Dialogue V31 No2 winter 2017 18 digital issue

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VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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‘Zionism Has Nothing to do With Judaism’ – Holocaust Survivor

PHOTOS

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WINTER 2017-18, VOL. 31, NO. 2

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A word from the publisher and editor…

Dear Reader, The letter “R” proved to be something of a challenge ~ and it took a little longer than usual for the issue to come together. But, in the end, it did ~ and we hope you find it rewarding and refreshing reading! Thank you to all the outstanding contributors in this issue. (Apologies to anyone we missed.)

The three ‘friends’ on the cover remind us to treasure the love we have for the fellow creatures who touch us deeply while they accompany us on our life journeys: remembering John Porter’s Dylan (p.13), Susan McCaslin’s Penny (p.2, 14) [see also story in Vol. 29, No.3, Spring 2016], and Amber, a Maine Coon feline, who was the very vocal & much-loved matron in a houseful of cats in Rockburn, Qc, with Janet’s sister Susan.

Lots of reflections and reminders related to topics that we don’t hear about often ~ some of them about how we have become so disconnected and how we can reconnect with each other and ‘re-member’ ourselves as part of the whole. As always, there are robust exposés on a fascinating range of topics and many remarkable personal stories reflecting the life experiences of their authors. We hope this Winter edition provides many opportunities for reflection and insight. Be warned: the hand of fate or synchronicity has brought together in this issue the topics of Big Oil, False Flags, GMOs/Glyphosate, Nuclear Arms, Vaccines, Zionism…

A special thank you to Paul Bowles and Sherry Williams, whose artwork (and stories, poetry) grace this issue (pp. 48, 59, 60). And we are delighted that John Porter has undertaken to begin a new column, Book Talk, in the spring, starting with three columns on Shakespeare in 2018.

And thank you to Dialogue readers who are making use of the Thrifty Foods Smile Card Fundraising Program – which enables friends of Dialogue (in B.C.) to have their grocery purchases at any Thrifty Foods store to support the magazine. The program donates five percent of purchases to Dialogue, at no cost to the shopper. [If you would like to receive a designated “Smile Card,” please let us know (250-758-9877).]

If you enjoy Dialogue, please consider ordering (or renewing) a Gift Subscription for a friend or local library, or a waiting room/café [p.58.] And Thank You if you are able to help with a donation, so we can meet expenses while keeping our subscription rate affordable for everyone.

At this special season of darkness & light and renewal, we thank you for being an invaluable part of this publishing adventure!

Maurice

volunteer publisher

Janet

volunteer editor

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

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

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

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

If you would like to share your ideas and become a writer/artist in our magazine, please consider this your personal invitation to participate!

We also need your support as a subscriber, to help us continue (See P. 58 for details) We receive NO government funding and no advertising revenue.

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

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was founded in 1987 and is now published quarterly.

Maurice J. King, Volunteer Publisher Janet K. Hicks, Volunteer Editor

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From Near and Far

Breaking Bad: The Pathology of Site C John Horgan’s NDP government ignored basic truths and now commits BC to greater environmental disaster.

By Andrew Nikiforuk, Dec. 12 | TheTyee.ca [EXTRACT/LINK] BC Hydro gets green light to use

Site C tunnelling machines — but citizens will get the shaft, says Andrew Nikiforuk.

The astoundingly stupid approval of Site C, an overbudget mega-project with no demonstrable need and plenty of cheaper alternatives, marks a black day for B.C.’s NDP government.

The party that promised to deliver fiscal prudence and accountability instead bowed to special interests and insider views. New Democrats swore to observe First Nation rights but now have trod on them. They talked about leadership with courage but embraced cowardice.

Horgan’s unforgivable decision also marks an equally dark day for the province and Canada. The federal government’s climate change plans rely on dramatic increases in hydro power generation — an approach that would lead to the flooding of First Nation land across northern Canada.

Horgan has now added Site C to that appalling plan.

The Premier, looking as uncomfortable as a character from Breaking Bad, offered the coarsest of excuses for this decision. Thanks to deceitful practices and the blocking of regulatory oversight, the previous Liberal government committed taxpayers’ money to a bad project with severe geo-technical problems. So, Horgan said, we now must dig the financial hole even bigger and deeper.

That’s the approach of a drunk gambler at the casino for the damned. By refusing to walk away from the costs of cancelling the project — about $4 billion, including $2 billion in construction costs and the same in remediation expenses — the government is now willing to put the whole province at risk.

How can spending another $10 to $13 billion on a project yield anything but more debt for taxpayers? […]

CONTINUE READING AT TheTyee.ca

LINK: https://tinyurl.com/ty121217 Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee.

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Free Speech in Canada today: Anthony Hall, Jessica Ernst…

[SEE Update re Prof. Hall, p.19] Comment from Bob Hansen, Nanaimo BC:

Congratulations to Prof. Hall (on his reinstatement).

However, the injustice of the administration’s actions, or illegality of same, must be addressed and examined in detail. This was a relatively short, though painful experience for one person (one too many), yet the mechanism by which this affront to free speech and resultant kangaroo court action evolved needs close scrutiny, or be certain it will happen again, and likely affect a larger group of academics in future.

At a time like this, in the history of these territories called Canada, the aggressors must be pursued and the issue they've raised must be dealt with appropriately so it is clear to everyone, including the general public, that free speech on campus is the cornerstone of free speech in society at large. hansen.bob5@gmail.com / The Corporation IS the Enemy Altered Egos Radio News Magazine, CHLY 101.7 FM ♣

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Comment from Jessica Ernst, Alberta

Another question, related: How did Encana and AER get the Supreme Court of Canada to behave so badly, knowingly publish lies, defame me, in their Ernst vs AER (Alberta Energy Regulator) ruling?* It was also a free speech case. I lost. Big Oil won; the Supreme Court decimated our Charter by judging that governments can rule themselves above the Charter if they feel like it. The very purpose of our Charter is to protect all of us, not just professors like Tony, from abusive authorities). It is not just free speech on campus.

Free speech everywhere in Canada has been decimated by oil patch/AER and their anti-Charter friends on Canada's Supreme Court (at the time of their ruling in my case, 7 of 9 were Harper appointees). I also suspect B'nai Brith is impacting my case – for years I have publicly written my opposition to Harper et al supporting Israel's human rights abuses, and I am part Jewish.

They have massive power in Canada, like Encana does. [* SEE: https://tinyurl.com/bccla-ernst ] www.dialogue.ca

♣

Suppressed report shows hundreds of BC's fracked gas wells may leak methane, underscores need for public inquiry COC/CCPA Media Release December 14, 2017 LINK: https://tinyurl.com/coc-frack-leaks

VANCOUVER: BC’s Oil and Gas Commission (OGC)

withheld a report from the public for four years showing that 900 gas wells could be leaking methane – a finding that highlights why a public inquiry into oil and gas industry fracking operations is needed. The Commission (OGC) published the December 2013 report on its website on November 20 (2017) after a copy of the document was leaked. The document shows that nearly 50 fracked gas wells were leaking methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and that up to 900 gas wells could be leaking and potentially contaminating groundwater sources.

“It is deeply troubling that BC’s energy industry regulator kept this report secret. Why did it not tell the public? Why, as the OGC now alleges, did it also not share the report with Cabinet ministers who have responsibility for the energy industry? We need answers and a full public inquiry is the best way to get them,” says Ben Parfitt, a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The suppressed OGC report notes that the estimate of 900 leaking gas wells applies only to a portion of northeast BC where fracking companies operate and that escaping gas could leak into “potable water aquifers and cause groundwater contamination.” The

report, by unnamed OGC staff, was informed by field studies where agency staff visually identified gas bubbling up through standing water at gas well sites, file reviews and field visits to sites where gas migration had previously been reported to the OGC. News of the suppressed report marks the second time this year that serious questions have been raised about the OGC’s lax regulation of fossil fuel companies.

Earlier, a CCPA investigation revealed how the OGC allowed dozens of unlicensed fracking dams to be built without requiring the fossil fuel companies that built them to obtain required water licenses and to submit dam engineering specifications to provincial dam safety officials.

Read more: https://tinyurl.com/coc-frack-leaks

The following groups support the call for a public inquiry into fracking in BC: BC Teachers' Federation, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Corporate Mapping Project, Council of Canadians, David Suzuki Foundation, Douglas Channel Watch, Friends of Wild Salmon Coalition, Keepers of the Water, My Sea to Sky, Public Health Association of BC, Saanich Inlet Network, Sierra Club BC, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, Union of BC Indian Chiefs, West Coast Environmental Law, Wilderness Committee ♣

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Is Trudeau ready for a Middle East war?

by Murray Dobbin, November 17, 2017

The world is now at the mercy of a coalition of three of the most dangerous autocrats on the planet: Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s new absolute ruler Mohammad bin Salman, a name that will become increasingly familiar as the months go by. These three “leaders” are now collaborating in an incredibly reckless plan to permanently reshape the Middle East.

The final outcome will unfold no matter what Canada does. But unless the government of Justin Trudeau gets a grip on reality, Canada will be drawn into this potential catastrophe by virtue of foreign policy positions it has already taken. Geopolitics is getting incredibly complex and there is little evidence that the Liberal government has a clue how to navigate www.dialogue.ca

through the dangers. The problem is that despite all the hype about “ being back” , Canada’s foreign policy under Trudeau and minister of foreign affairs Chrystia Freeland is still characterized by cynicism and ill-considered trade-offs on files within the broad spectrum of foreign affairs — including investor rights agreements like NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Obviously, a certain amount of realpolitik is inevitable and even necessary to protect Canada’s interests. But even so it begs the question of how Canada’s interests are defined. How much of the store is Trudeau willing to give away to buy favour with the US on NAFTA, especially when it seems concessions like putting troops on Russia’s border has gotten us nothing in return? With Trump and his …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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redesigned U.S. Empire, there is no quid pro quo.

