, grandparents and anyone else with a stake in the future.

(Quoted from Amazon.ca: $16.55 / kindle $13.79) Publisher: New Society Publishers; Revised, Updated ed. edition (2009); ISBN-10: 0865716595 ♣

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“Resonance”

Living in the Mystery: Keats, Negative Capability, and the Ecozoic Age

by Susan McCaslin, Fort Langley BC This summer I have been revisiting the life and works of the English Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) decades after studying him in graduate school.

I have long felt that writers we consider “dead” are actually very much alive, and become more so when we enter the worlds their words create.

This has certainly been true for me in the case of the lingering presence of John Keats.

During a trip to the English Lake District this summer, I was reminded that, not only did Keats undertake a walking tour of northern England and Scotland three years before he died of tuberculosis, but that he visited Keswick, the very town where my husband and I were staying. We chose Keswick because it was associated with the poet S. T. Coleridge, but I was soon reminded that Keats too had visited there with his travelling companion Charles Brown in 1818.

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London in 1817, and was to meet Coleridge in Highgate outside London later in 1819. The younger Romantic adored his predecessor Wordsworth, but coined the phrase “the Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime” in a letter to his friend Richard Woodhouse to express his sometimes ambivalent response to the more conventional, middle-aged Wordsworth. However, it is clear that Keats admired Wordsworth to the end of his life.

Keats was certainly quieter and less flamboyant than his fellow second-wave Romantic poets and peers, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. During my graduate studies, I focussed on the later spiritual and philosophical writings of Coleridge, but I also participated in a lively seminar on Keats and stood in awe of his use of Greek myth, his sensual connection to the natural world, and what have been called his “five great odes of 1819.”

It was generally agreed among the literary critics that had Keats lived longer, he might have surpassed many of his predecessors as well as his famous peers. Sadly, he was granted only twenty-six years in which to forge poems of enduring beauty and power, among them my favourites, his sonnet “When I Have Fears That I …/ www.dialogue.ca

May Cease to Be,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode to Autumn.” More recently I find myself returning to his last unfinished epic poem, The Fall of Hyperion.

Now, well into my own autumnal years, I find Keats’ accomplishment even more awe-inspiring than I did when in my twenties. Even before giving up his …/ planned profession as a surgeon to pursue his love of poetry, he set himself the ambitious task of reading Homer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, and most of the classics. Ironically, though he shifted from the practice of medicine to the craft of poetry, he remained in the deepest sense a healer. It was not by accident that his favoured Greek god Apollo presided over both medicine and poetry—the healing arts.

Though Keats laboured at his craft continuously, his letters and poems suggest he was able to allow something much larger than mere literary ambition flow through him. He set his aims high, choosing Shakespeare as his model, whom he also studied with the fullest attention.

Keats was able to make such enormous strides because he had in abundance what he called the power of “negative capability” – a precondition for art of the highest order.

The term “negative capability” arises only once in Keats’ letters, which read to me as prose poems. Often in our contemporary emails, we compose, click and send before rereading. Yet Keats’ missives are epistolary gifts of contemplation. Some of his letters start, pause and resume over days or even weeks, more like journal entries. They are not only among the best letters ever written, but often warrant as much study as his sonnets and ballads. They are part and parcel of the body of his work. Because many of them are addressed to his family and close friends, they remain intimate, natural, lucid, revelatory.

In a letter written to his brothers George and Tom on Dec. 21, 1817 Keats shares his famous passage on “negative capability” (itself a rich oxymoron) in the context of what he most admired about his hero Shakespeare: … several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a [Writer] of Achievement – especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a [person] is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason ...

A later remark in a letter to his friend Richard Woodhouse (Oct. 27, 1818) fleshes out Keats’ sense of the value of remaining in uncertainty without trying to resolve it through the workings of ordinary rational www.dialogue.ca

thought. He defines the “poetical character” as that which transcends but includes the merely personal: [It is] … not itself – it has no self – it is everything and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated – It has as much delight in an Iago [the antagonist of Shakespeare’s Othello] as an Imogen [Shakespeare’s heroine in Cymbeline]. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the cameleon [sic] Poet.

This disappearance of the writer’s ego into her art requires a letting go of the false, constructed self we think we are when cut off from each other and from the wholeness of the world. In Keats’ poems, “negative capability” is grounded in humility: listening, stepping lightly, waiting, opening, being with process. What this “capability” relinquishes is grasping, holding, our greed in relation to what we assume is ours to control. Keats teaches us the value of respect for the greater beauty that contains our personal pain and losses. This more expansive consciousness holds our sorrows within a larger, more compassionate plenitude. And that mysterious fullness, replete with mystery, is something we The earliest surviving can experience directly, but portrait of John Keats, charcoal drawing by cannot control either in life Joseph Severn, 1816 or in art.

Since my first exposure to Keats in high school, I have had occasion to explore some of the works of the unitive mystics of various spiritual traditions. Keats’ phrase “negative capability” for me ties to what has been called “the apophatic” way. The term “apophatic” (an aspect of “negative theology”) has to do with experiencing realities that cannot be easily named or grasped by mere reason. Rather than affirming what we believe about God, the world, or ourselves, the via negativa requires a letting go of divisive names and concepts. We are invited to be held instead of holding. In apophatic wisdomteaching, waiting in stillness allows us to enter more expansive modes of being. The way of unknowing is at base not one of passivity, but an active opening to a wholeness we can barely imagine.

Jesus speaks of “dying to self.” In Sufism the term for letting go of the certainties of the ego is even stronger: fana, often translated as “annihilation.” However, fana entails the loss of an assumed self, not the ultimate loss of the …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Susan McCaslin, Living in the Mystery: Keats, contd.

soul. And the anonymous 14th-century English mystic who wrote The Cloud of Unknowing describes seeking the unnameable Unity as like entering into a “cloud” where one abandons rationalistic certainty for union.

In a letter to his friend J. H. Reynolds (May 3, 1818) Keats writes of the stage of life when a person enters what he calls “The Chamber of Maiden Thought,” which gradually darkens until “We are in a Mist…We feel the ‘burden of the Mystery.’” For Keats, the act of affirming beauty even in the midst of suffering is a practice that extends from the beginning to the end of his life. He writes to Benjamin Bailey in Nov. 1817, “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not….” This affirmation reappears at the end of one of his most beloved poems, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which concludes with the famous lines, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Though the clarity of the urn’s pronouncement may seem abstract when taken out of its context in the poem, and even to contradict Keats’ embrace of uncertainty and unknowing, for me it is an example of another kind of clarity that sometimes emerges within the experience of the cloud.

Keats’ speaks of another aspect of the apophatic Imagination at the end of the same letter to Bailey: “The setting sun will always set me to rights—or if a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and pick about the Gravel.” The act of transcending one’s ego to enter the consciousness of a bird requires shifting from a perception of separateness into that of a unity that contains both bird and human. Here the divisions between ourselves and other species become permeable.

Keats was not an otherworldly nature poet. As a progressive, liberal thinker, he was engaged with the social issues of his times, often rejecting conventional religiosity. He was keenly aware of the inequalities between rich and poor, colonialism, and dogmatism in its many forms. For a time, he saw himself in alignment with the ideals of his atheist friend Shelley who critiqued conventional forms of religion. Like Shelley, he turns in the letters and poems to the mysteries of nature, agreeing with Wordsworth about the futility of an obsessive “getting and spending” which “lay[s] waste our powers.” Because he insists on returning to the essential mystery of things, Keats for me is a heroic figure of humility and courage rather than abjection.

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his posture of humility toward the earth. The ecological writer Thomas Berry coined the term “Ecozoic era” in his The Dream of the Earth (Sierra Club, 1988) to describe the geological era humans could be entering now, where we might (if we awake in time) come to live in greater harmony with other humans and with the ecocycles of the earth. It is an understatement to say that our “positively capable” industrial technologies developing during Keats’ time, which have enabled us to exploit and ravage the earth, have not served us or the planet well. Yet as we experience the destructive impact of our own cleverness as a species, Keats’ poems still sing about how we yet may open to a more conscious awareness of our relation to the earth.

The Kentucky poet of sustainable farming, Wendell Berry, also addresses our need to lament our collective arrogance and adjust ourselves to the rhythms of the natural world. He writes in a Keatsian mode of “negative capability” when he argues that “we must learn to cooperate in [the earth’s] processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important[ly], we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it.” (from “A Native Hill” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays) Berry’s concepts of “slow growth” and even “no growth” are ways of affirming the life-renewing powers of restraint. Keats is a poet whose body of work continues to speak against the human urge to manipulate, improve, and control the planet.

Keats’ insights about the fluidity of the poetic process are essential not only for the composition of poetry, but for the formation of a more poetic way of life for all: “[I]f it [poetry] comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree,” he writes in a letter to John Taylor (Feb. 1818), “it had better not come at all.” His sense that poetry should flow naturally, doesn’t mean poets shouldn’t craft their words. It doesn’t mean that creating art is without struggle or difficulty. Nor does “negative capability,” when applied to our relation to the earth, mean we shouldn’t labour to protect and restore the ecosystems of which we are a part. The emphasis is actually on the word “capability,” the power that comes from joining with powers and forces greater than those of our limited selves. If we work with a sense that the doing is ours but not ours, we might have much better outcomes.

The ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu writes about the ease of “non-doing” when one with nature’s flow: The Tao does nothing, but leaves nothing undone.

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (verse 37) …/ www.dialogue.ca

Lau Tzu’s timeless lines are fully in sync with Keats’ negative capability. Only the language of paradox and poetry can fully capture the balance of simply being in the mist of uncertainty, frailty, and temporality. As a retired educator who is still writing poetry, I try to take the young Keats’ advice whenever I can, still learning from one who died my junior in years, but already an elder of the tribe.

