Dialogue v28 1 autumn2014

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VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 28 NO.1

www.dialogue.ca

A word from the publisher and editor…

Dear Reader, With this Autumn 2014 issue, Dialogue begins its 28th year in print as a unique, not-for-profit and volunteer-based Canadian magazine.

The mission of Dialogue is, as it was in 1987, to provide a forum committed to the free expression Janet, Maurice and Penny and exchange of ideas – and the telling of our stories – through the written word and in creative images. The publication of the magazine is entirely supported by its writers and readers (through your subscriptions and donations).

Dialogue began in the province of Quebec and gradually spread to readers in all provinces. Today it is published from Nanaimo, BC and has subscribers across Canada (and a few beyond!). With Janet as the volunteer editor, graphic artist, etc., the magazine has been able to provide, without any paid staff, its eclectic compilations of the insights and perspectives of its reader/writers. Our commitment to remain free of the influence of advertisers has meant we have had to manage without the income to meet all the expenses beyond the printing and mailing.

And without a promotional budget, Dialogue relies on its reader/writers’ efforts to make the magazine known to family, friends and neighbours ~ and your purchase of Gift Subscriptions!* While longevity has improved the appearance of the magazine and its content, it has taken a toll on the number of long-time readers. However, with so many dedicated volunteer writers involved – and with the committed support of its subscribers, Dialogue will continue to be a meaningful alternative to the commercial media. Let’s celebrate 27 years of informed and dynamic writing & reading – and a bright future for this collaborative endeavour supporting freedom of expression in Canada.

We are most grateful for your support and your voices that make Dialogue possible.

Maurice

, volunteer publisher

Janet, volunteer editor/design …& Penny &Lucky!

P.S. For a note about the change to bond paper instead of newsprint – and how

this makes Dialogue more viable, see p.46. If you wish to continue receiving the magazine, please ensure your subscription is paid up! [See your address label] P.P.S. As we work our way through the alphabet, this is our “E”-themed cover! We invite your suggestions and contributions for the WINTER issue’s “F”-themes!

Can you help with a donation to launch our

28th

year?

With the postage increase this year and other operational expenses (such as a pressing need to replace a ten-year old computer & upgrade its programs), we continue to need the support and donations of readers to keep Dialogue in print! Thank you for your help at this time. *It’s never too early to start thinking about Christmas Gift Subscriptions!

As you begin your Christmas & holiday planning this fall, please keep in mind that Dialogue makes a unique gift for all readers and for anyone who has something to share in writing ~ or in artwork! We are always open to new contributors!

[For Gifts / Subscriptions / Donations, please see pp. 58-59] www.dialogue2.ca

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

Now in its 28th 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.

Would you 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. 58 for details) We receive NO government funding and no advertising revenue.

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

dialogue

was founded in 1987 and is now published quarterly.

Maurice J. King, Volunteer Publisher Janet K. Hicks, Volunteer Editor Date of Current Issue: Sep. 15, ‘14

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

The views expressed in this publication are those of their individual authors.

Reprints of published articles are included for their educational value.

6227 Groveland Drive Nanaimo, BC, Canada V9V 1B1

Tel: 250-758-9877 Fax: 250-758-9855 E-mail: dialogue@dialogue.ca WEBSITE: www.dialogue2.ca Deadlines: Aug. 1st, Nov. 1st, Feb. 1st, May 1st.

VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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From Near & Far

Corporate ‘free trade’ trumps our Constitution?

Bob Hansen, Ladysmith BC

The constitutional re-make of Canada is being done in the background in order to facilitate 'free' trade.

Breaking down our environmental regulations will let federal governments off the hook so corporations can use Chapter 11 NAFTA dispute resolutions processes that are beyond the courts, and that will drive national policy on ALL issues, from education, to employment, to health, to food and to the environment. Everything.

These undemocratic trade agreements, in principle, are all in violation of our constitution and the constitutions of every democratic government in the world.

Not to address the illegitimacy of all of them compels us to be ground down fighting each one independently,

a huge drain on our democratic and activist resources.

We must attack all of these trade agreements at their core, because they are not being properly debated.

Also, have they actually been tested against the charter?

It has been confirmed that (PM) Harper does not send his proposed legislation to be vetted against the charter, as was done for the previous 20 years, since 1982.

Harper has been unwinding Canada for over a decade, we must stop him now.  To save your world you asked this man to die: Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

— Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier, written by W. H. Auden [21 Feb. 1907– 29 Sep. 1973]



Collective Rights in the 1982 Charter Ernest Semple, Dollard des Ormeaux QC

The 1969 Official Languages Act originated with Lester Pearson and Jean Chrétien in 1963 and was officiated by Pierre Trudeau in 1969, in finishing the work of those two, and going further. Trudeau also solved his "biculturalism problem" in 1969 by proclaiming his multiculturalism solution based on group rights and not just special rights for two language groups. Rights for English groups and French groups would have been an openly fascist cultural statement, alienating all other groups as being inferior to the two main groups.

In 1968, we had the Pearson-Chrétien sanctioned postal strike with language blackmail and separation threatened. Thousands of small businesses failed, because of that incredible strike centered around Francophone demands.

Andre Ouellett was involved. He accused Don Johnston of being "a Westmount Rhodesian".

The real problem today is the sandy foundation for the Official Languages Act (OLA) which elevated group rights above individual rights in 1969.

At that time in 1969 Trudeau's OLA was unconstitutional under British Common Law and the supporting Magna Carta foundation for the 1867 BNA. Don Johnston knew all the facts but was neutralized by the Liberal Party forces that existed. Quebec courts were obviously, and still are, in favour of group supremacy under law when it comes to even highway accidents.

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Individuals suffer persecution under present law all across Canada not just for language. This is because the changes inserted in the Charter of 1982 put group rights superior to individual rights in the overall Canadian Constitution, not just in Quebec Law. That disastrous period for Canada culminated in the 1982 Charter set up by Jean Chrétien, who tried to take full credit, but not blame. Pierre Trudeau got all the blame, and Claude Ryan, who insisted that "collective rights" be specifically entered in any new constitutional terms of reference, took the credit for protecting Quebec culture.

Ryan dictated to the Liberal Party of Quebec in his 1978 "Beige Paper," contesting with Trudeau for that constitutional protection of Quebec French through insertion of (mythical) collective rights. Jean Chrétien made sure it was included in the 1982 Charter.

Thirty years later, Chrétien bragged about his part in the collective rights inclusion, in an interview published in 2012 in the Ottawa Citizen and elsewhere.

The Queen was not warned what she was signing in 1982 on Parliament Hill. The 1982 Charter was a declaration of abandonment of the British Common Law principle of individual versus collective rights as embodied in the Magna Carta and its history. That inclusion changed all Canadian law in all Canadian courts.

It created a conflict the Supreme Court has yet to solve.

[More on the OLA on p. 39]



www.dialogue.ca

Camouflaged Fascism

David Boese, St. Catharines ON

The one per-cent who control just about everything in our world and in our life, I call “camouflaged fascists.”

By their actions they are the least democratic people in the universe!

They are non-elected for the most part; they are almost invisible, unaccountable, nontransparent and completely evil in their quest, to rule the world. We think we are free because we have elections, but the people we elect are only pawns, in the hands of the camouflaged fascists. We think we have freedom of choice, but try to tell that to the poverty stricken, the homeless and the unemployed!

Lastly, we think we are free, but the fact of the matter is, that almost unknowingly we, the 99% are “Slaves to a Debt” that can never be repaid, to bankers who loan you money they don't have and expect to get paid back with interest, all the while stealing our savings and pensions.

These actions of the camouflaged fascists are not acceptable and must be addressed and will be by the 99%. It is totally ludicrous to have children go to bed hungry, to have food banks and people sleeping on side-walks. Enough already!

David is on Twitter: Retired, social advocate, interested in politics; had my own blog (http://boeseblog.wordpress.com ) which no longer exists. It was hacked. Hoping to start another. 

On the current training of RCMP officers in Canada Bill Woollam, Duncan BC

I was talking with a long-serving RCMP officer at one of Duncan's summer music festivals a few years back.

Both he and I were concerned about the quality of training of police officers, these past years. We both agreed that RCMP training seems to be downplaying the importance of crisis management. RCMP training programs are not teaching these officers the art of handling difficult situations, over and above the use of taser, hand-gun... or even dog.

We both could not see the sense in officers going into a mobile home, guns fully cocked and loaded, only to deal with a mentally unstable or psychotic person. I mean, why not send him a pizza with a tranquillizer in it, and get him to a hospital for proper meds and treatment. Instead, the officers shot and killed the poor fellow who was, of course, delusional. And the case of the Polish visitor to the Vancouver Airport (Robert Dziekański) who only needed to be reassured, not provoked and tasered.

Crisis management isn't rocket science, it only takes thoughtfulness and respect for the human condition.

As far as the shooting of a drunk driver goes... the same reasoning holds true. These officers are not being trained to handle crisis situations with compassion and forethought. Instead, they are being trained to draw the gun, send the dog, or use the taser first.

I am not denying that specific situations do require force, but let us remember that less than one hundred years ago, the police force, pressured by big business, used deadly force to mow down and kill hundreds of striking union workers who only desired an eight www.dialogue.ca

hour work day with reasonable overtime pay.

Is it not important to demand proper 'crisis management training' from our well-paid police force? 

Sell out to China locked in

The Harper government announced Sep 12 that it has ratified the Canada-China foreign investment treaty: comes into force Oct. 1

Press Release from Green Party: [EXTRACT/LINK BELOW]

Elisabeth May… “Once ratified, the Canada-China Investment Agreement will bind Canada, including future governments, for a minimum of 31 years. Unlike NAFTA, with an exit clause of 6 months’ notice, this agreement, also called a FIPA (Foreign Investor Protection Agreement) cannot be exited for the first 15 years. After 15 years, either country can exit on one year’s notice, but any existing investments are further protected for another 15 years. Despite some claims by other politicians that the treaty could be voided by a future government, that is not the case.

“The only way to exit the treaty would be through negotiations with China in which the government in Beijing agrees. Unilateral withdrawal would trigger a multi-billion dollar claim by the Peoples Republic of China against Canada, with damages open to collection in one hundred countries around the world.

“Cabinet’s signing of this deal behind closed doors, instead of giving Parliament a say, is not just undemocratic in itself,” added Deputy Leader Bruce Hyer. “It is also a profound attack of Canada’s sovereignty as a nation, and an erosion of the rights of all Canadians to make democratic decisions about our economy, environment, and energy.

The Conservatives have now allowed for secret tribunals that will work to re-write our laws in order to protect Chinese interests.”

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/EMay-FIPAlocked  [SEE ALSO P.59] VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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History and The Canadian Senate

Rectifying the Supreme Court decision on Senate Reform

By Vincent Pouliot, Québec QC

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision (April 25, 2014) on Senate Reform strengthens misconceptions of our constitution that must be rectified if we are to improve our government in Canada.

These misconceptions have been upheld at every turn, to the point that they have become unquestioned truths. They serve those who would balk at being constrained in their exercise of the powers of the State. The result is a Prime Minister who exercises the people’s prerogative as he pleases, effectively unconstrained by the will of parliament.

Montesquieu wrote, of the British Constitution: “Political liberty is to be found only ... when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go ... To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.”

The Senate was meant to be this check, but it was neutered from the very start, and these misconceptions were upheld to justify its existence.

The Court explains in para. 15 that “the Senate… [provided] a distinct form of representation for the regions that had joined confederation and ceded a significant portion of their legislative powers to the new federal parliament…”.

How can this statement be reconciled with section 3 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which declares: “… after the passing of this Act, the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick shall form and be One Dominion under the Name of Canada.”

Furthermore, the regions of Canada were not constituted and organized into legal entities. A region has no legal personality. A region cannot possess rights.

There are no recognized regional constituents, no regional political parties, and no regional legislatures.

There were no regional legislative powers to cede at the time of Confederation! A region is a concept, not a person endowed with political capacity.

Clearly, the member states of this Canadian federation are the provinces of Canada.

Section 92(16) establishes the exclusive jurisdiction of the provinces to make laws “Generally [in] all Matters of a merely local or private Nature in the 6 dialogue

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Province.” The provinces must be represented in Parliament so they can represent and protect their local interests in the political process through which the people of Canada decide the quality and extent of their federal government.

The Senate was instituted to provide this representation. The 14th resolution of the 1864 Quebec conference, which laid the groundwork for the constitution of 1867, states: The first selection of the Members of the [Senate] shall be made … from the Legislative Councils of the various Provinces…; such Members shall be appointed by the Crown at the recommendation of the General Executive Government, upon the nomination of the respective Local Governments, and in such nomination due regard shall be had to the claims of the … Opposition in each Province, so that all political parties may as nearly as possible be fairly represented.

This resolution provides for the proportional representation of all provincial political parties in the Senate! Thus, the provincial political capacity of the people as well as their federal political capacity was meant to be embodied in Parliament.

The 14th resolution provided for only the first selection of senators because this was the extent to which the Fathers of Confederation could agree. A number of them argued that each province should be free to select their representatives otherwise, when and as they best see fit. They would naturally have assumed that the representative principle underlying the first selection of senators would continue until their province determined otherwise. They certainly did not foresee a federal government structured to exclude the provinces from advising the Governor General of their choice of representative.

The Fathers of Confederation obviously thought that these two powerful Houses would be able to conciliate their interests within the system of Responsible Government that was meant to be renewed for the peace, order and good government of Canada. This confidence had its roots in the way Upper and Lower Canada managed to conciliate their interests within the Province of Canada in the years leading up to Confederation. (see www.responsiblegovernment.ca) We do not need to reform the Constitution Act to  www.dialogue.ca

ensure the provinces are fairly represented in the Senate. We need only apply British constitutional principles to the letter of the law.

The checks naturally arising from the constitutional balance of both Houses would ensure that the legitimate interests of the people take precedence over party interests.

For our children and our children’s children, we must restore the influence of the people in Parliament. The Supreme Court’s decision has just made that task a little more difficult.

Vincent Pouliot, Québec (Québec) Intervener in the Reference re the Secession of Quebec 

Politics and Banking

Banks – and the politics that support them – have not changed: A Layman's View of the Further Threat of Financial Fraud and Recession Hugh Ector, Fruitvale BC

It is certainly true that vital court decisions are not made on the grounds of truth, equity, or justice, or even of long-term interests of many countries. Take the economic crisis that we, Canada and the US, are still having to confront. We have learned nothing.

Allow me to give examples in dramatic statements: 1. In 1978 in the US, regulatory standards were reduced (e.g. The Glass-Steagall Act*) under Presidents Reagan and, in 1999, by President Clinton. This led to the Savings and Loan crisis of the middle or late 80s.

More than 1,000 bankers were convicted by the Justice Department, and the Savings and Loans (S&L**) went defunct. Enron and Arthur Andersen firms also were indicted and contributed scores of inmates for the Dept. of Corrections. Sentences were received amounting to as much as 45 years.

But in the 2008 Economic Recession – which involved more serious crimes – the many financial institutions and executives were not convicted of criminal acts, and no top executive was sent to jail in the US or Canada. Even after the recession, most laws that put constraints of financial freedom on bank and investment institutions (the laws defining restrictive standards put in place before 1978) have been changed and have become even less restrictive.

2. Moreover, though some courts arrived at the verdict of fraud (a criminal act), no important banker went to jail since 2008, and often the CEOs and others in the upper levels of top-ranked financial institutions were rewarded with bail-outs and later, bonuses, often issued at taxpayer expense.

In a report to the Justice Department and Securities Exchange Committee for investigation, Ted Kaufman, a contributor for Forbes, writes: “I don’t know what changed his mind [Lanny Breuer, retiring head of the Criminal Division in the (US) Department of Justice], www.dialogue.ca

but the argument seems to be that, if the president of a major bank were to be indicted for criminal behavior, his prosecution would endanger the bank itself and the jobs of all of its employees.”

Really? I just don’t buy it. Scores of executives went to jail because the government prosecuted them after the Enron and Savings and Loan scandals. Those prosecutions certainly did no lasting damage to our economy.

“Justice for all” has always been a basic tenet of this country [both US and Canada]. Have we really gotten to the point where we are afraid to prosecute a Wall Street [or Bay Street] executive for stealing millions while we send some teenager who steals $20 from the corner store to prison?

3. Why did the Justice Department not prosecute banks and financial institutions for money laundering of drug money, even though money laundering against some banks was proven in court? At the same time: examples of homeless persons, caught with a few joints in their pockets, got 20 years or more.

4. How can voters not object to their governments when executives or their institutions have to pay relatively small fines when convicted? In addition, their fines can be listed as tax exempt, (Canada included under certain cases) leaving the taxpayer, in effect, to support a criminal act.

What prevents a repetition of this moral outrage?

Where is the disincentive to engage in fraud?

5. How is it that persons who work for institutions that received bonuses often go to work in the Justice Department or the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), even to the extent of being appointed regulators of such institutions? How can these already tarnished individuals be expected to change what many think  will happen again?

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Hugh Ector, Banks and Politics, contd.

6. In both the US and Canada, why should a law firm bring charges for corruption against a corporation when the chances are rather obvious that they, the more powerful institutions, will win, even after the smaller firms commit as much as half their resources to fighting such cases? Money is not made by losing.

Their best bet is to spend their limited resources, when supportable charges are made, against smaller organizations, especially when their chances of winning cases against powerful corporate odds are underwhelming and may take years to find out how expensive it is to lose a single case. Is not this procedure a detriment to a true entrepreneur-driven middle-class?

Too often struggling businesses have to vigorously defend their right to develop and conduct a business when infringement laws are decided by courts that are traditionally controlled by corporations looking after special interests. This is rather obvious when it involves complicated patent laws and financial regulations. Neither the courts nor plaintiffs have the resources to become knowledgeable.

7. A CCPA “study reveals that Canada’s banks received $114 billion in cash and loan support from both the U.S. and Canadian governments during the 2008-2010 financial crisis. The study estimates that, at some point during the crisis, three of Canada’s banks – CIBC, BMO, and Scotiabank – were completely under water, with government support

exceeding the market value of the bank.”

While Canadian banks have basically escaped fraud charges, evidence of secrecy while making investment decisions, in the light of recent bailout actions, is unmistakable . . . and unconscionable.

8. It is as if, not only has nothing changed, but that the likelihood of being charged with a crime is even less likely in the future, and the fines are less onerous. In fact, recent cases have shown this to be true.

What brought all this on? The answers are obvious.

Also, with no changes, so too is the future obvious.

With the connivance of politics and money, so should the solutions be obviously simple.

Hugh Ector, Fruitvale BC * The US Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, passed during the Great Depression, prevented commercial banks from trading securities with their clients’ deposits and created the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) as a guard against bank runs. Passed in 1933 as the Banking Act, Glass-Steagall was chipped away over the years and eventually repealed during the Clinton Administration with the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. ** Savings and Loans: A savings and loan association (or S&L) is a US financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans.

Poems by Hugh Ector have been published in The Georgia Review, Canadian Forum, Quarry, The Fiddlehead, Southern Humanities Review, Epos, and Root Cellar Press, Agrenta (Chapbook with Hugh Lefolii). Books of poems are available from Interlibrary Loan, BC & from e-mail: onestop2@ector.ca 

From the Committee on Monetary & Economic Reform (COMER)

COMER vs. Bank of Canada et al From: Herb Wiseman, Peterborough ON

Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform

Below is a link to the latest issue of ‘ER’ from COMER (Vol. 26, No. 3 • MAY–JUNE 2014) – with updates about the Bank of Canada court case. The fourth article

is by Paul Krugman about Piketty’s book. LINK: www.comer.org/archives/2014/COMER_MayJune2014.pdf [EXTRACT] The COMER lawsuit is picking up speed.

And so is the cost! To date, this action has cost just over $215,000. We have been fortunate on two fronts.

First, until now, one person, Bill Krehm, has carried the cost entirely. Secondly, we have an outstanding and committed lawyer, Rocco Galati, who has, in the past, trimmed his fee to lower the cost and is presently trying to encourage “two hearings for the price of one” in upcoming round three. (That is, the gov8 dialogue

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ernment’s appeal on the latest decision, and our response to that decision.) Galati is pressing to have both heard together, before the end of the year.

Now, however, the financial burden will have to become a collective responsibility, for the government’s strategy includes dragging the matter out and making it as difficult for us as possible to carry the case forward.

Of course, their coffers are forever adequate to the task, connected as they are by a hose to the public purse.

The Lawsuit has attracted keen attention at home and abroad, and has promoted our cause. Whatever the outcome, the lesson it makes clear will advance that cause. If you can help with a donation to support the case… [cheques payable to “The COMER Lawsuit” please] to: COMER, c/o Ann Emmett, 83 Oakwood Avenue, Toronto, ON M6H 2V9 Thanks, Herb [ herb.wiseman@gmail.com ] 

www.dialogue.ca

A bold analysis of public versus private banking systems

Money creation for national purposes, not private gain!

Russ Vinden, Errington BC

I have long been intrigued by the subtle changes which occur in bodies of people – perhaps more so in political parties and governments – due to developing pressures, and to the growth of those changes until a tipping point is reached. I suspect that North America (including Canada) and a large chunk of Europe is in such a critical phase right now, most likely triggered by the big bank crash six years ago and still unresolved.

It is not just a financial problem. It is far deeper than that, and being driven ever faster by the increasing spread of awareness in populations, due to the Internet and instant news broadcasts.

It is worth pondering, too, that major wars and revolutions all seem to break out in the mid-summer to fall period. Is this a psychological response, or simply due to drier ground for easier movement, more certainty of a harvest, and other practical explanations? At any rate, the collapse of Lehmann Brothers and others occurring in the fall of 2007 triggered the huge banking meltdown over the next year or so, with enormous repercussions. While the creation of a nation's money remains a fiefdom of private organisations for profit, such calamitous events are bound to recur; the needs – of government and profits – are incompatible.

The utter absurdity of the process is that it has placed an entirely unnecessary power in the hands of bodies basically only concerned with their own well-being, distorting entire government programs in order to cope with the constructed debts.

Above all, it has effectively distorted all other policymaking by insisting on the extraction of enormous amounts, from the general pool of money in circulation, to pay away for interest.

If money is accepted as a tool – a means to an end, not a product – this situation should never arise. The only true charge on money creation is surely just the actual cost of production, the mechanical part, easily covered by minute taxation. The entire assessment of its need, of quantity, the controlling process itself, should always and only remain in the hands of an elected www.dialogue.ca

national government which can be discharged by an electorate if they screw up; anything else opens the door for exploitation by businesses whose very purposes have enabled them to grow too big to fail without endangering the whole system. This is precisely the situation today, as taxpayers are lumbered with the rescue of the very gamblers who created the problem.

The only means of real recovery appear to be either total collapse of the system as in Germany in the 1920's; or by voluntary rejection of the entire debt structure by a disgusted electorate – as happened in Iceland a few short years ago by public referendum, and, involuntarily, in Argentina a bit further back, when their system simply fell apart from excessive debt and endemic corruption.

It is worth while here to recount the extraordinary recovery which occurred in Nazi Germany following the Stock Market Crash of 1929 – awareness of which is curiously absent from political discussion nowadays; perhaps due to the irrational fear that anyone drawing attention to those events must be a Nazi sympathiser. It's worth the risk.

In essence, the new government – faced with a worthless Reichmark, and knowing that its anti-Jewish attitude prohibited any assistance from the predominantly Jewish-owned banking system – determined to issue an entirely new currency. Since its integrity depended on the intrinsic value of the whole stuff of the country – people, land, forests, houses, factories, railway rolling stock, canals and roads etc. – a sort of Domesday Book inventory of the country was undertaken. A figure pulled out of the air related all this stuff to a certain number of American dollars – a totally accepted international currency – and the new Deutschmark was issued.

But – and it’s a crucial ‘but’ – an iron control was placed on the amount of new currency issued. Every mark had to be for a specific national purpose, and checked at every stage. Corruption was instantly fatal; and since the money was issued by the state there was no point in charging interest on it; it would have been like taking money out of one pocket just to put into another, and its absence was critical to the scheme's success. The debts were always balanced by the everincreasing assets being created, and taxation only  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Russ Vinden, Public versus Private Banking, contd.

had to cover depreciation and the relatively minute cost of running the system; but no interest charges.

The effect was electrifying. From being a shattered and dysfunctional nation in 1932, with massive unemployment and frequent starvation in the cities each winter, in two years Germany had full employment.

By 1936 it had a powerful and rapidly growing modernised army and navy and the most technically advanced airforce in the world. Every schoolchild was getting a hot meal every day; full health coverage and education to any level was free. It was literally a revolution.