The embarrassing “me too” gang-up on Russia is bad enough. The Canadian version of the U.S. Magnitsky Act is a pathetic effort to please the U.S. (EU allies in NATO are increasingly uneasy about Russophobia given their own particular national interests). And Putin can hurt Canada and Canadian businesses more than we can hurt Putin and his oligarchs — and he has promised to do so.

And the Middle East is a whole other question. Canada’s past sins, such as torture in Afghanistan, and the destruction of Libya, can be dismissed by the government as old news. Canada has thankfully avoided getting re-involved in the chaos that is Middle East politics. But with the coming to (absolute) power of the new and reckless Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman, Middle East policy is suddenly fraught with danger and risk for any country allied with the U.S. or with any claim to interests in the region.

The new Saudi prince (who has arrested everyone who might challenge his authority) is encouraging Israel to invade Lebanon, urging the Israelis to do what they want to do, anyway: deal a crippling blow to Israel’s most effective foe, Hezbollah.

Hezbollah basically governs Lebanon and has its own well-armed force. Funded by and allied to Iran, it fought the Israeli army to a standstill in 2006. It is this fact that prompted the Saudis to force the resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri; he refused or was unable to curb Hezbollah’s political power. The Saudi government upped the ante saying the Lebanese government would “be dealt with as a government declaring war on Saudi Arabia.” It ordered all Saudi citizens to leave Lebanon.

For the Saudis, the ultimate target is Shiite Iran and its significant influence in the Middle East and presence, directly or indirectly, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. When bin Salman declared that a rocket attack on Riyadh by Yemeni rebels could be seen as an act of war by Iran, the U.S. backed him up, implicitly giving the Saudi dictator a green light for more aggressive action.

Given the political situations in the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia, all sorts of case scenarios are now being speculated, with the potential for a rapid escalation of military confrontations, to the point of risking a confrontation between the U.S. and Russia. The first would be an Israeli assault on Hezbollah and 6 dialogue

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Lebanon’s infrastructure. That could be followed by a Saudi-led invasion of Qatar and the removal of its government. While less likely, another confrontation could see the U.S. launch a campaign to seize Syrian territory reclaimed by the Assad regime, on behalf of Israel and risking a direct confrontation with Russia.

All of this could be a prelude to an attack on Iran itself and possibly the use by Israel of nuclear weapons. The rich potential for unintended consequences includes World War III. If all of this sounds fantastical, consider those who currently run Israel, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu is mired in his own corruption scandal and needs a distracting war to survive. Bin Salman has already demonstrated a stunning recklessness and ruthlessness: the brutal bombing of Yemen (and now a blockade of food and medicine), the blockade of Qatar, and the house arrest of another country’s prime minister. As for Trump (and some of his generals), he seems to genuinely believe that the U.S. is invulnerable, a truly suicidal assumption. All three heads of state adhere to the doctrine of exceptionalism: the normal rules of international behaviour don’t apply to them.

If one or more of these scenarios begins to play out just what will Trudeau do? His government’s policy towards Israel is driven by political cowardice, rooted in the fear of the Israel lobby in Canada. Towards Saudi Arabia, it is driven by sales of armoured personnel carriers, and a blind eye towards gross human rights violations. With respect to the U.S. it is characterized by ad hoc efforts to predict the unpredictable.

If any of this war scenario plays out, Trudeau will suddenly be pressed to come up with principled positions in response and not just political opportunism and calculated ambiguity. And he should take note: Canadians’ attitudes towards Israel have turned very critical, with 46 per cent expressing negative views and just 28 per cent positive views of that country.

As for our proposed $15 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, 64 per cent disapprove.

While these progressive attitudes lie relatively dormant at the moment another slaughter of innocents will bring them to life. Is the prime minister prepared?

Murray Dobbin, Vancouver LINK: https://murraydobbin.ca/2017/11/17/istrudeau-ready-for-a-middle-east-war/ ♣

www.dialogue.ca

Rafe Mair Leaves Extraordinary Legacy The politician, broadcaster, advocate died Oct. 9, 2017 at 85

By Tom Hawthorn. Monday, October 9, 2017 in The Tyee (link below)

Rafe Mair: Proud contrarian, environmental advocate, champion of B.C.’s interests, died Oct. 9, 2017, at age 85. … Rafe Mair swapped his seat at the provincial cabinet table in Victoria for one in a radio studio in Vancouver. Only in British Columbia would that be a promotion. […] Photo: YouTube: CMHABC LINK: https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2017/10/09/Raif-Mair-Extraordinary-Legacy/ ♣ ***********************************************************

The societal impact of 1.2 million Canadian unemployed Larry Kazdan, Vancouver BC

The biggest problem in our society is not government overspending but the lack of aggregate demand in the economy that keeps approximately 1.2 million Canadians jobless, with the attendant costs of increased stress and sickness, more household breakdowns, additional crime and alcoholism, the degradation of skills in our workforce, and significant lost output.

If the private sector hoards cash and is not willing to invest, the government must step in and mobilize activity for the benefit of society, regardless of any pre-

existing national debt. Mark Milke(*) may advocate for smaller government and a low tax agenda, but the other side of the coin is that more federal spending means more net financial wealth in the non-government sector, more infrastructure, more services, and more people who are productively, healthfully and happily employed. John Maynard Keynes advised, “Look after the unemployment, and the Budget will look after itself.” * writing in “The red in our Maple Leaf is for chronic deficits” – Mark Milke, Nov. 10, 2017, Macleans ♣

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Hockey History in the Making! – 1954 David Boese, St. Catharines ON

Now that a new hockey season is underway, I begin to reminisce about some of the most exciting hockey, I've ever witnessed. Some of the best Jr.A players, ever to make it to the the N.H.L came from our own St. Catharines TeePees. I know this is going back a way, but I think it's worth remembering and repeating!

My most memorable hockey game happened in 1954 when our St. Catharines TeePees, a Jr.A OHL team, played St. Mikes in a semi-final game, in our home rink. It was in the third period and St. Mikes was leading 5 to 4 with 36 seconds to go! With a stoppage of play there was a face-off in our own end. On the ice was the famous record- breaking CBC line which consisted of Captain Brian Cullen, Hugh Barlow and Barry Cullen.

Our coach at the time was the most innovative, charismatic Rudy Pilous, and he called captain Brian over to the bench and instructed him to pull our goalie, Marvin “ Stinky” Edwards. Brian said, “coach, are you crazy, the face-off is in our end” and Rudy replied “Who's the coach, me or you?” Brian skated over to “Stinky” and said, “we're pulling you” and Stinky said “this is crazy.” Nevertheless, out came “Stinky.” At this point there was a collective gasp www.dialogue.ca

from the crowd and then complete silence. At that point, without a goalie in the net, Captain Brian positioned himself in front of the net.

Now this was HISTORY in the making! To this day the act of pulling a goalie while the play is in our end, has never been repeated. The puck was dropped and our centre-man Hank Ciesla, won the draw, sending the puck to the strongest defence-man in the OHA, Elmer Vasko. Elmer took the puck down the ice and shot it into St. Mikes corner, then followed it and dug it out, passing it to Barlow who scored, tying the game at 5-5. The crowd erupted, shaking the rafters.

Now in a 10 minute overtime, both teams scored which still left the game in a tie, giving the TeePee's one point, which was enough to keep them in the finals. The TeePee's eventually went on to beat the Marlies, then the Quebec Jr. A's and finally the Edmonton Oil Kings to capture the most coveted trophy in Junior A hockey, the MEMORIAL cup.

Brian and Barry went on to play in the NHL. Rudy Pilous went on to coach the Chicago Black Hawks, winning the STANLEY cup!

WOW! What a guy, what a team, what an era!

BLOG: http://boeseblog.wordpress.com ♣ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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“The Fifth Columnist”

Paranoia, the Destroyer

Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON [Dec. 1, 2017] On Thursday, the Que-

bec legislature adopted a motion calling on store clerks, no less, to just say ‘Bonjour’ when greeting customers, instead of “Bonjour-Hi.” I always took the Bonjour-Hi thing as an invitation from a bilingual person to converse in either language. If you are unilingual, you signal this by saying one or the other. Hard to believe but the national assembly voted 111-0 in favour of the motion – not coercive they say and yet somehow it was pressed to the top of their “national” agenda!

It’s all about respect, the familiar refrain goes.

Against this backdrop, we have Quebec’s religious neutrality bill, requiring those receiving state services to have their faces uncovered (recently stayed by a judge).

Back in 2011, this headline appeared in an Ottawa newspaper, “Montreal schools move to scan playground chatter: Quebec’s largest school board seeks to make yards, halls and cafeterias French-only zones.” Is it still the 1930s in Quebec? “The playgrounds, hallways and cafeterias of Quebec's largest school board will soon be French-only zones as authorities move to silence other languages - even during recess,” the article went on. “ In a bid to ensure its 110,000 students master French, the Commission scolaire de Montreal has announced a new code of conduct declaring French de rigueur at all times during the school day.”

Justifying this school board’s policy, a spokesperson for the board went on, “There will be no language police,” she said. “Instead, monitors who overhear children using their mother tongue during recess will simply remind them of the rules. If they are automatically switching to another language, (the monitor) will gently tap them on the shoulder - not on the head - to tell them, 'Remember, we speak French. It's good for you.”

Who is the “monitor” in school board story but the “minder” of North Korea, the “commissar” of Soviet communism? Yes, the state is watching. Conformity is necessary. It was in the 1920s and 30s, spawned from the Great War, when fascism arose. Plenty of people use the word pretty loosely these days, but it’s been defined as an ultra-nationalism driven by emotion, by an intense sense of being victimized, a 8 dialogue

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chosen people with a greater destiny and a sick mythology that entitles one group of people to act collectively to strip others of their rights.

From Robert O. Paxton’s book The Anatomy of Fascism: “At bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one’s own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community.” Can you hear the voice of entitlement, of victimization and the abiding paranoia over assimilation, in the chilling phrase “necessary sense of community”?