Susan McCaslin

Susan McCaslin has published thirteen volumes of poetry.

Her next, Painter, Poet, Mountain: After Cézanne, is forthcoming from Quattro Books in Oct. 2016.* Previous volumes include The Disarmed Heart (The St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2014), Demeter Goes Skydiving (University of Alberta Press, 2011), and a memoir, Into the Mystic: My Years with Olga (Inanna Publications, 2014). ♣ *SEE SCHEDULE OF BOOK LAUNCHES & READINGS, P.87

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Ode to Autumn - John Keats, 19 September 1819

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease; For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river-sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

POEM ONLINE AT: www.bartleby.com/106/255.html See also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Autumn “The work was composed on 19 September 1819 and published in 1820 in a volume of Keats' poetry that included Lamia and The Eve of St. Agnes. "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats' "1819 odes"…

The work marks the end of his poetic career, as he needed to earn money and could no longer devote himself to the lifestyle of a poet. A little over a year following the publication of "To Autumn," Keats died in Rome. ♣

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Time Flies

Time… and the Moment

Mike Nickerson, Lanark ON, Sustain5@web.ca Time flies around deadlines, having fun, watching children grow and countless other aspect of life. It is an age old platitude, which survives because we experience exactly what it represents again and again.

I couldn't count the times I've heard "time flies," yet one sunny summer day it triggered a new sense in my core.

What if one watches time fly the way one watches a bird fly?

While watching a bird, the bird is fixed in one's visual centre while the background changes. www.dialogue.ca

Of a sudden, on that sunny day, the trees and grasses shimmered in the intense Sun – soaking up the rays and fixing that energy in new growth. In each instant, the entire universe is present, then disappears into a past that is no more than a memory or perhaps some recordings.

Yet here is reality again, in its all-embracing presence, only instantly to become past while bursting forth as new presence in its steady flow. Can you see time flying?

Now is the eternal dynamic reality. Past and future are only figments in our minds. Now is packed with all that is. It renews constantly. Suspending one's self within the flowing present, watching it fly, is one channel toward peace of mind. For me, watching time fly …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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has opened a new depth of appreciation.

P.S. This story comes from the Lanark Eco-Village website: "In a cold climate, if a home was built without a heating system, it would be seen as incomplete. As transport fuels become expensive, a home built without a food supply will be considered incomplete. Such

domestic ecosystems can be built for individual homes, for villages, or perhaps even cities. All would benefit from secure local food production."

All links at: www.superaje.com/~sustain5/Eco-Village_links.html ♣ See also: "Where Will the Grandchildren Live,” P.63.

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Musings On Beginning My 8 th Decade…

SEVENTY YEARS OLD TOMORROW (Aug. 31, 2016) Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC scribepoet@hotmail.com PHOTOS ON P.87

Tomorrow is my birthday so I can't help sending you this brief review of my life which I wrote just for the occasion.

I hope you are both in fine health and have enjoyed your summer, reaped some fine vegetables from the good earth and find sufficient amusement to keep you intrigued with life itself.

Outside my window I hear rumblings of thunder, heralding perhaps the end of summer. The magical force of cyclical change taking place vibrating through our bodies, flashing lightning searing our eyes, touching our souls with the relationship to Earth. The wind blows through the trees and the pattering of rain drops gradually increase in volume expanding to a torrent thrashing upon the roof and flooding the ground.

I don't know how my day tomorrow will unfold but I am looking forward to some real mail (that I understand has been held back for the occasion.) Hard copy, real written words perhaps, who knows? What anticipation held in suspension. All the best Paul Seventy years old tomorrow, do I collate the memories one by one? Is there a reason I should bother, other than running out of time to spare or the desire to scatter some notion of a life, for the interest of grandchildren should they ever wonder who I was.... when it’s too late to ask.

Here, introspection is an old hand opening a drawer revealing a past, a fragmented tapestry of friends, and music making, ideas and beliefs, loves and struggles, occupations and hobbies.

How can one encapsulate the fascination, when young, with images on matchbox labels collected and dutifully stuck in albums and scrap books, I still have them, (p.87) the ‘Elect Kennedy’ book match, ‘The Pentagon’, the flooded Dutch house, the Bengal Tiger Attack, The P@0 Line match, Greek, Italian, Chinese match box labels, featuring architecture, aircraft, lotus flowers, 70 dialogue

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Stonehenge, The Pyramids, ruined amphitheatres, snow covered mountains. I can’t expect anyone these days to appreciate these static images of a pre gadget world from the 1950’s. I also enjoyed carving a piece of wood on the front step or drawing ships or cars with pencil on paper. Later in life I became a printer in occupation and a calligrapher and illustrator as a serious pastime.

But my first job was as a clerk at the Admiralty in Whitehall, London, England, for the Department of Naval Security. We were shown films of how government people might be approached by the ...’Other Side,’ and duped into a life of espionage and blackmail. One day I went through just such an experience for real. It seems odd to think that a naive 16-year-old boy could recognise someone tailing him, but I could – and ran like Hell to shake him off. It became more obvious then, in a London crowd: two figures weaving in and out of people and traffic; even more obvious when I took the emergency spiral staircase down to the underground trains and just slipped into the closing doors ahead of this careening figure leaping from the stairs.

I smiled with a satisfied expression, but then watched with disbelief as the doors opened once again and he slipped inside. I moved down the carriages and relaxed, thinking he would never find me among all those people through which you could hardly move, since it was rush hour; but he did find me and I was approached. He gave me the rap and I actually agreed to meet with him but then I didn’t show up. I never told the department about it. I was not sure if he was ‘one of us,’ just testing my mettle, or if he indeed worked for the Russians, but he didn’t try a second time. I will never know. After two years as a clerk, I made a transition to Lithography and entered the printing trade, which was a more practical rather than intellectual environment.

I enjoyed working in London as a young person, the Beatles were singing ‘Twist and Shout,’ Trafalgar Square is impressive, and nostalgic for me since I have an old black and white photo of my dad and me when www.dialogue.ca

I was about four years old, sitting on the wall of the fountain. (p.87) Many years later I had someone take a shot of me and my big son Ambrose on that same spot.

St. James Park is right in the city, the Serpentine River running through it, home to both black and white swans and upon the winding pathways, friendly squirrels that jumped into your lap. Bands played in bandstands, Buckingham Palace was just up the road, and there were clubs to visit, like The Whisky A Go Go and The Marquee Club on Wardour St., where I saw The Average White Band. At Ronnie Scott’s Club I saw The L.A. Express with Joni Mitchell, also Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Lane, in this very intimate venue.

There were drum clinics to attend in the lunch hour where big band name drummers would demonstrate their technique. The many drum stores, like Drum City on Oxford St., filled with brightly coloured drum kits drawing in young aspirants. I had a beautiful chrome Ludwig kit with Zyldian cymbals.

Why I became a drummer for fourteen years is not so clear, but the song ‘Wipe Out’ was a galvanising, rhythmical tune that pulled me into a percussive future, which continued to be a creative endeavour from the mid 1960’s through the 1970’s.

After a hiatus of 30 years, that percussive drive is now, translated from the drum kit of the past to a wooden box of the present called a Tongue Drum. My compositions are called: Torrent of Tongues, Tempestuous Tongues, Tongue Tonic, Taste of Tongues, etc. Since 2009 I have sixteen drum pieces, each memorised as a chain of rhythms, played with rubber tipped sticks upon wooden tongues producing many tones. More recently I acquired an old thirteen-note, wooden xylophone for which I have composed eight songs in the last four years, with titles like: Xylophony 2012, Xylophile, Xylophonacity, etc.

Thank God for Joe Hill Coffee House, at the top of the mountain in Rossland, B.C., where I can play in public for fifteen minutes of stage glory, reciting poetry and stories of grandkids between songs, just for the fun of it.

The autumn season of 2016 has just begun; I must sign up for a spot.

Being in the world, for me, has never been lucrative, but it has been very satisfying for just having pursued my own interests. In England, from the age of 18, to 33, I played drums in many pop and rock bands until I immigrated to Canada. Once, on the strength of a phone call in answer to my ad in the music paper Melody Maker, I travelled from England to Germany with my drums, on the Rhine Express, to play with a band I had never seen www.dialogue.ca

or heard. I was met at the station and taken directly to where the English band ‘Cockroach’ was performing at a dance club venue. I met everyone for the first time in the dressing room; their drummer said “Goodbye” and I played with them six nights a week for the next three months. I still have a cassette tape of one of my drum solos, frenetic and fueled by adrenaline, from that unforgettable time in the mid 1970’s. Forty years later, their bass player is still a friend in contact.

Since 2014, my focus has been written contributions to Dialogue Magazine, sharing with others ideas and memories, giving me a sense of consolidation. This has pushed into the background the calligraphy that has been a close part of my life for 30 years. For a few years, I had sold copies of hand-written pieces at craft fairs. Being a ‘press man’ for the last 22 years had given me the opportunity to copy my artwork. Now, in my more sedentary stage, I have boxes of the stuff sitting around in my closet, inactive inspiration, words that could bring meaning to life, Rudyard Kipling’s ‘IF,’ Thomas Hardy’s ‘Afterwards,’ or echoing the ancient tenets of sages, “In thinking, keep to the simple.” “The way to do is to be,” says Lao Tzu. I have to do something about all these pieces, not just let them be dormant illumination. (p.87) Sometimes, seemingly random events smack of destined arrangement, like new relationships that knock on your door and begin, even reconfiguring one’s life and future country. Life with my Canadian wife Allison began like that, 35 years ago in 1979.