In four years, the nation was unquestionably a world force again. In six, it felt able to invade Czeckoslovakia and face a new World War, a monument to arrogance and stupidity; enormous progress was destroyed by Nazi dreams of world domination and racial hatred. But it is a howling mistake for anyone to assume that these bitter distortions were what drove Germany's economic recovery then. And Germany today, with the strongest economy in Europe, not only still funds itself but substantially props up and rescues less enlightened neighbours who have chained themselves to privatised debt.

It is also salutary to realise that China today, funding itself, is exploding with created wealth from a past far less developed than Germany in the 1920's.

Debt-free, burgeoning national economies exist around the world in wholly peace-loving nations, using the same process of money creation for national purposes, not private gain, as in Norway, which has accumulated vast sovereign wealth funds, in common with other Scandinavian nations. All are relatively or wholly debt-free, yet have world-class social, educational and welfare schemes, while we are in constant un-resolvable crises with un-payable debts, deficit budgets, and cut programs because of the tremendous drain of interest producing nothing of value to the nation, only to the private lenders.

And of course North Dakota, just over our border, alone in the whole USA has no debt and therefore much lower taxation. It also has far less unemployment, house repossession or credit card defaults, has not run a deficit in fifty years – and has funded itself from its own State Bank for over ninety years.

The silence from our legislators is deafening; the subject is apparently not for discussion.

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While the USA and Canada are mired in astronomic debt and debt-service costs, which grow by the nanosecond, the elected Parties spend their time and resources in coping with the fall-out. The tremendous leap in un-extinguishable debts, which almost immediately occurred under all forms of government of any stripe as soon as borrowing from our own Bank of Canada was abandoned in 1975, simply does not seem to have registered.

It passes notice that within four years after this happened, interest rates jumped from 5½% to 10%, then to 22½% in the next four, remaining historically excessive for two whole decades. All government debts exploded into un-payability, where they have remained, steadily growing, for the last 30-odd years.

The cost in tax revenues transferred directly to the money-lending sector for its own use, in this time, is in the trillions, and fully explains why the Teachers Compensation talks have broken down – there truly is not enough money to meet such requirements while taxpayers countrywide have to find $63 billion a year for interest.

Thus a state of usury – perpetual interest on debts which cannot be extinguished – has been created and is not accidental; it is deliberate policy. Ominously, Paul Hellyer, a retired cabinet minister no less, has confirmed that no records can be found in the National Archives on the establishment of this process, and it simply remains, unchallenged by any Party.

How long before the system blows again? And will it be by popular revolt – or an outbreak of sanity amongst our back-benchers? `

Russ Vinden, Errington BC ~~~

P.S. Sorry to hear of your set-backs,* almost certainly due to prolonged stress of running your unique publication – I was a dairy farmer for far too long, and know a bit about relentless schedules! I appreciate the decision to change the printing method, and hope you will be able to maintain the distinctive covers – the artwork underlines the general philosophy of the paper.

I hope the (preceding) comments find a place in the magazine sometime – they attack an absence of attention evident in all our political Parties which is signalling yet another financial crash in the not too distant future, barring – God forbid – another war.

Best wishes with your new efforts; Russ *In a letter with renewal notices during the summer; see p.46



www.dialogue.ca

"Grist for the Mill"

The Major Difference between an Army and a Police Force Ed Goertzen, Oshawa ON

Historically, the primary purpose of an armed force was to pacify a people who have grown rebellious to the rulers.

In the days of the god-kings in the city-states of Mesopotamia, the Ed Goertzen surrounding villages were supposed to send their surplus grain to the Ziggurat for storage.

Occasionally a village would decide to hold it for themselves. When the god-king found out about it, he commanded his army to lay waste to the village, rape the women and burn their homes. The purpose of raping the women was to destroy the moral fibre that had taken root there. For the next 50 years, a very peaceful village appeared, while the villagers tended their fields and rebuilt their village.

Many years ago, Arnold Minor, a Toronto Police Commissioner at the time, said that young people in some areas of Metro Toronto regard the police as an invading army. This has bothered me, since I believe that, in spite of being vilified and ignored by the media, Arnold Minor had a point.

What seemed to escape the comprehension of the critics are the different roles played by police and an army. Police have historically been drawn from the community that they policed. Consequently, they would share the same socio-cultural values as those whose behaviour they monitored. Secondly, the police enforce laws that have been made, within the community, for the people – with which to govern themselves and each other, through the democratic process.

If we agree that a democracy means that people are governed “with their consent,” and we are governed by laws made by those we elect, then the public must feel that they have participated in the promulgation of that law. The consequence of this is that the law is considered ‘good and right’ and serves to guide our behaviour. Obeying the law is voluntary.

There can be no doubt that in a milieu of degenerating moral values – and with legislatures increasingly passing laws that put into statute law what should be moral law – the police are having an increasingly difficult time maintaining law and order. It is extremely difficult www.dialogue2.ca

to enforce a law that has transposed from moral to the statute. It is understandable though, that this would happen with the breakdown of neighbourhoods.

If the public feels excluded from the promulgation of the law, or that the law is being made by select special interest groups or their representatives, and further, that the enforcers of the law are unknown to them and from a different culture, then they (the public) will not ‘take ownership’ of the law and will follow the ‘Police State’ rule of ‘don’t get caught.’

To reiterate, we have an increasing number of people in our society that have adopted the position that “we are governed” instead of “self governing.” Since they feel they are governed, their attitude is not “obey the law because it is in all our interest to obey it”, but rather, “don’t get caught.”

On the one hand, we will have democratic and moral self government; on the other, we are governed, “as if by an invading army.”

That is one reason that neighbourhood policing is increasingly valid. There is one aspect of community policing that has not been proposed or initiated to achieve the ideal situation, and that is the added requirement that community police be drawn from and live locally, in the area that they are policing.

These local police could even be cadets or auxiliary until such time that openings are available in a force administering a larger area. I have heard that recently Vancouver is proposing such a force.

The cost of keeping one person in jail would probably pay the wages and benefits of two of these cadets.

An invading or occupying army is one that does not need to know the culture of the people since it governs with military law. It uses naked force, fear and even terror to subdue the people under its control. Additionally, they enforce laws that are imposed on the public, generally by decree. An army is most effective if they do not know, and are not known by, the people they are subduing, with brute force if necessary.

There is another concern that needs to be considered and it arises from the inquiry into the wrongful conviction of Guy-Paul Morin in Ontario.

Our systems have been set up and evolved over a  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 11

Ed Goertzen, The Major Difference Between An Army And A Police Force, contd.

long period of time. The one good thing that came out of the Inquisition was the development of case law.

When they were set up, there were checks and balances that assured their fairness. That fairness, however, was predicated on the existence of a certain moral standard that was subscribed to by the great majority of the population and, by default, the police and other public servants.

With the degeneration and confusion of those moral standards, our systems do not have within them sufficient checks and balances to assure the fair and equitable treatment of all citizens.

The noted historian Eric Hobsbawm,* in one of his many books, said that a democracy works best when the people adopt one culture.

I am aware that moral lassitude extends to some of our politicians and even some senior civil servants. You are aware, no doubt, that the line between the politicians and the civil servants is routinely crossed. Politician are supposed to administer the civil service, the civil service is supposed to give force and substance to the law.

One civil servant has said that they operate on the basis of law (written), regulations (written), guidelines (written), and suggestions (unwritten). Anyone who wants a promotion or a cushy posting, or even to keep their job, will obey the suggestions, even if they may contradict the written orders. It’s a real dilemma for those with moral fibre.

An item from the Chronicle Herald** that may be of interest: “Perhaps we should think about developing some kind of body of community members, unburdened by legal training and trial-oriented minds, which might be used by the Public Prosecution Service to review the tough or questionable cases. Such a group could assess those cases on grounds that are separate and apart from legal merit. A much more fundamental question would be put to them: ‘will prosecuting this matter be a useful way to protect or improve the community in which we live?’ ” At the end of the day, that is what the criminal law of our country is for, and lawyers do not have a monopoly.

– Ed Goertzen * Eric Hobsbawm, 1917–2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism, and nationalism. ** From Chronicle Herald, The Mail Star, 1996-08-01, pub by “The Halifax Herald”. Ltd. 1650 Argyle St., Nova Scotia, P.O. Box 610, B3J 2T2

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AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 28 NO.1

Budgets –Deficits – Debts and Assets Ed Goertzen

I noticed in the Toronto Star (July 3) that our newly minted Premier is not going to refrain from playing ‘flim-flam games’ with Ontario’s assets: “Wynne pledges ‘activist’ agenda for Ontario” (2014-07-03) Of course Governments of all ideologies have been doing this for centuries, and getting away with it, since most voters are not bookkeepers and the patterned thinking of bookkeepers runs deep in but a few. Also, most columnists are not economics oriented. As one reporter once told me, that’s why they chose writing.

The scam works this way – and it is necessary to follow closely: Government spending falls into two categories (1) program spending – on things like public asset maintenance and civil servant wages. (2) Spending on investments into public assets – on things like libraries, public offices, roads, warehouses, etc.

Inevitably, government spending goes into deficit.

Deficits are converted into government debt. Most deficits are not the result of program spending, but the result of investment spending to obtain assets.

When the extreme ideological right complains too loudly about the deficit, the governments solemnly promise to ‘balance the budget”.

The way they accomplish this remarkable feat is to sell assets, and take the resultant revenue and call it budgetary revenue.

Since the assets that were purchased with the deficits are all in a common pot, the fact that the revenue from the assets sale should have all gone to pay the debt and not reduce the deficit, goes un-noticed by the non-financially trained media.

Some of us old ‘grey hairs’ remember the famous B.C. Progressive Conservative Premier W.A.C. Bennett. Remember? He was the first person to get B.C. totally out of debt! He did that by simply putting all of B.C. assets, and the debt, into Crown Corporations, and made those corporations balance their books!

Neat isn’t it?

Ed Goertzen, Oshawa, Ontario 

www.dialogue.ca

“Ideas Whose Time Has Come”

Intriguing Ideas from David Foster…

Nine Kinds of Wealth

1) Currency ‘float’, (as in surplus cash from any trade put to work).

Its opposite is ‘Debt’.

2) Benefits earned from labour as David Foster wages. Capital structures of long lasting utility created from that labour.

3) Benefits earned from employing those structures to lasting personal or public benefit with no reference to currency or money. We simply owe ill-defined good will.

4) Benefits earned from better ideas that result in less labour needed to achieve the same result. So called ‘intellectual or real ‘property’ that may be Public Domain or claimed as Private Benefit. The root of the conflict between Rich and Poor.

5) Presumptions of ‘rights’ to divert any of the above to an inside few. Taxes that can be fairly borne.

Dividends that can be fairly distributed.

6) The capacity to forcibly transfer any of the above against some smaller sector’s interest to the disproportionate advantage of others. Bullies with guns, secrets, propaganda, and information media control. The ugly side of ‘wealth’…hoarding.

7) Gifts of God and Nature… light, land and waters (and their by-products of plants, animals, chemicals, weather, sky and the Great Electromagnetic Mysteries.

8) Health with the absence of pain. An understanding of the course of human life. Choices as to how to aid in maintaining health, and in how to end it as one might choose.

9) Access to our own pleasure centres in the body and in the brain. Life is ‘fun’ – or should be.

We deceive ourselves by pretending one artificial medium, ‘money’ can do all these, and that everything then has a price (depending on complex and ever changing ‘rules’). The challenge is in agreeing on the convertibility of each form of wealth into another that is more suited to the mutual need of the moment.

Since the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 and its repudiation in 1971, ‘money’ is simply faith in pieces of paper that a printer can make billons of. It is literally a house of paper cards. Leadership has been www.dialogue.ca

david.foster2@powergate.ca

usurped by those with no mandate. Thus the many cyclic ‘crashes’ concerning both money and the economies that measure themselves by it…

[Wiki:] The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states in the mid-20th century. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent nation-states.

Preparing to rebuild the international economic system while World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, also known as the Bretton Woods Conference. The delegates deliberated during 1–22 July 1944, and signed the Agreement on its final day.

Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, the planners at Bretton Woods established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group. These organizations became operational in 1945, after a sufficient number of countries had ratified the agreement.

The chief feature of the Bretton Woods system was an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate by tying its currency to the U.S. dollar and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments. Also, there was a need to address the lack of cooperation among other countries and to prevent competitive devaluation of the currencies as well.

On 15 August 1971, the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and rendering the dollar a fiat currency. This action, (referred to as the Nixon shock), created the situation in which the United States dollar became a reserve currency used by many states. At the same time, many fixed currencies (such as the pound sterling, for example), also became free-floating.

Why then do these groups – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group – still exist?

So now what do we do? Stop pretending…  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 13

“Prévoyance”

Observations from Erik Andersen, Gabriola Island BC Comments on article by Ellen Brown trillion in interest rate derivatives contracts, betting that Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the interest rates will not shoot up. If they do, it will be the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve equivalent of an insurance company writing trillions of dolbooks, including the best-selling Web of lars in life insurance contracts and having all the insureds die Debt. In The Public Bank Solution, her latest Erik Andersen at once. The banks would quickly become insolvent. Worse, book, she explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 200+ blog articles are at our deposits would get confiscated to recapitalize them, unhttp://EllenBrown.com . der the new “bail in” scheme approved by Janet Yellen as To: Ellen Brown one of the Fed’s more promising tools (called “resolution Thank you for writing so well on a not so easily planning” in Fed-speak). understood topic. [EXTRACT & LINK BELOW] As Max Keiser observes, “You can’t taper a Ponzi scheme.”

Something to possibly add to your solutions list is the You can only turn off the tap and let it collapse, or watch the parasite consume its food source and perish of its own accord. division of the financial industry into two different

structures with different currencies.

The first would be designed to serve speculators, large businesses and others who presently use the creditworthiness and taxation capacity of the general population to back up dealing and gaming.

The second design, using a domestic-only currency, would be limited in use to individual citizens and perhaps small businesses and would be integrated with tax systems that are there to deliver public services that can generally be described as natural monopolies. This would also only be the only place where government deposit insurance is provided.

I like the idea of forcing accountability onto the speculators, as with the idea of bank ‘bail-ins’ as oppose to ‘bail-outs.’ A segregated financial system that forces a choice on the industry of being only an agent or only a principal would neatly remove the conflict of interest issues that banks currently slide over when confronted.

– Erik

Collapse or Metamorphosis?

[EXTRACT, WITH LINK AT THE END]

The rules have been changed before and can be changed again. Depressions, credit crises and financial collapse are not acts of God but are induced by mechanical flaws or corruption in the financial system. Credit may stop flowing, but the workers, materials and markets are still there. The system just needs a reboot.

You Can’t Taper a Ponzi Scheme

by ELLEN BROWN (July 27, 2014)

[…] At one time, manipulating interest rates was the Fed’s

stock in trade for managing the money supply; but that tool too has lost its cutting edge. Rates are now at zero, as low as they can go – unless they go negative, meaning the bank charges the depositor interest rather than the reverse. That desperate idea is actually being discussed. Meanwhile, rates are unlikely to be raised any time soon. On July 23rd, Bloomberg reported that the Fed could keep rates at zero through 2015.

One reason rates are unlikely to be raised is that they would make the interest tab on the burgeoning federal debt something taxpayers could not support. Higher rates could also implode the monster derivatives scheme. Michael Snyder observes that the biggest banks have written over $400 14 dialogue

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The question being hotly debated in the blogosphere is, “What then?” Will economies collapse globally? Will life as we know it be a thing of the past?

Not likely, argues John Michael Greer in a March 2014 article called “American Delusionalism, or Why History Matters.” If history is any indication, governments will simply, once again, change the rules.

In fact, the rules of money and banking have changed every 20 or 30 years for the past three centuries, in an ongoing trial-and-error experiment in evolving a financial system, and an ongoing battle over whose interests it will serve. To present that timeline in full will take another article, but in a nutshell we have gone from precious metal coins, to government-issued paper scrip, to privately-issued banknotes, to checkbook money, to gold-backed Federal Reserve Notes, to unbacked Federal Reserve Notes, to the “near money” created by the shadow banking system. Money has evolved from being “stored” in the form of a physical commodity, to paper representations of value, to computer bits storing information about credits and debits.

Hopefully the next program that gets run will last more than 20 or 30 years. Ideally, we might mimic the ancient Mesopotamians, the oldest and most long-lasting civilization in history, and devise an economic system that lasts for millennia. How they did it, along with some other promising models, will be the subject of another article. For more on this: www.publicbanksolution.com/ READ ARTICLE IN FULL AT LINK: www.truthdig.com/report/item/you_cant_taper_a_ponzi_scheme_ti me_to_reboot_20140727 

www.dialogue.ca

Prévoyance, Erik Andersen, contd.

Even the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is saying it: Time to rain money on Main Street – Ellen Brown (Sep. 1 14)

“When an article appears in Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece of the policy-setting Council on Foreign Relations, recommending that the Federal Reserve do a money drop directly on the 99%, you know the central bank must be down to its last bullet.

“The September/October issue of Foreign Affairs features an article by Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan titled ‘Print Less But Transfer More: Why Central Banks Should Give Money Directly To The People.’

It’s the sort of thing normally heard only from money

reformers and Social Credit enthusiasts far from the mainstream. What’s going on?” […]

CONTINUE READING AT: http://EllenBrown.com

The Concept of Odious Debt

Ellen Brown has introduced an interesting new dimension to the discussion of debt. The concept of odious debt and think of what this could mean in a BC context and all the IPP contracts. – Erik Here is Ellen’s latest article, posted on Global Research (Aug. 12, 14) -- LINK: http://tinyurl.com/CRG5395691 “Cry for Argentina: Odious Debt, Fiscal Mismanagement or Pillage? Financial Mechanisms which Spearhead Nations into Bankruptcy” 

Reflexive Law: How Sustainable Development Has Conned Us All Patrick Wood, The August Forecast and Review

Dear friends, This is the most important white paper I have written in over two years, and I encourage you to read and distribute immediately. Yesterday, Obama announced that he was pursuing a sweeping climate accord that would bypass Congress altogether. As I read the article, alarm bells were triggered as I connected dots from some other research that I have been pursuing recently. Thus, the topic of this white paper

(the above title). If you have never heard of "reflexive law' before, you must hear about it now. It is collapsing all notions of Rule of Law as we know it, and undermining the entirety of Western Civilization. Please read and distribute. For Liberty, Patrick Wood, Editor, The August Forecast and Review White Paper: Reflexive Law: How Sustainable Development Has Conned Us All, Aug. 27, 2014 LINK: www.augustforecast.com/2014/08/27/reflexive-law/ 

News Items from June Ross (Nanaimo):

Council of Canadians calls for reopening of robocalls investigation Ottawa, Sep 9, 2014 – In the wake of the Ontario Superior Court ruling in the Michael Sona case, the Council of Canadians is calling on the Commissioner of Canada Elections to re-open the investigation into the widespread election fraud that took place in 2011.

“The prosecutor and the judge in the Sona case have made it clear that he did not act alone. Even Dean Del Maestro is saying the same thing,” says Garry Neil, Executive Director of the Council of Canadians. “It could not be clearer: there were others behind this effort to subvert the last election. The Commissioner of Elections has a responsibility to reopen the investigation to find out who that is.”

In its formal complaint to the Commissioner, the Council is urging that the new investigation make use of the Federal Court ruling of Justice Richard Mosley and the Ontario Superior Court ruling of Justice Gary Hearn as starting points for uncovering new evidence.

“Either Conservative Party senior leaders were directly involved in election fraud or they were astoundingly negligent in securing access to their voter database,” says the Council of Canadians’ Democracy Campaigner Dylan Penner.

The Council of Canadians is calling on the Commissioner www.dialogue2.ca

of Canada Elections to explore every investigative avenue possible to obtain the list of everyone who had access to the Conservative Party’s national CIMS database. It also should explore either who had the authority or at least the opportunity to make decisions about launching such a campaign.

With the passage of the so-called Fair Elections Act, the Commissioner of Canada Elections is currently transitioning from Elections Canada to the Public Prosecution Service. The official transfer of the Commissioner and staff is expected to be completed sometime in the fall of 2014.

The Council of Canadians supported the legal challenges to overturn election results in six ridings.

LINK: http://canadians.org/media/council-canadians-callsreopening-robocalls-investigation MORE INFO: Sujata Dey, (613) 233-4487, ext. 226 MORE LINKS FROM JUNE ROSS: 

Fearing the Opinions of Others The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton, (1815 – 1902)  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 15

Mount Polley: A wake-up call for Canada's mining industry On August 4th, the massive tailings dam at the Imperial Metals Mount Polley gold and copper mine burst.

The dam breach unleashed around 25 million cubic meters of toxic heavy metals and chemical laden tailings water and sludge (enough water and material to fill nearly 9,800 Olympic-sized swimming pools) into Polley Lake, down Hazeltine Creek, into Quesnel Lake and onto the Quesnel River which directly connects to the Fraser River Watershed. Volumes of water, tailings and other debris released into the environment by the August 4 breach were at least 70% higher than the initial estimates released to the public when the disaster occurred. The Quesnel Lake water-

shed is a major source of drinking water and home to one quarter of the province’s sockeye salmon.

This is the largest mining disaster to occur in Canada and it's still unfolding. […] Read more at LINK: www.canadians.org/tags/mount-polley

Council of Canadians co-hosted a webinar Sep 12, with the Freshwater Alliance, on the Mount Polley Mine Disaster, featuring presentations from Jacinda Mack of the Xastull First Nations, Ramsey Hart from Mining Watch, and Amy Crook from the Fair Mining Collaborative. Watch the VIDEO of the webinar: http://tinyurl.com/YTcoc-sep12 From Leila Darwish, BC-Yukon Regional Organizer The Council of Canadians, (o) 604-519-4843, #700, 207 West Hastings St, Vancouver, BC, V6B 1H7 

Another handshake, another deal, still the same secrecy Leila Darwish, Council of Canadians (Link below)

As reported by the CBC and the Globe & Mail, Canada and the European Union announced on Sep 8 that they had completed negotiations on the Canada-EU Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), which the Canadian government says "will lay out a strategic direction for stronger future relations and collaboration between Canada and EU member states at the bilateral and multilateral levels," including in the areas of law enforcement, the energy sector, security and intelligence cooperation, and crisis management.

If you're like most Canadians, you're probably saying to yourself, "I didn't even know we were negotiating a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Europe." In fact, negotiations have been underway since 2011. Such political framework agreements are typically signed by the EU and its free trade partners, aimed at increasing cooperation on a range of foreign policy issues. In October of 2013, the EU's ambassador to Canada stated that there wouldn't be a deal on CETA or the SPA unless the other was also completed.

In November of 2012, the Council of Canadians revealed that negotiations on the SPA were potentially creating a roadblock in the concurrent negotiations towards the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) because of objections by the Harper government to the EU insisting on the inclusion of language regarding respect for human rights.

In October of last year, it was again reported that negotiations on the SPA were being held up because Canada objected to clauses that would allow for the suspension of CETA in the case of violations of the EU's "essential clauses" in the SPA related to human 16 dialogue

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rights and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The Huffington Post explained that "the EU insists Canada sign on to these agreements so that other countries which have agreements with the EU could not accuse negotiators of unfairly singling out certain countries with troubled human rights records, while giving Canada a pass."

So, did Canada or the EU ultimately get its way on human rights and non-proliferation?

Well, nobody knows.

Even though it was announced back in March that the two sides had "concluded politically" the SPA, calls to release the details of the agreement were ignored. Despite the Sep 8 announcement, smiles, and handshakes

by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird and Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs to mark the conclusion of the SPA, citizens on both sides of the Atlantic still aren't able to see what the agreement contains, and to see which side buckled on the human rights issue. The actual text of the agreement wasn't released and apparently won't be until it's ready to be ratified.

This doesn't bode well for hopes that Canadian and European citizens might actually get their first official look at CETA after the expected Sep 25 announcement in Ottawa of the conclusion of those negotiations.

Even though the entire CETA text was leaked by a German media outlet weeks ago, Canadian officials refuse to comment on the specifics of what CETA contains, saying only that "Canada does not comment on leaks of purported negotiating texts." […]

CONTINUE AT LINK: http://canadians.org/blog/anotherhandshake-another-deal-still-same-secrecy 

www.dialogue.ca

Politics and our Earth

“Creating Hell on Earth is Immoral.”

The Mount Polley Mining Disaster in BC Alexandra Morton, Sointula BC EXTRACT [LINK at the end] from

Alexandra Morton’s report on her visit to the aftermath of the Mt Polley mining disaster that poisoned rivers and lakes on the route where 1/4 of this years Fraser sockeye are expected to return.