You may well ask, why doesn’t the federal government do something about Quebec’s “un-Canadian” intolerance? There is a precedent for federal government intervention even in a city’s affairs. Former Official Languages commissioner Dyane Adam once intervened with a 70-page affidavit demanding that the City of Ottawa adopt a bilingual policy. When the Liberal Party of Canada, the Canadian branch of Socialist International, wishes to wield the knout (*) for Quebec’s French culture, they are not shy. Yet here we are in the new millennium, French Canada still flirts with fascism while a weak federal government dithers. Not wishing to offend. Lip service paid to the Quebec “nation.” So polite.

“We are not infringing on children's freedom,” the spokesperson for the Montreal school board ironically insisted back in 2011. So it goes.

Amidst a fentanyl epidemic, climate change, pollution, famine, war, and misery across the globe, there is this bizarre call for “respect” in Quebec. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic more like. Continuing along this vein, while it might be easier to let the tsunami of change wash over her decks while the tongue troopers’ band plays on, still, you have to ask, when does Canadian tolerance become cowardice? Does Canada stand for anything anymore beyond not wishing to offend? Is Canada’s tolerance really a justification to do nothing, to be nothing – nihilistic – making Quebec’s …/ approach somehow principled, even brave? www.dialogue.ca

Tolerance and respect. At the heart of one’s identity, does the state belong? I wonder.

Mike Neilly, Dunrobin ON ♣

[EDITOR’S NOTE:

* Knout (in imperial Russia) a whip used to inflict punishment, often causing death.]

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Norwegian fish farms chose to locate in the location most damaging to wild salmon stocks Jim Erkiletian, Nanaimo BC

We should evict all foreign-owned fish farms from BC because they are in direct competition with wild salmon and employ programs to destroy wild salmon stocks. When the first Norwegian farms opened here they were sited in the Broughton Archipelago where they have direct impacts on 80% of the wild salmon spawned in the Salish Sea basin. Only 20% migrate through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which has recently been suggested as a new site for fish farms.

The farms attract sea lice which can then be ejected into the wild salmon migrations by feeding farmed salmon poisons that cause the lice, now fully grown, into the open water searching for new victims.

Wild salmon migrations are flanked by seals and sea lions who protect the salmon from dogfish sharks, mackerel and other aquatic predators, but not sea lice.

Fish farmers generally kill seals and sea lions.

Fish farms also inject huge amounts of diseases, and antibiotics meant to cure them, into the open sea. Wild salmon often have no natural resistance to the diseases of Atlantic salmon grown in the farms. And the antibiotics often poison them too.

There were 30,000 Norwegians involved in anti-fish farming organizations when the first ones opened in BC. They have already lost about 100 wild salmon rivers. Many farms moved to Scotland where they destroyed another 60 rivers before coming under regulations. Here in BC Stephen Harper and Fisheries Minister Gale Shea welcomed them by gutting the Fisheries laws and reducing regulatory staff.

With many places they could have sited farms that would not have impacted salmon migration, they chose the one spot where they could do the most damage. They should have been evicted then. ♣

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Troubled Waters – Losing Our Wild salmon Susanne Lawson, Tofino BC

I am sitting in a boat near a Marine Harvest fish farm in the Broughton Archipelago...I walk outside and the air stinks of acrid, penned Atlantic salmon and feed pellets that are continuously sprayed into the pens.

The sound of the sprayers never ceases. It is depressing to see these fish leaping in the air trapped in these stinking pens. Salmon should never be in pens.

This farm has been occupied by local First Nations for almost three months now. There are multiple First Nations involved, very dedicated people.

There is a camp in the woods of kayakers standing by to help...they call themselves Kyactivists. These are public lands, public waters. There is another camp of people at a land based house nearby that was built by Marine Harvest which First Nations occupied. Marine Harvest has several land based houses for workers, leased quite permanently (it seems) for comfort and ease of access.

At the farm, 5 pens are empty as the protest has so far www.dialogue.ca

prevented more Atlantic salmon from being restocked and 4 are full of approximately 8-month-old fish.

Marine Harvest does not have permits to restock at this time, yet are determined to go ahead.

There are about 4 to 5 boats belonging to supporters of the protest with people aboard them, providing support, transportation and warmth.

The weather has been stormy, cold and wet...it is mid November 2017.

First Nations people...Chiefs and their families, have maintained a presence here since August, with two young women, Molina Dawson and Karissa Glendale, in their early twenties, of the Musgmagw and Namgis First Nations, living on the floats. Chief Ernest Alfred and other hereditary First Nations of Alert Bay occupied Swanson Island fish farm and Wicklow fish farms this fall. Marine Harvest came in and stocked the pens in front of the Chiefs who were occupying the farm in full traditional regalia.

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treating the area with great respect and understanding, one of them doing his doctorate in law and jurisdiction. It is a sweet space with big trees and a creek bubbling nearby.

Marine Harvest has gone to court seeking an injunction to have everyone removed. The judge has given both parties until Dec. 14th to present their case and in the meantime the First Nations agreed to remove their occupation and buildings. Marine Harvest wants to go ahead and restock the empty pens with Atlantic salmon smolts despite First Nations demanding they don't.

Things are at a standstill right now, sad that nothing is preventing more Atlantic salmon and diseases to continue to prevail in B.C. waters, especially after such a concerted effort to bring about positive change to such a destructive process as fish farming. So much and so many are losing ... commercial fishermen, sports fishing, families dependent on the wild salmon resource, bears, eagles, trout, marine life like seals, sea lions, and so much more...it is impossible to weigh the values of what wild salmon have provided for the coast.

Wild salmon are on the brink of disaster...wild stocks are crashing, Alaska has closed all Chinook fishing

and bears and more have been starving on the coast.

Sea lice are out of control all over the world where these farms exist and have been found on emaciated trout, ling cod, herring and more. An application for 18 hectares of pesticide use has been made for Clayoquot Sound waters by another fish farm company, Cermaq, owned by Mitsubishi and operated out of Norway. We are all losing while others are profiting from our loss.

How far does this go...until our amazing wild salmon are extinct? I hope for sanity to prevail.... If this doesn't turn around now, the irreplaceable loss of our wild salmon migration and all it nourishes will be one of the greatest regrets of this century.

Sincerely, Susanne Lawson, Tofino, B.C. councilfire@hotmail.com

♣

*** Thanks for that huge commitment Susanne Doers are rare Talkers to the converted, common All Best, David Ellis, Merritt B.C davidellis@lightspeed.ca ♣

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Reovirus – RCMP – Risks Marine Harvest – Going Rogue?

The occupation of salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago passed the 70-day mark (as of Nov.2nd) Alexandra Morton, Sointula BC

Below is the link to the story from just two of those days. There is enormous progress being made, but it will backslide if some of us don't remain on the front lines: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/AM-mh-rogue “The police crowded us on the narrow walkway between the ship and the pens. We were peaceful, but none of us would move. I am in awe of the young women who stood with me. Such bravery and selfcontrol as the tears rolled down our cheeks at the terrible thing being done to their territory, our future. As hereditary chief Robert Mountain has said only days before to premier Horgan - this is genocide. Robbing a people of their most valuable food resource is a form of genocide in a country struggling to reconcile with First Nations. One culture cannot reconcile with another while destroying their food resources.

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I know most won't or can't step onto the front lines of this fight, but I am asking you to please help us continue. A lot of progress is being made, but it will stall Alexandra Morton (right) with the and backslide young women who stood with her at the occupation. if some of us can't stand toe-to-toe with those who are destroying this part of our world. […] Read in full at link above.

To support Alexandra Morton, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/last-stand-for-wild-salmon ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Remembering Laurie Gourlay Please...make Laurie's dreams a reality! Sign the petition... Yours, June Ross From: Guy Dauncey, Nov 19, 2017

Sad news – Laurie Gourlay has passed away

We have very sad news about the passing of a local Yellow Point friend, and a committed activist for a better world, Laurie William Gourlay.

Early morning on November 14th, Laurie passed away in the arms of his one true love Jackie and surrounded by their 6 Lassie collies, on their farm (in Cedar, Vancouver Island, BC).

Laurie leaves behind many friends, family and his loving wife of 41 years, Jackie Moad. He was an amazing, energetic, dedicated, kind man, full of light, love and a 'brother' to many.

An eloquent writer, a life-long defender of the environment, a community activist, Laurie was a tireless advocate for the designation of the Salish Sea as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Laurie was piped into his final resting place at Royal Oaks Burial Park in Victoria on November 20th. In true Laurie fashion he has requested a green burial.

It would be the highest honour, if in lieu of donations, you would sign the House of Commons Petition E-1269.

It was Laurie's greatest desire to see the Salish Sea recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The link where you can sign the petition is here: https://tinyurl.com/petition-salish (until Jan. 23, 18) ♣

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Attitudes of Gratitude Bradley Olsen, the Joseph Campbell Foundation [EXTRACT & LINK] Meister Eckhardt, a German theo-

logian born in the mid-13th century, once remarked that if the only prayer one ever uttered was “thank you,” that would be enough. Eckhardt reminds us of how important it may be to actually give voice to the feelings of gratitude that we so often are aware of only as a sensation or a feeling of gratification, satisfaction, relief, delight, self-worth, competence, or a generalized sense of amour-propre. These are the feelings we have witnessing the babble of infants, the happiness of our children, the sounds of sea gulls and a breath-taking ocean view, soft summer nights and the sounds of crickets and flashes of lightening bugs, comfortable communities and loving friends. It’s impossible to not feel gratitude at the recognition of life at its best.

But where do we find gratitude when life isn’t at its best—an arguably more important task. Perhaps not surprisingly, Joseph Campbell has something to say about this as well. In a 1976 Parabola magazine interview Campbell is quoted saying, “ I’ve described in my books what I call the four main functions of myth www.dialogue.ca

[…] The second is the cosmological function of relating us to the cosmos as now known in such a way that its mystery can be experienced, that we can relate to it with gratitude.”