We now have four grown children and four grandkids from 5 years old down. These human life forces have emerged from us and they are now finding places in the world to spend their energy and hone their skills. As I felt that I did in my new Canadian life, starting again from nothing , surviving as a handyman, digging, cutting, planting, fixing, building fences, delivering firewood, picking and pruning fruit trees in orchards. I was a tree planter for seven years, clambering up and down the desecrated slopes of B.C. in the heat and rain, healing into the ground thousands upon thousands of trees. My ‘D’ handle shovel was moulded with the grip of my fingers.

I escaped the treadmill of tree planting after entering the library one day and spotting a poster on the wall. I took the offered course and at the end of the year I had a job that lasted 22 years. The course instructor had come to me and said, “I have just had a phone call from the boss of the print shop in Trail, he is looking for a press man.

Wow. Funny thing was, not long before that, it had been the Chinese new year – Year of the Snake – and the Chinese student astrologer at the college was …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Paul Bowles, Beginning My 8th Decade (photos, P.87) fortune-telling in the lobby. He told me that “I would soon find the jewel in the sand.”

I even found my house at that place of work, when I overheard a conversation and sidled in to make an arrangement. Many years later our son would rebuild it.

Now I wallow in retirement, ambition ebbed away, memories seeping through while in an armchair solitude that could also be termed ‘out to pasture.’ I potter away in the yard, moving around surplus lumber, from one place to another, (residue from the renovations) while my wife tends to flowers, the vegetable garden, cooks and mentors children, cultivates her family tree on Ancestry, and encourages our son to finish the house finally. Then, when the floorboards are down, railings are on the decks and bathroom finished… then I can present him with my father’s ceremonial sword (a German

war trophy), passing it along so he can put it up on his wall and that will be that. But I won’t hold my breath since he has a farm, wife and two kids, sheep, horses, chickens and four dogs, while building his own house and organising a riding school with boarding, as well as maintaining his own house design business.

It’s exhausting even thinking about our son’s life, while I age away, my life’s activities diminishing – to ‘summing up’ on paper the many experiences for which I am grateful. Grateful to people in my life, grateful to the Earth for what I have seen and been granted and for my own patch of ground, and grateful to the Mystery from which Creation has emerged with its incomprehensible cellular and stellar forces.

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC ♣

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“Soft and Hard Edges”

I am the splash in the pond

By Jim Taylor, Okanagan Centre BC “I just don’t get it,” a friend told me recently. “You talk about us being stardust, about being made of the same stuff as the whole of the universe, about worshipping a cosmic God. I don’t feel connected to a galaxy out there in space somewhere.”

I do feel that connection. I find it mind-blowing that that all of us, all of everything, emerged from the same cataclysmic explosion.

Whoosh! We are pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, where every piece is intimately related to every other piece, and every piece is essential to the whole. So I feel it. But I have trouble explaining it.

AHA! A METAPHOR! Then I thought of the lake out beyond my front windows. Anyone who lives by a lake occasionally throws stones into it. The stone makes a splash. Ripples spread from the splash. As they spread, they dissipate. They grow weaker. But the ripples never fully disappear.

Those ripples keep going right to the far end of the lake, even if individual ripples are no longer detectable as they blend with all the other ripples on the lake. The ripples closest to the splash are the biggest. Steepest. Strongest.

Most easily identified.

I think of the closest ring of ripples as my immediate family. They matter more to me than anything else.

Although I am committed to non-violence, I would 72 dialogue

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abandon that conviction in seconds if they were in danger.

The next ripple outwards might be my friends. They too matter to me, but not quite as much. The ripples continue to expand. My local community, perhaps.

The organizations I support. Or my environment -- the garden I nurture, the woods I go walking in, the waterfront where waves lap.

Somewhere farther out are ripples for my country, my ancestors, my profession. I feel a connection to them, but not as much as to my family and friends.

So no, I don’t feel any particular kinship to Galaxy CL J1001+0220 -- recently discovered by NASA at 11.1 billion light-years away from Earth. My puny ripples will have been pretty fully dissipated by the time they get there.

NOT SEPARATE But -- and here’s the point -- I must not think of myself as standing on the shore making ripples in a lake. I am not even the rock thrown into the lake. I am the splash.

As long as I think of myself as separate from the lake, I can never fully identify with the universe I live in. I am not separate from the lake, or from my ripples. I am part of the lake. Whatever I do to the lake will inevitably affect me. I am the part of the lake closest to any toxins or poisons I dump into it.

I am not separate. I am the splash; I am the lake. www.dialogue.ca

The wise ones have long known this truth. The prose poem known as Desiderata said, back in 1927, “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars.” Joni Mitchell wrote, “We are stardust, we are golden, We are billion year old carbon…”

We all make our own ripples in the universal pond.

But none of us are separate from the pond.

Jim Taylor, Okanagan Centre Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved. To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca (and a copy to dialogue@dialogue.ca too if you like!) ♣

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“Intimate Details”

Introducing Thomas Merton

By J.S. Porter, Hamilton, Ontario

Thomas Merton (19151968), “contemporary of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Vietnam and the Watts riots.”* Monk. Hermit in his final years. Poet.

Journal-keeper, photographer, calligrapher. Translator, essayist, letter writer. Reader. Social and political thinker. You need a whole alphabet for Thomas Merton.

He was born in France and died in Thailand. He lived for most of his adult life in a Cistercian monastery in Kentucky near Bardstown and the world’s largest distillery of bourbon.

If you listened to Pope Francis’ address to the American Congress in the fall of 2015, you would have heard his name mentioned – along with Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King – as a spiritual presence in our time. The Pope said this: “Merton was above all a man of prayer, a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church. …/ He was also a man of dialogue, a promoter of peace between peoples and religions.”

I turn to Merton for his prayers.

It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with one’s hunger and sleep, one’s cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off, making coffee and then drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying. I live as my ancestors have lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen.

His prayers often seem unexpected, even unintended. He famously said once that how he prayed was to breathe.

These lines from his sixties classic, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, continue to nourish me: “Dark dawn.

Streaks of pale red, under a few high clouds. A pattern of clothes lines, clothes pins, shadowy saplings. www.dialogue.ca

www.spiritbookword.net

Abstraction. There is no way to capture it. Let it be.”

Merton’s thinking is holistic and connective; he sees the interdependence of each thing in the whole: We have a deep and legitimate need to know in our entire being what the day is like, to see it and feel it, to know the sky is grey, paler in the south, with patches of blue in the southwest, with snow on the ground… and cold wind making your ears ache. I have a real need to know these things because I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place, and a day in which I have not shared truly in all this is no day at all.

The above passage from his journals sounds like his friend Thich Nhat Hanh on the subject of interbeing, but is more personal and intimate.

So often Merton’s thought teeters on the cusp of poetry and prayer: “A sweet summer afternoon. Cool breezes and a clear sky. This day will not come again. The young bulls lie under a tree in the corner of their field.

Quiet afternoon. Blue hills. Day lilies nod in the wind.

This day will not come again.” His thought falls into praise and thanksgiving, a human tendency that marks the best of our species.

I appreciate Merton’s ecological mindfulness and his sense of gratitude: “A very small, gold-winged moth came and settled on the back of my hand, and sat there, so light that I could not feel it. I wondered at the beauty and delicacy of this being—so perfectly made, with mottled golden wings… It would not go away, until needing my hand, I blew it lightly into the woods.”

After having written two books on this American poet-monk – The Thomas Merton Poems and Thomas Merton: Hermit at the Heart of Things – I thought I had finished with all things Merton.

Then came an e-mail from my poet-scholar friend Susan McCaslin asking me to join her in a collaborative …/ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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J. S. Porter, Introducing Thomas Merton, contd.

Merton word-dance. Her gesture to include me in a new book on Merton seemed extraordinarily generous. How could I say no? Susan was particularly interested in Merton’s engagement with the feminine, the feminine around him and in him. My interest lay in his Zorba-like nature of immense vitality and energy.

We’ve decided to call our book Thomas Merton Superabundantly Alive. In the middle of the book, Susan and I dialogue on the feminine in all its natural and spiritual manifestations.

Susan is a joy to work with. Under her guidance, we’ve produced a poetic meditation with verve and playfulness, befitting – we hope – the verve and playfulness of our subject.

All we need now is a publisher.

Postscript: Ready for a journey – with Merton? Begin with Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander and move eventually to Emblems of a Season of Fury (his poems and translations of Latin American poets), Opening the Bible (for Merton, a book of provocation rather than reassurance) and The Asian Journal (his dialogue with the East and Eastern thinkers, including the Dalai Lama). A handy little book to have at your side is The Unquiet Monk: Thomas Merton’s Questing Faith by Canadian scholar Michael W. Higgins.

J. S. Porter, www.spiritbookword.net

* Michael W. Higgins, The Unquiet Monk: Thomas Merton’s Questing Faith (Toronto: Novalis, 2015) p.68. ♣

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What is meant by the SHIFT? From: Anna Christine Doehring [Email: energyallaround@shaw.ca ]

December 2015 I wrote: “Our planet needs every single one of us to be happy, calm and centered during this time of the Shift.”Some people are wondering what is meant by the Shift and I promised to explain.

21.12.2012 was never about the end of the world. It was according to the Mayas about the beginning of the Golden Age – a new time-period of 26.000 years.

The SHIFT began 1987 ... it is a time-period in which our consciousness is evolving and we are vibrating on a higher and higher frequency until we reached spiritual awakening. We move slowly away from duality (good/bad, love/fear, peace/war) into neutrality and eventually into a state of love for all of creation – the planet, humans, animals and plants.