A government that lets this happen, despite the clear warnings, is a Alex Morton government that does not care about the people who elected them and pay their salaries.

Our society is sick with an addiction to money and, in places & times like this, it shows. Are we really so unintelligent that this is the only way we can do business?

Imperial Mines really does not know how to build a berm designed to hold water? It seems clear that it is well-known that earthen berms are not meant to hold water. But this company can't do business using engineering solutions that would have protected people and the land?

This was a place that made food, that people sought out to nourish their souls. This is not a wise use of the resources of this province. This is not, at all, a smart way to do business. This is sloppy, foolish, wasteful, and downright mean-spirited towards the children of all species. Creating hell on earth is immoral.

Wake up BC and make sure government hears from you that this is not acceptable. This is exactly the same colossal stupidity I have fought for 25 years – to protect wild salmon from farm salmon disease. Government knows the risk of allowing viruses to spread from feedlots, but they don't do anything about it.

Well, this kind of government behaviour has to stop because we need our planet intact. We need a functional living world to survive. This kind of pillaging economy cannot be allowed to be the monster that denies the right to life on earth. This is not a true and sustainable economy.

As we drove away we stopped at the Horsefly River.

Clear, clean, wholesome. All the salmon that come to this place will have swum past the waste on the sea floor that I sampled. They will have swum through the plume of mine tailings still pouring, 13 days later, www.dialogue2.ca

into Quesnel Lake. No one knows what will happen to them and everyone and everything that needs them.

Imperial Mines has risked so much just to make more READ ARTICLE IN FULL: money. http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton /2014/08/been-to-hell.html

A Petition at Change.org

The BC government's first response was that all the grey slurry pouring out of the mine was just sand, no different than an avalanche and that we got "lucky" the water is safe to drink. That is not at all what the situation looks like and the people in the area and downstream have virtually no confidence in the BC government's assessment. The federal government is completely missing in action – a stunning silence.

My sense is that this is very similar to the situation with European salmon viruses in BC waters. Government appears to be doing what they can to support the companies, not the public. However, this disaster is bad for the mining employees, as well as, the rest of the public. Everyone knew this was going to happen and government and Imperial Metals apparently just let it happen. The BC government likes to promote itself as pro-industry, but has catastrophically failed once again in that capacity: salmon farms have lost social licence and this mining disaster confirms they have transformed Canada into a third world country.

I am writing to ask that you sign and share a petition (below) to inspire government to clean up this mess.

Imperial Metals knows how to move massive amounts of material; they need to apply this expertise to their tailing waste on land and underwater. If this is not cleaned up, it is going to leech into the Fraser watershed for hundreds of years, impacting the ability for juvenile salmon to rear in Quesnel Lake (all sockeye spend a year in fresh water) and the entire watershed.

Clean up is not going to happen unless government knows the people demand action. So, once again if we want wild salmon it is up to us. Here is the petition to save you the effort of going to my blog: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/changeMtPolley : Please check my blog as I will update it as this continues to unfold.

LINK: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com

Thank you for your efforts on this, Alexandra Morton  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 17

“Have Computer Will Write”~ Jeremy Arney Have 308 people really lost their way?

Jeremy Arney, Victoria BC

This was sent by me to all the MPs currently sitting on our behalf in the House of Commons for the people of Canada's parliament. I acknowledge that there might be some among you who do not agree with this letter, and that is your right, but I personally have to wonder why there is such solidarity among our MPs when there is no such solidarity among the Canadian people. - Jeremy (Aug. 1 ’14) To Canadian Members of Parliament:

Over the years Canada has fought in a war or two, believing the propaganda that what we were fighting for was right, and doing the job very well. For the last few decades, however, we have lost our way.

Because it was a NATO-sanctioned affair, we agreed to invade Afghanistan in support of George Bush's lust for a military win in response to his own attack on New York, and that support was a big mistake.

We refused to follow George Bush in his "seek and destroy Saddam Hussein" venture into Iraq and that was good thing. This was because we had a PM, with a majority, who wasn't swayed by then Opposition person Harper's blood lust, but who rightly believed that the Canadian people had no desire to follow George into a personal battle.

However, brewing along nicely in the background was the Israeli/Palestinian squabble, which from time to time caused us some concern.

Since 2000, it would appear that every MP in the various Canadian Parliaments have believed that Israel has the right: to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza at will, under the guise of defending itself ; to kick Palestinian farmers off their land, held in their families for hundreds if not thousands of years – with nothing more than the clothes they are wearing – just so Jewish settlers can move into an established and fully furnished home; to bomb hospitals, schools and family homes simply because they can. And no real country says, "Enough Israel, enough already!"

Jump forward to today, when Gaza is one huge enclosed ghetto from which there is no escape, nor is there any way to get help into that space as it is besieged by Israel. Hamas, a legally-elected government for the Palestinian people, is considered – by the 18 dialogue

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biggest terrorists in the world (Israel, USA and Canada) – to be a terrorist government (is this not the kettle calling the pot black?), therefore it is OK to call them names, dismiss them as undemocratic and not their peoples' choice. In fact, their election was probably more legal than the ones held in Canada in 2006, 2008 and 2011.

So here in Canada today, we have some 308 MPs, give or take a few who have quit, and who among you does not, I repeat does not, condone what the Israelis are doing to those in Gaza? There is always the qualifier “Israel has the right to defend itself” – which gives you all the out from doing something.

However, if there is even one of you who does not condone Israel's actions, why are you so silent? Why are you not demanding your leaders do something?

Why are you not doing something yourselves?

Where is the Jim Manly (M.P. 1980-88) of today to stand against their party for what is right?

Nowhere in sight! What a horrendous silence I hear.

Could it be that so many of you (all but one at the time) agreed with the attack upon, destruction of a country, and killing of civilians in Libya – which gave you such a rush you want another? Was one war crime by Canada not enough for you to sanction?

Must you sanction another by our parliamentary approval of Israel's genocidal behavour?

Do you 308 odd MPs think that there is unanimous support in Canada by the Canadian people for your complete and unqualified support of Israel killing Palestinians trapped in the Gaza strip, or do you simply not care? Harper and Baird have made it very obvious that, no matter what it does, Israel is perfect, do you all absolutely agree with those two genocide supporters?

This is one of those occasions when responsibility for the total dysfunctionality of our Parliamentary system does not lie squarely in the hands of our Dictator, but in your hands – unless you are willing to stand up and say enough is enough.

To say the very least, I am yet again disgusted that you all are willing to accept our money, be our overpaid employees and yet totally ignore us. Would this happen in any of your wonderful corporate entities?

I do not approve of your actions at all in this matter. www.dialogue.ca

Jeremy Arney, Letter to MPs, contd.

More than ever, we need to kick the whole lot of you out and replace you with men and women who will listen to us, not to the party whips and the

corporate or religious sect lobbyists.

Jeremy Arney [EMAIL: iamjema@gmail.com ] Jeremy’s blog: http://jeremyarneysblog.wordpress.com/

The Canadian Action Party is a different kind of party Jeremy Arney, Interim Leader of CAP CAP believes that any MP should be responsible to their constituents not the party called CAP – and that is

representative of yours in Ottawa... Are you up for it?

so easy in today's electronic age... I actually had approached about 150 people when I was running in 2008 to ask if they would be willing to let me know how to vote by email if I gave them the pros and cons on any legislation, and they all said yes.

Recall? Yes but why would you if your MP was doing what you wanted anyway and representing you? If they fail to do that, yes recall. Party policies would be no problem because if you didn't like them you would not vote CAP and anyway the people would still rule.

I agree that today the parties rule, and that we at CAP would change that by example. And we would then eventually challenge, to overturn, the ruling by the Supreme Court that an MP has no responsibility to her/his constituents because they elected them on the basis of the party they were running for in the elections... What total BS that is.

Please do not judge CAP by the lack of standards and values that the other parties have; that is their problem and if you don't like it, don't vote for them.

So how do you make sure that there is a Candidate for whom you can vote? Join CAP and help form an EDA (Electoral District Association), and with that EDA, elect a candidate and make sure you get her/him elected.

Sounds simple but it takes work and a desire to have a

elections and in a nutshell came to the conclusion that every MP should stand for re-election every year. Not on a general election basis, but for 308 (338 after 2015) days of every year there would be an election in one riding or another and the previous year's performance would be rewarded with another year or not.

Jeremy Arney, Interim Leader of CAP P.S. A friend and I spent some time brain storming about

That would fit with CAP's ideas on constituent service; but at this time it is still a discussion only. However most people I talk to about it like it. Imagine how the government could change in the space of a month or less, so if the government didn't respond to the people, the people would have to power to kick them out by simply voting against the government of the day's candidates for however many days it took to remove their majority. Like it?

I have more but don't want to overload you with them at this time. General upshot is that if we are to be a democracy then the people should actually be represented. Today we are NOT a democracy, more like a petty dictatorship.

Oh, one more thing: we at CAP also believe that the police should serve and protect their public, not serve them their heads via batons, kicks and plastic straps for simply expressing their views peacefully.

Jeremy Arney, Interim Leader of the Canadian Action Party (Federal Party) Jeremy Arney [EMAIL: iamjema@gmail.com ] Jeremy’s blog: http://jeremyarneysblog.wordpress.com/ 

Our system of representative government Gerry Masuda, Duncan BC

In our system of representative government, our elected representatives theoretically represent our interests.

However, this system is implemented through a party system in which the party leader must sign our representative's election papers. Thus our elected representative is first responsible to the party leader and secondarily responsive to constituents.

The party leader is compromised by election contributions which effectively makes him/her responsive to political contributors and their special interests rather than to constituents. Thus, our system of representative government is basically faulty by design. It is a clever www.dialogue.ca

con-job by the 1%ers over We the 99%ers.

This is a deliberate built-in flaw to our system of democratic representative government. This flaw can be overcome. One method is to determine what We the People, We the 99%ers, want, and use these wants to impose accountability on our People's Party.

This could be achieved by using a multitude of small groups using ‘Dialogue Circle’ and ‘Wisdom Council’ techniques to develop, over time, two lists: the What We the People Want and Don't Want Lists. These Two Lists would then be used to draft the People's Party election platform that would resonate with the majority of voters. Our party leader and elected  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Gerry Masuda, Want & Don’t Want Lists, contd.

representatives would be held responsible for implementing our Two Lists embedded in our election platform as members of the opposition or as members of the People's Government. These Two Lists then provide a method of imposing accountability on our elected representatives. Accountability is now possible

by evaluating their actions against the Two Lists.

We the People, We the 99%ers, can impose accountability on our elected representatives of our People's Party based on what We the People want. In this way, we can overcome the basic fault of the current system of representative government. Comments? – G. Masuda

A Response from Derek Skinner, Victoria BC: (via email) [EXTRACT] Gerry, We Know what we want and don't want with milk-toast (aka Milquetoast). I think you have to and have said it many times. Here are my lists, a synopsis of go for broke with your own proposed lists. You my take on the 4 Parties & a way to use your 2 lists, - Derek should put your lists out, showing how they cover What we want: everything, and ask for support.  Electoral Reform to some form of Proportional Rep.  Monetary Reform to re-establish the Bank of Canada to Reply to Derek from Gerry [extract]: its proper role of Control of the Nation's Credit.

I like your Want and Don’t Want lists. However, I  Cancellation of proposed and existing Free Trade think getting individuals to think out their own Two Deals… to be rewritten as Fair Trade Lists as a group is important. I am suggesting that the What we don't want: process is more important than the resulting Two  Participation in the American sponsored New World Lists. What I would like to see is more political inOrder (personally I would join the South American bloc) volvement by many more individuals. I think we  Fighting in other peoples wars would agree that the public suffers from apathy. Part  Unregulated capitalism

Those Lists can be modified in detail but any subsidiary Want including stopping "climate change" can be accommodated.

What are your lists? If you hope to find a consensus by synthesising other people’s lists you will end up

of the apathy results from a feeling of powerlessness.

Getting the thinking public involved in defining what small groups want and don't want would help to reduce apathy and create interest and participation. in political thinking. – Gerry Masuda 

Equal as Citizens: The tumultuous and troubled history of a great Canadian idea – a book by Richard Starr [SEE IMAGE P.60] From the publisher’s website: LINK: www.formac.ca/Book/2630/Equal-as-Citizens.html

Given the shifts in wealth between Canadian provinces over the past couple of decades, should specific measures still be taken to ensure that residents of different provinces receive equal social benefits? Starr proposes how equalization can be reframed in a 21st-century context to suit the needs of a changing nation.

In Equal as Citizens, journalist and policy adviser Richard Starr discusses the idea of "equalization."

No matter where they live, Canadians expect and receive equal benefits from their government when it comes to old age pensions, consular services when travelling abroad, and airline safety. Canadians also expect the same quality of education, medical care, and social benefits anywhere in the country. But when government services come from provinces and not Ottawa, differences in the quality of services can be enormous. Canada's provinces have equal responsibilities but very unequal means to pay for those responsibilities.

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Equal citizenship for all Canadians is an idea that has a long and distinguished pedigree in Canadian life. When differences between the provinces grew dramatically in the early twentieth century, politicians crafted a response that sought to equalize services across the country. They called these measures "equalization," and the idea was deemed so fundamental that it was embodied in the 1982 Canadian constitution.

But Canada has changed. The centre of wealth has been shifting from Ontario toward the resource-rich provinces.

The wealth gap between provinces has grown -- and with it disparities in taxes and services available to citizens.

Regionalism and neoconservative ideas have undermined support for equal citizenship.

In this compelling new book, Richard Starr traces the history of this idea. He tracks how it has been undermined and attacked, and proposes how it can be reframed in a 21st century context to attract the support of most Canadians.

EQUAL AS CITIZENS: Publication Date: 30 May 2014 ISBN: 9781459503113 -- Also available as an e-book 

www.dialogue.ca

Robin Mathews Uncut

Devolution. Evolution. Revolution. The Future Is Now. Robin Mathews, Vancouver BC

This week, this month, maybe this year, the economist of choice is Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics. Very briefly, Piketty points to present developments in capitalism. Unchecked capitalism (as it exists increasingly in the present devastation of democracies and the empowerment of private corporations) leads by its very nature to unequal concentrations of wealth. No surprise. Put another way, when the rate of return on investment exceeds the rate of economic growth (a fundamental purpose of capitalism), the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.

Uncontrolled capitalism creates returns on investment that drain wealth from the larger population and concentrate it more and more in the hands of a hereditary financial elite.

While Piketty’s research is interesting to fellow economists, we can’t be sure how widely the interest is shared – or even the direct relevance of the findings.

A part of the power of the work is its return to basics and its refusal to mythologize greed. Those starving in off-shore industrial slums, and those looking desperately for a living wage in Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan – not to mention the 18 million in the United Kingdom unable to afford adequate shelter (to name only a few instances) – know there is a rough capitalist boot is in their faces. Piketty’s work doesn’t change that, and until political forces appear that can challenge the boot wearers, not much will change.

His book has landed with an explosion of interest – a sign the degeneracy of contemporary society has gone so far that a call for justice and a measure of equality is radical and almost shocking! Pointing to ‘Victorian’ inequalities growing in our societies, Thomas Piketty has a name that might, itself, have been lifted from a Charles Dickens novel.

So far, there is no political force in the Western world challenging what is, in fact, an old, old process of greed in power. The force of the work of Piketty and those who assisted him is that they have managed, at least, to put the question of growing inequality forward as a distinct evil, not as the natural intention of human activity – and they have suggested a number of actions within capitalism that can ameliorate the greater human lot. www.dialogue2.ca

That is merely to say that Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century may not be as important nor as central to real issues as the first Capital published in 1867(1) ... which never goes out of fashion and is enjoying a quiet resurgence and re-examination in our time. Classics stay “classic” because they don’t lose the relevance they had when they first appeared.

Piketty is morally on the right side. He wants Progressive Taxation, taxes on extreme wealth, governments with reasonable power and real responsibility to the electorate – wielding humane policies. He has watched the intensification of private wealth, its move towards – in a few words – naked fascism, and he is arguing against all that evil. Piketty sees Devolution in action and argues for social Evolution. The author of the first Capital(1) might still call for the dictatorship of the proletariat by whatever means necessary – by active and sudden change, sometimes called Revolution.

All the possibilities are present and uncertain. The future is Now, because an intense and brutal conflict is at work ... shifting and shaping what is, and what is to be.

Paul Krugman, U.S. economics guru, writing for the New York Review of Books, says Piketty has created “a revolution in our understanding of long-term trends of inequality”. Except … except a lot of nobody commentators and non-famous commentators have been shouting that long-term inequality has very visible characteristics … re-appearing now … and becoming a key factor in the lives of the present generation. To them, Piketty’s work might be useful and another log thrown on the fire and – perhaps – attractive because it has Establishment blessing.

The signs that his work is just another log thrown on the fire go very deep. The European Union is in a state of self-destruction as a meaningful community. Robert Savio (May 28, 2014) of Inter Press Service observes that the values of social justice, participation, and accountability are gone from the European Union. As well, writes Savio, “Eurocrats have appeared more and more unaccountable and isolated, in a maze of bureaucratic values”. He might have gone on to say that Eurocrats are increasingly clubby, overpaid, and loyal to private corporations.

On June 19, 2014, RT(2) quoted a study carried out by the University of Bristol revealing that poverty in the  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Robin Mathews, Devolution. Evolution. Revolution. The Future Is Now, contd.

United Kingdom has doubled in the last 30 years. “Almost 18 million people are unable to afford adequate housing”. The poor are suffering deeper poverty and the gap between the rich and poor is growing says the University of Bristol study.

On Vancouver Island, Derek Skinner writes an article called “The Dragon with Five Heads.”(3) He shapes ways to confront the purposeful, growing inequality of our time. Early on, he states (in capital letters) that IN THE LAST 50 YEARS, WE HAVE CREATED A CLASS OF MONIED ‘ELITES’ WHO CAN BUY AND SELL POLITICAL PARTIES AND GOVERNMENTS AND MANIPULATE MONEY MARKETS TO SUIT THEIR OWN INTERESTS AND AGENDAS. Skinner looks at the large

picture from a province (British Columbia) that mirrors everything in the larger world of ‘devolution’.

In the last fifteen years: the people-owned BC Gas was folded and sold to foreign private interests at ongoing cost to British Columbians; the people-owned BC Rail was strangled and corruptly passed to foreign private interests; BC Ferries was removed from public oversight in a bastard privatization to become a source of fake accounting and in-group advantage – and devastating loss to coastal and island people; the people-owned BC Hydro has been semi-privatized to offshore ownership, and buried in barbaric accounting methods that the Auditor General of B.C. has refused to pass on for TEN YEARS! All those ‘transactions’ deserve deep criminal investigation. But the RCMP, apparently, can find no way in.

Alleged to have been grossly inadequate in the BC Rail Scandal investigations, the RCMP has been granted a twenty-year contract to police B.C. – some believe as a payoff for corrupt co-operation with the Gordon Campbell/Christie Clark cabinets.

The courts of British Columbia are regularly and purposefully starved of funds – to keep, some say, their operation limited to the needs of corporate growth and operation. On-going court procedure costs for average British Columbians are prohibitive. In British Columbia that is called “equality before the law” and “justice in a free and democratic society”.

What I am saying in those statements is that capitalism unchecked doesn’t only lead to an unequal concentration of wealth. It leads: to the brutalization of all social values, to the perversion of almost all positions of trust in society, to fraud and bribery as the currencies of 22 dialogue

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economic interaction and political behaviour. So-called public contracting becomes a giant pigs’ trough in which the illegitimately powerful swill.

On the less visible but even more threatening side, several reports on new, so-called Trade Treaties – The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Europe North American “trade” negotiations – point out they are being carried out in almost complete secrecy to keep general populations from knowing how totally the people are being betrayed by their governments.

Negotiations for TISA, the Trade in Services Agreement Financial Services Annex is, it is alleged, pushing for privatization of all public services. The secrecy of those negotiations is alleged to be even greater than the backroom silence of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks. Those huge ‘international negotiations’ are, in fact, gatherings of capitalist club members using the governments they own to manipulate – even farther – the unequal concentration of global wealth.

Piketty arrives on the scene with academic knowledge of some use IF there happens to be anyone with power who wants to see change in the present growth of inequality. But there appears to be no significant power that really wants change for the better. Only a growing portion of the human population wants change for the better … and it is presently shut out ... even from the programming of so-called “Opposition parties”.

Could there exist a more obvious collision course in process? That’s why the title of this column is “Devolution. Evolution. Revolution. The Future Is Now.” For biologists, “devolution” means “degeneration” and “reversed evolution”. The biologists say those things occur, just as evolution and generation occur.

Some observers look a long, long way back to observe the process of human biology, not – with Thomas Piketty – looking back only a scant three or four centuries. In one way or another, concentrating wealth has always been about concentrating power – long before the word ‘capitalism’ was invented.

The images from history and what we can know of pre-history are pretty clear. Pharaohs, Emperors, High Priests, and other such tyrants only found in archeological remnants, amassed wealth, gave themselves divine connections, bought supporters, and walked on the faces of the powerless … for as long as they could make their systems work. Sometimes, it seems, there was benevolence, storing of crops, building of  www.dialogue2.ca

Robin Mathews, Devolution. Evolution. Revolution. The Future Is Now, contd.

granaries, holding of public holidays, even provision for care of the aged. We believe those systems arose because of the potential power of the people. To hold off revolution, rapid change, new beginnings that would empower the general population, a sense of sharing community was developed and honoured.

But greed, ambition, brutality, fear, and a desire to be exclusionary drive much of human action biologically.

It is no accident that the Stock Markets of the world – called major engines of modern society – are said to be driven by “greed and fear.” Many of those who use the Stock Markets are driven by greed, by fear of “the other,” and by a desire for wealth they can never use.

They frequently despise governments that seek to protect the vulnerable, and they seek the protection of exclusive clubs and societies. They make heroes of such people as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, who – using a system constructed to create inequality – store mountains of wealth while millions around them starve.

A society that places no inhibition on greed and ambition soon reveals the presence in power of psychopaths and sociopaths. The true biological degenerates assume social power and reverse (in the modern way of thinking) evolution. In many epochs, eras, civilizations, our present concepts of evolution didn’t exist. The intention of power in society was to keep things constant, fixed, stable, unchanging so that the powerful would not be challenged. And so a class system had to be fixed, had to be seen as natural and perpetual – in order to prevent ideas of change … of revolution … from appearing.

Today we say we are not in a fixed social pattern.

Today we expect technological change, movement in the social order, the equality of women, the equality of people with every sort of sexual orientation, the equality of all races and colours ….

We say that is what our society means – and conditions will change and shift before our eyes. But that vision is only half – or much less than half – true. For a gigantically powerful core group of the wealthy, using most governments of the day, are – as this column is being written – moving heaven and earth, legions of lawyers, mountains of mercenary fighters, armies of bribed taste-makers and indoctrinators – called The Mainstream Press and Media – to guarantee the devolution, the degeneration of present society – to move it to a condition in which the tyrants www.dialogue2.ca

return. Beneath the apparent variety and difference in our society, a single message is being repeated and repeated: “You are lucky. You live in a free society. It will be guaranteed its freedom by constant police surveillance to weed out dissenters and ‘terrorists’. Proof of the freedom of your society is shown by the unchecked liberty granted to the rich and to private corporations. They are given, freely, unimpeded access to all of the planet’s resources, to populations fighting, as individuals, for a chance to work in order to hold starvation at bay. Your free society will be guaranteed as long as you know there is no free lunch, that no one is entitled to education, health care, social securities, or to genuine representative democracy. You will be guaranteed freedom as long as you know you’re on your own and you get what you can wrest from a hostile world, freely making your choices and freely choosing. Those qualities are the true qualities of a Free Society. Be ready to fight for it.”

The “evolutionary” phase of modern society that grew from the Second World War (at least in some nations) has been stopped in its tracks. Global directions are “devolutionary,” degenerative of community well-being, reversing social evolution. So obviously is that happening that a large, slow beginning of resistance is being born. A few South American countries are ending treaties that let corporations sue governments for alleged blocking of profit-making. Power in banks, financial houses, governments, and in mercenary armies is fighting those South American countries every minute of every day.

In Europe, the Eurosceptics not only see the degeneration – the ‘devolution’ of European democracy – but they are forming parties to fight it.

The labour union movement in Canada is, finally, declaring it will fight back against the erasure of basic bargaining rights and union freedoms.

Thomas Piketty, an economist, has written a book saying, in effect, that the present economy is anti-evolutionary and is run by degenerates possessing too much wealth – new wealth or inherited wealth.