First, and this is extremely important, Campbell notes that the cosmological function relates us to the universe as we now know it; that somehow in the ongoing mytho-imaginal conceptualization of the universe, contemporary science and cosmological cartography have an important role to play. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, myth allows us to relate to the cosmos—the universe of all that exists, including everything that is in our lives and all that we presently experience—with gratitude.

Finding and expressing genuine gratitude for everything we are experiencing is a tall order, a difficult thing to find within oneself in difficult times. And yet, finding gratitude in challenging times is an essential component that leads one to continue building the psychological quality called resilience. Resiliency is predicated upon a series of struggles—gratitude may be born of a single struggle—and a willingness to …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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explore deeply for oneself the meaning of the impact of the events one faces and not dismiss or hurry through painful and often tragic situations by uttering the banal and insipid platitudes we all hear all too often in times of pain and tragedy. Gratitude results from being willing to sit with and slowly wander through, as best as one can, all the nuances of one’s life in this particular moment.

I think it’s important to give voice to our gratitude, to say it aloud, or as Meister Eckhardt put it, utter the prayer of thanks. It’s important to talk about gratitude even if only to ourselves, because as most of us have found, speaking about something, naming the experience, makes it seem more real. Words are magical that way. Witches and warlocks, for instance, cast spells via incantations, a word derived from the Latin word, incantare, which means “to chant upon,” and suggests that words somehow have the ability to materialize image, power, and desire, among other familiar

artifacts of magic. In the Gospel of John is the phrase, “The word became flesh…” and that suggests to me that words, quite literally, matter.

I am grateful for your reading and your interest in the work of Joseph Campbell; thank you.

Best regards, Bradley Olson, Ph.D. LINK: https://www.jcf.org/mythblast-attitudes-of-gratitude/ Bradley Olson, Ph.D., is a former police officer who returned to school to earn a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and literature, two Master’s degrees in psychology, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Mythology.

Would you like to further support the work of the Joseph Campbell Foundation? As a small thank you for your financial support, we’re offering a free eBook download of one the world’s greatest collection of folk myths and fairy tales, The Thousand and One Nights, translated by John Payne and edited by Joseph Campbell. Find out more at link: https://www.jcf.org/works/donate/ ♣

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Canada’s Parliamentarians complicit in decades of 'horrific human rights abuses' by Canadian industries in third world countries…

Comment from: Stephanie McDowall, Nanaimo [Link follows (right) to article in The Guardian, Dec. 13, 2017]

It's not just the Canadian mining industries that are at fault. It is also a few Canadian manufacturing industries located in third world countries.... Haiti being the country where I am most familiar with such abuses taking place. I might add that both our Conservative and Liberal Federal Governments have been fully aware of what takes place, as have our Opposition Parties. The Canadian MSM have also known for years. They have chosen to be silent. Why??

Political donations of course.... on the part of the political parties and our MSM almost always supports the status quo.

Rape, murder, the burning of homes & agricultural crops all take place. Canada's Governments and most Parliamentarians have known. They are complicit.

Let them try & deny it. Non-white people don't matter much until it becomes public knowledge. I have been forwarding relevant information to these people for years. Literally years. They probably have not read most of what I have sent. Our Parliamentarians are badly in need of more staff.

- Stephanie McDowall, smcdow@telus.net

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Guatemalan women take on Canada's mining giants over 'horrific human rights abuses' LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/world/americas

A group of indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ women has launched a precedent-setting legal challenge that could cast a chill over Canada’s vast mining interests.

“On the 20th floor of an office tower in the heart of Toronto’s financial district … It was the first time Choc Cac had ever left Guatemala. But the story that she and 10 other Maya Q’eqchi’ women had come to tell is at the heart of a precedent-setting legal challenge pitting indigenous people against a transnational corporation – and which has cast a chill over Canada’s vast mining industry.” … A team of Toronto lawyers seized on the Canada connection, filing civil lawsuits that argue that the Canadian parent company … was negligent when it came to monitoring the actions of its Guatemalan subsidiary. […] Read more at: LINK: https://tinyurl.com/tg-guatemala-can ♣ www.dialogue.ca

”Intimate Details”

Remembering Dylan Grandfather, son/father and grandson together in their collective tribute to a magnificent Flat-coated retriever …

Our dog Dylan died October 9th. Cheryl J.S. Porter and I found him lying dead on the grass in our backyard -- apparently a sudden and massive heart attack. He was 8½ years old. Very fit. Very well. Sometimes life turns quickly and savagely. We have a hole in our house and a hole in our hearts…

Our grandchildren, without knowing it, said their farewells yesterday after our Thanksgiving dinner. They told Dylan they loved him, said goodbye and kissed him.

Dylan, Dylan Where are you Please come quickly I love you Poem by Kaizen Porter, 9:

In tribute to a very special dog, we are reprinting the story about Dylan that was John’s first contribution to Dialogue, five years ago.

My Dylan J.S. Porter

No, not the Welsh poet. Not even the folksinger after whom he’s named. No, Dylan the black dog, my Flatcoated retriever. The one with the long snout, narrow almond-coloured eyes and scraggly ears. The one who runs like a race horse.

He anchors my day – opening and closing it with a vigorous walk.

As a puppy he slept on my bed for four days in a crate (my wife slept on the sofa), so I could poke my fingers through the bars to reassure him and quiet the relentless whimpering and howling. There’s no cry in the dog world quite as piercing as the Flat-coat’s highpitched emission of fear and anxiety.

Dylan bonded with me during those first nights. Ever since he has wanted to be physically close, lying on www.dialogue.ca

Photo: Daniel J. Porter

my foot while I write, putting a paw over my leg while I eat.

Flat-coats give new intensity to the term “contact species.”

Dogs are a huge part of my earliest and happiest memories, more constant than grandparents whom I seldom saw, more necessary than friends. I feel calm when I’m around dogs, less intense, more at ease in the world. My wife shares this deep affection for dogs and psychic calm and integration when petting a dog or walking with it.

I can understand why the French critic Hélène Cixous has never wanted to own one. She accurately says, “A dog is a threat. What is threatening about dogs is their terrible love… This infinite, complete, and limitless giving of love is exhausting for a human being…Such limitless love doesn’t fit our economy.”

The French novelist Anatole France once memorably wrote, “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” Parts of my soul come awake in the presence of a dog, come alive in the presence of my Dylan. He gives his best (presence, affection, devotion) and receives my best (tenderness, exercise, care). I admire his high spirits, his playfulness, his stoicism in pain, how he takes the world in by his nostrils, how he licks it into friendship.

As a kid you watch older people with their dogs and you make vows: When I’m older and have my own dog, I’ll never …/ 1. kiss the dog; VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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2. talk to the dog as if he’s human; 3. refer to myself as daddy or my wife as mommy.

4. boast about the dog Then when you have your own all the rules are broken. I kiss my Dylan a dozen times a day, talk to him as if he’s my younger brother, say things like, “Go see

your mommy” or “Come to daddy,” and I’m constantly going on about his speed and balanced temperament. I make a fool of myself in all the ways I swore I wouldn’t.

J. S. Porter P.S. Photos of Dylan taken by my son Daniel J. Porter ♣

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The following was written in memory of Mark & Susan’s beloved mini-Australian shepherd Penny, who was struck and killed by a truck on the night of Dec. 27, 2015 (photos, p.1,2)

Song of the Empathetic Beast (an elegy) Susan McCaslin, Langley BC

Life on earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.

– Lynn Margulis

1 A luminous fox brown, white, and amber huddles in our dog’s fur Night wind summons her eyes to the moon where her howls erupt as music wilding our domesticity 2 This Oak Bay beach where I walk is skin holding my skin holding foot nerves that no longer sign their signals as before Yet on the night after the night she died my small brown dog curled at my feet at the foot of the bed where she had curled before still sniffing and crooning She with her wisdom neurons 14 dialogue

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nosed deep past skin and bone to lick the numbness from my feet Cell to cell microbial touch in the mystery of her sweet black nose her laving tongue where she keened at my feet her sea-riffled song— song of the empathetic beast 3 My husband and I wade in a Cariboo Lake within his dream. A whir, a break in clouds.

He points skyward, dark spots, soon a flock, a troop. Bald eagles ride in vector-shape (like geese, but eagles flocking in a V?).

Circling fierceness makes us cower like mice.

Two leaders plummet, yet no talons tear.

Instead their feathery cape of wings wraps round our heads, our shoulders, lost in soft embrace, such gentleness, the strange largesse of power.

Weeks later Penny slaughtered by a truck, daughter’s car totalled, our house vandalized.

We wonder how this emissary dream held precognition, consolation—awe.

4 In the photo, hunched at our red canoe’s prow

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Penny rides. A red patch gleams at the back of her neck

She gazes across Young Lake in the Cariboo

small as a copper penny then— soon to grow full span

where taunting loons draw from her throat her own primal yip

♣

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Book Review Into the Open ~ by Susan McCaslin Review by J.S. Porter, Hamilton, Ontario Susan McCaslin’s Into the Open: Poems New and Selected (Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2017).

For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and things. You must know the animals, you must feel how the birds fly …. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings…; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained . . .; …to mornings by the sea…to nights of travel . . . and it is still not enough.

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge: A Novel It’s not easy to be a poet of the calibre of Susan McCaslin. You need to see an object, or a being, in its fullness, but also its surround, its interconnections and interdependencies. You need to know words intimately, their textures and sounds; you need to know birds and trees and dogs; you need to be able to enter lives foreign to yours as if they were your own. This is one of McCaslin’s great talents: to enter another life, or life form, and re-animate it. When she writes about William Blake, she becomes Blake or someone in his circle. Likewise for Teresa of Avila, Paul Cézanne, John Keats and other luminaries, she becomes the Other, ingests them, speaks from their centre. She is always open to the unexpected and the quiet unannounced miracles of the day.

In “Chickadee,” the speaker is driving along and a black-capped chickadee trills her into meditation, “lifts it/over the steering wheel and beyond the car.” The speaker closes the poem with an invocation to the bird: www.dialogue.ca

www.spiritbookword.net

Dear bird, return and draw again that keening song, that circling kaddish on loan to air.