The ones who move faster ahead with the evolution of their consciousness will eventually reach Christ consciousness (unconditional love, wisdom, compassion) and will become 5th dimensional beings. They will still be physical beings on the planet but their lives will always flow harmoniously.

Duality with its wars will, over time, disappear...

Corruption is and will be exposed and removed. Manmade illnesses will become a thing of the past because the reasons for those illnesses will be removed.

Solar flares and Particles from the universe are assisting us in our evolution. Even NASA confirmed their effect on our emotions. The lower we are on the emotional scale (pride, anger, fear, worry, guilt, grief, and shame) the more we are affected by these high frequencies. Our bodies have to adjust. Many wonder whether they have a medical problem, others find 74 dialogue

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their experiences even traumatic.

We can help our body by removing everything that is negative from our lives. For many this will be difficult because we became so accustomed to it. Therefore I do not have TV and listen less and less to the radio.

2016 and 2017 are supposed to be the years with many changes. When we are in a state of inner peace that is enabling us to be the observer, it will be easier to get through this time.

This is the reason I am practising Reconnective Healing® which is seen as the leader of the new field of Energy Healthcare. Healing is more than the elimination of a symptom. It is a return to balance and wholeness, mental clarity, youthfulness, stronger relationships, physical endurance, improved libido, and human evolution.

When you have any questions please call me.

Anna Christine Doehring, RHFP, RCP Energy All Around Therapies, Tel. 250-756-2235 (PST) www.ReconnectionToTheCosmos.com www.energy-all-around.com ************

The Nanaimo Metaphysical Network is now meeting at Unity Spiritual Centre, 2325 East Wellington Rd, Nanaimo, on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month at 7 PM (attendance by donation). Information about the speakers is available at www.unitynanaimo.org On November 6th, 2016: Anna Christine Doehring, from Energy All Around Therapies will speak about “Reconnective Healing®” & “What is The Reconnection® connecting us to?” Her talk will include: Dr. Eric Pearl, the significant 6 sentences, benefits, and much more; and with a Q&A. See you there! ♣ www.dialogue.ca

“The Fifth Columnist”

The Media isn’t the Message

Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON We believe what we are told. We read books, listen to the news and watch television. This is our view of the world. My view of the causes of the First World War come from three books and several documentaries on the History Channel and Netflix.

I was shocked to see that Hitler may have made it out of Germany at the end of World War II, according to the series called ‘Hunting Hitler.’ For years, I think most of us believed that he committed suicide in his bunker at the end of the war. Recently unclassified FBI documents claim that he made it to South America.

Likewise we were taught that oil came from dinosaurs. I remember writing a column on this, disputing the claim with some basic math.

What we know personally is the view from the narrow path that we walk in a lifetime. I know that the English watch a lot of American television, but that was based on an experience in 1977, based on a single household, for just a few days. But it is salted away in my mind as gospel and universal.

For the first time in decades, I’ve been following the American election, from the straw polls on. Everybody I talk to is awestruck by the rise (and possibly fall) of Donald Trump. Nobody appears comfortable with either candidate, Trump, bombastic and tactless; Clinton, a cagey politician with a lot of baggage. We believe what we see in the media, and hope that some context is offered, that it is unbiased, but neither is true. It’s a shame that some fine presidential candidates were (apparently) swept aside by these two, but we are riveted nevertheless by this train wreck, this lurid story.

I’m heartened by the messages I see now about conservation, that we need the world and the world does not need us, ideas about consuming produce grown within a hundred miles. But still we won’t challenge the market’s need for constant growth, now being fed in Canada largely by immigration. We accept the right to grow and the right to pollute because we believe that it is our planet. Convenience and comfort trump the inevitable conclusion.

Marshall McLuhan once said that the media is the message. I once accepted this without question. It was www.dialogue.ca

brilliant. Now I’m not so sure. Air is a medium, water is a medium, space is a medium and the message is just noise, gibberish, a star farting millions of light years away, Gilligan’s Island. For us, it’s entertainment, nighttime viewing. The medium is just a conductor, a continuum. What we run through it says who we are: Ice Road Truckers, Hitler’s Bunkers, soap operas.

From my narrow path, I’ve concluded that our perception is manipulated by the message. Growth is necessary. I’d feel better with a new car, surely. The planet is warming or cooling. Thoughts, feelings, actions, results, the message tells a story to push our buttons, and the puppet master makes money.

Gaia or God or Gort the Robot, I look to the sky for them.

A fireball streaks through the atmosphere. Could it be?

I turn back to the house and wonder what is on TV. On another note, I’ve been writing this column for over 10 years, blathering about my view from the narrow path. It’s hard to believe that someone can complain for that long about three subjects, but there you have it! And Maurice and Janet King have graciously let me get away with it. There’s something about seeing words in print. I just wanted to thank you all for reading this column.

On still another note and in a bit of shameless self-promotion, I’m pleased to announce that my wife and I recently wrote a teen novel called “Sphere,” available on Amazon, and the idea that this story could be around for a hundred years or more – well, that’s intoxicating, if a bit wishful! Readers of this particular column may notice that this is our contribution to the “noise!” Here’s hoping that it’s a pleasant one all the same.

– Mike

Sphere - by Allida M. Neilly and M. R. Neilly A mysterious island with a shadowy past. An awesome discovery made decades earlier. Three young teens stumble onto a secret of astronomical proportions.

Relentlessly pursued by the military and corporate interests, they must elude capture and find a way to save their friends from a maniac before it’s too late.

Paperback: 218 pages (CreateSpace Independent Pub. Platform, Aug. 12 2016); ISBN-10: 1533516812; or Kindle edition (Devonia Books, July 22 2016) ♣ VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Moose Mountain Ride Sherry Leigh Williams, Sidney BC “Do you want to go on a helicopter ride?” my eldest son asked me.

Before my natural instinct to say no because of fear could kick in, I blurted out yes!! This was kind of a big deal for me, as I used to have paralyzing anxiety when it came to flying.

When I was a child my uncle took me up in his small Cessna and Sherry Leigh Williams proceeded to do some tricks to scare us. It worked; I swore I would never fly again if only God would let us land safely. Then a few years later I was on my first jet flight from Edmonton, Alberta to the North West Territories where we had to land on a run way covered in ice, with fire trucks waiting for the unthinkable. Surviving that I again vowed I would never fly, until I had a chance to visit Haida Gwaii. On the return flight the planes interior filled with smoke and we were half hour out over the Pacific. Yes I have flight anxiety.

As a child, part of me had dreamt about flying. I even tried to jump off the log diesel tank stand on the farm with an umbrella only to discover that the umbrella arms broke under my weight and I tumbled ungracefully to the hard Alberta ground.

Helicopter Pilot Ron was just wonderful, he took the time to point out just enough safety features to give me an idea of what I might need to know, but not too much to make me back out at the thought of what could happen. We climbed in, buckled up, and put on our headsets. My heart was pounding, but I was determined to do this thing. I felt reassured as we flew and he spoke of his 40-plus years of experience flying around the world. He is my son’s personal pilot both in helicopter and fixed wing planes, so I began to feel pretty safe.

After getting clearance in a language only my pilot friend Shannon could understand we were off. Up, up and away.

It was kind of dizzying and exhilarating and terrifying in moments only. Mostly it was amazing. The emerald landscape below became this mosaic of man and wilderness existing together hemmed in by the majestic mountains. I was closer to heaven at 10,000 feet, but I could not resist sticking my hand out the tiny window just to say I did it.

At 100-plus miles an hour, I learned quickly that might not have been my brightest moment.

Our destination was Moose Mountain and I so hoped I 76 dialogue

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could spot a moose which is one of my favorite animals.

I believe that I owe my healthy childhood and the health of my children to an organic wild diet for the most part, and I thank the mighty moose for that sacrifice.

Seeing a grizzly would have been nice too, but alas the only large mammals were domestic cattle feeding below us. Captain Ron took us to the top of Moose Mountain and only then did I truly have to close my eyes. He could tell by my grip on the bottom of my seat that maybe landing on that precipice might be a bit much for my maiden flight. He finally took us a wee bit lower and landed in an alpine meadow. I was fascinated that we could just touch down on top of the deadfall. It was gentle and I could imagine how the birds must feel with this power, to soar and land where they wish. I began to imagine how a dragonfly must feel, always mindful of that tail that could brush something if one were not careful.

What a gift this was to me. My son who made it happen also had his first helicopter ride when he was small. He had entered a coloring contest when we lived in Valley view Alberta and the prize was a helicopter ride. He reminded me of that day and how it had changed his life. I think my mommy anxiety had blocked that life changing moment for him, as all I wanted was to have him safe on the ground! Now he owns a fleet of these million dollar machines, and planes besides.

It is a mother’s wish to see in her lifetime, not only her children grow up safe and healthy, but also that we live long enough to see their dreams come true. My children have all soared with eagles; they have overcome many obstacles and have been successful each in their own way. Nothing makes me more proud as a mother.

I realize as I write this that as I have aged, there have been obstacles to overcome with each decade for me too. That growth never ends, just because we have reached a certain age. I am convinced that in order to remain young at heart, we must always be willing to take a measured, calculated risk in order to enjoy our lives.

Overcoming our fear is part of it, as is soaring with the eagles, and realizing what a wonderful, magical life it is.

Savor everything!!

Sherry Leigh Williams is an artist, writer, singer/songwriter living in Sidney, BC. Sherry was born and raised in the rural community of Shining Bank Alberta. She ranched in Little Smoky, A.B and Chetwynd, BC, where she raised her family.

[See “Bear” painting by Sherry on back cover.]

Online: https://www.facebook.com/sherryleigh.williams ♣ www.dialogue.ca

“Stirring the Soup”

Do You Believe in Magic?