The devolutionary surface is being scratched, but - so far - only scratched. The opposite of devolution is revolution, which is the product of devolution: when people see no other escape than physical conflict. Stephen Harper’s policies are policies of “incremental devolution” – meaning the slow introduction of fascism: the condition in  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Robin Mathews, Devolution. Evolution. Revolution. The Future Is Now, contd.

which corporations own governments and use them to brutalize the population on behalf of the wealthy.

The Pharaohs, the Emperors, the High Priests – the tyrants – are always waiting in the wings, ready to don the robes of power and magic. Their moral eunuchs – the Stephen Harpers of this world – are always available to do their bidding.

“The people have no bread,” someone said around 1789 to Marie Antoinette – surely a female pharaoh or empress. “Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette is fabled to have replied … as the French Revolution was beginning. With rich (though grisly) poetic justice, the people cut off Marie Antoinette’s head, as bread began to become available in Paris.

Pharaohs, Emperors, High Priests - all the tyrants - think nothing of erasing human lives in the way they would erase hills of ants. Think of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Honduras, Chile, Palestine, Nigeria …

Finally, the time comes when devolution meets resistance it can’t stop. The time comes when Pharaohs,

Emperors, High Priests discover – too late – that their own lives can be snuffed out as easily as the lives of all the millions they have sacrificed in order to satisfy their greed and fear and ambition and their barelydisguised love of brutality.

The time comes when sharp and sudden change – called revolution – happens (the call for evolution having failed). Revolution lays the groundwork for another long term of social evolution – a period we describe as a time when there is a move towards equality, social justice, and security for all.

We are living in that present and future, as I write…. The future is now.

– Robin Mathews, Vancouver

Footnotes (1) The first of three volumes of Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, by Karl Marx (Capital: Critique of Political Economy) was published on 14 Sep 1867; the only one published during his lifetime (Wikipedia) (2) RT is the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news: http://rt.com/ (3) See Derek Skinner’s article, “The Dragon with Five Heads” on the dialogue website at: LINK: www.dialogue2.ca/derek-skinnerdragon-with-five-heads.html 

“That’s My Take On It”

Over 800 world scientists agree: GM crops are nothing short of a bio-war on our food From John Shadbolt, Acton ON [Quote from NaturalNews.com]

More than 800 scientists from around the globe who have joined forces in an open letter to all world governments, outlining their detailed concerns over the alarming potential threat of biotech’s unauthorized, worldwide GM foods experiment.

In a country whose government and media appear only too eager to conjure up fear of “bioterrorism” and “biological weapons,” it’s shocking (albeit obviously deliberate) to what extent the GMO issue remains omitted from mainstream discussion. Consider that the message from these scientists seems to be that the whole planet is already under attack by the persistent and largely unchecked, reckless behavior of greedy, unruly U.S. corporations – corporation’s whose activities appear to be sponsored by the federal government. And whether you know it yet or not, your body is the battleground.

The letter, as posted by the Institute of Science in Society (at: www.i-sis.org.uk/list.php ), is a collective call for the immediate suspension of any and all 24 dialogue

AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 28 NO.1

releases of GM crops and products into the environment for at least five years, in order to allow for more thorough testing. The scientists further demand that all patents on life-forms and living processes – including seeds, cell lines and genes – be revoked and banned “for a comprehensive public inquiry into the future of agriculture and food security for all.”

Read more at NaturalNews: http://tinyurl.com/NN040447 From: John Shadbolt [ cdr000@primus.ca ]

An answer to propaganda and engineered narratives - A Global Solution Model To Save Humanity Now! A GREAT article By Bernie Suarez (link below)

As we move through 2014 and beyond, humanity stands in awe of government propaganda, engineered narratives and ongoing scare-mongering. With part of humanity awakened to the control system's tactics, many of us are locked in focus mode, brainstorming new ways of exposing the ongoing propaganda. No sooner do we expose one false flag, when another is engineered. There is enough lies and propaganda to confuse an entire generation if you are not paying attention.

LINK: http://truthandarttv.com/propagandawithout-consequences-a-global-solution



www.dialogue2.ca

“Big Picture World” ~ Rodrigue Tremblay

In Iraq and Syria, A Vietnam-type Quagmire over Oil and Gas?

by Rodrigue Tremblay, Montreal

If the political and military situation in the oil-rich Middle East appears to be most chaotic, most complex and most confused, it's because it is. How could it be otherwise when there are twentysome governments jockeying for power and influence over there, trying to put their hands on the oil and gas faucets and they have no scruples about getting directly involved in the affairs of each other to reach their goals. Indeed, there is no part of the world where foreign intervention in the domestic affairs of other nations by a host of governments is so prevalent and is even taken for granted.

At the top of the list of outside interventionists, we find the well-armed United States of America with its military gear spread all over the world. In March 2003, the Bush-Cheney administration, assisted by the U.K. Tony Blair government and pushed by the Israeli government, used false pretenses and outright lies, and opened a Pandora's Box of woes in that part of the world by militarily invading the country of Iraq. It did it to overthrow Iraq’s Sunni-controlled government and replaced it with a Shiite-controlled government.

This invasion has since destabilized the entire Middle East by rekindling the dormant Sunni-Shiite antagonism, and it has put into motion a series of civil wars and a series of proxy wars in many countries of the region, mainly along the politico-religious lines of Sunni populations vs. Shiite populations, but also along ethnic and tribal loyalties.

In 2011, the U.S. Obama administration thought it could safely withdraw American troops from a devastated Iraq and wash its hands of the entire mess. — Well, it did not turn out that way. The current insurgency of Sunni Muslims both in Syria and in Iraq is a fall-out from the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The ongoing civil war in Syria has been a fertile ground for disenchanted Sunnis to form an Islamic State militia (IS), [also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)]. Their aim is to carve up a large chunk of land out of Syria and Iraq that they call an Islamic caliphate to underline the links between politics and religion in that part of the world.

After having left behind a country governed by a www.dialogue2.ca

sectarian Iraqi Shiite government in December 2011, the Obama administration has very limited options to counter the rise of the most barbaric IS militia in that part of the world. For domestic political reasons, however, Mr. Obama must go into the motion of waging war in the Middle East. (There could be a more logical reason why Obama wants to bomb Syria, as explained below).

On September 10 (2014), President Obama announced that his administration stands ready to send hundreds of American military “advisors” back to Iraq and to intensify the campaign of airstrikes against the Islamic State militia (IS), both inside Iraq and inside Syria, with the assistance of some other governments that are expected to provide ground troops to occupy any territory “liberated” from the IS organization.

Such a strategy raises a few fundamental questions.

First, there is a legal question. How can the United States government say openly that it intends to violate Syria’s airspace to attack the IS jihadists without either a formal agreement with the Bashar al-Assad Syrian government and/or without a supportive resolution of the United Nations Security Council?

Secondly, there is the feasibility of a military ground operation in Iraq and in Syria when the three most directly involved governments in the region, i.e. the Assad Syrian government, the Sunni Turkish government and the Shiite Iranian government are not participants in the operation.

Considering that many countries in the Middle East have complicated interests, their direct military involvement in Syria is questionable, … unless the true objective of the Obama operation is to complete the overthrow of the Assad regime in Damascus. In which case, the IS organization would only be serving as a convenient pretext for another more important purpose, i.e. the overthrow of the Syrian Assad government.

The organization IS (or some other manipulating power behind it) deliberately provoked American media and American conscience with well-staged barbaric beheadings. Keep in mind that in September 2013, Syrian rebel groups had staged a false flag operation by using chemical weapons against civilians in order to provoke an American response. This time, one year later, they seem to have succeeded.

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Rodrigue Tremblay, The Quagmire over Oil and Gas, contd.

Indeed, what are the ultimate political and military objectives in Syria? Does the U.S. State Department still want to topple the Assad government? If yes, why?

What has the Syrian government done to the United States? And, if it is overthrown, who will take its place?

This would be a most curious “strategy” indeed if the U.S. were to fight both the Islamic State militia IS and the secular Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, and end up creating a political vacuum like the one the same policy created in Libya. Politics does not support a vacuum of power. In a country where 60 per cent of the population is Sunni, compared with only 20 per cent in Iraq, the likely successor to an Assad government in Syria would be a sectarian Sunni-controlled Islamist government, whether it be called IS or any other name. It could also become a complete mess as it is today in Libya, where different armed factions are fighting each other to grab some political foothold.

Who would then benefit? This can be ascertained if we rely on some economic analysis. Indeed, let us consider the all-important geopolitics of proposed gas pipelines in the Middle East. Such pipelines are planned to go from the Persian Gulf to Europe in order to diversify and reduce European energy dependence upon Russian gas.

Two main pipeline routes have been considered in recent years to bring natural gas to an energy-starved Europe that is in a more or less open conflict with Russia and which would like to find alternative gas supplies to balance out the Russian dominance of its markets: - First, there is what has been dubbed the “Islamic pipeline,” (also called the “Friendship Pipeline“ by the governments involved), because it is a proposed 3480 mile-long Iran-Iraq-Syria natural gas pipeline going toward Europe from east to west, from Iran and Iraq to the Mediterranean coast of Syria and Lebanon.

- Secondly, there is an alternative pipeline to supply natural gas to Europe and it is the Qatar-Turkey pipeline which would take a more northbound route and would go from Qatar (the world's leading exporter of liquefied natural gas) and Saudi Arabia via Syria to Turkey, where it would connect with the Nabucco pipeline originating from the Caspian Sea to supply European customers through Austria, as well as gasstarved Turkey.

This latter pipeline is supported by many European 26 dialogue

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states and by the United States, and by Israel who would benefit with a connected pipeline. Therefore, many countries’ involvement in the Syrian civil war is based in part on their desire to see the building of that gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey through Syria.

However, the Syrian government has rejected this latter proposal, preferring the first option. That is why the country of Syria is at the center of decisions regarding the building of pipelines to bring natural gas to Europe. This is also an important source of political conflict in that part of the world. It explains why the governments of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Israel and the European Union (EU) have worked so hard to overthrow the Syrian Assad government and have financed various rebel groups, including the IS organization.

Conclusion

Oil and gas production, pipeline building and sales are important factors in explaining the political frictions present in the Middle East and the reason why so many governments want to topple the Assad Syrian government. Such an overt or camouflaged policy will only bring more chaos to the Middle East.

To bring peace to the Middle East would require a spirit of compromise and concessions, and serious political negotiations, not decades-long wars. A negotiated political solution would seem preferable to constant military confrontations, especially considering the carnage that wars bring to the people.

The sooner this is recognized, the better for all those involved.

Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is an international economist and author, whose last two books are: The Code for Global Ethics, Prometheus Books, 2010; and The New American Empire, Infinity Publishing, 2003. To read Dr. Tremblay’s blog, please visit: LINK: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.htm The author can be reached at: rodrigue.tremblay1@gmail.com LINK: www.thenewamericanempire.com/tremblay=1162.htm 

The Return of George Orwell and Big Brother’s War – On Israel,

Ukraine and Truth: by JOHN PILGER

[July 11 14, QUOTE & LINK] As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular. In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesied in 1984.

“Democracy” is now a rhetorical device. Peace  is “perpetual war”. “Global” is imperial. The once

www.dialogue.ca

hopeful concept of “reform” now means regression, even destruction. “Austerity” is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich: an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few. […]

READ AT: www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/08/02/johnpilger-explains-west-murdered-truth/ OR: http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-return-of-george-orwelland-big-brothers-war-on-palestine-ukraine-and-truth John Pilger is the author of Freedom Next Time.

All his documentary films can be viewed free on his website: LINK: http://www.johnpilger.com/ 

US Government uses sleazy political blackmail to FORCE Monsanto's GMOs on countries that don't want them Inge Hanle, Vancouver, CDSAPI [cdsapi@shaw.ca] RE: US pressures El Salvador to buy Monsanto's GMO seeds; LINK: http://rt.com/usa/165128-uspressures-salvador-monsanto-gmo Cdsapi’s Added Comment: [EXTRACT] The US Gov-

ernment, supposedly operating as the self-appointed global champion of ‘”Democracy and Freedom” (at gunpoint, if necessary), seems determined to use all of the “blackmail resources” at its disposal to overrule “the Democratic Freedom of lesser nations to Choose and Protect themselves” from the biological devastation inherent in the exceedingly toxic products – chemicals, seeds, foods – produced by the monster corporation MONSANTO, the epitome of evil from every perspective.

MONSANTO, which has never produced a product that has not been a biological and environmental disaster, is vehemently rejected by most populations and governments around the world – none of them want Monsanto’s GMOs and their associated chemical products! So in the free-market world of ‘Supply and Demand,’ Monsanto is “unable to make it” on normal corporate merits, and has a history of shamelessly resorting to inconceivable levels of deceit and corruption. Monsanto, in its desperate effort to dominate, has a history of resorting to

pressure-lobbying the US Government to use the “clout of government in foreign affairs” to FORCE these toxic products on the rest of the world. The question looms: Why is the US Government shamelessly using its clout to promote the WORST corporation on the planet and to undermine (obliterate) the Democratic Freedom of consumers, countries and their people – who refuse to buy poisonous products. And yes, the science is there!

Alarmingly, the US Government is proving itself just as deceitful, sleazy and corrupt as the corporation it is illegally “forcing down the throats” of the rest of the world. … Populations cannot afford – and will not permit – being turned into “consumer slaves” of evil corporations producing deadly products, in a government-supported toxic economy, through the power structures of sleazy politics by governments that do not hesitate to operate criminally, immorally & unethically – knowingly and intentionally sacrificing the health and lives of people with impunity.

(Note: Canada’s Prime Minister Harper is following the same dirty international politics, determined to force Genetically Engineered Foods/Seeds into every market place on the globe) – Citizens Demand Scientific, Academic & Political Integrity (CDSAPI) 

Cell Phones: Sustained EMF exposure is dangerous The industry doesn't want to admit it, but the science is becoming clearer: Sustained EMF exposure is dangerous. An article

by Dr. Martin Blank, excerpted from his 2014 book, "Overpowered: What Science Tells Us About the Dangers of Cell Phones and Other Wifi-age Devices" [March 10, 2014, ISBN: 9781609805098] [EXTRACT/LINK] You may not realize it, but you are par-

ticipating in an unauthorized experiment—“the largest biological experiment ever,” in the words of Swedish neuro-oncologist Leif Salford. For the first time, many of us are holding high-powered microwave transmitters—in the form of cell phones—directly against our heads on a daily basis. … "As a result of the central role these devices play in modern life, individuals are understandably predisposed to resist information that may challenge the safety of activities that result in EMF exposures. People simply cannot bear the www.dialogue2.ca

thought of restricting their time with— much less giving up—these beloved gadgets. This gives industry a huge advantage because there is a large segment of the public that would rather not know."

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/MBland-emf-dangers

"The extremely well documented “Overpowered” reads like an environmental thriller! Dr. Blank does a superb job of explaining the biological effects of cellphones and all things wireless on cell physiology and how to protect ourselves and, most importantly, our children. The sections on electricity, wildlife, and the 'business' of science all demonstrate the dark side of technology–an inconvenient truth we must consider."

- Ann Louise Gittleman, Ph.D., New York Times bestselling author of “Zapped” [Forwarded by S. McDowall, from Richard Averett]  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Keep The Peace! ~ Stop Site C Dam From the Council of Canadians

The proposed Site C dam threatens to flood 107 kilometres of river and 52,000 km2 of total area, including rich farmland, wildlife habitats, and First Nations territories. Treaty 8 First Nations in B.C. are vehemently opposed to BC Hydro's plans. Flooding would violate their treaty rights to hunting, fishing and collecting medicinal plants. What’s more, the federal Joint Review Panel found there is justification for the Site C project. But there is still time to stop the dam!

Harper and Clark are set to decide on whether or not the Site C dam will proceed this fall. This is one of our last opportunities to stand with local First Nations,

farmers and scientists, and voice our critical opposition to the dam. If enough of us send letters and emails, we will show the Clark and Harper governments that with this overwhelming public opposition, approving the dam would be a bad political decision.

Thank you so much for taking action.

LINK: www.canadians.org/action/stop-site-c-dam [Photo p.59] Leila Darwish and Brigette DePape Council of Canadians' Pacific Regional Office 700-207 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 1H7 (604) 688-8846, 1-888-566-3888 | bc-yukon@canadians.org | WEBSITE: www.canadians.org  SEE ALSO: www.desmog.ca/2014/09/02/field-dreams-peacevalley-farmers-ranchers-fight-keep-land-above-water-site-cdecision-looms 

“Resonance”

Trinity Western University’s Application for a Law School: Who Would Jesus Discriminate Against?

by Susan McCaslin, Langley BC

There has been much recent public debate about whether provincial law societies should recognize proposed law degrees issued by Trinity Western University (TWU), a private evangelical institution in Langley, BC. The issue revolves around what I see as TWU’s clearly discriminatory “community covenant” which students and faculty must sign, forbidding them to engage in “sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

Trinity argues that refusal to recognize their degree infringes on their right of religious freedom, while others say law societies should defend the rights and freedoms of gays and lesbians (LGBTs), and even unmarried heterosexual couples.

Trinity has argued that its position is the traditional Christian view, and seems to suggest that everyone there shares it – after all, they all sign the covenant, don’t they? What is little known is just how controversial the administration’s position is within TWU, and how many of its own faculty are mortified by the public spectacle now prevalent in legal circles and the media.

In writing this piece, I have decided to tell the story of my own brief association with Trinity. In 1973, when I was a young woman in my mid-twenties with a fresh M.A. in English from SFU, I discovered the mystical and esoteric stream of Christian tradition and self28 dialogue

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identified as a Christian. A one-year sessional appointment at the University of Victoria had just expired and a friend suggested I apply to Trinity Western College.

I didn’t do my homework on Trinity’s roots in the Evangelical Free Church, but went for an interview and was impressed with the then Dean of Arts. He offered me the job on the spot, mentioning the covenant, which at the time involved promising not to imbibe wine on or off campus. I don’t recall it saying anything about sexual orientation. I told him quite frankly I wasn’t the “legalistic type,” and enjoyed an occasional glass of wine with a meal. About to retire himself, he laughingly admitted that he too lifted an occasional glass in private. So I signed the covenant, making all kinds of qualifications in the margins, with which he had no problem.

Once at Trinity, I enjoyed my students and most of my colleagues, along with the opportunity to teach Biblical and Classical Backgrounds to literature, which examined many of the biblical stories as archetypal myth.

Some of my students coined me “myth McCaslin.”

But after only a few months, I began to feel Trinity and I weren’t a good fit.

Every time I went out with my friends to a restaurant and ordered a glass of wine, I’d look over my shoulder to see if someone from the College was seated nearby. I felt like a sneaky subversive. Soon I made friends with fellow faculty members who considered themselves mavericks working to change the system  www.dialogue.ca

Susan McCaslin, Trinity Western University Application for a Law School, contd.

from within. I probably had an inflated sense of how radical I really was and also felt I had to conceal my true self.

Soon I became close friends with Grace Dyck, a brilliant young Mennonite philosophy professor from the prairies, who had done her Ph.D. with the well-known atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen. Grace was a Christian who encouraged her students to explore their honest doubts, not to fear the “secular” world lurking outside, and in short, to mature in their faith by exercising both curiosity and reason.

Grace was having marital difficulties, and after a while she and her husband separated. The President and Board urged them to attend a series of coercive “counselling sessions.” When this approach proved unsuccessful, they advertised her position behind her back.

Immediately, Grace left of her own accord for a prestigious position at King’s College, University of London. She reverted to her maiden name, Jantzen, came out as a lesbian, and moved in with a partner she met subsequent to her time at Trinity. Eventually she landed a post at the University of Manchester where she became a prominent feminist theologian, an advocate of women’s reproductive rights and AIDs research. Appalled at what happened to Grace, I left Trinity right after her departure, accepting a part-time position as a substitute teacher in the public school system in Surrey at considerable loss of job security and pay.

That was then, this is now, you might argue. However, recent events have led me to wonder whether the TWU administration has gotten better or worse. It certainly is more controlling, now requiring faculty to reaffirm a more detailed “community covenant” every year. The current debate over intolerance of gays and lesbians overshadows TWU’s even deeper attack on academic and intellectual freedom found in the Statement of Faith that faculty must sign.

This isn’t just theoretical, pro forma ritual: the Vancouver Sun reported last year that a faculty member in process of being hired for a part-time position, who had signed the contract, was then dismissed by the Provost’s office because he had made an intriguing film about how the concept of hell has changed over the millennia. Apparently, the administration at Trinity felt he didn’t have the “right concept” of Hell.

I happen to know a number of accomplished, progressive Trinity faculty who are appalled at this suppression www.dialogue2.ca

of their intellectual capacities, usually honed at universities that long ago had to shirk the dogmatic religious ideologues. Some of them complain of having to “hold their noses” and sign the covenant and faith statement just to keep their jobs. Some suggest that it’s really about money – that Trinity believes its donors insist on this type of rigid intolerance and control. While these faculty numbers are growing, they remain shy of a majority, similar in number to those who voted (unsuccessfully) in favour of forming a faculty union.

The covenant presumes sexual intimacy and commitment between anyone other than a married man and woman are aberrant, “unbiblical,” and sinful. The prohibition is based on an extremely narrow interpretation of scripture, and mostly on a few statements in letters written by Paul. The covenant speaks of “the Christian or biblical viewpoint” as if there is only one and they have it right. Jesus himself, as far as I can see, delivered no prohibitions against gays and lesbians.

To my mind, the covenant is not just about belief: it’s about control. If it were about beliefs, Trinity could simply state, “We invite you to respect our community values.” But the Trinity covenant goes further in its effort to exclude, control, and discriminate against others. There’s a core distinction between holding beliefs and attempting to control people’s personal lives, particularly their private and intimate sexual lives.

In arguing that they are the ones being discriminated against on the basis of religion, Trinity’s administration is engaged in a classic form of psychological projection. Discriminate against others; then accuse others of discriminating against you. Although TWU makes the point that students and faculty who disagree with the covenant are free to go elsewhere, the situation may be more complex.

A nineteen-year old student who discovered he was gay during his time at Trinity worked up the confidence to “come out” during a presentation in his sex and gender class. One classmate challenged: “I personally read the King James Version [of the Bible]…

It’s hard for me to see how homosexuality is the right choice. How do you expect to get into heaven?”

Though other students supported the gay student, it’s hard to believe that this atmosphere of intolerance doesn’t lead to psychological harm, especially at a crucial developmental stage in their lives.

As I write I see before me the faces of my gay and  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Susan McCaslin, Trinity Western University Application for a Law School, contd.

lesbian friends and associates who are concerned that Trinity’s law school will perpetuate discrimination against LGBTs. It’s one thing for a religious institution to dig in its heels on matters such as this, but another for provincial law societies to endorse it. A former TWU faculty member told me he was appalled that some B.C. benchers said they abhorred the covenant but voted in favour of recognizing the law school – “Where is the ethics and commitment to tolerance in that?” he asked. Some think that the law society probably has no idea how it is undermining progressive forces at TWU, and rewarding the entrenched discriminators.

Trinity has vowed to fight this in court, as have those on the opposite side of the issue. Some lawyers claim TWU has a right to discriminate due to past court decisions: others dispute that earlier decisions speak to this issue now. The Law Societies of Ontario and Nova Scotia have voted against Trinity granting law degrees

under the terms of the current covenant. On April 10th the governing body of the Law Society of Upper Canada voted against accreditation, requiring the Benchers to revisit their April decision.

So there is hope that justice and reason may prevail.

Whatever position the courts have taken in the past, surely it is time for society to move forward by insisting that basic human rights and rights under the Charter take precedence over the right to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.

Background: TWU’s covenant, signed each year by faculty and students https://twu.ca/studenthandbook/university-policies/communitycovenant-agreement.html TWU’s Statement of Faith (signed each year by faculty) http://twu.ca/divisions/hr/employee/documents/statement-offaith.pdf Recent Vote in BC: www.lawsociety.bc.ca/page.cfm?cid=3926&t=Resolutionadopted-at-Law-Society’s-special-general-meeting

Susan McCaslin, Langley BC

This piece appeared first on the Vancouver Sun website (June 16, ‘14) 

Intimate Details

Apocalypse and Alchemy

On B.W. Powe’s Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2014).

By J. S. Porter, Hamilton, Ontario – www.spiritbookword.net

You hear a voice when you read a B.W. Powe book. All his works are voiced works where a personal voice – probing, playing, stretching, J. S. Porter listening – is speaking to you. Not surprisingly he defines a book this way: “A book is truly one person speaking to one person.”

Having co-interviewed him in a four and half hour conversation in Toronto in 1995 for the college journal Kairos, I know from personal experience what a superb conversationalist B.W. Powe is. Powe in person is open, generous, imaginative, courteous and vulnerable, just as he is in his books. Powe talks in his books as if you were seated across from him sharing a pot of coffee. His books are one person speaking to one person.