A poem entitled simply “Dog” addresses the dog as “you, Nose of Creation/rolling tumult in grass/vocabulary unencompassed/by “come,” “sit,” “stay.” Of all the words I’ve read applied to dogs, none honours their being so simply and accurately as the phrase “Nose of Creation.” And nothing I’ve read reprimands so gently our tendency to think ourselves masters over beings for whom our controlling-vocabulary is much more limited than we realize.

In a poem whose title “Dwelling in Possibility” McCaslin likely borrows from Emily Dickinson, the speaker draws near to aspects of nature for a moment with vivid and memorable language, then has the good sense to let go: Cedars rise from duff their green names wide-open cadenzas Concatenation of crows— nothing is as it is for long These two lines “nothing is as it is/for long” summarize the life’s work of First Nations artist Norval Morrisseau where human and animal forms contain each other and morph in and out of each other at will.

Quite often in McCaslin, language rubs up against that which has no language, or at least no …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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language recognizable by human beings. In a longish poem “Wilderness/Poetry” she explores how poetry engages wilderness by attempting to call it into speech: the abyss is a roiling cauldron spewing up forms so lovely they silence speech.

The speaker humbly recognizes that “There is a syllabus we cannot master/and it has no name.”

She is surer of language’s limitations than she is of language’s potential for control and mastery.

In his very fine Introduction to Into the Open, Russell Thornton takes note of how frequently magnolia, flower and tree, have presence in McCaslin’s poetry. He writes: “Botanists believe that the magnolia has existed since the beginning of time, and may be the first flower.” In “Writing to Magnolia,” McCaslin speaks directly to her subject, “and you, Magnolia,/casting your fleshy dress/like snow at my feet.” Along with the whiteness of the flower and of snow, one pictures an Agnes Martin painting where a white grid seems to dissolve into invisibility. As in a Martin painting, there is more in a McCaslin poem than the eye is first able to discern.

White is the central colour in Into the Open—” white meditation,” “ white flutter,” “ white dolphin,” “ white lion,” “ white arms,” “ muslin’s white,” “ white stone,” “ white door,” “ beurres blanc,” “ white shirt,” “ white nun,” etc. If only a rich patron, in recognition of Susan McCaslin’s nearly score of books and chapbooks of poetry and her one-of-a-kind contribution to Canadian letters, would fund the cost of lavish reproductions of Agnes Martin’s paintings to accompany the poems. Seldom does linkage

between poet and painting seem so right.

If white is the key colour of the book, flow is the key word. In “Omega Suite” the speaker suggests that one of the duties of the poet is “attending the flow.” In her poem to Wisdom, “Dear Sophia,” McCaslin writes, “one body/bowing/not as to a king/but to what flows.” The lines bring back to mind an earlier poem, “Mindfulness,” which concludes with these lines: “But be in your place/as the globed magnolia.”

You are not the first or the last to change.

Flow, change, metamorphosis: these are the ways of nature, and of the world. How could it be otherwise within “wind-born” creation?

For a long time now, Susan McCaslin has been moving towards greater and greater openness, inclusiveness, wholeness. She has partaken in her work of the “big fruit salad of the Spirit.” She has drawn inspiration in particular from “the Galilean poet” whose gospel of justice and forgiveness still resounds throughout the world.

She has come to know the importance of being generous, as “The rainbow doesn’t stint.”

She has come to know this hard-won truth: Nothing divine charges a fee Everything is charged with love Poet Eva Tihanyi says if you can only read one book of poetry this year, read Into the Open.

For quick purchase, order it from the publisher’s website: https://www.inanna.ca/catalog/open-new-andselected/ [See book cover image on p.2]

J. S. Porter, Hamilton

♣

John will launch a new column, BOOK TALK, in the Spring issue, beginning with a 3-part series on Shakespeare.

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Susan McCaslin has published fourteen volumes of poetry. Her most recent is Into the Open: New and Selected Poems (Inanna Publications, Sept.

2017). Her previous ones include Painter, Poet, Mountain: After Cézanne (Quattro Books, 2016) and Demeter Goes Skydiving (University of Alberta Press, 2011), which was short-listed for the BC Book Prize (Dorothy Livesay Award)... Susan has also published a memoir, Into the Mystic: My Years with Olga (Inanna, 2014). She resides in Fort Langley, BC where she initiated the Han Shan Poetry Project as part of a successful campaign to protect an endangered rainforest along the Fraser River. Susan’s website: www.susanmccaslin.ca Susan’s column, “Resonance,” began in Dialogue with in Vol. 27, No.1 (2013) – after her story about the Han Shan Poetry Project. We look forward to hearing from Susan when time and inspiration permit! ♣

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www.dialogue.ca

Hard & Soft Edges…

HONOURING THE TREE OF LIFE

By Jim Taylor, Okanagan Centre BC, Aug. 7 2017

Christmas is just weeks away. Silver bells ring on city sidewalks, sleigh bells jingle in lanes. Coloured lights brighten the long dark nights.

And indoors, Christmas trees light up.

Our family used to go out and cut a tree. About 11 years ago, for various reasons, we switched to an artificial tree. I figure that eleven trees are still alive today, that wouldn't be otherwise.

“So what?” you scoff. Pines and firs on a Christmas tree farm were never intended to grow to maturity.

They were grown to be cut down, weren't they?

Maybe. But like us, they're living things.

Trees are, in fact, the oldest living things on the planet. A Bristlecone pine at a deliberately undisclosed location in California is supposed to be over 5,000 years old. It started growing before Egyptians built pyramids.

Fortunately, no one cut Christmas trees back then.

Trees are also the largest living things. Individual trees, like the redwoods in California, the Douglas firs in B.C.'s old-growth forests, are huge. But the biggest living thing on the planet is probably the multiple stems of a single Quaking Aspen* in Utah that covers 106 acres and weighs an estimated 6,000 metric tonnes.

SACRED TREES The ancient Druids had sacred groves. I suggest that every tree should be considered sacred.

Because we owe our existence to trees.

At one point in the planet's history, our atmosphere contained too little free oxygen for animals to survive.

But plants created oxygen as a waste product, thus enabling us oxygen-breathers to evolve to what we are today.

As the largest plants, trees did most of the work.

When my daughter was about 12, I gave her a small book of my poems -- short, mostly tongue-in-cheek -as a Christmas present. I hoped they would both entertain her and encourage her to see familiar things with different eyes.

In one of those poems, I called trees the stitches that held earth and sky together. If it weren't for trees, I www.dialogue.ca

suggested, the sky would go flying off and leave us with nothing to breathe.

LINKING EARTH AND SKY It’s not such a silly idea.

Visually, a slim trunk ties together roots and branches.

Both of which divide and spread to grab hold of as much soil and air as possible.

Their structure resembles the capillaries of human circulatory systems, the bronchioles and alveoli of human lungs.

If it weren't for trees, the sky would not fly off. But we wouldn't have air our lungs could use.

Our civilization, tragically, see trees mainly as a resource to be cut down, harvested, cut up for lumber or firewood. We fail to acknowledge that trees are the most efficient carbon-sinks we have, far surpassing human technologies.

That's how we got coal, the original fossil fuel. Coal is almost pure carbon, the remains of trees that fell in a forest long before anyone heard the sound of their falling.

But every year, we humans cut down about 15 billion more trees. Since that Bristlecone pine was a seedling, the planet has lost one-third of its trees. We clear land for farming. We bulldoze trees for housing developments. We clear-cut hillsides.

Christmas is about the only time in the year that we give trees a sacramental role in our lives. *******

Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved. To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca (and send a copy to dialogue@dialogue.ca too, thanks!) ♣ * In the Fishlake National Forest in Utah there is a colony of quaking aspen that is an estimated 80,000 years old, though no individual tree currently alive is anywhere near that age. Even the oldest non-clonal trees in the world, at some 4000+ years of age, don't approach the age of the root system of this organism, known as Pando, or the Trembling Giant. On the western edge of the Colorado Plateau a single root system has been metabolically alive for 80,000 years. Or maybe more: There's some debate on the age, with that figure being a conservative estimate.

Taken as a whole, all the individual trunks, branches and leaves weigh in at an estimated 6,600 short tons: The heaviest known organism on the planet. And it's a tree, or, rather, trees, operating on an entirely different time scale that most other plants and certainly any animal, covering 106 acres. (www.treehugger.com ) ♣ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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Retrospect Bonna Rouse, Grey-Bruce Writers, Owen sound, ON; mistawis@bmts.com

How many persons have lived in this body?

All the years I have had life and breath?

A laughing baby, a wide-eyed child, Expectantly awaiting Santa Claus?

A little girl, crying for a mother gone, Not understanding, simply taken away by death.

A teenager, struggling to grow, slipping back, Adulthood beckoning, Excitement not imagined, Perhaps unseen perils, a future unwritten.

Saddle shoes and poodle skirts, pincurls, and Bright, bright lipstick, just a little awareness There are boys out there - do they see me?

A career, called “work” back then, Finding independence, self-sustaining.

Watching other romances, wondering when.

Will there be someone for me one day?

Looking over the prospects, no happy choices, Am I just being picky? Too particular?

A ship came into harbor, and “choice” Walked off it, the future suddenly clear.

Growing affection, plans, hopes and dreams.

A white-clad bride, veiled ecstatic, apprehensive.

No thoughts then of ageing, illness or loss, A new person, a wife lives there now!

A mother, responsibility for little lives, Brownie Mom, Sunday School teacher, Activities surrounding children's growing.

Letting go, apron strings do not last forever.

The person inside has now become The caregiver for those who nurtured me.

Tears flow easily, I am alone again.

How swiftly the years together sped by!

The mirror is merciless, wrinkles, blotches, Gray hair, sags in unmentionable places.

Memories sustain my days, and lessons Learned long ago fortify and uphold.

Where are all those who dwelt in me?

A child, a stumbling teen, trying maturity, A responsible woman, loving God, Growing in knowledge of life.