Marie Gaudet, Edmonton AB Once upon a time, there was a young girl (myself) who was initiated into books. Fairy tales were my favorite when I was very young. From Hans Christian Andersen’s enchanting tales of The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, Thumbelina and The Princess and the Pea; to Grimm’s Fairy Tales for the adventures of Rapunzel, Hansel & Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin; and Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose, where Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots and Cinderella taught me some charming lessons about never giving up on finding your happy endings even if you have to overcome all sorts of obstacles to get there. Many categorically magical hours were spent poring over these and other books of hocuspocus and bewitchery – in my room, on the tree swing, in the library, sitting with my feet buried in a sand hill while munching on a stem of prairie grass, lying in a hammock, hiding between the corn rows reading when I was supposed to be detasseling corn. Oh, the magical phrases I learned that opened up caves full of treasures and carried me away from that tedious farm life and the problems of the day!

Later on at school, Greek Mythology took over the reins, with Zeus, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Achilles with his vulnerable heel and even those nasty sirens conjuring images of how to overcome the most diabolic of challenges and indeed conferring upon me my first inkling that I had my very own personal power to draw from.

Also while in my teens, I discovered Harlequin romances! What a treasure trove that was for a teenaged girl just beginning to notice boys. It wasn’t just my mother anymore who kept screeching for me to come and help with the chickens, but teachers wanting me to pay attention, my dad waiting for his lunch out in the field and bus drivers reminding me to get off because I was home, now. When you find your escape, you really immerse yourself in it, don’t you? But I needed to find my happiness and who cared if I was only doing it vicariously through my mystical leading characters for now?

Currently, I use an e-reader to escape into my imaginary worlds and oh, how I miss the smell and feel of those magical little books in my hands!

By the time I was a young adult, I had read many of the classics and (some would say downgraded to, but I www.dialogue.ca

say) graduated to reading and watching science fiction; and the boundaries of my imagination shattered. I no longer had to dream about just this simple planetary existence anymore, because now an entire universe filled my mind with its endless adventures and mysteries. My dreams expanded exponentially once the possibility of space travel became part of the equation! In essence, I did leave this earth for short intervals, while imagining everything that my life could be at but a touch of the magic wand. During those periods, my problems became irrelevant as I planned for a better future. Reading offered me a tremendous diversion from the adversities I was facing at home and at school. You might say books were my mentors. They instilled hope in me, and dreams, and confidence that I could build something special for my life, that I could find love, that the world was my oyster. For a self-conscious young woman still searching for her authentic self, this was nothing short of enchanting!

And then my kids came along. “Just in time,” I thought, gleefully rubbing my hands together. “Someone to play with!” Kids have so much imagination and excitement for life themselves, I thought, maybe we could all abracadabra together! So I cast my spells on them and they were mesmerized. I read to them every night from newer versions of the same old books and they gobbled it up – even the stories about billy goats being gobbled up by trolls. And as their worlds expanded, so did the magic in our home. I remember one Christmas when I dressed as Santa and went outside, tapping on bedroom windows. My then 6-year old, who was beginning to doubt Santa at the time, later proclaimed with star-filled eyes that Santa had come to his window, waved at him, then seemed to fly away. Only a child’s imagination could create such a delightful illusion.

Another time, I convinced my 8-year old daughter to take the “Princess” test. I put a dried pea (the largest I could find) under her mattress before she went to bed, telling her that if she could have a good night’s sleep on it, she wasn’t a “real” princess,” just an amazingly awesome little girl with a heart of gold and if she complained about it, I was going to pick her up, twirl her around and hug her and kiss her. Of course, she came back complaining the next morning that she’d had a very fitful sleep and would I please remove that annoying pea? So we celebrated Princess April with curtsies, thees and thous and currying favor. Halloween, of course, was VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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special because our entire entrance was filled with skulls, potions, goblets and our dreaded book of incantations. I’ve never had so many vampires, zombies, witches, goblins and princesses in one room before (that’s four of my own kids plus two stepkids).

Every day was an excuse to celebrate and take your imagination to the next level. When my daughter turned 14 and thought (based on gossiping peers) that it was no longer trendy to be a virgin, I posted a long, loving birthday message in red stencil letters on my extra-large front window… with six blue letters scattered throughout, spelling V-I-R-G-I-N. Thankfully her peers on the school bus missed that hidden message, but she was so horrified when I pointed it out to her, she split a gut laughing! No matter -- our home was a happy place to be as they were growing up and magic became a part of them. They’ve since learned to weave their own spells in copious ways since with their own kids, keeping the magic alive and helping them cope with life’s numerous turns and twists with pizzazz!

And, never, ever to be forgotten is the magic I have always found in nature. From climbing trees for a view from the top to picking all manner of nuts and berries; from dragging my toes in the baby-powder smoothness of the soft earth to digging up potatoes, the tiniest of which only needed a rub of the skirt before being popped into your mouth; from laying down in the middle of a wheat field to watch the clouds floating serenely by to rafting on a pond with only a stick for steering; long barefoot walks in fields, meadows and forests and through creeks; hours spent building a tree fort far enough away from home to dream in much-needed silence and solitude; studying sparrows, dragonflies, bumblebees, squirrels, gophers, lizards, skunks, foxes and ants. It’s not even necessary to really focus on noticing everything around you when you’re in nature because magically, just being in it will fill all of your senses with its beauty and wonder and refresh you in both body and spirit. Such outings, no matter what our age and though we may not even realize it, are filled with enchantments of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste that heal us from

the inside out so that once we return home, we often can’t remember why were so stressed to begin with. Try it next time you’re in a mood – you’ll see!

Now, as an adult, I’m still discovering magic potions everywhere, be it treating burns with an aloe vera plant; a couple of drops of Japanese Mint Oil on my temples to immediately relieve a headache; 9 drops of Vanilla Bourbon essential oil and 3 drops of Lavender over baking soda in a pretty jar for a sweet-smelling room; Turmeric Tea to soothe the savage backache; or ingesting a teaspoon of regular mustard to quickly ease heartburn. If I wasn’t so open to magic, I likely would have never even looked for these wonderful recipes which are now a boon to me as I get older.

And music, ah the beautiful sound of all kinds of music. Have you wondered how come certain songs just do it for you and others don’t? And yet at times, those “others” are the ones that speak to you? I was never so shocked as when I found myself listening to (and liking) a rap song! But it depends on your mood at the time, doesn’t it? And of course, the lyrics. I’m a bit of a mutant when it comes to music. I listen to all kinds -- from rap, hip-hop, alternative, country and rock to jazz, classical and music of the world -- depending on my mood – and never does it fail to lift me. I may not know the name of the band or even the artist sometimes, but I know what I like and what my soul responds to. A life without music would be just tragic. Add meditation to some of that soulful music and you’ve just entered a little place called heaven! Do you remember the Lovin’ Spoonfuls’ song from the 1960s -- Do You Believe in Magic? I definitely do believe. Do you?

The moral of this story is that if you let it, magic will, like it did with Alice in Wonderland, Alladin, Snow White, or the Beast pining for his beauty, sculpt you into the most extraordinary being you can be. And then you’ll realize that this person was there inside you all along. What a glorious gift to give to children! And they will send you magic dust in thanks, one day -- as they live out their happily ever after.

Marie Gaudet, Edmonton ♣ [See Marie’s Sunset Photo, on the back cover]

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The Art of Making the Mundane Magical “We must shift our allegiances from fear to curiosity, from attachment to letting go, from control to trust, and from entitlement to humility.”

– Angeles Arrien, author Quoted at article: Anne Veh: The Art of Making the Mundane Magical --by Awakin Calls, Aug 18, 2016 78 dialogue

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LINK at DailyGood.org - http://tinyurl.com/AV-ammm ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Warm Welcome – To a New Writer…

RETROSPECT

B. Rouse, Grey-Bruce Writers Club, Owen Sound ON How many persons have lived in this body? All the years I have had life and breath? A laughing baby, a wide-eyed child, expectantly awaiting Santa Claus? A little girl, crying for a mother gone, not understanding, simply taken away by death.

A teenager struggling to grow, slipping back, adulthood (beckoning, excitement not imagined, perhaps unseen perils, a future unwritten. Saddle shoes and poodle skirts, pincurls, and bright, bright lipstick, just a little awareness. There are boys out there – do they see me?

A career, called “work” back then, finding independence, self-sustaining. Watching other romances, wondering when. Will there be someone for me one day? Looking over the prospects, no happy choices, am I just being picky? Too particular?

A ship came into harbor, and “choice” walked off it, the future suddenly clear. Growing affection, plans, hopes

and dreams. A white-clad bride, veiled ecstatic, apprehensive. No thoughts then of ageing, illness or loss, A new person, a Wife lives there now!

A mother, responsibility for little lives, Brownie Mom, Sunday School teacher, activities surrounding children’s growing. Letting go, apron strings do not last forever.

The person inside has now become The caregiver for those who nurtured me.

Tears flow easily, I am alone again. How swiftly the years together sped by! The mirror is merciless, wrinkles, blotches, gray hair, sags in unmentionable places.

Memories sustain my days, and lessons learned long ago fortify and uphold.

Where are all those who dwelt in me? A child, a stumbling teen, trying maturity, a responsible woman, loving God, growing in knowledge of life. And so, all the folk who lived within are still there. Perhaps more yet to come. © B. Rouse ♣

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And ‘Welcome Back’ to an old friend

From Denny Petrik, BC Hello Janet, Yes, I am still pestering the neighbourhood, and the son and his family. My prevailing past time these days are doctor visits. That situation is best described as, “I feel like the old ‘Model T’ that has travelled over many miles and some bumpy roads.”