Powe’s new book is his personal take on two master thinkers, both of whom he had as teachers, Frye in his undergraduate course on myth criticism 30 dialogue

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and McLuhan in his last graduate course.

Usually Powe’s books seem more stylistically akin to McLuhan than to Frye, but in this volume he leans towards Frye. There is a deep and thorough scholarly element to the book, but not to the point that it eclipses Powe’s conversational voice. On every page you hear him speaking from the heart about what matters.

I suspect that Powe could comfortably stand by the words he quotes from Marshall McLuhan’s letter to John Polanyi, “I have always found questions more interesting than answers and probes more exciting than products.” Like McLuhan, Powe is more comfortable with percept than concept, fluid than solid, movement than fixity.

In his new book, he links both Frye and McLuhan, along with Harold Innis, to the “Toronto School of Communication Theory.” Both are, in Powe’s words, “memorable mythmakers at the centre of our literature and our imagination.” Powe sees their commonalities as well as their divergences: “The two left unfinished  ideas and implications for others to develop. www.dialogue.ca

J. S. Porter, Apocalypse and Alchemy, contd.

Their enterprises were invitations to grow our souls ing to his name (Northrop Frye Hall) and McLuhan and minds.” They were alchemists (transformers) of has a street (Marshall McLuhan Way). the imagination and communicators of the apocaPowe acknowledges their differences in this summalypse (“heightened awareness, the moment of rizing sentence: “The mutable tensions between them, epiphany, where an individual sees into…his or her and within them, are those of the scholar-humanist time and place”). and the experimental discoverer, the perpetual reader and annotator and the reimagining aphorist and poet.”

McLuhan was a westerner (born in Edmonton), a Catholic, and someone, like the sailor in Edgar Allan For all their differences, they do at times converge.

Poe’s story “A Descent into the Maelström,” who When Frye late in his life says to the CBC’s David learned to be at home in the turbulence of media. Ride Cayley — “I am more and more drawn to thinking in the wave, McLuhan posits. Don’t resist it. terms of a great swirling of processes “The new media,” he says, “are not and powers rather than a world of bridges between man and nature – they blocks and things…the text is not a are nature.” McLuhan was also, however, thing any more…It’s a focus of a great reader of books (as well as media powers”—one wonders if he is at large). As Powe notes, “The McLuhan channeling his friend and sometime paradox is this: you have to be literary to combatant Marshall McLuhan. understand what is wordless, musical, Both Frye and McLuhan are master sensual, strobing, buzzing, interfusing, phrase-makers who build their books and iconic.” around pithy, and often playful, insights Frye was an Easterner (born in Moncton), and speculations. The challenge for a Protestant (a United Church minister to both, in Frye’s phrasing, is “translating be exact) and a lifelong bookman for discontinuous aphorisms into University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division whom the book was the central medium continuous argument…” At the heart of (May 6 2014) for culture and the other media were for McLuhan is a Book of Investigations ISBN-10: 1442648112 the most part distractions. “Democracy (his son Eric brought to print The Book and book culture are interdependent, and the rise of of Probes published by Gingko Press in 2003); and at oral and visual media represents, not a new order to the heart of Frye is a Book of Aphorisms (clearly visiadjust to, but a subordinate order to be contained,” ble in The Northrop Frye Quote Book, expertly comsays Frye. piled by John Robert Colombo).

The central book in book culture for Frye is of course In Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, B.W. Powe the Bible. “The Bible is to me the body of words himself combines a talent for McLuhanesque probing through which I can see the world as a cosmos, as an with Frye’s facility for pithy, memorable statement. order, and where I can see human nature as someHe learned his lessons well from his masters. And he thing redeemable, as something with a right to surdelivers these lessons to his readers in personal and vive. In Western culture it’s the comprehensive book engaging prose. If you’re looking for an indispensathat takes in everything. It takes in the divine and the ble exploration of two essential Canadian thinkers, demonic, as well as the human.” this is the book. ~~~ Like William Blake before him, Frye links God and * On a personal note: I’ve always been open to McLuhan’s man very directly: “If you insist on separating God experimental thought. On the other hand, I’ve tended to from man, you have merely God who is a scarecrow dismiss Frye as a scholarly categorizer. Thanks to Powe’s in the sky and merely man who is a psychotic ape” book, I now see Frye as a member of a select group of (David Cayley’s Northrop Frye In Conversation).

Canadian visionaries. For more about B.W. Powe, himself a seer, read an interview with him on my website – McLuhan and Frye were colleagues at the University www.spiritbookword.net – first published in the ecumenical of Toronto, sometimes speaking of each other disparjournal Grail. [Click the “spirit” icon on my website.] agingly and sometimes admiringly. Both have been – John Porter, Hamilton fittingly honoured by the university. Frye has a buildwww.spiritbookword.net  www.dialogue2.ca

VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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“Your Health Matters”

BREAKING THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH Derrick Lonsdale, M.D., Strongsville OH

While the Oath is rarely used in its original form today, it serves as a foundation for other, similar oaths and laws that define good medical practice and morals. Such derivatives from the oath are regularly taken today by medical graduates about to enter practice.

Both the Canadian and American Hippocratic Registries are organizations of physicians who uphold the principles of the original Hippocratic Oath as inviolable through changing social times. Hippocratic medicine was humble and passive. The therapeutic approach was based on "the healing power of nature". Referred to as the “father of modern medicine,” Hippocrates emphasized that physicians should do no harm, that if they could do nothing to reverse the course of the disease, it was better to do nothing except ease the comfort of the patient. I believe that Complementary Alternative Medicine, with its emphasis on aiding and abetting the natural process of healing, is closer to obeying this important oath. In the pages of Dialogue, I have offered my opinion on how modern medicine is digressing from it (“The American Medical System is Broken,” October 29, 2007; “The Disaster of a Modern Hospital Admission,” February 11, 2010).

I want now to add a little “grist to that mill.”

First, I am going to tell the stories of three individuals who underwent open heart bypass surgery that was quickly followed by their deaths. The first case was a well known doctor who had just returned from a lecture tour in the East. Although I knew her personally, I do not know the details but she succumbed to the complications following bypass surgery. If she was well enough to complete such a stressful lecture tour, was that kind of surgery really necessary so soon after completing the tour?

The second case was in an individual that I also knew personally. He was wheel chair bound from polio that he had suffered many years previously. He experienced a heart attack and was moved to a local hospital under the care of his own physician whose opinion was that he should be treated medically and not be subjected to surgery: that his physical condition prohibited any other course. The patient, well into his seventies, 32 dialogue

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had long since been retired, but the CEO of the company for which he had worked “had influence with a cardiac surgeon”. He was promptly moved to a major center for bypass surgery, after which he languished in the Intensive Care Unit for about three weeks and where he eventually died.

The third and most recent example of this was an eighty four year old friend. One evening he and his wife were my guests for dinner. Not feeling well the next day, he consulted his current doctor. Receiving a diagnosis of congestive heart failure, he was admitted to a local hospital and received an injection of a drug that resulted in diuresis, thus relieving the congestion from fluid overload. When I visited him, he volunteered the fact that he felt much better and was looking forward to discharge from hospital. The very next day I found that he had been moved to a major center for double bypass surgery. I visited him there and he was in good spirits, free of pain and confident enough in the outcome to sign his permission for surgery. Although I do not know the exact details, he died 24 hours later ”from post surgical complications”.

Before I retired from medical practice, this friend had been under my care as a patient for about 20 years.

Some 15 years ago he and his wife were both seriously injured in a car accident and my friend, as part of his injuries, had had to have his spleen removed. The spleen has long been known to be important in the immune mechanisms of the body. Because of this and the serious nature of his other injuries, he was told on discharge from the hospital that he had an approximate 20% chance of final survival. I undertook to give him a series of water soluble vitamins intravenously. Not only did he recover completely, he returned to his professional activity, remaining well until his recent illness.

Apart from the colossal expense, ending in disaster 24 hours after surgery, it is entirely appropriate to ask whether this was the right procedure, undertaken so lightly and apparently without taking into consideration his previous history. The point is this: double bypass open heart surgery was performed on this elderly patient because of two blocked heart arteries. Common sense should ask why he was not already dead from such serious arterial obstruction in the heart. Because Mother Nature often gets around the block by  www.dialogue2.ca

Derrick Lonsdale, Breaking the Hippocratic Oath, contd.

growth of multiple small caliber capillaries known as collateral circulation, it appears to me that this was not taken into consideration. The natural lifespan and expected quality of life in such a person, whose risk potential was more than obvious, should have been considered. Would his system tolerate this form of stress or could rest and gentle bodily assistance be used without doing any potential harm? It is difficult to explain the reckless lack of clinical judgment that appears to be all too common in this technological age.

This leads to my further comments. Many years ago, a friend of mine was a director in a major medical laboratory. He told me that patients would come into hospital for surgery, after which some of them would develop complications, as may be expected in a minority of cases. During the treatment of complications, laboratory work would be repeated. Sometimes the blood cholesterol would be reported as decreasing successively with each sample of blood taken and the patient would die.

Any form of major surgery is a colossal stress on the body. Hormones produced by the adrenal gland, part of the endocrine system, are synthesized from cholesterol. They are known as the stress hormones, going into action as part of the defense of the body in response to any form of stress. Cholesterol also has to be synthesized in the body, requiring cellular energy for this important purpose. I gathered from my laboratory friend that the peculiarity of a post surgery diminishing cholesterol was merely accepted by the responsible doctors as an unknown mechanism that could not be prevented.

Although it has not been proved scientifically, it is logical to consider that the explanation is quite simple.

If the nutritional status and cellular energy potential of the patient is not assessed, it could be that energy metabolism is marginal even before surgery is undertaken. Consider the possibility that the necessary removal of a sick organ indicates failure of medical (and possibly nutritional) prevention in the first place. It is hypothesized that the demand for synthesis of stress The role of cholesterol in our brains…

If you missed the item about “The Grain Brain” in the last issue (Vol. 27, No 4, p.34) – and if you have any concerns about your health (especially mental health) as you age – this is a book you will want to read! Dr. Perlmutter explains clearly how carbohydrates and healthy fats impact our brains – and many diseases.  www.dialogue2.ca

hormones uses up the available cholesterol which could not be replaced by the cells that lack energy for its production. Also, stress responses are conducted by nerve signals to and from the brain to the requisite body organs. The cholesterol producing cells would have to be “notified” that the adrenal gland required more cholesterol for its part in the overall stress response. Since the brain and nervous system are most impacted by poor nutrition, an alternative explanation could even be a failure of the communication signals between the brain and body organs, thus resulting in the cholesterol producing cells failing to be activated in the emergency. Perhaps it is not the disappearing cholesterol that is the important factor to appreciate. It may well be that failure in brain/body communication in these patients was the underlying cause of death.

I think the overall problem is this. We have come to accept the extraordinary wonders of modern scientific medicine as the great benefit of our age. In the West, we ignore the wisdom of centuries gone by, considering that our scientific knowledge has obviated this wisdom, originally gained by patient and intelligent observation. This particularly applies to surgery that seems to have produced a certain amount of arrogance on the part of surgeons. They sometimes seem to forget that major surgery is also major trauma from which the natural healing processes of the body must recover. Yes, they can sew the blood vessels together, but the actual joining of the tissues is a function of healing.

To obey the Hippocratic oath, we should assist this process without causing trauma where there is obvious surgical risk. An 84-year old man with documented heart disease is such a risk. If we fail to influence the expected decline in health by gentle assistance of the healing process, we at least have accepted the commitment that we shall do no harm. ~ Derrick Lonsdale, M.D. “Everything is connected to everything else.”

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

"We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN." – B.W. Powe, Towards A Canada Of Light VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 33

Natural Nurturing – Part III

What’s with babies hanging off us like primates… …didn’t we evolve?

By Colin Knauf, Nanaimo BC

This is the third column in a series on Natural Nurturing, discussing hands on nurturing during the inarms-phase of infant neural, emotional and physical development. Some background if you missed the two previous articles [LINK: http://tinyurl.com/D-ColinKnauf ] :– The article in the spring issue stressed the importance of natural birth, preferably in a natural setting such as the home. It spoke to how birth circumstance affected positively or negatively the VITAL natural steps to health and happiness. Steps intended to follow immediately, sequentially, naturally and easily to guide us on the path to optimal living. It looked at the sequelae of events after birth such as breast-feeding: simple and easy— or painful and hard. To put it most simply— the experience depends on the trust we put in our self and our trust in the intelligence of our natural evolution— which can and will make birth painful and hard, or simpler and easier. Depending on the level of interference, compounding effects, and interventions by the medical community during childbirth.

A simple natural birth is the ‘sine qua non’ of a life of health and harmony.

The immense attendant benefits are the first and foremost steps to optimal wellbeing of nature's perfected symbiosis between mother and baby. With this first and most vital step achieved, the path ahead becomes much easier.

The column in the summer issue spoke to why Breastfeeding is so important. This second natural step, brings us closer to utopia as reality. Suckling provides naturally perfect dynamic nutrition which biochemically reformulates hourly to satisfy specific and timely needs of all baby’s developmental stages.

Breastfeeding is so much more than VITALLY important nutrition. It provides antigens to fight allergies, 34 dialogue

AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 28 NO.1

antibodies to bolster immunity, probiotics, hydration, stem cells and the VITAL closeness and physicality between mother and baby to create a loving lifetime bond.

When born neither our brain, nor body is fully developed. We mistakenly suggest our gestation is nine months. In fact, it is nine months in utero and nine months ‘in arms’ or ex utero, for a total of I8 months.

Our evolution to upright posture reconfigured our pelvis. We are born early so our bipedal pelvis can accommodate our undersized cranium for optimal birth.

Quadruped mammals are often born fully developed so they can quickly move with the herd.

Humans on the other hand have many significant developmental achievements to be reached before we are remotely capable of independence.

The kangaroo, a bipedal marsupial mammal is a little more like us. A baby kangaroo or ‘Joey’ is born after a short 30 day gestation and ONLY two cm long! Amazingly it navigates on its own from birth canal, up through mother’s fur, then down into the pouch, locates a teat, and latches on. After about 9 months, Joey will spend another 9 months in and out of the pouch.

We too, are just as capable of such a seemingly daunting odyssey. Human babies are ‘hardwired’ to make their way immediately upon birth, to mother’s breast, with umbilical cord in tow. On arrival he will latch perfectly and suckle effortlessly with no pain to mother. It is part of the nature’s GRAND plan. No miscues creating pain and suffering to mother while suckling. No lactation consultants required. No feelings of ‘failure’ – which is often foisted on women in a medical model of industrial birth.

Initial suckling, triggers mother’s amazing self regulating system. Nipple feedback asserts— “baby is breathing and has received all available blood from  the placenta for a healthy start to life and the www.dialogue2.ca

Colin Knauf, What’s with babies…, contd.

placenta is no longer needed.” Initiating a large burst of oxytocin to constrict blood supply to the placenta avoiding haemorrhage at separation. It then incites strong contractions to safely expel the placenta.

Baby’s suckling triggers prolactin to bolster milk production after colostrum is depleted.

When we override and interrupt nature’s perfected program, the system gets the wrong signals. NO suckling response, is interpreted as stillbirth, signalling: “NO prolactin,” therefore no milk. Confounding mothers, who blame themselves as ‘failures’ – invariably seeding self-doubt – often fostering postpartum depression. Up to 18% of women suffer this debilitating syndrome in developed countries.

The amazing wonders which result from ‘Hands on Nurturing’

Let’s look at the evolutionary importance of skin to skin contact and hands on nurturing— the third step to baby’s healthy well being and development.

We are a self regulating system made of an extraordinary complex array of components.

Babies on the other hand need to be next to mother for development of self regulation. Newborn’s cannot regulate body temperature. Mother’s skin to skin contact insures thermal regulation.

Close body contact is the glue that binds, builds and bonds. The in-arms phase is a safe haven providing essential nutrition and stimulus for rapid mental development for the next nine months. Creating a secure, attached and loved baby who will in all likelihood eclipse North American developmental milestones.

Early skin to skin contact combined with breast feeding and carrying our babies on our body, make a naturally stable and fundamental foundation to help ‘weather any storm’— short term and lifelong. The combination of these three vital and life affirming steps trigger a vast array of biochemical interplay for optimal survival. A baby, attended as necessary with immediacy and love, engenders happiness, for baby, mom, and family, as well as harmony and familial cohesion. By extension, when all three important developmental steps follow in natural progression peace is enjoyed in the home. With a foundation of familial cohesion and contentment, peace grows exponentially.

Spreading to community and nation— knowing no bounds, to include all people. Three hallmarks of www.dialogue2.ca

peaceful nations are Natural Birth, Natural Nutrition and Hands On Nurturing.

Close body contact with baby from birth promotes easy breast-feeding. The resulting bond from the ‘love drug,’ as oxytocin is called, fosters ‘baby wearing’ for pleasure, convenience and optimal development. With all innate needs met, baby is quiet, happy, attentive, and a pleasure to hold. Agreeable and without feelings of rejection or insecurity, nor suffering from gastrointestinal pain, there is no unconsolable crying. We are innately attracted to joyful babies and want to hold them. Baby will usually enjoy and share the safety of the family bed, making night time feeding easy and simple. Body to body and heart-to-heart proximity facilitates— respiration and cardiac synchrony along with thermal regulation. With baby near, our fear and worry of how she doing is gone—everyone sleeps well and is well. Parents are the best baby monitors on the globe. Our sensitivity is innately enhanced when we enter the realm of parenthood. We are ‘hard wired’ to be alert and attuned to any change in baby sounds and signals. Risk of SIDS [Sudden Infant Death Syndrome] is very remote.

Closeness strengthens baby’s immature immune system thus creating less stress, meaning less cortisol and adrenaline damage for favourable health. A high vantage point at the centre of activity makes a wonderful classroom. You can’t get a better “Alma Mater.” Learning becomes the next natural progression.

Carried babies are recipients of a host of health-giving adjuvants. The list is naturally long and beyond the scope of this column, but here is a small sampling—  30% larger brain mass  lower risk of SIDs, abuse and infanticide  better digestion, less crying  talk, walk, potty train, and develop independence earlier  improved somatosensory development [better understanding of time and space and where they fit within it; SIMPLY: much more graceful and agile in movement. OR: not awkward and clumsy — less spilled milk. OR: good candidates for dance, athletics, sports, and scholarships.]  enhanced sense of self worth and self esteem  diminishing of high risk behaviour such as promiscuity and succumbing to peer pressure  insures normal and social development  carrying and breastfeeding help mothers return to optimal weight  improves women’s already amazing ability to multi-function.   VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 35

Colin Knauf, What’s with babies…, contd.

Babies’ body-to-body vantage point means language comes easy and early. As mother speaks, her eye contact, facial plasticity, vibrations of the throat, synchronized with diaphragm movement are visually and somatically intuited, fostering accelerated assimilation of language and communication.

When baby's needs are satisfied – feeling, seeing, smelling, hearing, and tasting mom and her magnificent miracle: the milk of human kindness and elixir of life; baby is happy and relaxed to settle into a quiet state of attentiveness. The imprint that asserts itself is— “I am loved and worthy.” It is here that baby will rapidly continue ex utero development without fuss nor demands for attention.

Held at the centre of activity— babies have no need to be the centre of attention but pay great attention and are happy to absorb the social content of community.

In this mute attuned state, learning bursts forth.

In mother's arms, breast-feeding is simple, timely,

efficient and pleasurable. An abundance of oxytocin is triggered in and by each of the partners, creating a wonderful and cherished experience, beneficial to both, to create a lifetime bond. The better the bond between mother and baby, the easier life is – safer, healthier and happier. The spinoffs are beneficial to the family and to all of us.

When we abide by our nature and honestly trust our selves, with faith in our innate intelligence and that of our evolution— we not only succeed and survive— we THRIVE. We can not hold babies too much or spoil them. When raised with compassion and love, babies will mature to happy, healthy, loving, social, wise, creative, productive and whole beings.

Every baby born is a potential saviour— when treated as divine.

Copyright © 2014 Colin Knauf — Syn C O G E N T D E S I G N

From the Desk of Colin Knauf, Nanaimo, 250-327-9515 

Remembering David Weston

which were his areas of special interest and expertise.

Among his many accomplishments and community April 15, 1935 - August 10, 2014 (Nanaimo, BC) involvements, David was the first full-time coordinator of NIDEA (Nanaimo International

by Kim Goldberg, Nanaimo BC Development Education Association) Longtime social activist and political beginning in 1979. Under his steerage, the philosopher David J. Weston passed away organization, which later became known as earlier this month, on August 10, 2014, at Global Village Nanaimo, began to sponsor the age of 79. [His memorial service (was) lectures and film series on issues such as held on Saturday, Sep 6 at the Unitarian energy, human rights, and women in the Fellowship, 595 Townsite Rd. in Nanaimo.]

Third World.

David’s involvement in worthy causes for In 1996, David began proposing the idea of a social justice, community building, and David Weston cohousing project for Nanaimo, modeled after economic reform will be missed by many, 1935 - 2014 similar projects in Denmark, which he had visited in along with his unmistakable laughter. I had known the 1980s. He floated this idea repeatedly to a group of David ever since he moved to Nanaimo in 1979. And I like-minded people gathering at his home for potlucks. find it hard to believe he is gone.

In the early 1980s, David hosted shows on Nanaimo’s After many years of hard work, that dream and vision community TV channel, while I was the Program Co- that was initially advanced by David blossomed into Pacific Gardens Cohousing on Seventh Street. David ordinator for the channel (back when the cable operalived there from 2008 until shortly before his death. tion was still owned by Cable West, and then later Shaw Cable). In the 1990s, David and I each penned a In 1997, David was hired to be the BC organizer for the Canadian Action Party. The party was founded weekly column in the Nanaimo Times newspaper.

by Paul Hellyer, former Deputy Prime Minister of David frequently used his column to expound on the value of community-building projects such as cohous- Canada, to give Canadians an alternative to what ing as well as co-ops and alternate economic systems, some saw as a US-influenced Liberal Party. 

David J. Weston, social activist, economic reformer, community builder

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www.dialogue2.ca

Kim Goldberg, Remembering David Weston, contd.

“It is important to understand that the reason politicians and political parties are beholden to the military-industrial-financial complex, is because their parties are funded by that complex, which often hedges its bets by funding all the large parties,” David said in a 2003 interview published in the UK in Prospect. “I suggest non-corporate funding is a prerequisite to us being able to bring about money and banking reform changes,” David added. And for that reason, David said he was glad to work for Hellyer’s new Canadian Action Party “because of its commitment to money and banking reform.”

More recently, David was one of four founding directors of the Island Roots Market Co-Operative, which seeks to establish a year-round indoor farmers market in Nanaimo. On March 30 of this year, David was honored with the designation of Director Emeritus for Island Roots Market Co-operative.

“Workers’ co-operatives are a fraternal link to coops,” David remarked. “To this end I made a special trip in 1983 to the Mondragon co-ops in the Basques Country in Spain. The visit confirmed my conclusion that a co-operative society is possible.”

Throughout his life, David was a champion of co-ops and of the co-op model for organizing workers, artists, goods, and services. In 1963 David was the founder of Carleton University Students’ Housing Co-op.

In 1964, he was a cofounder of Ottawa Direct Charge Co-op. From 1969-1972, he was the cofounder and vice president Co-operative Habitat Association of Toronto, which designed and built 175 extant townhouses and medium-rise human-scale dwellings in Mississauga.

In November 2011, during the height of the Occupy movement, David proposed that the Nanaimo Occupy encampment in Diana Krall Plaza could become a co-op of workers and artists that could be permanently housed in a large city-owned building downtown. He outlined his vision in a letter to the editor published in the Nanaimo News Bulletin.

David was also a poet, a musician (see p.2), an educator, and an active Unitarian since the early 1960s.

David was born in Plymouth, Devon, and brought up and schooled in various parts of Britain, including Scotland. He was raised in a musical family where his maternal grandmother was a violinist in the Plymouth Symphony, and his father was a church organist.

David held a Masters of Philosophy in Urban Design from Oxon. (University of Oxford). And he was working toward his PhD with his thesis on the feasibility of cohousing in a modern consumer society.

For more information on David’s history and philosophy as a money-reform activist, read this 2003 interview with him in Prosperity (a quarterly Money Reform journal published by Alistair McConnachie in Glasgow, Scotland) – at LINK: http://tinyurl.com/prosperity-djw

David’s insights and laughter will be missed by many.

But he has, through his decades of activism, left a living legacy that will endure long into the future.