And so, all the folk who lived within Are still there, perhaps more yet to come. ♣

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On Removing Rhetorical Redundancies…

Lawyers and the English Language Alexander Miller, Port Alberni

Years ago I drafted home-made wills for myself and my wife in ordinary, everyday English - a language about which I care even when I'm not strictly proficient with it. I took them to a BC notary to have them checked for legal acceptability. To my horror what was returned to me – for a very significant fee – was a pair of rewritten documents containing needlessly and absurdly repetitive clauses as well as words (?) like “heretobefore;” and filled with arcane phrases and double – triple? – redundancies like “ Nominate, constitute and appoint,” “Give, devise and bequeath” and so on. One would have thought (I'm the “one”) that lawyers, notaries and the like, being intelligent & well educated, would have the smarts to see through this nonsense, rebel against and reject it to avoid puking. Apparently not.

What is the matter with these people - and who do 18 dialogue

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they think they/we are? It's not just the legal professions of course. Nearly all government documents suffer from an inability to state clearly what they mean to convey. The same goes for much of the correspondence I receive from corporate groups. It often seems designed simply to “Cover their backsides” and satisfy the accounting & legal departments while, if possible, confusing the customer. Even social and charitable organisations fall for the idea that they should use the same sort of bafflegab, presumably thinking it makes them sound somehow more “legitimate.”

What can be done about these insults to the intelligence of the general public?

Feeling the need to update our wills, or just clarify them, I've written the professional bodies for the lawyers and notaries of BC, asking for the names of any www.dialogue.ca

members who will write documents in Plain Language. Next I think I'll start to harass our MLAs and MPs on the subject. I think there's a facility for online petitions that could help exert some pressure. I've never been an activist before but “The humour is on me now.” Are there folks on here that will join me?

Write somebody! Grow the movement for plain (but complete) communication!!

Rick Mercer are you with us?

I claim NO copyright for this article. By all means quote me but please don't misquote or distort anything I've written. You can write me at speug@shaw.ca . It's a disposable address which will be deleted if abused.

By the way, I've reviewed all of I've written here and removed quite a number of rhetorical redundancies; but probably not all .... ;-) Peace, (without apathy), Alexander Miller ♣

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An open letter from Jewish academics and elders to McGill's administration regarding false allegations of student anti-Semitism From Abby Lippman - Independent Jewish Voices – Montreal, actionalert@ijvcanada.org Nov. 15, 2017 This letter was sent Nov. 13, 2017, to Principal Susan Fortier, Provost Christopher Manfredi, and Secretariat Board of Governors and Senate Maria Kontzidis.

As Jews, we declare solidarity with the McGill students who are currently being demonized for supporting Palestinian rights. They are being labeled antiSemitic by major establishment organizations and the university Principal, in an apparent campaign to suppress Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activism on campus. BDS is a non-violent movement for equality for Palestinians and a just peace for everyone in Israel-Palestine.

We understand that the McGill student government (SSMU) has been a contested space around BDS resolutions, but it is disingenuous and disrespectful to label students who support BDS as anti-Semitic. They exercised their legitimate right to oppose student officials who are anti-BDS. There are Jewish students on both sides of this issue as well.

Political disagreements among students should be dealt with by respectful debate, not libel. We applaud all students who speak up about the need to distinguish anti-Semitism from anti-Zionism.

Signed: Abby Lippman, Professor (retired) Medicine, McGill University, Michael Dworkind, MDCM, Associate Professor, McGill Medical School, Eric Schragge, Professor, Dir. (retired) School and Community and Public Affairs, Concordia, Yakov Rabkin, Professor, History, Universite de Montreal, Larry Haiven, Professor Emeritus, Department of Management, Saint Mary's University, Harry Shannon, Professor Emeritus, McMaster University, Sid Frankel, Associate Professor, U of Manitoba, Sheryl Nestel, Professor (retired) Department of Sociology and Equity Studies (OISE/UofT), Dorit Naaman, Associate Professor, Queen's University, Joanne Naiman, Professor Emerita, Ryerson University, Stephen Levine, Professor Emeritus, York University, Neil Naiman, Senior Scholar, York University, Diana Ralph, MSW, Ph.D. Associate Professor (retired) Social Work, Carleton University, Kevin Gould, Associate Professor, Geography, Concordia University, Dr. Adrian Fine, Professor of Medicine, Marty Roth, Emeritus professor of English, University of Minnesota, Dan Freeman-Malloy, PhD, University of Exeter, Dr. Yoella Teplitsky, MD, Dr. Miriam Garfinkle, Retired MD, Cheryl Gaster, LL.B., C.Med, Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, MSc Pharmacology, U. of Toronto, Bruce Katz, BA Literature SGWU, BA History Waterloo, MA English Studies UdeM, Adrian Fine, Ph.D. Medicine, Freda Knott, Retired Teacher, Edward Clarke, Psychologist, Scott Weinstein, BSN, Arthur Milner, Playwright, Eva Sharell, Elizabeth Block, Wolfe Erlichman, Zvi Gaster, Sid Shniad, Carl Rosenberg, Gordon Doctorow, Marion Pollack, Mira Khazzam, Tali Loselevich, Smadar Carmon, D. Ryce ♣

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Academic Freedom and Responsibility: Understanding the case of Professor Anthony Hall – Update December 2, 2017, by Andrew Blair LINK: https://academicfreedomanthonyhall.ca/

The news is mixed.

The good news is that as of November 23, 2017 Professor Anthony Hall has been reinstated to his position on the faculty of the University of Lethbridge after having been suspended for over a year. This accords www.dialogue.ca

with an agreement made between the Board of Governors, the Faculty Association, and Dr. Hall himself.

The agreement was reached in the aftermath of a judicial decision handed down on Sep. 15, 2017 that went against an attempt on the part of the Board to oust Professor Hall without going through the agreed upon procedures laid out in the Faculty Handbook. …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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The university has already set the course schedules for the spring term in 2018, so Professor Hall will not be back in the classroom at least until September 2018.

In the meantime there are plans to set up a committee of investigation composed of members agreeable to both the Board of Governors and the Faculty Association to assess the validity of charges against Hall. Exactly what the charges are have been left unspecified.

There are no plans to set up a committee to investigate the failure of the Board of Governors to fulfill its obligation to protect academic freedom as set out in Article 11 of the Faculty Handbook: “The Board and Association recognize the need to protect academic freedom. Academic freedom is generally understood as the right to teach, engage in scholarly activity, and perform service without interference and without jeopardizing employment.

This freedom is central to the University’s mission and purpose and entails the right to participate in public life, to criticize University or other administrations, to champion unpopular positions, to engage in frank discussion of controversial matters, and to raise questions and challenges which may be viewed as counter to the beliefs of society.”

The wider context for this is that a series of wars have been prosecuted in the Middle East in large part because of the impetus given to a belligerent attitude adopted in Western states (U.S., Canada, U.K., etc.) in the aftermath of the atrocity called “9/11.” Canada has participated in some of these wars, though not all.

Many have wondered whether the finger of blame has been deliberately pointed at the wrong culprit in order to generate this belligerent attitude. But, as President George Bush said on November 10, 2001, soon after 9/11, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th …”

Ever since, those who doubt the official story have been relegated to the lunatic fringe. Amongst these are Professor Hall and his partner on the False Flag Weekly News Youtube show, Dr. Kevin Barrett. As with the abridgment of Dr. Hall’s academic freedom, Dr. Barrett’s academic freedom was breached at the University of Wisconsin.

Is there not a conflict between the Bush directive and Article 11 of the Handbook?

Those of us who have studied war propaganda know that the theory that 9/11 was a false flag fits with the usual patterns of deception that take place prior to 20 dialogue

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going to war. It may at first seem counter-intuitive that democracies would be particularly vulnerable to deceptive practices, but in fact they are. Under dictatorship, citizens are forced to do as they are told, but in a democracy a greater degree of consent is required – and so the wealthy and powerful often deceive the citizenry into doing what they want them to do. The existence of such patterns does not, of course, prove anything about 9/11, but it makes the unofficial conspiracy theories about 9/11 seem less preposterous to those who are aware of them.

Universities have a responsibility to resist deceptive practices, and to pursue the truth on the basis of evidence and good reasoning. They cannot fulfil this responsibility if they do not have freedom from political interference. This is one of the central components of academic freedom. Not all professors need take on the issue of 9/11 of course. But those who do should have protection against the likes of the directive from George W. Bush. Without such protection, universities cease to be pillars of democracy.

This brings me to the bad news. The campaign to keep Professor Hall out of the classroom continues. As explained in the letter below this campaign has reached into the office of the Premier of Alberta. Now I actually am a fan of Premier Rachel Notley. She appears to me to be a good person, and not at all an enemy of democracy. But I believe she has been deceived and unduly influenced by the B’nai Brith.

The B’nai Brith has been sapping the life-blood of democracy by interfering with freedom of expression.

Their allies collect information on individuals, professors and organizations, which they then target in order to silence them. Their information on Professor Hall may be found here. They have every right to collect this information, and to their opinion of the people and organizations they target. They also have the legal right to call for the dismissal of people they disagree with, but they do not have the legal right to defame them, as they have done in the case of Professor Hall.

However, even if the B’nai Brith has the legal right to call for someone’s dismissal (without defamation) it does not follow that they are morally right to do so.

Given their opinions of Hall and Barrett what the B’nai Brith should do is dispute whatever of their assertions they wish and engage them in an exchange of reasons why they believe that their own views are correct and those of Hall and Barrett are not. That is www.dialogue.ca

the democratic way. Should the B’nai Brith choose to take this approach, I will facilitate in whatever way I can – for example, by making pages on this website available for such an exchange. I doubt that the B’nai Brith will take me up on this offer, as they have not replied to my own comments on their website, as recorded here, but deleted them instead. However, my offer stands.

Better still, why doesn’t the B’nai Brith contact Hall or Barrett to ask for airtime on False Flag Weekly News? If they refuse it will tend to discredit them. If they accept maybe both sides can come to a better understanding.