My sacro is not getting along with iliac too well and that is a pain in the back. However, so far I have managed to get up in the mornings, say thank you for still breathing and attend to my pleasant duties of looking after granddaughters’ pup.

When the girls are at school and parents off to work, I am the designated “lion tamer”.

And that is a chore I love. I shall enclose a picture of the Little Sweet.

I hope all is going well for you and that the heat wave is not too much of a bother. Thank you for the hug, it was very nice to “read” from you.

Take care and I hope you meet many smiles – each day, – Denny www.dialogue.ca

♣ VOL. 30 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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“Observations from Lithuania” Grandma, Smuggler

by KR Slade

She looked as a grandma should look: old. She looked as if she must be in her nineties. However, she had looked that-old for the half of her life before she would reach her final 90th year.

From since I was a child, everyone thought that she was my great-grandKen Slade mother. She had the perfect cover for her decades of smuggling.

My memories of her were: thin, bony, stooped, rough and calloused fingers with very-short but broken fingernails, crooked fingers with oversized knuckles; a deeply-wrinkled face, yet the softest cheeks to kiss; white hair in a large bun, blue eyes; unusually short in stature for her Lithuanian ethnicity; belying frailty.

Her only outstanding physical characteristic was skin so white that she made most other Caucasians appear positively putative.

At home, she always wore only a nightgown and slippers; when she went out, she always wore a looselyfitting dress that was ankle-length and with a high neckline. She did not wear any jewellery, except a very small religious pin when she went to church. Although she would live in the USA for sevenplus decades, she never learned English.

The only English I ever heard her speak was, “English no good.” And, she was not saying that her English ‘is no(t) good;’ she was saying that ‘the English-language is no good.’

Nevertheless, she worked from under cover of home and church; never travelled 100 kilometres from where she had landed in North America. No, she never made any money doing her ‘hobby.’ It cost her about one-third of her very-limited income to play the smuggling game -- a past-time that was her only entertainment. However, for her endeavours, the penalty in the Soviet Union, where her efforts materialized, was death. If she ever returned home to Lithuania, the Soviets surely would kill her.

She was not at all like my short, fat, homely, and gregarious and warm Roman grandma, the huggable Latin one. No; my Baltic grandma had been one good-looking blond, and she had always known that.

However, she had a rough time in life. Before the beginning of the First World War, she was separated 80 dialogue

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Ken Slade, Vilnius from her mother, father, and sister; and was sent from the village in the Old-Country to North America.

There must have been some ominous feeling by her parents of the coming war for Lithuania, which was a part of the Russian Empire. Grandmother never discussed that subject, or about after the end of the Second World War when the Soviets came; they took her father outside of his house that was over his shop, so he could be shot in the street of Kaunas. Perhaps she did not discuss the subject because she really did not know the details.

To ensure survival of some members of a family, worldwide and throughout history, there has been the practice for parents to exile one or more of their children. She emigrated in a small group of similar girls, and was placed in a Rhode Island (USA) Catholic convent until she was eighteen and could marry. She had no passport, no ID, no documents. Because she could not write, her only way to identify herself was verbally; her oral communications resulted in different spellings in all of the various official documents that would be created in the USA. The Lithuanian alphabet is not the same as the English alphabet; and, Lithuanian can be written also in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. For hundreds of years before the first quarter of the 20th century, the Lithuanian language had been greatly ‘Polonised.’ English-speakers have difficulty with the multi-syllabic Lithuanian words, and which have sounds that do not exist in English; therefore, US officials wrote what they thought that they were hearing. Her first name, Dominyka (in Lithuanian), could also be spelled in English as Dominica or Domenica. Her family name could be spelled Juskevicius or Jezukiewicz, or other ways. She did know that her father’s name was Unufras, and that her mother’s name was Marite (but that also could be Maria). Her sister’s name was Elzbieta (with various spellings); her subsequent married-name was Bardaris or Bardariene. There was also the issue of dates, such as her birth date, because of the differences in the Russian and Western calendars.

All of these facts of identification(s) in the US gave her many pseudonyms.

Her future husband had recently arrived from the oldcountry where his family were forest-wardens and farmers, since the times of monarchy in the Grand …/ www.dialogue.ca

Duchy of Lithuania. Fortunately, he and she spoke the same dialect of Lithuanian, as well as being from villages rather than the more-sophisticated city-speakers that were the majority of the small Lithuanian community in Providence, Rhode Island. He also could not read or write, and had no passport, ID, or official documents; and he had emigrated also at the beginning of World War I. His family name was Sladkevicius (variously spelled); so, in the Lithuanian tradition of names for married women, she would have the last-name of Sladkeviciene (many spellings). She had told my Father that the first thing that she liked about him was that he was tall and big, the way a man is supposed to be, as her father was, as my father is; the way I was going to be.

By the time she was twenty-nine they had four children. Three years later she was widowed; the youngest child was three, my Dad. She never allowed photographs of herself, not even at her wedding; she was superstitious of photographs. However, she did make one exception: at her husband’s funeral, she allowed a photo of her and her four children. The year after her husband’s death, she was diagnosed with an incurable disease and given a maximum of six months to live. She put her affairs in order by placing her four children in an orphanage; and she waited; and she prayed. After the six months had passed, her health improved, and thereafter was no longer any sign of the illness. She went to work; and she removed her four children from the orphanage. She was never sick again.

She worked an eight-hour shift at one factory, and then worked another eight-hour shift at another factory. It took her twenty years to buy her third tenement-house, and then retire to the luxury of a landlady’s life. She paid cash for her houses; no bank would lend her any money anyway. Her work began Sunday night at 11 pm at the rubber-factory down the hill. At 7 am the following morning, she walked home to see the children, then further up the hill to church for 7:15 am daily mass. At 7:45 am she went down the hill, dropping-off groceries at home, and then further downhill, to directly across the street from where www.dialogue.ca

she had just worked, to the easier job at the textile factory for the 9 am day-shift. Noisy factories did not require any language skills; she never spent one day in her life at any school; she could not read or write. After work, at 5 pm she climbed up the hill to make supper, yell at the children, and get four hours of sleep.

Six days a week; before they invented vacations, which concept she did not understand, and always thought that 'vacation' meant the factory might close permanently. That is how she came to look old.

Maybe that is also why she looked to The Church, and going to Holy Mass every day.

She never owned a television. She had a radio, a gigantic floor-model; she listened to radio one hour per week: ‘The Lithuanian Hour’ from Boston that sounded like a short-wave radio transmission. She maintained her houses, interior and exterior, in an absolutely immaculate condition. Her houses had a coaland-wood giant stove in the kitchen, for heat and hot water.

When the city demanded that she put central-heat into her houses for her tenants, she installed oil furnaces in the basements; however, she did not change the heating for her own flat.

She could not count beyond ten; therefore, it was necessary for her to devise her own ‘monetary system’ - that was based on religious statuettes. On her bedroom dresser, she kept cash, sorted as to denominations, with each pile weighted with a religious statute.

When she received mail, she would know from the kind of envelope what was an important bill to pay. My Father would explain (in Lithuanian, of course) to her, for example a bill for $97.67: “City property tax: one ‘Blessed Virgin’ (i.e., $50), two ‘Holy Family’ (i.e., $20), one ‘Infant of Prague’ (i.e., $5), two ‘Saint Joseph’ (i.e., $1), and some coins.” If she had one, but not two, ‘Holy Family,’ then should would become upset for not having enough money. She did not seem to know that the one missing ‘Holy Family’ could be replaced by two ‘Christ on the Cross’ (i.e., $10).

Story will continue in the next issue…

Ken Slade, Vilnius, Lithuania All Rights Reserved: 2004 kenmunications@gmail.com VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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Feedback re Dialogue Magazine +

Shirley Shum, Kirkland QC Dear Maurice and Janet, Thank you for the joy you have given me, for so many years! The latest photo of Penny & friends is absolutely adorable! Keep them coming for years … My subscription payments fell behind, so hope I’m closer to up-todate (blame old age!). Looking forward to future issues with Penny & friends. Thank you so much. ♣

Alan Trussler, Kitchener ON June 2016: Keep up the good work. Dialogue is a much needed publication. I wish I lived nearer, to help. ***

From Iris Yawney, Daphin MB I enjoy your magazine and appreciate your work on it.

God Bless!

The Dalton Camp Award will go to the winner or winners of an essay competition on the link between de-

***

Yolanda East, Ste. Agathe-des-Monts QC Dear Maurice & Janet & Penny, Thank you for the Dialogue. I read it from cover to cover…

Two years ago, Dr. Marguerite Ritchie (who had been my friend for 30 years) called me to meet her in Ottawa.

(She came here many times; 4 years ago for a corn roast and she stayed 3 days – it was wonderful!) We agreed to meet in Wakefield, where I was hoping to move. I drove 2 ½ hours and met her & friends in a German restaurant and we spent the day together. … She called me after my trip to tell me how happy she had been to see me.

Years ago we travelled together to visit my family in Lac St. Jean and she used to call them for their birthdays. I miss her so much.

– Love, Yolanda ♣ ***

mocracy and the media in Canada.

This year there will be one Award, open to all eligible entrants, consisting of a prize of $10,000, as well as a bronze cast medal by the late Canadian sculptress Dora de Pédèry-Hunt. In addition, a second Award consisting of a prize of $2,500 may be awarded, at the Selection Committee’s discretion, to the best essay by an entrant who is or was during the 2016 calendar year a student at a recognized post-secondary institution.