Kim Goldberg is an award-winning poet, journalist and author of 6 books. Latest titles: RED ZONE (poems of homelessness) and RIDE BACKWARDS ON DRAGON: a poet's journey through Liuhebafa. She lives in Nanaimo, BC. Contact: goldberg@ncf.ca / REPRINTED WITH AUTHOR’S PERMISSION; LINK: http://pigsquash.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/rememberingdavid-weston/ 

Native / Non-native "Canadians for a New Partnership" – CFNP.ca

A partnership based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful co-existence, and equality McGill instrumental in launching Indigenous former Assembly of First Nations national chief initiative, by Neale McDevitt Ovide Mercredi, former auditor-general of Canada [QUOTE/LINK] On Sep. 4, at the Ottawa Press Gallery, Sheila Fraser and Justice Murray Sinclair, who led the former Prime Ministers Paul Martin and Joe Clark Truth and Reconciliation Commission. … People who, participated in a press conference announcing the earlier in their careers, may not have been very open launch of the Canadians For a New Partnership to collaboration, working toward a common (CFNP) initiative. Looking to strengthen Canada goal without pushing specific political agendas… through by forging a new partnership between the That common goal is to bridge the perceived chasm Indigenous peoples and all Canadians, the CFNP has between Indigenous peoples and other Canadians brought together an impressive team of prominent through an education campaign and public discusleaders from a cross-section of political, cultural and LINK: http://tinyurl.com/McGill-CFNP sions. [ ] economic backgrounds, including Martin and Clark, The CFNP website: www.cfnp.ca / 1-844-236-7111  www.dialogue2.ca

VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 37

“The Fifth Columnist”

One Winter’s Night

Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON

First, let me say thanks to Mr. Stanley Moffat who wrote to me with advice about wood stoves and how to avoid chimney fires. I confess that I had hardly considered the lowly wood stove but in the country it makes perfect sense.

Wood is in abundant supply.

Mr. Moffat suggested that a likely cause of our chimney fire was burning newspaper and advertising flyers, and I confess that I had been bundling them to use as kindling. Of course, there was more. Being a typical man, I was impatient when I set the mother of all fires. Placing a huge box of kindling in the fireplace and lighting it was just asking for trouble! And the chimney had not been used in seven years. Mea culpa.

What an experience. The fire lept up into the chimney and then there was a fierce roar. My wife and I were suddenly seized with panic. What was happening?

Then a loud snapping, like dry timber burning in a bonfire, was heard over head. Was our roof on fire?

It’s funny how time slows down. My wife walked outside and she reported that she could see flames shooting from the chimney cap. I asked her to call 9-1-1.

At some point it dawned on me that I had to suffocate the fire. How long it took me to realize this, I can’t say.

You’ll laugh but at first I spread my parka over the fire screen, hoping to choke the fire. Then I had a brainstorm: I grabbed a bucket, filled it with water, doused the flames and closed the fireplace damper. Somewhat relieved, my wife reported that the flames pouring out of the chimney had disappeared. The loud snapping had stopped, too. There was some regret about calling

9-1-1, but who can say if the fire had spread or if we were out of the woods, so to speak.

I was shocked to see the response that Sunday night, four fire trucks in the driveway, even the fire chief paid us a visit. Firemen climbed onto the roof, some went into the attic with thermal imaging equipment and others even cleaned out the fireplace. The fire trucks illuminated the place with a bright, white light and even on the “dark” side of the house, you could see clearly. We were apologizing profusely to all who spoke to us about ruining their Sunday dinners. Canadians, eh?

When the smoke cleared and we sat down to watch television afterwards, I recall regarding our fireplace with some apprehension. We were still in shock that a pleasant evening by the fire had deteriorated into mayhem and that my attempt to save some money had caused such turmoil. The next day we were surprised to see that our backyard and deck were covered in ash, and the burnt wood deposited in the deep snow by the firefighters that night had melted the snow down to the ground.

I am now looking for a wood stove and promise to burn only wood, in modest amounts, in our WETTinspected* chimney. I will also have a bucket of water at the ready.

But honestly, why don’t guys follow instructions?

Mike Neilly dialogue always welcome: michael.neilly@bell.net



* WETT-: Wood Energy Technology Transfer Inc. (WETT Inc.) is a non-profit training and education association managed by a volunteer Board of Directors elected by holders of valid WETT certificates. Through its administrative designate, WETT Inc. functions as the national registrar of the WETT program.

Through professional training and public education, WETT Inc. promotes the safe and effective use of wood burning systems in Canada. From: www.wettinc.ca

An interesting website and thoughts on learning French…

Kim McConnell, Ottawa ON

We’re always looking for well-written articles by the media. Someone sent me an article from the social media which I thought was interesting. The web site is: www.jjmccullough.com/ (formerly filibustercartoons.com) – authored by J. J. McCullough (based in Vancouver).

We like it particularly because Mr. McCullough writes on all sorts of issues – the language debacle is 38 dialogue

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not his focus. If you have time to read the comments by posters to his article, you’ll find that most of them are well-written, even if not all are in support of our stance on this issue. Most of them are of the opinion that knowing several languages is a good thing – we agree!! Of course it makes a person a more rounded person who can communicate with people from different parts of world, etc., etc. We have no quarrel  www.dialogue.ca

Kim McConnell, Thoughts on learning French, contd.

with people who like learning languages – our quarrel is with a government-enforced language which attempts to equate a minority language (spoken by a decreasing proportion of Canadians) to a language spoken by the majority.

The article (link at the end) was written in 2011, so it’s a little out of date – but still relevant. I’m not sure if new comments are welcomed but I sent in my comment anyway: I wish to thank J.J. for a very informative article and the opportunity to read all the comments – most of them are thoughtful comments. However, NO ONE has referred to the fact that this policy is FORCED on Canadians by the very devious actions of a Prime Minister who, being a Socialist, believed in social engineering and took the opportunity of bringing back our constitution from Westminster to entrench two very egregious social engineering policies (the OLA & the Charter). On top of that he gave the courts the right to interpret what is in the constitution and further ensured that the appointed judges are of the Liberal variety.

The Official Languages Act has cost the country billions over the 40+ years that it has been in operation and the cost in human terms cannot be measured. A minority language cannot be used as the yardstick of employment competence but that is what it has become. The number of well-qualified people who have lost their jobs or been denied promotion because they cannot master a minority language, heard only in Quebec, New Brunswick and Eastern Ontario, far outweigh the questionable result of the original objective of keeping the country together. As it has caused more illfeelings between the majority English-speakers and the minority French-speakers, its primary reason for being has been a failure.

Quebec does not feel any happier being part of Canada (it has rejected bilingualism in favour of persecuting English-speakers) and the only reason its separatist movement has failed is that the Federal government's bribe of the huge Equalization Payments Policy has been hard to resist. With this policy due for re-negotiation this year (2014), let's hope that the Western provinces will stop this wholesale wealth transfer that has only created more welfarism in Eastern Canada, with Ontario being added to the growing list of "have-not" provinces.

It was refreshing to read the refreshing views of JeanFrancois Lacelle, who understands that the Francowww.dialogue2.ca

phones themselves should work to preserve their own language and not expect the government to do it for them. The element of "force" which includes the diminishment of employment opportunities, or fines when bilingual sign by-laws are violated, is not the way to make French a language one wants to learn.

Coercion only breeds resistance and contempt.

Kim McConnell, Ottawa LINK to “Is speaking French useful?” by J. J. McCullough, Vancouver BC: www.jjmccullough.com/index.php/2011/07/19/is-speakingfrench-useful/

The Official Languages Act (OLA) is “a sorry failure!”

Bravo, Kelly Egan!* You have said what most mainstream media dare NOT say but which is common knowledge in Canada – that the OLA is a sorry failure!!! Thanks to the group pushing for the expansion of the original intention of the act – to “provide service in the language of choice WHERE NUMBERS WARRANT” – this has now become the right to work and be supervised in the language of choice. This has led to management and supervisory positions in the public service becoming the purview of French speakers as they are the ones most likely to be bilingual and as hiring underlings is their prerogative, they tend to hire their own, leading to a public service that over-represents the minority language group.

The OLA (1969) was a federal law, applicable only in the courts & the federal public service – it was adopted in its entirely by only ONE province (New Brunswick). Other provinces (mainly in Eastern Canada) were coerced by the well-funded French lobby into adopting a French Language Services Act – Ontario is one of them. The lobby to make the City of Ottawa “officially bilingual” is a wellfunded French group (ACFO), headed by French political leaders and the bilingual academia to push for more French services and French-only public agencies. The academia (of the socialist variety) believes in social engineering – using the law to bring about correction to perceived social injustice. Coercion and enforcement only bring about resentment and rebellion and we have seen this growing by leaps and bounds as more Canadians see the extent to which this policy has been pushed.

Legal challenges and threats by various left-wing political factions (Liberal & NDP) have silenced or forced the Conservative government into compliance.

Kelly Egan says it so well – please take the time to read it in its entirety and celebrate the fact that the “God that failed” is no longer to be mindlessly worshipped!!!

Kim McConnell Canadians for Language Fairness, Ottawa

*LINK: http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/egan-howthe-feds-poisoned-the-well-of-official-bilingualism  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 39

“The Wonderful Tales of Granddaddy and Malachi”

~ and a child’s unquenchable curiosity…

Hello Dialogue, Paul Bowles here, I am not in your files but I am a reader of your magazine. I pick it up at the local library in Fruitvale, B.C. where a kind reader passes it on for the benefit of others.

I do appreciate being apprised of the various aspects of our society which are predominately control oriented, such as the power companies’ Smart Meter programs, genetically modified foods, fish farming and its subsequent disease, mining in parks, political sculduggery, etc. Not that I am morbidly obsessed by our capitalist sins and opportunism in this world; in fact, I try to be of a more optimistic nature – in the sense of our evolution from a spiritual perspective rather than a dominant materialistic outlook.

However, recently I have penned a story of times spent with my grandchild and wondered if you might be interested in it for publication…

Granddaddy and Malachi Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC

The human whirlwind is only three years old but he is the closest thing to omnipresence in our lifetime.

He was up at 4 am this morning, despite collapsing at 9 o clock the night before. Climbing up onto my bed, he slams my slippers into my chest and proclaims, “I’m ready to play in the dirt, granddaddy.”

Unlike Malachi, I suffer from insomnia and if it wasn’t for a disjointed dream filtering through my head about a very confused musical venue, I would have sworn no sleep took place at all. I opened my eyes to behold the ‘whirlwind’ had one eye swollen shut from a mosquito bite which I remembered occurring on my watch, when with dirt packed hands, Malachi was clawing at his face while attempting to fill up his dump truck at the same time. It had not appeared to affect his energy level – which my mother would have called St. Vitas Dance.

But that was yesterday, today the summer sun was bursting through my window and the train whistle would soon be blowing across the valley. To be there when that big freight comes bursting through the forest, bell ringing and siren wailing, was the name of the game. It was living our song…. “Train gonna come when that whistle blow, when that whistle blow, train 40 dialogue

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gonna come, train gonna come.” And we were there when it came, nearly every day for two weeks.

The little chap with the blazing furnace was on loan from his mum and dad in Kelowna and there was no time to lose.

Two weeks in Fruitvale – of wagon rides, hours of walking, playing in the park with passing strangers looking to swing and slide, like youngsters Sloan and Hudson Eastern and the little two-year-old bundle of sweetness who knew how to say, “All Aboard” – was fun. When her dad chimed in with “Whoo, Whoo,” Malachi’s ears pricked up; he had thought we were the only pair of human whistles in the game of train.

“Come on Malachi,” yells Sloan, a seven-year-old leader of children, “let’s go see the old car buried in the bank.” My interest is piqued; she knows something I don’t! So I follow after the rapidly disappearing throng of kids running along the creek. (It was fenced by the way.) Then, after intense peering through the jungle of growth, I see it.

Yes, it is a car with an oval rear window and flat-trunk rear end, rusted but intact, buried into the bank on the far side of the creek. Huh, well what do you know.

Since we couldn’t get in it, there was a general dissipation of interest – and then… the train whistle blew.

The train was returning! Malachi’s eyes lit up like lanterns, “It’s coming back from the border,” he said, “Let’s go.” So we pick up and run as fast as I can carry him out of the park, up the hill, over the bridge, through the town, across the road… and we get to the tracks before it arrives.

There she comes… bright light shining and with ear piercing whistle, the 4519 crosses the main road through Fruitvale. The engine driver waves and we sing our song that has married us to this thundering iron horse… “Train, train, rolling down the track, train, train, oh me and Malachi, watching that train go by.”

We amble home… Malachi up on my shoulders, we head over the tracks, up the country path, across the stream and back home for lunch and then the next-toimpossible nap time that will demand much resilience to see through, until sleep washes away the desire to play.

The afternoon, yet to manifest itself, may well www.dialogue.ca

Paul Bowles - “The Wonderful Tales of Granddaddy and Malachi,” contd.

incorporate a resumption of yesterday’s struggle to That reminded me of an occasion, walking with prevent the bucket full of soil from entering the Malachi, when we came across a short post in the freshly filled wading pool; or perhaps we may repeat a centre of the sidewalk, he asked, “What’s that?” recent rewarding experience at the ‘Ball Room’ down To which I replied, “That’s a post.” We walked furat the Mall, where kids enter a void of parental interther and saw another short post, he asked again, ference – to throw themselves into a pit of balls, or to “What’s that?” I said, “A post.” Continuing on, we climb a rope ladder into an over ground caterpillar encountered a tall LAMP post on the sidewalk and, type tunnel and slide out of an exit, cascading down once again, he asked the question, “What’s that?” flights of cushioned steps and then be delivered into a This time, I defined it as “a LAMP post” – and added net. [Malachi has not yet developed the strength or “because it has a light above,” I pointed up at it, and height needed to take on the zip line across the room.] noted, “But there is no light now because it is daytime and the light is not turned on in the daytime.” [As I After one such exhausting day, I was reclining in my said this, I was sure it was out of his depth of underarmchair upstairs in my room, when a pyjama-clad standing, but I was backed into a corner and could not escapee pitter-pattered up the stairs and joined me in say it in a simpler fashion.] He then turned to me and the chair, clutching his sippy cup. pointed over the road to a single lamp post, the only There had been a power outage, which had just been one on the street with a bright light on, he said, reconnected, and my wife was resetting the clock on “What’s that grandthe stove – resulting in loud dad?” beeping sounds. He asked, “What’s that granddaddy?”

Kids have insights, if you are listening. Me I said, “That’s the clock being reset.” He said, and Malachi were walking down the “What’s the clock, country path, on a stretch granddad?” of grey gravel mostly, I said, “Right…hmm, well, but he saw a particular the clock tells us the time.” rock embedded, which To which he replied, stood out – if you were “What’s time, granddaddy?” looking. He proclaimed, I said, “Okay, well you know “There’s a pancake rock, the sun comes up when you granddaddy,” and it sure wake up and we go out to Photo of me and Malachi, at Ainsworth Hot Springs, was.

It was roughly oval, Kootenay (BC) – summer holiday play, then the sun goes down, flattish and had a golden it gets dark and we have to brown colour and with some depth around the edges. go to bed, that is time passing by. The sun is like a While I was stopped gawking at this profound obserclock, but granddad has a little clock here see, it has hands on it that move around like the sun moves in the vation, Malachi goes on ahead and waves down a couple of people coming our way and proceeds to exsky. The clock tells us the time in numbers. Just like plain, “There’s a pancake rock back there.” They 1,2, buckle my shoe, 3,4, shut the door, 5,6, pick up both concur with him and pass on. We continue to the sticks, 7,8, lay them straight, 9,10, big fat hen.” park, thoroughly testing the depth of numerous pudHe said, pointing across the room, “There’s a clock dles along the way. over there, granddad.” “Oh yea,” I said, “I forgot It was along this same path that Malachi composed his about that one, I don’t use it at all, but here you can see it.” I got up to fetch it and gave it to him. He then first song that came out of the blue while travelling on my shoulders, in what must have been a state of silent asked, “Where’s the numbers, granddad.” “Oh incubation. All I could do was think to myself, Wow, right,” I said, “This clock doesn’t have any, just I have to memorize this fast. It had a tune and words marks.” describing his experience: “Lets go down, down to  www.dialogue2.ca

VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Paul Bowles - “The Wonderful Tales of Granddaddy and Malachi,” contd.

the park, lets go down to the water, lets go down, down to the park, lets go down to the water.”

We have since reinforced this, in both our memories, and sing it together, in a sort of “Heigh ho, heigh ho, it’s off to work we go…” type of fashion. He also comes up with other phrases, like, “Muffin in the water, yea, yea,” as he sprinkled his muffin in a puddle.

I also make up songs as opportunity affords, such as “The bees are drinking the flower juice, the birdies in the sky…,”etc., as we see things happening around us, so it must be rubbing off on him as an expression of life lived.

I am often surprised at the word associations he makes, such as from an occasion when pushing him very gently on the swing, I was slowly incanting the words, “Back and forth, back and forth,” and he joined in with a Robert Munch line about “Rocking my baby… I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always, my baby you’ll be.”

Just like a bee attracted to flowers, Malachi cannot resist an array of buttons, whether it’s on the console of a vehicle, a cassette player, which he loves to open and close, or a printer or television, he will get it to do something, given the time alone to investigate. One morning he was randomly adjusting everything on the face of my record player when I showed up in the room. He switched his attention to the record albums stored in the cabinet beneath and pulled out Kate and Anna McGarrigle, which I put on the turntable right away. It was surprisingly appropriate for his listening and he took to it easily. He started dancing and I joined him… the occasion was well enjoyed.

On another day, drawn to the same activity of checking out the albums beneath the record player, he pulled out a box set of Mahler’s 5th symphony, which of course I put on to play. He listened for a while to the trumpet fanfare and explosive dynamics crashing and booming, but the spaces in between were too much for him and he took off – to return later, to where I was still sunk into an armchair, and he asked for Pingu the penguin, which is his favourite character to be found on the computer.

The signature tune for Pingu galvanizes Malachi to dance the penguin walk, shuffling along, flapping his arms and happily imitating the cartoon characters who are always getting into trouble while going about their 42 dialogue

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play – such as lost in ice caves or trying to avoid a huge ball of snow which they have loosed upon the community. I once ventured the penguin walk when at a play park with Malachi; fortunately he followed me and before too long, we had a host of other kids as well. I felt like the pied piper.

One morning before I was awake, it was not the birds singing outside my bedroom window that gradually filtered through my consciousness but Malachi playing a kid’s snare drum on the landing beneath my room. Bang, bang, bang in well-timed strokes – which impressed me doubly because he sang in time to “The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round,” etc. with great gusto.

I had cause to wonder if there was anyone else up and awake at this time and indeed pondered what time of the morning it actually was… because he often gets himself up and just goes about his business, fishing around in the toy chest or running his two-wheeled penguin suitcase up and down the main floor, dragged by the extension handle, while wearing a matching penguin backpack. Or else he could be astride a large red wooden train, which came from another era and that sounded like rolling thunder as it traversed across the wooden floor, paddled along by little feet.

Malachi is well aware that music is encouraged here.

I have a wooden Tongue drum* which I leave available for him in my room, at his height level; and when he is in the mood he plays, in his way, and will ask for his special sticks with red balls on the ends and also the odd green one, with which he will tap around for a while before changing over to the xylophone… then he will zip the sticks along the keys from one end to the other in a sort of accomplished flourish; and he loves to smash the big cymbal, which lends a rush of finality to the composition.

Since Malachi was just on loan for a couple of weeks, we had to give him back to his mum and dad, but memories for me trickle in and out, as I hope for him that he retains something of our experiences together in Fruitvale and that there be explorations yet to come – when we can just be kids, before that time has passed for both of us.

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale, B.C. [ scribepoet@hotmail.com ] *To see and hear this fascinating, mellow instrument, visit: www.wimp.com/tonguedrums/

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Tales from My Travels ~ Don Parker

JAKARTA JOLLIES

The story of my travels around the world on the working cargo ship, MV Rickmers Jakarta

By Don Parker, Georgetown ON

The Adventure Begins!

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, under Captain Henryk Nowicki, with a crew of 23 and four fellow travellers.

What follows is my account of my trip, chapter by chapter (as I continue to compile my notes and photos from the travels).

I hope you enjoy the trip!

We departed from Houston, Texas, on Nov. 24, 2005, and our first port of call was Camden, New Jersey.

It should have been New Orleans (NO) but Katrina nixed that – more about NO in the final chapters.

But, the trip really began long before that!

CHAPTER ONE WHOOF! Where to begin? “At the beginning!” you say. OK. That seems like a reasonable suggestion, but how do you define, “at the beginning?” For the purposes of this saga, the beginning starts in #711, my condo unit, on Nov. 11, 2005, with me doing a juggling act with several balls of activity… besides all the packing I could do so that only the last minute stuff was left for Saturday morning, just before my departure for the airport.

Saturday morning arrived, I ate my breakfast, did the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, and then tackled the rest of my packing. With that done, I laundered the bed clothes so they would be clean when I returned, and also laundered whatever was in the clothes basket.

While all this was going on, time was passing.

Some thoughts as it passed: 9.50 am: ‘Tony should be arriving soon.” (Tony W. had volunteered to drive me to the airport some two weeks previously.)

On Thursday, I decided to play it safe and called Tony to ask him if he had anything specific planned for Saturday, but before I could ask my question, Tony asked, ‘When do you want me to pick you up?” We settled on 10:00 am.

When 10:20 appeared on the kitchen clock, I decided I’d better have T. paged. At 10:35, I called again, exwww.dialogue2.ca

plained the emergency of the situation, and asked that T. be paged again. To make a long story shorter – T. had his pager on vibrate sitting on the kitchen counter; however, he got the second page and dashed over to pick me up.

In the meantime, I called nephew Eric, explained the situation, and he came hot-footing-it over.

While I was waiting, I took all my stuff down to the lobby with the intention of waiting for Eric there. I was just about to enter the ‘waiting’ stage when the front door was yanked open and there was T., all apologies – he had forgotten all about me! T. grabbed up all my bags, loaded them into his car, and we were off! [We met Eric on Hall Rd., explained the situation, and then we were off again.] Tony was in a hurry, not just for my sake, but also for his own; he had a 12:00 appointment and he didn’t want to be late.

When we got to Terminal 2 at Pearson International, T. fixed me up with a cart, loaded my bags on to it, stuck out his hand and said, “Have a good trip!” hopped back into his car and sped away. Now what do I do? I was hoping T. would accompany me to the check-in counter and load my bags on to the weigh-in scales. No such luck, I was on my own. What’s the operant phrase on junkets like this? That’s it. BE FLEXIBLE!

CHAPTER TWO With as much flexibility as I could muster, I pushed my cart to the check-in counter where a very pleasant and accommodating lady (PAL) was waiting. She helped me load the larger of the two suitcases onto  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Don Parker, Jakarta Jollies, The Adventure Begins, contd.

the scales and then informed me that I was 8,6 pounds over weight. “Could I transfer something from this large bag to the smaller bag?” she helpfully asked? I said that I doubted it because the small bag was crammed full. The overweight penalty was $35.00.

(Have you ever wondered about the reasoning behind this weight business? There I am weighing about 190 pounds plus my suitcases. Behind me in the line up is a guy who weighs 300 ponds if he weighs an ounce, with two suitcases that are just under the weight limit, and he goes through with no penalty! Could it have something to do where the weight is stored once it’s loaded on the aircraft? Hmmm…)

Next came the usual questions: Did I pack my bags myself? Were there any sharp objects in my carry-ons?

Were there matches or a cigarette lighter in the carryons? To which I answered, “Yes. No. and No.” PAL declared me checked in and directed me to the U.S. customs counter. My luck was running high in the form of an efficient but considerate U.S. agent (ECUSA) who asked me for my passport, which I didn’t have (it was down with VIP Services in Houston, waiting for me to pick up along with three visas.) “Do you have a Birth Certificate and a Driver’s License?” was the next question. “Yes, I have,” I replied, and fished in my wallet to produce them. “Why do you wish to go to the United States?” In answer to this question, I explained about freighter cruises and gave him the TravLtips website ( www.travltips.com ).

ECUSA responded with, “Welcome to the U.S.” I thanked him for helping me and he, in turn, thanked me for the TravLtips information.

My next destination was Gate “C” to wait to board Flight #8672. I had forgotten to put a book to read in my camera bag, but since I had less than an hour to wait, I didn’t fret about that; instead, I played mental games along the line of ‘What will I do when I get to Houston? What sites will I visit while I wait for the Jakarta?’ and more such highly technical stuff.

After a while, two Air Canada reps (ACRs) opened up the boarding counter. One lady posted the flight number which looked a little strange to me. She had posted Flight #8276. I checked my ticket to make sure there was no error on my part – there wasn’t – and continued to wait for the ACR to correct her posting; nothing done in that direction.