Unfortunately, the Premier of Alberta appears to have gotten taken in by the B’nai Brith. So, on November 29, 2017, I emailed her an open letter, which appears below. I urge you to read it, and, if you agree with it, then I urge you to send her a letter in support at premier@gov.ab.ca/ You do not, of course, have to

agree with anything at all that Professor Hall or his colleague Kevin Barrett say in order to defend their right to express their views. And if you do not agree with my letter you are of course welcome to tell Premier Notley that too.

Other email addresses you might wish to use: Alberta Advanced Education Minister Marlin Schmidt: ae.minister@gov.ab.ca University of Lethbridge President Mike Mahon: mike.mahon@uleth.ca President of the University of Lethbridge Faculty Association Andrea Amelinckx: andrea.amelinckx@uleth.ca Prof. Anthony Hall: hall@uleth.ca Dr. Kevin Barrett: truthjihad@gmail.com Me, Andrew Blair: andublair@gmail.com Comments on anything on this site (link below) are welcome, but especially if there is something you disagree with. Just scroll to the bottom of this page and enter them.

[You can also read the Open letter to the Premier of Alberta at the website]: https://academicfreedomanthonyhall.ca/ ♣

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THIS HARVEY WEINSTEIN BUSINESS. . . . . .

Derek Skinner, Victoria BC

The other day I was watching an old movie “Ziegfeld Follies” or some such name with beautiful, scantily-clad women parading for the titillation of the viewer and it made me think about all this sex business and how the revelations industry got started.

Sex has always been one of the most powerful drivers of society, but Victorian morality codes and a fairly strong religious element were keeping most of it under control during the early 1900’s.

Then came the Great War and thousands of lusty young men were let loose on the countryside where thousands of willing young women were available. Hollywood started showing fairly explicit movies and casual sex for recreation became available if not common.

During the 30’s Depression, my father, an ex-policeman and having lived in the Middle East, started a shop selling pharmaceuticals in the slum area where we lived and provided “ ergot of rye” abortions to the women of the back streets who had to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy for whatever reason.

At the same time, religion took a beating because people could not relate to a God that had permitted www.dialogue.ca

such horrors as world war, particularly when he was invoked by both sides. Secular principles spread widely and together with social studies of motivations and selection of specific personalities for certain jobs and the understanding of the fundamental drive of the sex hormones, sex became a commonplace topic for discussion. And then came the “Pill.”

Not everyone was impressed with these developments, but among the writers, entertainment industries in radio and film and even the Mainstream Press – and to some extent among the general population – sex became accepted and practiced.

In the middle of this milieu you have the Type A personalities, sociopaths and outright sex addicts who rise to positions of authority by virtue of talent and drive.

And they take advantage of consensual sex and push the envelope particularly when they encounter a NO. I am not excusing or condoning harassment of women by men in authority. However, they are taking advantage of an environment that leads towards such behaviour and until the environment can be cleaned up this behaviour will continue.

As for myself, I do regard recreational and consensual sex as a most pleasant and healthy release of tension and would recommend it where available. ♣ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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The origin of the nuclear arms race…

From Herb Spencer, Surrey BC spsi99@telus.net

The recently available documents (noted in the Global Research article below) show that the US military mindset was just as bad as the Nazis; their idea of war was to kill as many enemy CIVILIANS as possible, as they had been doing since their mass bombing of German and Japanese cities. The really scary thing is that this mindset may still be widespread today in the Pentagon, ready to start WWIII for Trump.

LINK: http://tinyurl.com/crg-wipeUSSRoff [article at www.GlobalResearch.ca is available in English, French, German & Russian] [EXTRACT] According to a secret document dated September 15, 1945, “the Pentagon had envisaged blowing up the Soviet Union with a coordinated nuclear attack directed against major urban areas.

All major cities of the Soviet Union were included in the list of 66 “strategic” targets. The tables below (see online, link above) categorize each city in terms of area in square miles and the corresponding number of atomic bombs required to annihilate and kill the inhabitants of selected urban areas.

Today, neither the 1945 plan to blow up the Soviet Union nor the underlying cause of the nuclear arms race are acknowledged. The Western media has largely focussed its attention on the Cold War USUSSR confrontation. The plan to annihilate the Soviet Union dating back to World War II and the infamous Manhattan project are not mentioned.

Washington’s Cold War nuclear plans are invariably presented in response to so-called Soviet threats, when in fact it was the U.S. September 1945 plan to wipe out the Soviet which motivated Moscow to develop its nuclear weapons capabilities.

Had the US decided not to develop nuclear weapons for use against the Soviet Union, the nuclear arms race would not have taken place. Neither The Soviet Union nor the People’s Republic of China would have developed nuclear capabilities as a means of “Deterrence.”

The Soviet Union lost 26 million people during World War II. The USSR developed its own atomic bomb in 1949, in response to 1942 Soviet intelligence reports on the Manhattan Project. ♣

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John Shadbolt, Acton ON

That’s My Take On It

The Nasty American Team Org According to our PM, and Mr. Trump, and of course all the mainstream media, North Korea is led by a nut.

But what kind of a nut? Seems to me he may well be the sane one, with all of our brilliant politicians and media just not understanding the way the things are.

The USA has decided to rule all of the world that does not do as it is told by the USA. For some reason, this means destroying countless countries, Libya, Syria, plus, plus.

All of the countries that have been destroyed had no means of defending themselves against the bullies mostly called NATO, (Nasty American Team org) the action arm of the USA. Now NATO (Nasty American Team Org) does not like to attack countries that can retaliate.

So now you know why NATO has not invaded and destroyed North Korea. Let’s hope other countries get as wise as those nuts in North Korea.

John Shadbolt, cdr000@primus.ca ♣

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RE: Brad Wall - A good man, but not all Conservative* Comment sent to John Robson in response to his article in the National Post (link below) Kim McConnell, Ottawa ON

I think that Conservatism is a dying philosophy in the world today – led specially by Hollywood, the Western world is losing ground on ALL fronts. Our muchtouted worship of “Freedom” is being used against every idea we have of Life & the Sanctity of Life. We have thrown out every principle of value inherited by 22 dialogue

WINTER 2017-18, VOL. 31, NO. 2

our Judeo-Christian heritage & replaced it with NOTHING!! Everybody sets his/her own standard of right or wrong, & ‘Reason’ is being used to guide our behaviour. However, without the guidelines of what constitutes Reason, we all interpret our laws in any way we like. Even the judges interpret our laws according to their own philosophies & twist their …/ www.dialogue.ca

judgements to suit the politics of the time.

I don't blame Brad Wall for not being able to be a true conservative – our citizens do not appreciate true conservatism. As a politician, you're supposed to win votes & use the power of your position (if you win) to change society to reflect some, if not all, of your ideas.

You try to steer a course that you can win with & if you cannot follow the straight path, you find a detour.

When your detour is beyond your own conscience, then you stop the journey & take a rest. That is the point Brad is at – he has found out that Saskatchewan is no longer willing to “tighten” their collective belts – they want more of things that they see other provinces getting, regardless of whether they can afford it. Quebec gets by very comfortably being given a huge portion of the Wealth Redistribution scheme, Ontario has a debt

of over $300 billion but Ontarians are not too worried.

The burden just gets passed on to future generations & who cares about them? The same complacency accompanies Canadian's attitude to our national debt.

It is very easy for people to criticize politicians from the sidelines but the voters have to take a large part of the blame for the failure of the politicians to lead us down the path that will benefit the majority in the country. Right now we are allowing the vocal & violent minority call the shots.

Kim McConnell, kimlian@bellnet.ca LINK: http://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-robsonbrad-wall-is-a-good-man-but-not-all-that-conservative

* Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall announced his retirement from provincial politics on Aug. 10, 2017 ♣

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Right to employment & public services more important than language Ronald Bubar, Fredericton NB

We New Brunswickers have recently been informed by the Gallant Liberal government* that the economy of the province is on track and the budget will be balanced by 2020, which remains to be seen.

We are also led to believe that the failure of the Canada East pipeline development destined for NB will not affect this outcome, but certainly would have given the government an opportunity to lower the unemployment rate while generating millions if not billions of dollars in revenue.

According to recent reports, there are forty thousand New Brunswick citizens unemployed while several government and government-contractor vacancies are not being filled because of the unnecessary high proficiency bilingual requirements.

It would appear that this government is more than willing to accommodate the language commissioner’s unreasonable demands, even though her job is only to make recommendations to government. A prime example is that of our paramedics who are struggling

to do their jobs without enough full-time employees causing burn-out and lost time, possibly creating a danger to the public.

Why is this problem necessary when electronic translation devices being used in other provinces are readily available at a minimal cost, allowing well-qualified unilingual English and French employees to maintain their present jobs? Similar undue pressure is now being applied to our city police officers and fire fighters.

If this atrocity is allowed to continue our province will not only be bankrupt, not only financially but also of qualified employees.

It’s time “we the people” elected a government that has the backbone to discontinue catering to this small elite group of highly-paid power brokers with their “not so secret” agenda for the future our province.

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality. * under NB Premier Brian Gallant ** Katherine d’Entremont, Commissioner of Official Languages for New Brunswick since July 2013. ♣

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Please help stop outflow of Canadian advertising dollars!

John Woodsworth, Ottawa, Dec 12, 2017

Dear Friends, Like many Canadians, I am very concerned about the loss of independent Canadian voices in our broadcast, print and social media. I've just signed a petition www.dialogue.ca

sponsored by Friends of Canadian Broadcasting to help stop this drain of our country's wealth abroad. I'm sending you the link in case you wish to sign it as well. LINK: http://act.friends.ca/page/17525/action/1 Thank you, John W., jw@kanadacha.ca ♣ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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Why Democracy?