Deadline: Dec. 1, 2016 LINK: www.daltoncampaward.ca Received from Friends of Canadian Broadcasting WEBSITE:www.friends.ca

♣

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Thin Red Line Review

M is for Movie…

20th CENTURY MASTERPIECE – EXPERIENCE LIVING AND DYING IN WORLD WAR II Herb Spencer, Surrey BC [spsi99@telus.net] them into dogs – it poisons the soul."). Soak in the imI just watched this movie on TV and felt compelled to agery (the violence of man/ the beauty of nature). Expewrite this review of one of my top-5 films. Watch it and rience the emotions (fear, loyalty, pride, disgust). experience life on the Existential Edge; hopefully you Roger Ebert was wrong, Malick knew exactly what he never get this close in reality. wanted to convey in this film; deep reflections on the August 28, 2016: The Thin Red Line greatest paradoxes that man must confront in his life: This is such a powerful film that I can only watch it once good/evil, life/death, bravery/fear, beauty/ugliness. The a year and I have seen it now over fifteen times since it massacre of the defeated Japanese soldiers in their was released in 1989. It is such a gut-wrenching expericamp by the triumphant US Army, is a gut-grinding ence that I feel I was there at Guadalcanal in 1942 with portrayal of the inhumanity of man. these men thrust into a situation few should ever know.

This is not simply a war film but a rare example of what This film captures the grimness of man and the nature of great movies and art are really about: "feeling life". reality that only a poet can capture. Terrence Malick, the The UK newspaper, "The Guardian" rated this the #10 writer/director is such a visionary that he was overbest action/war movie of all time. I rate it as one of the whelmed by many first-class Hollywood actors, even if BEST movies EVER made. they only got a walk-on cameo role, when he was castLINK to Review (at Amazon.com): ing this film. http://tinyurl.com/Ama-Review-HS-thin-red-line ♣ Listen to the words ("War does not enable man; it turns 82 dialogue

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www.dialogue.ca

Ramblings

CHURCHILL OR GANDHI Randy Vancourt, Toronto ON It’s a basic fact that everyone thinks their baby is the cutest one to ever enter the world. No doubt you thought the same about your own child. My wife and I certainly did, the main difference being that in our case I’m pretty sure we were correct.

This September our son celebrates his 2nd birthday and I’m happy to say that he’s still got his looks. On the day of his birth I felt that it would have been remiss not to get official confirmation from our obstetrician that our child was, clearly, the most attractive one he had ever delivered.

Perhaps the doctor was tired from working a long shift, or maybe it was just the gin talking, but what he then said hit me across the face like a ton of wet wipes.

All babies, according to the wisdom he had gleaned over his years delivering hundreds of them, are born looking like either Winston Churchill or Mahatma Gandhi.

Wow...Churchill or Gandhi. While I can certainly understand the desire to have your offspring share similar features with the famous and powerful, I would have hoped that the selection might have been a bit broader; and by broader I of course mean more attractive. Not that looks are everything but seriously, when you’re only a few minutes old that’s really all you’ve got going for you.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this over the next few days. Our child was obviously in the Churchillian category as his cheeks resembled nothing more than a chipmunk gathering nuts for winter. Disturbingly, over the past 2 years we have started noticing other similarities to Winston as well.

Although he has yet to take up smoking cigars, our boy does seem to “harrumph” a lot, and I’ve noticed him bristle whenever he sees Nazis on the History Channel.

I’m also keeping an eye on the liquor cabinet although I’m crossing my fingers he might hold off on that

particular Churchill tradition until he’s say, 4 or 5.

Don’t misunderstand; I’m not complaining. I’m just not really sure which would be easier to explain to the neighbours – a slightly pudgy toddler with a glass of scotch in hand, shouting about fighting them on the beaches, or a small, bespectacled child dressed in a dhoti and sandals running around our yard with a walking stick.

I was explaining this theory to some friends the other day and they admonished me for my parochial tone.

How dare I suggest that all babies look male...and males exclusively from the 20th Century to boot! I was going to share my observation that there are certain other historical characters it could be even more offensive to choose – say, Genghis Khan and Mussolini – but clearly the theory was still showing a male bias.

Of course there are many brilliant, powerful women of the past to select, from Joan of Arc to Marie Curie, but it was while considering them all that I suddenly identified this theory’s fatal flaw. It necessitates choosing people whose faces are so familiar, so burned into our collective memory, that the mere mention of their names immediately creates a vivid picture in our mind.

This obviously requires them to have lived in a time of photography because let’s face it, you can’t believe the accuracy of any painting that was paid for by a sitting monarch. Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, it helps that both of these guys were pretty funny looking. I know, I know; there were no doubt plenty of funny looking female historical characters, but I am not about to start heading down that path.

So in my desire for fairness, I would like to refute the theory that all babies look like either Winston Churchill or Mahatma Gandhi. For the sake of peace in our time, let’s just agree that all babies are born looking more or less like space aliens. www.randyvancourt.com ♣

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The Joy of Old Age...We need a Laugh everyday...

Sent by John C. McCullough The people who lived there have small apartments but they all eat at a central cafeteria.

One morning one of the residents didn't show up for breakfast so my wife went upstairs and knocked on his door to see if everything was OK. She could hear him through the door and he said that he was running late and would be www.dialogue.ca

down shortly so she went back to the dining area. An hour later he still hadn't arrived so she went back up towards his room and she found him on the stairs. He was coming down the stairs but was having a hell of time. He had a death grip on the hand rail and seemed to have trouble getting his legs to work right. She told him she was going to call an ambulance, but VOL. 30, NO. 1, AUTUMN 2016

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he told her no, he wasn't in any pain and just wanted to have his breakfast. So she helped him the rest of the way down the stairs and he had his breakfast. When he tried to return to his room, he was completely unable to get up

even the first step so they called an ambulance for him. A couple hours later, she called the hospital to see how he was doing. The receptionist there said he was fine, he just had both of his legs in one leg of his boxer shorts. ♣

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Continuing Tales of Granddad and Grandkids

AMELIE and MALACHI at EASTON’S BIRTHDAY

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC He crawled out sopping wet and bedraggled but OK. Given the persuasive pressures of time and the preferNext there was cake. Easton had it presented to him in ences to fill it, a life that has long since retired has cultihappy birthday fashion but rather than sliced and dished vated spaces for reading and writing, listening to music out, he had it all to himself. Uncertain of how to proand doing chores around the house… And when twoceed, he stuck his fingers in it; parents’ calls of “Break and-a half-year-old Amelie is visiting, filling time is an the Cake Easton” prompted him, but he didn’t quite reopportunity to enter her world. alise that he was expected to tackle it like a wild animal.

Play dough is high in her repertoire of activities. Time Frankly neither did I, perhaps it was a local custom, evaporates for Granddad who is now entering his second something I had never encountered. [Easton photo, p.2] childhood. Between the tentative sculpting of stars and After a long drive from Kamloops to Fruitvale, and setmoon, person, dog and flower or an archway for her littling in with Malachi who was on loan for a week, new tle worm to pass through, time spent playing with her lessons of sharing were cultivated. Two-and-a-half-yearwins her favour as she moves closer and puts an arm old Amelie and five -year-old Malachi spent around my neck. quality time gathering contents of the numerThis little prancing fawn from Montreal with ous toy boxes, filling a small pram with play deep brown eyes, full cheeks and a smile essentials, like kettles, play dough, an old crathat would disarm anybody, already counts dle-type telephone, toy computers, blankets, a to ten in both English and French and sings cuddly Triceratops, and various trolls. This ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ with a French hoard became the essential ‘travel all’ for the accent. She seems to pick things up quite kid who prefers to do everything immediately. readily. Recently at Easton’s first birthday Amelie was initially enamoured by the ever party, all the kids seemed to have acquired moving circus of Malachi the mover and water wands from somewhere and were acshaker, however the moment she reached for Amelie tively being encouraged to spray the adults the pram was an electric shock for Malachi. It by a self-appointed ring leader, who succeeded in drench- was his world and he would call the shots. The volatility ing this poor fellow who was fully clothed at the time! did not subside until lengthy negotiations were conNor was I immune from targeting: with my own wife accluded, with the two mothers and grandmother apportively encouraging my ritual soaking, with calls of “Get tioning sensible equality of rights. This was supported granddad Amelie” – to which she happily responded by the set timing of the indisputable phone alarm. brandishing her water wand and discharging it with glee.

The final week of intense engagement with children was Then, while his back was turned, she dropped over him a time of beaches and parks, walking and swimming, a collapsible plastic tube (which kids had been crawling parties and horse rides, triking down the road and quadthrough), pushed him over and rolled him around the ing on the farm, with Amelie at the wheel of the kids lawn and down the slope. I heard someone yell, “Not in ‘Gator’- foot to the pedal and turning in circles, or visitthe river.” I was up on my feet as the human tube caing neighbours, waving at the train driver, playing games reened towards another brink. I was helplessly looking and riding in the wagon or just being there… This time is down on a wild throng of kids just released from civia priceless gift, when we can each leave something of lized constraints, but at the last minute before he went each other behind. The new generation is touched with over the edge he must have freed an arm to anchor himcaring and the old is replenished with love. self and the tirading mob momentum ground to a halt.

See Easton’s photo on P.2 ♣ 84 dialogue

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Tales from My Travels ~ Don Parker The story of my travels around the world on the working cargo ship, MV Rickmers Jakarta

By Don Parker, Georgetown ON In November 2005, at the young age of 77, I embarked on the trip of a lifetime, lasting in all about six months ~ as a passenger on the working freighter, MV Rickmers Jakarta, [First chapter in Vol.28 No.1-Autumn 2014, p.43]

Chapter 8, Part 1 (continued from Vol. 29, No. 3)

Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005: How should I write up to-day? Yesterday, I was a rebel. To-day I am an international criminal, perhaps even a terrorist, most definitely. In the opinion expressed by the Captain to the Belgian immigration authorities, I am a ship-jumper!