I decided to check with the ACR sooner that later. I wasn’t about to miss my flight due to some form of human error regardless of whose – hers or mine. I got up and approached the desk. “Is this the Boarding Counter for Flight # 8672?” I asked. “Yes,” the ACR replied, with a gesture towards the board with her arm, “just as it’s posted on the Board.”

The Board says Flight #8276,” I pointed out. ACR gave a snort of derision and made some selfdeprecating remark that sounded like “... just chalk it up to dyslexia!” and made the change.

With that little item taken care of, I returned to my seat, waited a while longer, boarded the plane, and had an uneventful flight to Houston, cleared the terminal in jig time, and took a taxi to my B&B, about forty-five minutes away.

[To be continued!]

Don Parker, Georgetown ON 

Electric Universe

Richard Moore’s presentation on the Electric Universe, climate change Report & link from Richard K. Moore

The event in July at Sergio’s (California) went well.

People seemed interested in my presentation on the Electric Universe & climate, but mostly it sparked others to share their own insights and experiences of an ‘alternative’ kind. So it turned out to be a very in teractive evening. Sergio has kindly uploaded a video of the event. The whole thing is about an hour and a half long. It starts with everyone introducing them selves, and then the presentation itself runs from about minute 16 to minute 42. The rest is discussion ranging over many topics: VIEW AT: http://vimeo.com/101088848 44 dialogue

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2014 Jul 16th – Guest Speaker RICHARD KELLY MOORE: TOPIC: The Suppressed Electrical Universe Theory and its Importance for Understanding Climate Change.

Presentation by one of our early Stanford Mathematicians who helped create Silicon Valley, and now lives in Ireland researching and writing about how the world really operates and what we can do to improve it Location: Penthouse at Sergio Lub's office, Martinez, CA Sponsored by: Friendly Favors – www.favors.org

* The reference for the electric universe model is LINK: www.thunderbolts.info .

- rkm RKM WEBSITES: http://cyberjournal.org/ - and: http://escapingthematrix.org - and: http://quaylargo.com/ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/richardkellymoore 

www.dialogue.ca

“Stirring The Soup”

The Benefits of Being Me

Marie Gaudet, Edmonton AB

You may not know it, but I am AWESOME! Even those closest to me might be surprised at how delightful it is to be me, mostly because I was taught that it’s best to keep my light under a bushel. But I don’t mind letting it come out for air once in a while, because I’ve evolved a bit and taught myself the following: not to crow but to be humble; to believe in myself without arrogance; to do good deeds without boasting about them or expecting anything in return; and to be a really good friend even when the recipient isn’t a friend in return.

Today, I feel the need to brag a little. Not to show conceit but because I believe it’s OK to think well of yourself and because there are too many people around who will try to convince you otherwise. Also because I could use a reminder, right about now, that it’s OK to be proud of myself for being a good friend, a fine mother, a loyal employee and in doing a job to the best of my ability.

It’s when you have false pride – which includes boasting, bragging and making yourself out to be someone you’re not – that you’re not being authentic. But a lot of people confound the two and then feel guilt about being prideful of their own accomplishments. This leads down a slippery slope of guilt, self-loathing, worthlessness and impotence. Those people eventually stop trying to do their best because why bother? I know, I’ve been there… even lately, in my job search when I consistently receive silence and rejection in answer to employment applications. So today, I choose to remind myself of how valuable I really am!

What’s especially remarkable about me is that I’m persistent to a fault and continue to believe that any employer would be fortunate to have me. Rather than accept the silence as meaning that I’m not a worthy candidate, I’ve tracked down some of the most promising employers and asked for feedback – and have been given some positive reinforcement in the process. Still no job, but I’m getting a bit closer with each exchange and my confidence gets a boost each time. This experience has actually reminded me of when I was in my 20s and looking for work. I used to have to look under “Clerical and administrative” in the job postings, when the jobs that really interested me were under “Profeswww.dialogue2.ca

sional”. I remember making myself a promise that “One day, I will have the kind of resumé that can blow an employer out of the water”. And today, I have the CV that I promised myself I’d earn – and it looks fantastic! I am that tenacious when I want something.

As a friend, I am extraordinary! You should be so lucky as to have me onside. I’m loyal, supportive, selfless, trustworthy, dependable, a good listener who gives common sense feedback, and I won’t avoid you when you’re going through tough times. As an example: I am friends with the parents of three kids, who are going through a real rough time right now and have been contemplating divorce. Although some people tend to steer clear of them because the tension emanating from them is like a live wire, I’ve chosen to keep in touch regularly and even spend time with them on special occasions. Granted, the succulent dinners are a great incentive but so is the good company. On those days, everything is put aside and we concentrate on enjoying the festivities. They get a welcome break from their gruelling daily combat because they have to be on good behaviour with company around and I get to feel that I’ve helped remind them of how good things can be between them.

And if that doesn’t convince you of my prize-winning friendship skills, I have been a loyal pal to an old school friend of mine for many years. Although distance separates us and we don’t see each other very often, I have been the best friend I know how to be with her; she unfortunately has never reciprocated and to this day she demonstrates towards me a lack of respect, an exploiting and manipulative nature, a need to feel superior and a strong tendency toward character assassination. You’re probably wondering why the hell I would be friends with such a person. Because I’ve always had a (granted, unsubstantiated) deepdown belief that she needed a true-blue and steady friend. I mean, who behaves that way unless there’s something seriously lacking in their lives? So I stuck by her. After these many years with no real shift in her behaviour, I must now conclude that I was dreaming in Technicolor. Whatever her problem is, she doesn’t seem to have the ability or the desire to respond in kind and, as I’m unsure whether my support has ever done her any good at all anyway, I’ve ultimately decided that I’m going to concentrate on being a better VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Marie Gaudet, The Benefits of Being Me, contd.

friend to myself instead -- by cutting her loose.

Bottom line? While wishing her all the very best in life, I can walk away from this one-sided and abusive relationship without regrets. I will now save my time and energy for friends who really care.

Speaking of friends who care, you know how sometimes you wonder how many really do? I mean, you can have friends of long or short-term duration – but when the chips are down and you need someone, how easy is it to call on the people in your entourage to ask for support? I’ve recently been provided with an opportunity to find out. In the past when I’ve gone through a difficult period, I’ve just blockaded myself in my house and refused to approach anyone until I was able to resolve the problem on my own.

Looking back, this tells me that I had no expectations of support from most of the people in my life. So about ten years ago, I reviewed my nexus and culled a significant amount of chaff from the wheat, so to speak, choosing to retain only people of substance, that is those who showed at least a propensity towards, if not an already well-established sense of respect, as well as an inclination towards mutual compromise and a caring disposition. This was necessary in order to erode the negative energy which had made itself very much at home in my surroundings; and to increase the positive spiritual force that I wanted to feel around me. It was tremendously hard to do, not only because it required me to change my mindset to a more positive one – difficult to do when you can easily “read” the toxic vibes of others – but it also

meant that many in my extended family had to be severed from the flock so that I could breathe.

And at the end of that long, painstaking road, imagine my surprise when I again needed encouragement and found myself reaching out without hesitation – and was overwhelmed by the love and caring I received from my new and improved network. What a profound lesson I’ve learned… and what a rare gem I am to have learned it!

But the most outstanding thing about me is that when I love, I love deeply and I will be by your side till the bitter end – literally, in some cases. Three of my siblings would attest to that if they could, as I cared for them during their illnesses and did my best to make their end-of-life experiences as tranquil and composed as possible. With two of them, I was able to offer them my best gift by holding their hand until they left this earthly realm, a kindness that I believe is due everyone.

So as you can see, I’m a staunch admirer of myself from way back! I almost feel at this point that an apology for having such a high opinion of myself is in order, but there should be no apology for being who I am so I won’t. Believe me when I say that I’m NOT pretentious. I’m simply a good soul… and one who is a beautiful, svelte and sexy woman, no matter what the mirror says.

There, I feel so much better already. You know, sometimes you just need a reminder… of the benefits of being you!

Marie Gaudet, Edmonton 

Changes to help make ‘dialogue’ more sustainable As we explained in the July renewal letters sent to subscribers, we are making some changes to help keep Dialogue viable! Beginning with this Autumn edition, we have switched to a different printing method that uses bond paper instead of newsprint – which makes the pages brighter and easier to read!

The change will also will allow us more flexibility with the number of copies we order. With the webpress printing that we were using previously, the cost was fixed at well over $1000 per issue, even if our print run dropped far below 1000 copies. Until now, we have been distributing complimentary copies to libraries, organizations and individuals that we hoped might help expand Dialogue’s readership. However, this longstanding practice has not brought any sub46 dialogue

AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 28 NO.1

stantial increase in subscribers – and, while we will continue with a few libraries, we have decided it is time to focus priority on the magazine’s devoted subscribers and supporters. With the new printing method, we can order and mail just the quantity we need; so both printing and mailing costs will decrease – making the magazine more sustainable! If you wish to keep receiving the magazine, please subscribe! In order to keep the subscription cost at an affordable $20, we still need to ask for the support of subscribers who can afford a donation to help meet necessary expenses.

Thank You! – Maurice and Janet PLEASE SEE P.59 FOR SUBSCRIPTION DETAILS. OR VISIT OUR NEW WEBSITE AT: www.dialogue2.ca/ P.S. Janet had a set back from iron-deficiency during the summer, but is now doing better. 

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Ramblings

Paris. The City of Light, the City of Love.

Randy Vancourt, Toronto ON

Ah, Paris. The City of Light; the City of Love. Is there a more fitting location to spend a honeymoon?

In July of 2013 I married the most wonderful person in the world. Or she did – I’m not sure which.

Suffice to say that we shared a beautiful summer ceremony with our family and friends and have hundreds of warm and joyful memories of that perfect day. Then we flew away to begin our life together with an exciting two-week honeymoon in Paris and London.

Visiting most European cities can be a little overwhelming; the sheer volume of history, culture and art brimming within the borders of the smallest hamlet puts even the largest of our cities to shame. If you don’t like one art gallery, go next door to the competition... or across the street for that matter. Once you tire of that, spend a day visiting one of a thousand historical castles, churches and buildings that have been meticulously maintained for the breathless wonder of future generations. It sure beats visiting most Canadian cities where it seems we can’t wait to bulldoze all vestiges our past, in favour of erecting yet another million-dollar-condo complex.

Paris is definitely no slouch when it comes to celebrating their art and history. In spite of my darling new bride saying she wanted a relaxing visit, we still wound up packing each day full of amazing adventures and experiences. And walking... lots of walking.

We visited most of the major sights and attractions, as well as the some that were slightly more offbeat.

Paris offers a terrific product that is well worth purchasing should you ever be there for more than a few days. The Paris Museum Pass is a wonderfully costeffective item which, for one flat fee, offers travelers entry to 60 different museums, art galleries and historic monuments. Granted some of these locations might not necessarily appeal to the everyday visitor.

In a city that boasts The Louvre, the Palace of Versailles and Notre Dame Cathedral, I would hazard a guess the average tourist won’t be spending too much time lining up at the Museum of Money or the www.dialogue2.ca

Museum of Stamps, even if they are included in the price.

However there was one fascinating historic attraction on the list that immediately jumped off the page to me: the Paris Sewer. That’s right, the amazing 19th century engineering marvel that became the gold standard for all other sewers worldwide. Designed during the reign of Napoleon, the Paris sewer was already playing host to visitors long before Broadway audiences watched Inspector Javert pursue Jean Valjean through its murky depths.

Public boat tours of the sewer system were once a popular Sunday afternoon outing. In fact as late as the 1970s they were still being offered, although regrettably these days one must explore the sewer by foot.

My wife seemed a bit skeptical the morning I suggested this particular outing. I pointed out that the entrance to the sewer was quite close to the Eiffel Tower, which was our afternoon destination. It only made sense to use our free pass to enjoy another attraction prior to visiting the tower. I knew I had married the right person when she agreed to go down into a sewer with me. We packed a lunch (OK, maybe not the best idea) – and off we went for our subterranean adventure.

The Paris Sewer website claims that once down in the depths, there is very little smell. This is a lie. The Paris Sewer smells exactly the way you would imagine; sometimes more so. It only took a few short minutes down there to make me wonder if climbing though a sewer was really the best choice for a romantic lifetime memory.

The tour was actually rather interesting and we did learn a lot about sanitation, although I expect that this is not everyone’s idea of a dream date. Adding to the fun was the fact that the only person who didn’t seem to realize we were on the English tour was our guide.

Or perhaps he believed he really was speaking English; I can’t be certain as we only managed to grasp about every fourth or fifth word, which obviously made the experience of climbing through a stinking sewer on our honeymoon even more memorable.

Absolutely the best moment of the entire tour comes at the very end. Sure, visitors are offered free hand sanitizer (you know, prior to eating your packed  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

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Randy Vancourt, Paris. The City of Light, the City of Love, contd.

lunch) but the Paris Sewer also has a Gift Shop. That’s right; you can actually purchase mementos of your unique visit. And no, it’s not above ground; it’s actually in the sewer. You can purchase clothes (‘My parents went to the Paris Sewer…and thank god they only brought me back this t-shirt’), commemorative buttons, and my personal favourite, stuffed toy rats for the kids. What child wouldn’t covet that little treasure from this historic capital?

Out in the Paris sun once again, we laughed about our experience while we quickly headed over to the Eiffel Tower. As we squeezed ourselves into the ridiculously crowded elevator to the top of the tower, we noticed a few of the other patrons eyeing us a bit suspiciously.

Call me oversensitive but it was almost as if they sensed we had just come from the sewer.

Randy Vancourt, Toronto www.randyvancourt.com



Poetry and Politics

Running Orders, by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha They call us now.

Before they drop the bombs.

The phone rings and someone who knows my first name calls and says in perfect Arabic “This is David.”

And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass shattering symphonies still smashing around in my head I think “Do I know any Davids in Gaza?”

They call us now to say Run. You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.

Your house is next.

They think of it as some kind of war time courtesy.

It doesn’t matter that there is nowhere to run to.

It means nothing that the borders are closed and your papers are worthless and mark you only for a life sentence in this prison by the sea and the alleyways are narrow and there are more human lives packed one against the other more than any other place on earth Just run.

We aren’t trying to kill you.

It doesn’t matter that you can’t call us back to tell us 48 dialogue

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the people we claim to want aren’t in your house that there’s no one here except you and your children who were cheering for Argentina sharing the last loaf of bread for this week counting candles left in case the power goes out.

It doesn’t matter that you have children.

You live in the wrong place and now is your chance to run to nowhere.

It doesn’t matter that 58 seconds isn’t long enough to find your wedding album or your son’s favorite blanket or your daughter’s almost completed college application or your shoes or to gather everyone in the house.

It doesn’t matter what you had planned.

It doesn’t matter who you are.

Prove you’re human.

Prove you stand on two legs.

Run. From Canadian Trends, online, July 16, 2014 Lena Khalal Tuffaha is a Palestinian American writer, poet; a co-founder of the Institute for Middle East Understanding.

Rec’d from Eva Manly, Stephanie McDowall 

Eclectic, adjective – deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources. www.dialogue2.ca

Unmentionables

“Hannah’s Hobbies”

Dorothy Hannah, Lacolle QC

Last winter while I was in Florida, I again attended the Pinawor Writers’ Club meetings. The attendance at the meetings seems to be growing and the discussions are interesting and sometimes lively.

The second to last meeting I attended, I got up enough nerve to read another one of my pieces. That was my third time up front, but I still felt a nervous breakdown coming on before I began to read. Things went well and the critiquing was kind. Perhaps this was out of respect for my grey hair, but for whatever reason, I was pleased.

The story I read was about my grandfather’s diaries and the paragraph that received the most attention was the following: It went like this, “Etta changed underwear.” Etta was the name of my grandmother and, not wanting to be disrespectful, I wondered if I should just ignore that entry. Of course I couldn’t, too many questions came to mind. One being when was the last time she changed it? I checked further and found that my grandfather, Cyril, had also changed his underwear because the diary had said so. It read, “Cyril changed to light underwear,” and that also solved the mystery.

Apparently my grandmother liked to record the day they were able to give up their winter underclothing.

During the critiquing period, one lady in particular, referred to my grandparents’ underclothing, saying she would like to know more about their underwear.

She wondered what it was like; did they wear boxers, or what? At first, I just took it all in fun, but the more I thought about it, the more intriguing the question became. What was their underwear like? Right away I realized I had a problem. I am not old enough to remember that far back, but I am old enough that there didn’t seem to be anyone left alive that I could ask.

There was only one answer. When all else fails, ‘Google’ it. [i.e. the Internet] As per usual, there was far more information than I needed or wanted, so I didn’t know where to begin. I thought for a bit and then decided, as this was a lighthearted venture; I would just skim and see what www.dialogue.ca

caught my eye. That was a good decision, because right away I saw an ad that advertised ‘Rust Proof Corsets.’ Isn’t that marvelous, just what I always wanted. That kind of information was fun, but not what I needed. I kept reading and then made a startling discovery. Women started out wearing long skirts and petticoats made from quite heavy materials and just didn’t wear any undergarments!

After that surprise, I kept reading and found a paragraph that read, “When the skirts started being made of lighter materials, women began covering their lower regions, simply because it was warmer to wear some undergarments in cool climates.”

Now things got confusing. In various places the garments with which they covered their lower regions, were referred to as pantaloons, drawers and the one I liked best, knickers. It would be too much to describe all the different garments, but it seems pantaloons were first, then drawers and then knickers. The term knickers came from a book written about a fictitious Herr Knickerbocker. The illustrations in the book showed men wearing loose breeches strapped or tied at the knee. Apparently women’s drawers resembled these breeches, hence “knickers.”

There was one last item I found interesting. It said,” The name of knickers changed in the 1920s. In 1924 knickers became known as panties and by 1930 they were called panty briefs”. Reading about “knickers” reminded me of the many English murder mysteries I have enjoyed. In those books I have often read the expression “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” I think it is a very funny and expressive saying.

With all the time I had spent on my research, I hadn’t even touched on the subject of men’s undergarments and decided not to. At that point I felt that if I keep on I would simply “Get my knickers in a twist,” and I didn’t want that to happen. It sounds most uncom fortable.

"Don't change yourself to please the world.

Be yourself.

That's what will change the world."

- Tera Warner, Quebec www.bodyenlightenment.me/about VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 49

“Reminiscence and Revelation”

My darling daughters gave me an I-Phone for my 88th birthday…

Mike Harvey, Langley BC

Can you imagine the frustration it has caused me in trying to use the darn thing? If you aren’t my age or close to it, you will probably not understand what I mean.

I come from an era when a telephone in a home was a luxury and party lines were common. I recall trying to make a call in the country south of Calgary. Twelve Mike Harvey people were hooked to that humming wire which crossed the prairies on poles. (It was, I’m told, a great way to listen to gossip.)

Overseas during the war the only link to loved ones was by flimsy paper that, once censored, crossed the dangerous Atlantic and was received in about three weeks. Telephones in my youthful days had no dial.

Instead a female voice would politely ask “Number please” to which you would reply “North 99, please.”

(That was the actual number of a girl I knew.)

A long distance call was an arranged affair. A letter would inform you to be by your phone at a certain time. The phone would ring, the operator asked for your name and the three-minute duration conversation

would begin. My mother would do this at Christmas time, as I stayed in boarding school. The voice you heard was faint as it hissed over the wires that often followed the railway line.

Radio was ‘the’ medium – combined, of course, with the printed word in newspapers and magazines.

Typewriters clacked away in offices; and movies, (amazingly some now in colour) rounded out the entertainment available. To get to see these movies, many would use streetcars, which rattled their way across cities.

Most people living had never been in an aircraft and those of us sporting pilot or parachute wings were looked upon as a sort of hero. In those days, kids played on the streets in playful roughhouse, people pushed lawn mowers, and swept driveways if they owned a car. Many didn’t and many stoked coal into their furnaces so that they’d be warm. Air conditioning? By use of a hand-held fan. And the ice required for refrigeration and milk were delivered to your doorstep. Mothers appreciated this – as they did hand washing and hung the product of their labour on a clothes line.

This returns me to my Smart Phone. Will I master the thing before I return from whence I came? Doubtful!

*********

Can you recognize a messenger from God? Mike Harvey, Langley BC

It is so easy to do, He has brown eyes, usually, And a wagging tail too.

The messenger can be a he or she, And no matter what you do, They are always there beside you, As their love is always true.

It matters not whether you rich or poor, Famous or a flop, Your dog is there to give you love, No matter what you’ve got.

Some are as proud as peacocks ~ 50 dialogue

AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 28 NO.1

Pets of the rich, But they show the same love, To their drunken owner in a ditch.

Dogs are the most loving creatures, That God has yet devised, With wagging tails and licking tongue, It’s you they idolize.

Their lives are short but their souls survive, They become a dog once more, To give total love and adoration, To the human they adore.

So to the lost and lonely, The solution is in sight, Obtain a dog if possible, And enjoy the Creator’s light.  MORE FROM MIKE  www.dialogue2.ca

Mike Harvey, Reminiscence and Revelation, contd.

The following poems were written years ago.

I just found them in a scrapbook. It was before I had a computer, as it was typewriter written.

My daughter Penny looking at a photograph of her long dead Grandmother…

Here is another one of a more sombre note:A tortured soul searches. Tormented, By the mysteries of life.

Knowing, or in faith, hoping, That life transcends this mortal flesh, Or, in ego grand, perhaps, Trusting at an rate that, In this orbit of mystery, Within the stars, Unknown, understood Mastery reigns, supreme.

Giving thought to feeble brains, Which, scarcely perceiving in realm of giganticness, About Him, cries, with faint heart, “I believe” In what?

Decaying flesh, the contents of my soul and memory?

The loved ones now, and later, and yet past?

Those whose remains are dust or stink in decay?

“Is that my grandmother, long since dead?”

Examining a photo, my daughter said, I looked at her and lovingly eyed, Her beauty, intelligence; my love and pride, Replying to her in a rebuke so mild, “That grandmother of old may now be you, my child.”

Sightless eyed with vestibules of stinking flesh, The Valhalla of maggot generations yet to breed?

No. That knows full well in feelings, Beyond, I think, the ego’s want, That the soul transcends the weakness of the flesh, Of sin, of want and waste.

That it rises like a phoenix at death, To learn once more, Sorrowful that again, in flesh, it failed, To find perfection.

With the great Oneness.

In knowledge that, once more, ashamedly.

But, with complete faith in the completion of its’ great destiny, It must don the mantle of young but aging death.

Michael Harvey, Langley BC 

FEEDBACK

Follow up to Tribute to Matthew D. Glenn Ron Bubar, Fredericton NB

Hope all is well with you. We continue to enjoy every issue of Dialogue. Your hard work and dedication is greatly appreciated. Let's hope subscribers will continue to assist with its publication. This donation from the Anglo Society is in memory of our departed president Matthew Glenn. He looked forward to reading every edition from cover to cover.

Wishing you a warm and enjoyable summer.

Ron Bubar, VP & Executive, Anglo Society of N.B. Poem read at the Celebration of Life of Matthew David Glenn (at Chipman United Church, February 16, 2014):

When I come to the end of the road And the sun has set for me, I want no tears or gloom-filled room, Why cry for a soul set free?

Miss me a little – but not too long; And not with head bowed low.

Remember, the love that we all shared; www.dialogue2.ca

(in Vol. 27, No. 4) Miss me, but let me go.

For this is a journey we all must take And each must go alone.

It’s all part of the Master’s plan, A step on the road to Home.

When you are lonely and sick of heart, See family and friends we know.

Take time to heal, tho’ we must part.

Miss me, but let me go. [Author Unknown] 

A small correction

From: Duncan Graham, Vancouver

Thank you for the copies of your June issue with my 100 Years Ago piece [p.23 of Vol. 27, No. 4]. Just a note as I am sure some of your perceptive readers will note an error. It was President Coolidge, not Cleveland, who sent off the USAAF biplanes on their round – Duncan Graham  the world trip.

MORE FEEDBACK VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014



dialogue 51

About the Summer Edition

MORE FEEDBACK

Phil De Rosa, White Rock BC

Hi Janet and Maurice. Thank you for sending me the excellent Summer issue of ‘Dialogue’. I will send you by email the original paper* I wrote on Daylight Saving Time. I wrote it in a light but serious vein with both the layperson and academic in mind. It is an easy, enjoyable read of roughly an hour and a quarter, so can be read over two breakfasts on a balcony in beautiful Nanaimo if you can find the time with all you do.