This morning, I let myself sleep in; I was tired from the last two days of tramping. I went down for breakfast and no one else was there. That’s OK, I got my breakfast into me, then went back up to my cabin to get myself ready for a trip to Hasselt, a place I visited in 2003 via the MV “ISA,” said good-bye and tot ziens to Stephan, and got on my way. When I got down on the dock, one of the cargo surveyors introduced himself and offered me a lift in his car to the railway station. I gladly accepted. It saved me about half a mile of stumbling along over cobble stones to the port gate and then on to the bus stop. It also saved me a Euro in bus fare.

So off I went to Hasselt. It is often said that one cannot go back, and that is what I learned to-day. Although it is only a little over two years ago that I was here before, there was much I couldn’t remember or recognize. I had forgotten how large Hasselt is, especially the train station, and I had forgotten how to get to where I wanted to go, so I retraced my steps and took the next train back to Antwerp while enjoying the ride once more.

Once back in Antwerp, I looked up an e-café and, once I got the system figured out, I sent a short message home. Next came searching for a “Bio” store or, as we say, a health food store. I asked for directions at various places but without much success until Bingo! - I walked into a likely store and was able to get almost everything I was looking for.

As mentioned earlier, the food on board is not the best www.dialogue.ca

and it is mainly fried which I don’t like and I do my best to avoid it. As a result, back in Houston, I loaded up on organic stuff and have been doing so ever since.

[Important side note: The times I am writing about are almost a decade ago. Now it’s 2016 with all the dangers of GMOs lurking almost everywhere. If you don’t know what GMOs are, view at least one of the following documentaries. 1) Seeds of Death, 2) The World According to Monsanto, 3) Food, Inc., 4) Seeds of Deception, and 5) Dr. David Suzuki and GMOs.] Following are some pics taken in Hasselt or Antwerp, one contains a puzzle which I will leave for you to solve, while the second is for pure entertainment.

Could you play a role in either of the two situations? One requires athletic ability (right): The next photo pertains to stonemasonry. There are four ‘true’ masons in the photo yet we see five. Obviously, one of the ‘masons’ is a fake… can you identify the fake one? (photo, left) I thought this was quite amazing…

There was a bite to the wind that day, but this fellow stayed perfectly still as he posed as one of the masons. This was in Antwerp.

Back to Hasselt for a moment: While walking along, I came upon a statue of a hand. Hmmm. That’s not much to photograph, but… a group of young girls who appeared to belong to an acting organization of some sort, came along. I asked them to pose for me on the hand, which they willingly did.

Ten girls on a strong hand! (photo, right) To be continued.

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Contributors in Andersen, Erik, BC…...18,29-30 Arney, Jeremy, BC ………17,41 Backhaus, Karl, ON….……...04 Beers, David,TheTyee.ca (link) 6 Bowles, Paul, BC 4,12,36,70,84 Bubar, Ron, NB (from)………39 Canadian Action Party 17,50,62 CCPA, ON (link)………...…7,31 CDSAPI, Inge Hanle, BC 55-57 Chossudovsky, Michel, QC…21 CJPME, QC.............................35 Clark, Ken, ON……………….39 CPAC:Public Affairs TV……..41 Creighton, David (from)……...24 Cude, Wilfred, NS ……….13-17 Derrick Skinner, BC………….18 DeSmog Canada, BC……43-45 Doehring, Anna Christine, BC 74 East, Yolanda, QC…………...82 Ebbers, Richard, ON………...49 Erkiletian, Jim, BC…………...12 Ewart, Peter, BC……………..22 Forsey, Helen, ON (link)..…...63 Foster, David, ON ………..47-49

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Friends of Cdn.Broadcasting 82 Gaudet, Marie, AB ……….77-78 Global Research, QC………..21 Goertzen, Ed, ON……………35 Goldring, Peter, AB…………..34 Great Lakes Commons, ON...07 Hanson, Bob, BC…………….45 Hare, Susanne, BC….Cover, 61 Harrison, Don, BC…………..7-8 Hellyer, Paul, BC……………04 Joubarne, Grace, ON……50-52 Kazdan, Larry, BC…………...08 Koehler,R.,CommonWonders 46 Krawczyk, Betty, BC…………11 Lonsdale, Derrick, M.D…..52-55 Mair, Rafe, BC………..25-29,42 Maffre, E., BC………………..80 Manly, Eva, BC………………36 Massey, Christine, ON…..50-52 Masuda, Gerry, BC…….........08 Mathews, Robin, BC……5, 9-11 McCaslin, Susan, BC….66-69,87 McConnell, Kim Lian, ON…..38 McCullough, JC, ON 24,38,41,83

McDowall, Steph, BC……40,63 McQuaig, Linda (link)……….04 Meyer, Peter, Australia.….....45 Moore, R. K., Ireland……45-46 Morton, Alexandra, BC 12,41,43 Neilly, Michael, ON…….……75 Nickerson, Mike, ON 63-66,69 Olsen, John, BC………..31-34 Op-Ed News (extracts)…18,23 Parker, Don, ON……………85 Petrik, Denny, BC…………...79 Porter, J. S., ON……….........73 PostalBanking.ca (link)……..08 Rabble.ca (extract-link)….….07 Raspbery, Mic, BC……….…25 Ross, June (from)…………...43 Ross, Lois, ON (extract-link) 07 Ross, Ted, NB………………39 Rouse, B., ON………………79 Ryan, Kevin, digwithin.net….24 Salt Spring Dollars, BC……..06 Schnarr, JW, AB(extract-link) 37 Semple, Ernest, QC……...37-38 Shadbolt, John, ON…………62

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Susan McCaslin: Book launches and Readings Susan McCaslin’s Fall 2016 Launches and Readings from her new volume of poetry, Painter, Poet, Mountain: After Cézanne (Quattro Books, Oct. 1, 2016) “Painter, Poet, Mountain: After Cézanne” re-enacts a journey to Aix-en-Provence in 2013, where the poet found herself in a "heart-soul-mind-clench" with the post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne. Her book traces how the artist from Aix-en-Provence accompanied her home to the Fraser Valley outside Fort Langley, British Columbia where she gazed through his eyes to see afresh the trees and landscapes near her home.

McCaslin's poems stand within the tradition of ekphrastic poetry as both a response to and reenactment of painting. Her book suggests how, by moving toward abstraction while being viscerally connected to the living trees and mountains of his bioregion, Cézanne helps us experience the world in all its shimmering processes. Readers may be surprised to discover the impact of Cézanne's achievement on later poets, philosophers, and writers, the enormity and enduring quality of his legacy. Read as a whole, this book suggests that Paul Cezanne was an early deep ecologist.

Ontario: Thurs. Sept. 29. Ottawa launch, hosted by Quattro Books at Pressed Coffeehouse, 750 Gladstone Ave., Ottawa, 7 pm., featuring Susan McCaslin, Richard Osler, Cora Siré, Sanita Fejzić,and Mark Frutkin: http://pressed-ottawa.com/ www.quattrobooks.ca Sun. Oct. 2. Susan McCaslin reading in Lit Live Reading Series, The Staircase Cafe and Theatre, 27 Dundurn St. N., Hamilton, ON. 7:30 p.m. http://litlive.blogspot.ca/ Tues. Oct. 4. Susan McCaslin reading in Rowers Reading Series, Supermarket Restaurant, 268 Augusta Ave. Toronto. Opens 6:30 pm, reading begins 7:00 p.m. https://rowerspubreadingseries.wordpress.com/ Wed. Oct. 5. Susan McCaslin and Richard Osler launching at the Quattro Book Launch, Toronto, Supermarket Restaurant, 268 Augusta Ave. (event room at rear of dining area); doors open 7:00 pm; start time 7:30 p.m. Free. http://www.supermarketto.ca/ Contact: info@quattrobooks.ca

Free.

Thurs. Oct. 20. Book launch. Susan McCaslin and Richard Osler launch their new volumes of poetry through Quattro Books, Susan’s Painter, Poet, Mountain: After Cézanne and Richard’s Hyaena Season. Vancouver Public Library, 350 West Georgia St., Morris J. Wosk Boardrom, 7th floor. 7:00 p.m. Doors open at 6:30. Host: Allan Briesmaster. More information at vpl.ca.

Friday Oct. 21. Susan McCaslin and Richard Osler reading at Planet Earth Poetry Series, Hillside Coffee and Tea, 1633 Hillside Ave., Victoria, 7 pm. With Richard Osler. Host: Daniel Scott. http://planetearthpoetry.com/ Thurs. Oct. 27. Susan McCaslin and Richard Osler reading at Twisted Poets Literary Salon for Pandora’s Collective, Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main St., Vancouver, BC, 7-9 pm. www.susanmccaslin.ca

From Stop Site C, http://www.stopsitec.org/ BUS IMAGE The Treaty 8 Justice Caravan had a fantastic, successful launch (Sep. 5th.) We had a number of speakers including MP Romeo Saganash who came all the way from Quebec as well as UBCIC Grand Chief Stewart Philip and his wife Joan Philip who drove all the way up from Vancouver just to attend the launch and provide words of encouragement and support. The caravan is travelling across the country – to be in Montreal on Monday, September 12th, the date that the West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations’ court case will be heard at the Federal Supreme Court.

Lower mainland Vancouver: October 2016 Sun. Oct. 16. Susan McCaslin reading at Poetic Justice with Richard Osler, 11:30-1:30 pm. Host: James Felton.

Boston Pizza, New Westminster (the Party Room), 1045 Columbia St., New Westminster, BC. Q & A afterward.

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Help Create Commoning Tools For The Great Lakes

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