I have had great supportive responses from leading medical personnel in Canadian and US clinics involved

with sleep disorders and SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), the Saskatchewan Government, the Royal Astronomical Society, the Canadian Automobile Association, and many others.

Thanks for creating Dialogue for all the issues/causes we are concerned with.  * EDITOR”S NOTE: Phil’s paper about Daylight

Saving Time is posted on the Dialogue website at: LINK: www.dialogue2.ca/writer-phil-de-rosa.html

My visit to ‘Dialogue’

From Ralph Forshaw, Nanaimo BC

My first issue of Dialogue – Spring 2014 – was not received at my address by mail, so I agreed to pick it up at the house of Dialogue’s editor/layout, a certain Janet Hicks. Janet lives in the northern, most modern part of Nanaimo, with its beautiful homes, on big lots and with beautiful gardens. That is a lot of hard work by a lot of people in their spare time.

Upon arriving at her door, first of all I began by ringing the bell on her garage door. While waiting for a response I was surrounded by the wonderful sound of bird song. Many small birds were flitting to and fro to a bird-feeder. Some of them appeared to be fledglings while two of them were flying wing-in-wing, rather than hand-in-hand. They seemed like a very happy bunch of them, enjoying the warm, sunny weather.

Eventually discovering Janet’s front door, she came to meet me with one of her cute wee dogs. She was smiling and friendly and gave me my copy of Dialogue.

Here are two of my haikus – Japanese type of poems that describe any one thing in a few short lines.

NANAIMO The Pacific Ocean and snow-capped mountains Clean air and clean safe streets A climate that is mild all year Nice people and fair maidens galore What if it were Nanaimo-on-Sea? (Even, say, Nanaimo-sur-Mer?) VOLUNTEERING They do it because they love it Acts of kindness and good deeds Helping out for many things Lifting the morale of those being helped World-wide, to make a better world Ralph Forshaw, Nanaimo 

Feedback to Robin Mathews re the CBC Herb Spencer, Surrey, BC, to Robin Mathews:

Just a short note to tell you how much I enjoyed your article on the CBC in today's "Dialogue" (Vol. 27, No.4).

I watch the CBC News regularly as my wife insists it helps her get to sleep at night (it really is boring).

I find so much to agree with you, especially the selfpreservation motivating the senior levels at CBC. They will accept anything quietly from Harper as long as they can keep their $100K+ jobs.

The other problem is that guys like Mansbridge are 52 dialogue

AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 28 NO.1

flattered to be invited to the Bilderberger Conference, where they are briefed on how the World's Ruling Elite tell such "journalists" how to spin the news.

This is also the group who invited Clinton, Blair, ‘Billary,’ Harper, Campbell and many others, who subsequently became our rulers. This kind of information will never be discussed on the CBC by their 'experts'.

Keep up the good work, best wishes. – Herb  www.dialogue.ca

Personocratia’s Path Beyond “Demoncracy”

“Democracy” means the power (-cracy) of the people (demo-) and designates a political system where the population is sovereign. Abraham Lincoln, US president (1860-1865), described it as the “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” To most of us, this word remains synonymous with liberty, equality, constitutional rights, and, in particular, the citizen’s right to vote. We believe that it is the opposite of dictatorship or tyranny. But, if we look at it frankly, we all live in totalitarian states, where a small minority (the elite of the private sector) rules and exploits the majority (the people) with the complicity of the government (the elite of the public sector). Welcome to the world of illusion where the god of illusion (Satan/Lucifer) rules with the help of his lackeys – demons, financiers, and politicians. That is why the word “demoncracy” is a morefitting term for the present political hell-on-earth in which we live.

On top of being diabolical, democracy is deceitful. In reality, “the people” do not exist. Like the word “society,” it is merely a mental concept. How can a theory have the right to rule? The only holder of true power is the person, not a country, state, people, society, community, government, or constitution. Because of her free will, an individual human being can choose to express her sovereignty or give it to someone else. If such is the case, there must be a contract between both persons. The US Constitution starts with “We, the People,” but only 40 persons signed it. Therefore, this document can only apply to the 40 persons who signed it – no one else!

Two False Solutions in a World of Illusion When they become aware of the true nature of democracy, some individuals try to reverse the roles of dominator and dominated – by attempting to give full power to the people. Bad mistake! Whether true or false, direct or indirect, or even participatory, democracy remains a lie and can only bring disorder.

Why? Because the separation of ruler and ruled always generates war. The ruler imposes her authority on the ruled, who resists. The more the second rebels, the stronger becomes the pressure from the first, and the more intense the war between both. No long-term political solution can come from such a vicious circle.

The person is the only true holder of supreme authority. Nevertheless, since she has forgotten who she is, she thinks that she needs a protector – the state – to insure her safety. That is why she gives it her sovereign power (vote) and the fruit of her labour (money). In this way, an actual trade takes place: security against liberty. As long as this balance is maintained, society remains stable, whatever the political system in place. When it is broken, war ensues.

Like a teenager who wants freedom and parental security, the human being has an authority/obedience conflict.

She rebels against her parents, but refuses to leave home. The citizen behaves the same way with Daddy State, and prefers a good dictator over individual sovereignty. Yet, the more security a citizen gets, the more liberty she loses.

All past systems having reached their limits, the elite conceived a new political system, participatory democracy, where “civil society” speaks in the name of individuals. The private and public sectors are well known. However, civil society is a third, newly-invented sector, comprised of an eclectic aggregate of civil groups – non-governmental organisations (NGOs), non-profit organisations (NPOs), unions, associations, and pressure groups – that are supposed to represent the people. In fact, they act as lobby groups financed by world banksters whose interests they serve. Protest movements are grouped together under banners called ‘environment’ (e.g. Friends of the Earth), ‘land use’ (e.g. Nature Conservancy of Canada), ‘urban planning’ (e.g. Transition Towns), or ‘financial reform’ (e.g. Occupy Movement). These groups promote the sacrifice of individual free will in the name of the common good. As for anarchists who refuse all external authorities, they do not transfer the power from ego to soul. Authority remains outside the person. This separation of authority and obedience brings fear and war.  www.dialogue2.ca

VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 53

Personocratia, contd.

The bad news is that no political system can ever fulfill humanity’s aspiration for both liberty and security. The good news is that each human being already owns both – but she has forgotten! When she remembers, she chooses personocracy, the power (-cracy) of the person, which means the governance by individual souls. From that moment on, there is no more need for political systems, dominator/dominated relationships, hierarchies, or governments (citizenship, territory, laws, police force, courts, prisons).

We are left with free, sovereign individuals living in abundance and harmony.

In most countries, the three fundamental rights of citizens – safety, liberty, property – are first written in a charter. The latter is included inside a constitution, which describes the organisation, functions, and powers of the government. Despite such reassuring documents, the state does not hesitate to seize my property if I refuse to pay taxes. It also steals my children if someone accuses me of being a bad parent; it watches me constantly (Internet, telephone, bank account) and can even throw me in prison without trial if I appear to challenge its authority.

Citizens of the United States are reputed to have the most freedom. Yet, in 2013, the US Congress approved the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act), which imparts dictatorial powers to the president, such as the unlimited detention without trial of any person considered a threat to national security. In Europe, the Treaty of Lisbon (2007) contains similar measures. In Canada, the Economic Action Plan (2013) authorises banks facing bankruptcy to steal the money directly from their client’s accounts (bail-in).

Despite all this, I still believe in citizen rights and continue to obey the law. Am I blind or stupid? Neither! I am simply stuck between two mafias: the official, legal mafia called government and all the illegal, parallel mafias. I am taught that the first one is virtuous and essential to protect me from the second, which is wicked and dangerous.

I am told that the government is a necessary evil and that, without it, there would be chaos. Yet, despite an omnipotent legal mafia, there has never been so much disorder.

Both mafias work the same way: money buys protection. If I refuse the conditions stipulated by the state (income tax), it sends me its tax collectors and police officers. If I decline the local Mafiosi’s offer, their musclemen burn down my shop and break my knees. The governmental mafia organises its monopolies (taxes, casinos, tobacco, alcohol), and leaves crumbs (drugs, sex) to the parallel mafias, and uses them for its own secret projects. Out of fear of the illegal mafia, I accept the legal mafia. I am caught between two evils.

How can I get out of this trap? I must acknowledge who I really am – Idessa*, unlimited creatrix. That is the only way to stop being afraid and looking for protection. I can now opt out of both mafias because I know that I am omnipotent and invincible. Without fear, neither mafia can exist. I stop voting and I stop paying – and the state dies! In this way, the illusion of security and the false power of external authorities both vanish. Statism disappears, along with its systems: politics, law, justice, and prison. The barbarian invasions following the collapse of previous advanced civilisations have now become impossible. Only truth remains!

Personocratia** Note – The tenth and last booklet of the Personocratia’s Booklets series- “Society” - is finally out!

You can order it on the information site below, in the English boutique section.

Information: www.personocratia.com __________

/

Videos: www.dianedares.com

* Idessa: The Supreme Being inherent in all that exists. She is both the unique creative spirit and its created matter.

The word Idessa is a combination of “identity” (id-) and “goddess” (-dess). ** Personocratia: The person who knows that she is the Supreme Creatrix incarnated in a body and who acts as such in her daily life. 

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AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 23 NO.1

www.dialogue.ca

“Observations from Lithuania”

The ‘Metalistas LT’ Cookbook of 67 Lithuanian Soups – edited by KR Slade This issue of Dialogue features Ken’s story about a Recipe Book project that he participated in, as translator, in 2013, in Lithuania. We will be sharing the Soup Recipes in future issues (4 per issue) – and they will be posted on the Dialogue website, as we go along.

Ken Slade

Best regards, KR Slade, B.S., M.R.E., J.D. Vilnius, Lithuania

Forward

Ken Slade, Vilnius This collection of 67 Lithuanian soup recipes (et als.) is the work-product of approximately 100 people. The concept was originated by Mr. Mantas Gudas, General Director (i.e., chief operating officer) of ‘UAB Metalistas LT’ (i.e., UAB is the Lithuanian legal designation for a joint-stock company, a corporation; www.metalistas.lt ), which is a metals-fabrications manufacturer in the city of Panevezys, in northern Lithuania. This collection was published as a book in December 2013.

The actual authors of the individual recipes are the Metalistas LT factory-workers, who contributed their family favourite-soup recipes. The recipes were collected and edited; the recipe contributors (in chef’s costumes) and their prepared soups were professionally photographed; further technical/historical information was obtained and edited; the Lithuanian was translated into English; the translation was edited; changes were made to the Lithuanian text; a professional designer performed the layout of the pages; the book was published.

The attractive final product was presented as gifts for customers and staff, for Christmas 2013.

I had the pleasure to edit and revise the book’s English text. Now, I have re-edited such text for republication - by ‘Dialogue’ magazine, a not-for-profit Canadian journal, located in British Columbia, with which I have been associated, as their journalist in Lithuania, for more than a decade. These recipes are a part of my Lithuanian heritage, the heritage of all Lithuanians, and also part of the heritage of other peoples from Eastern Europe.

All photos and the original text are the property of ‘UAB Metalistas LT’; this re-edited (English) version is produced and published by ‘Dialogue’ magazine of British Columbia, Canada (www.dialogue2.ca ) with the permission of ‘UAB Metalistas LT’.

Book publication information: title, ‘Metalinis šaukštas: Sriubos -Metal spoon: Soups’; a cookbook of 67 Lithuanian soup recipes (etc.), in Lithuanian and English, with photos; author: N/A; 168 pages; 23.3 cm wide x 21.8 cm high; published by: UAB Amalkeros leidyba (Panevezys, Lithuania); published for: ‘UAB Metalistas LT’ (Panevezys, Lithuania; www.metalistas.lt ); Dec. 2013;

www.dialogue2.ca

ISBN: 978-9955-659-57-0; UDK 641.5(083.12) Me256.

In December 2012, the company published a similar book (132 pages), ‘Metalinis šaukštas -- metal spoon,‘ of Lithuanian recipes for cold appetizers, soups, hot dishes, sweet dishes, and preserved dishes (same publisher: ISBN 978-9955-659049-5; UDC 641.5(083.12) Me256

The Listing of Soups and the Preface from Mantas Gudas, on behalf of the staff at ‘Metalistas LT’ introduce the recipes. The book also includes an historical and cultural Overview of soup and some General Considerations regarding the preparation of ingredients (which will be shared in future issues); plus three recipes for Accompaniments for Soups: Bread, French Bread, Small Pizza, which will also be shared in future issues.

Listing of Soups # Soup name in English - Recipe contributed by:

I. SPICY (HOT-FLAVOURED) SOUPS 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

Spicy Beef-Soup - (Mr.) Darius Jakubaitis Spicy Bean-Soup with Sausages - (Mr.) Vaidas Balciunas Kharcho Soup - (Mr.) Darius Bumblys Chilli Soup - (Mrs.) Grazina Grigiene Beef and Bean Soup - (Mr.) Deivydas Sriubas Mexican Soup - (Mrs.) Danguole Sukiene Tomato and Lentil Soup - (Mr.) Giedrius Niekis

II. VEGETABLE SOUPS 8. Cucumber Soup - (Mrs.) Stase Marcinkeviciene 9. Borscht - (Mrs.) Alma Staskuniene 10. Beetroot Soup - (Mrs.) Rita Truklickiene 11. Cabbage Soup - (Ms.) Sandra Jasiunaite 12. Simple Minestrone – (Ms.) Kristina Krasauskaite 13. Leek Soup - (Ms.) Aurelija Januskaite 14. Sour-cucumber Soup with Kidneys - (Mr.) Henrikas Dzikas 15. Autumn-vegetables Soup - (Mr.) Giedrius Niekis 16. Fresh Vegetables Soup with Cereals - (Mrs.) Stase Rozeniene 17. Samogitian Potato-Soup - (Mr.) Evaldas Gudas

III. MUSHROOM SOUPS 18. Cep and Beetroot Soup - (Mr.) Alvydas Pilipunas 19. Borscht with Ceps - (Mrs.) Liucija Kudukiene 20. Dried-Mushroom Soup - (Mrs.) Bronislava Tomkeviciene 21. Mushroom Soup (#1) - (Mrs.) Ona Griteniene 22. Melnikai Mushroom Soup - (Mr.) Dainius Balciunas 23. Chicken and Mushroom Soup - (Mr.) Alvydas Pilipunas 24. Mushroom Soup (#2) - (Mrs.) Stase Salaviejiene 25. Pea Soup with Mushrooms – (Mrs.) Regina Pamarnackiene  VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 55

The ‘Metalistas LT’ Cookbook, Lithuanian Soups, contd.

IV. MEATY SOUPS 26. Goulash Soup - (Mrs.) Liucija Kudukiene 27. Heavy Soup - (Mr.) Mantas Cerkesas 28. Soup with Sausages - (Mrs.) Bronislava Tomkeviciene 29. Thick Crimean-Soup - (Mrs.) Dalia Mikolajuniene 30. Veal Soup - (Mr.) Marius Zukas 31. Old-time Soup - (Mrs.) Alma Staskuniene

V. FLOUR AND MILK SOUPS 32. Potato Dough-ball Soup - (Mrs.) Dalia Mikolajuniene 33. Dumplings Soup - (Ms.) Ramute Strolyte 34. Milk and Vegetable Soup - (Mrs.) Rasa Gudiene 35. Milk & Buckwheat Soup - (Mrs.) Lina Voveraitiene

VI. LEAF & LEGUME VEGETABLE SOUPS 36. Nettle Soup - (Mr.) Mantas Zubas 37. Haricot-bean Soup with Meatballs - (Mrs.) Violeta Merzvinskiene 38. Haricot-bean Soup with Chicken - (Mr.) Evaldas Gudas 39. Sorrel Soup (#1) - (Ms.) Nijole Norke 40. Sorrel Soup (#2) - (Mrs.) Vanda Baleviciene 41. Snap-beans Soup - (Mr.) Kestutis Siuipys 42. Spinach Soup - (Mr.) Marius Zukas 43. Pea and Carrot Soup - (Mrs.) Danute Sukiene 44. Pea Soup - (Ms.) Ramute Strolyte 45. Pea Soup with Chicken - (Mr.) Nerijus Gerve

VII. SWEET AND COLD SOUPS 46. Watermelon Soup - (Mr.) Mantas Gudas 47. Dried-fruit Soup with Noodles - (Mr.) Egidijus Skupas 48. Blueberry Soup - (Mrs.) Regina Valuckiene 49. Wild-berry Soup - (Mrs.) Jurate Sidlauskiene 50. Sweet Soup - (Mr.) Jevgenijus Chochlovas 51. Avocado Soup with Ginger - (Ms.) Aurelija Januskaite 52. Gazpacho - (Mr.) Saulius Sidlauskas 53. Kuplunas - Mrs.) Grazina Tamoliuniene 54. Cold Sorrel-Soup - (Mr.) Egidijus Skupas 55. Cold Borscht - (Mr.) Aurimas Sebeckis 56. Peasant Bread-Soup - (Mr.) Laimonas Venslovas

VIII. CREAMY SOUPS 57. Onion Soup - (Mr.) Mantas Gudas 58. Pumpkin Soup - (Mrs.) Rasa Gudiene 59. Creamy Broccoli Soup - (Ms.) Aiste Miceviciute 60. Creamy Potato and Cheese Soup - (Mrs.) Rasa Aleliuniene 61. Creamy Vegetables Soup - (Mr.) Egidijus Skupas 62. Creamy Tomato and Cherry Soup - (Ms.) Aiste Miceviciute

IX. BOUILLABAISSES 63. Journey Bouillabaisse - (Mr.) Arunas Jaselis 64. Mediterranean Bouillabaisse - (Mr.) Mantas Gudas 65. Bouillabaisse - (Ms.) Nijole Norke 66. Bouillabaisse with White Wine - (Mrs.) Bronislava Tomkeviciene 67. Fish Soup - (Mrs.) Liucija Kudukiene

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AUTUMN 2014, VOL. 23 NO.1

Preface On behalf of the staff at ‘Metalistas LT’ Mantas Gudas, General Director Creativity, as one of the mostremarkable of human competencies, has recently obtained greater significance, relevance, and recognition. Persistent dedication to perfection, and the constant search for novelties, hybrids, inventions, applications, imaginations, and freedoms of Mantas Gudas thought -- these qualities are the creativity ingredients, which merge into the integrated formula for success. The value of the meaning of human creativity is continuously reassessed and renewed by various organizations that perform successfully. Such cultural transformations are emphasized also by all of us who work at “Metalistas LT.” Creativity, as a phenomenon, must be achieved creatively -- by showing respect for and aspirations of the ideal of simplicity. In our team’s opinion, this collection of 67 soup recipes is a tangible and positive example that demonstrates the nature of such creativity. With this collection of recipes, which was developed collectively by our staff, let us experience the joy of the elusively-definable feelings of solidarity and fullness, as well as spiritual elevation.

This effort organized us at ‘Metalistas’ much-more firmly, and concentrated us for new and other major challenges -- experienced both at work and in the kitchen. After first seeing the horizon of our culinary contrivances, we became endlessly curious in seeing the depths of such culinary imagination.

This book was created in this way, and was focused on the topic of soups, which topic of our collective culture had been disregarded; nevertheless, which still is an important focus of our kitchen. After assembling such knowledge, which we had already, and coming to learn more about preparation of our traditional soups, we came to be surprised about its variety, range, breadth, and comprehensiveness.

Now, we share our discovery, also with you. Enjoy !

(Mr.) Mantas Gudas General Director (i.e., Chief Operating Officer) ‘Metalistas LT’ – Panevezys, Lithuania, Dec. 2013

The Phantom’s Parade: Ken’s Scary Ghost Story This ghost story was my entry in a contest, sponsored by ‘Morin College/LHSQ library’ in Quebec city, to write a ghost story about QC… The story takes place in Quebec … in the Old City; particularly from the ‘Plains of Abraham’ (where French Canada was lost to the British in 1759, in the great battle between General Wolfe and General Montcalm)…

The time of the story is when I first visited Quebec City, ~ early-1970’s -- when I was in my early 20’s. LINK: www.dialogue2.ca/ken-slade-phantoms-parade.html  www.dialogue.ca

Laughter & ‘Lightenment From John C. McCullough…

Comprehending Engineers What’s Cool?

you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The engineer said, "Look I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's cool."

An engineer was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week."

The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want."

Again the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess, that I'll stay with you for a week and do anything

Great Bike!

From Don Parker…

16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

17. A backward poet writes inverse.

18. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you'd be in Seine.

21. A vulture carrying two dead raccoons boards an airplane. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.'

22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says, 'Dam!' 23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly, it sank – proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, 'I've lost my electron.' The other says, 'Are you sure?' The first replies, 'Yes, I'm positive.'

25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root-canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

26. A geologist exploring an earthquake fell to his death through no fault of his own.

27. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did. 

Puns for Educated Minds

1. The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

2. I thought I saw an eye-doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical aleutian .

3. She was only a whiskey-maker, but he loved her still.

4. A rubber-band pistol was confiscated from an algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

8. Two silk worms had a race, they ended up in a tie.

9. A hole has been found in the nudist-camp wall.

The police are looking into it.

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger, then it hit me.

14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: 'Keep off the Grass.'

15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large. www.dialogue2.ca

Two engineering students were walking across campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?" The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."

"The second engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit."

Definitions

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer,  the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

You don’t stop laughing because you grow old, you grow old ‘cause you stop laughing!

VOL. 28 NO. 1, AUTUMN 2014

dialogue 57

Contributors in dialogue Vol. 28 No. 1

Andersen, Erik, BC……….. 14 Anglo Society of NB………. 51 Arney, Jeremy, BC……….... 18 Auden, W.H., (Quote)……… 04 Blank, Dr. Martin (Book)..…27,60 Boese, David, ON…………. 05 Bowles, Paul, BC…...…...40-42 Brown, Ellen (Quotes/links) 14-15 Bubar, Ron, NB…………… 51 Canadian Action Party……. 19 Cdns. for a New Partnership 37 Cdns. for Lang. Fairness….. 38 Change.org (petition link)….... 17 COMER (Monetary Reform)… 08 Council of Canadians 15,16,28 Darwish, Leila (COC)………. 16 De Rosa, Phil, BC…………. 52 DeSmog.ca –BC (link)……….28 Dialogue (changes)……..….. 46 Ector, Hugh, BC…………… 07 Edo (quote)………………... 60 Eisenstein, Charles (from)… 60

Forshaw, Ralph, BC………. 52 Foster, David, ON…………. 13 Gaudet, Marie, AB………45-46 Ghis and Mado, QC……….. 53 Global Research (link).…… 41 Goertzen, Ed, ON……….11-12 Goldberg, Kim, BC………36-37 Graham, Duncan, BC……… 51 Green Party (press release)… 05 Grout, Pam (book)….……… 60 Gudas, Mantas, Lithuania… 56 Hannah, Dorothy, QC……... 49 Hanle, Inge, BC (CDSAPI)… 27 Hansen, Bob, BC……….… 04 Harvey, Mike, BC...…...…50-51 Knauf, Colin, BC…………34-36 Lonsdale, Derrick, US…...32-33 Masuda, Gerry, BC……...19-20 Mathews, Robin, BC…….21-24 MacKinnon, J.B. (book)….… 60 May, Elizabeth (quote/link)…. 05 McCaslin, Susan, BC……28-30

McConnell, Kim, ON…….38-39 McCullough, J., ON (from)…. 57 McDowall, S., BC (from)….27,48 Moore, Richard, Ireland….. 44 Morton, Alexandra, BC…… 17 Neilly, Michael, ON…….…. 38 Parker, Don, ON……..2,43,57 Personocratia, QC…..…53-54 Perlmutter, David (book)….. 33 Piketty, Thomas (about) …8, 21 Pilger, John, UK (Quote/link) 26 Porter, J. S., ON………...30-31 Pouliot, Vincent, QC……… 06 Powe, B. W., ON (quotes) 30,33 Ross, June (from)………..15-16 Semple, Ernest, QC..……. 04 Shadbolt, John, ON…….…. 24 Skinner, Derek, BC……..20,22 Slade, Ken, Lithuania…..55-56 Spencer, Herb, BC……….. 52 Stanton, Eliz. Cady (Quote) 15 Starr, Richard (book/link) 20,60

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Teichmann, R. (Quote/link) 59 Tremblay, Rodrigue, QC…. 25 Tuffaha, Lena Khalaf, US… 48 Tyee.ca (Quote/link)……… 59 Vancourt, Randy, ON…….. 47 Vinden, Russ, BC………… 09 Warner, Tera, QC (Quote)… 49 Weston, David (1935-2014) 2,36 Wiseman, Herb, ON……… 08 Wood, Patrick (Quote/link)… 15

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