From Peter Weygang, Bobcaygeon ON

Democracy, the people power of ancient Greece, has a long history. It was an outpouring of the human soul, expressed so well by Lincoln the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Unfortunately, the slaughter at Gettysburg did not establish democracy. Apart from Switzerland, we are still ruled by tyrants in one form or another; political party leaders, dictators, religious zealots, war lords, and bureaucracies. They are all social cancers that feed on us by nibbling away at our inalienable right to self-determination. All our other ‘freedoms’ rest on this one bedrock. The right to freedom of speech, of assembly, of religion, all rest there.

As do the rights to property, and equal treatment under the law.

We think the law, and our courts, are a safeguard for our rights. Nonsense! The Supreme Court has nine judges. In a split decision, four judges say aye, four say nay. The decision then rests with the ninth judge, just one person. The first, unsettling conclusion, is that law is a matter of opinion. There is nothing carved in stone. There is no eternal truth. We can twist the direction of an entire country by carefully selecting the judges. Canada does that. So does the USA. The second conclusion is that the opinion of just one person becomes the law of the land. That is the very epitome of dictatorship.

The same system is seen at the municipal level, where a handful of people use a simple majority to force their vision on the taxpayers. In this case the vision is just a reflection of the underlying bureaucracy.

This unhappy situation played out in Victoria County around 2000; the scourge of amalgamation that spewed out the City of Kawartha Lakes. VOCO, the Voices of Central Ontario, was organized to resist amalgamation, then, later, to undo this dreadful mistake. But the underlying principle was the same. Victoria County belongs to the residents. It should be they who determine its future. It is not, and never was, the personal fiefdom of Harry Kitchen, who ruled supreme in this issue The fact that the municipality, and the Province, broke promises, and ignored popular votes, is important.

None of the benefits came to be. Commitments to better service, a smaller bureaucracy, lower taxes, and 24 dialogue

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zero debt, turned out to be absolute rubbish; as predicted by the opponents of amalgamation. However; the key matter is that no government, no person, has the right to overrule the expressed wishes of the people. The sovereign will of the people is the highest right in the land.

Citizens for Direct Democracy (C4DD) was established to put the people in the driving seat. To follow our collective vision. To establish our collective rules. Our vision is based on good science, often expressed as The Wisdom of Crowds. I prefer an older version Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God. The people, collectively, have an inner sense of what is right or wrong, what is wise or foolish, what is frugal or wasteful. They are not swayed by glib arguments, by self-serving politicians, or by imperialistic bureaucracies. The people have common sense.

The C4DD is forging links with other groups who share this same basic tenet. These groups, such as OLA (Ontario Landowners Association), may have some specific objectives. The OLA asks a simple question: ‘Dear government, which part of my property do you not understand?’ VOCO makes a simple demand: ‘Government, honour your promises.’

The Trillium Party says, in part, ‘Important decisions will be made by the people.’ That is why we are encouraged by our contacts with OLA, VOCO, and Trillium. Our mutual support, and larger base, will be a great help as we take on the fight against those who would have us simply pay, and obey.

We have produced a number of videos that feature the problems with our local municipal council. I expect that other jurisdictions have similar problems.

These videos may be found at our website (link below). There are also links to other videos on democracy. On the whole, we have selected ones that are short, snappy, and often humorous.

Peter Weygang, peterweygang@gmail.com Secretary, C4DD, citizens4dd@gmail.com Website: www.citizensfordirectdemocracy.ca

P.S. There are many groups of concerned citizens who feel the same was as we do. They are scattered throughout the provinces right across Canada. We need an umbrella organization that would give Direct Democracy a national voice. Any interested groups should contact us at citizens4dd@gmail.com/ ♣ www.dialogue.ca

“Prévoyance”

To bail-out or bail-in Canadian private banks; that is the question Erik Andersen, Gabriola Island Letter sent Dec. 2, 2017, to Sheila Malcolmson; Member of Parliament, Nanaimo-Ladysmith (BC)

Please take note and indicate a willingness to stand against the three risks to the CPP Fund mentioned at the end. Thanks and regards. Erik Andersen, citizen.

After the scary period of 2008 and 2009 when the global financial sector was paralyzed, when commercial banks could not get reasonable bid prices for many bank loan assets, they went with begging bowls to governments to avoid bankruptcy. Because private banks use huge business leverage, called fractional reserve banking, they can be very quickly rendered powerless when too many of the loans they hold cannot raise a reasonable bid price, when the banks conduct their “ mark-to-market” tests, so vital to their ability to carry on international trading. The Government of Canada was called upon to swap about CDN$125 billion of these troubled loans for cash.

This was then called a “bail-out.”

After escaping the worst of this period Canadian private banks regained their previous status that allowed full international trading/business. The then Finance Minister , in combination with others , responded to the political difficulties associated with the public purse being used to save private investors from the consequences of their bad judgments, by introducing the notion that should there be a repeat of 2008, private banks would have to save themselves with a “bail-in.”

What exactly is a bail-in has yet to be given clarity but whatever might be done in the future it should not be the socialization of losses and loan risk, at least that has been the talk.

One of the first ideas was to require a troubled private bank to call upon its depositor customers to swap cash deposits for some form of paper asset issued by the bank. This was tried once with a bank or banks in the Mediterranean but depositor push back put an end to that idea. Another option suggested more recently is that private banks be required to increase their fractional reserves from 6% to a greater fraction, done in www.dialogue.ca

accordance with market risks and their loan portfolio risks. Because this action reduces bank profitability and competitiveness it too has been rejected, this time by the banks.

The only suggestion left untouched and still in the game comes from the Bank of England, specifically from their Chief Economist, Andrew Haldane. As early as April 2014, Andrew started promoting the idea of using the huge pension and insurance investment funds as buyers of private bank loans that were of questionable credit quality. Since the start he has been back and forth over the Atlantic with this idea, which is of course just a variation on the socialization of bank loan risk and or loan loss. A “bail-out” idea again but in different clothing. His strongest argument for this proposal is that pension investment funds and insurance funds do not face bankruptcy risk whereas private banks do. A patriotic duty.

Here in Canada, until recently, there has been mostly silence on this topic. Now the government has begun developing “bail-in” legislation that is currently in the hands of a few chosen to provide advice. It is not yet clear how socialization of private bank loan losses is to be avoided in Canada but Andrew Haldane's idea still looks most likely to prevail and that brings us to the Canada Pension Fund.

Since the Canada Pension legislation does not provide for any accountability to those who have made contributions and are contributors', nor is there any mechanism to accommodate expressions of investment concern that any one of the 20 million Canadians might have about the investment choices made by the CPP Investment Board, we all have a problem. For example it may be uncomfortable for some to know that the Board has $60 billion in liabilities, money borrowed to make new investments. As a test devised after reading a disturbing report on the poor financial condition of the global oil production sector, the question to the CPP IB was “what investment exposure does the CPP Fund have to the oil and gas sector.” The following was their answer; “We do not provide the composition of our portfolio at that level of detail.” In a few words; we don't know or maybe don't care.

To understand what prompted the question to …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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the CPP IB in the first place, consider the following.

According to a report written by S.R. Srocco and published by “ZeroHedge” on October 17, 2017, “The world's largest oil companies are in serious trouble as their balance sheets deteriorate from higher costs, falling profits and skyrocketing debt.” They use a term “EROI” or energy returned on investment, to display the financial condition of the industry and its direction. So for example, the combination of financials from seven large oil producers, Petrobras, Shell, BP, Total, Chevron, Exxon and Statoil, has seen an increase in corporate debt from US$84 billion in 2007 to US$379 billion in 2016. That is a 4.5 times increase in only 10 years. From 2013 on these large producers had to borrow to pay their dividends, only Petrobras suspended paying dividends in 2015. Group net income fell from US$99.2 billion in 2004 to US$10.5 in 2016. The combined net free cash flow minus dividends for the group fell from plus US$34 billion in 2004 to minus US$39.1 billion in 2016. That means that the global financial sector is likely holding about US$400 billion of private bank loans made to a sector of the economy that is coming up against King Hubbard's “Peak Oil” projections of the 1950s.

In the world of large scale investing there is a defensive analysis called “Value at Risk” (VaR) analytic.

By letter in November 2013, the then Federal Finance Committee was asked to have the CPP IB embrace a VaR process and that it be done by qualified persons away from the CPP IB. A half-hearted effort was made by the Board which was to hire someone onto the Board's staff. This would never be other than a conflict of interest and a superficial condition.

To underscore the deteriorating financial condition of the petroleum sector, there is the recent report that the Norwegian Government has received a recommendation, presumably after a VaR analysis, to sell all oil and gas investments in their sovereign wealth fund.

Now what can a Canadian personally do if it is thought to be needed? The first thing is to object to their member of parliament that borrowing to invest by the CPP IB is not a smart idea when on a number of fronts we are hearing of the prospect of rising interest rates. The second objection should be to make it clear there is zero tolerance for any “bail-in” idea that exploits the public purse or the savings of those with financial interests in pension funds and insurance funds.

Socialization of troubled private bank loans is not an 26 dialogue

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option. The third objection should be one that is an expression of more than dismay at the CPP IB's stated intention to increase the investment portfolio risk by moving to an 85% global equity proportion by fiscal 2018.

Good luck Canada.

Erik Andersen, Gabriola Island [Email: twolabradors@shaw.ca ] ♣

Comment from: “R” re: To bail-out or bail-in Canadian private banks; that is the question.

Dear Erik. Thank you for this … again clear and comprehensible. The next thing I am going to say is completely related: in the last Dialogue (p.18) you said you were going to send five letters to five (govt.) people … and watch for their responses. (???)

It is related because my very clear sense is that the responsibility such people have IS NOT owed to Canadians, not felt to be owed to Canadians … but to those under the bubble … you might say the givers of place and the formers of policy. Many, many conversations are had into mirrors in Ottawa. At one time that was not so; it is now.

I don’t want to appear anything like a fatalist. But one cannot have the experience of consistent attempts not to answer, not to be responsible … without drawing some conclusions. One of my grandsons who got interested in the Victoria False Flag Terrorist Event expressed surprise that one would expect an answer from an elected MP! (That one grandson of six would show interest in public affairs is something of an achievement.)

The Canada Pension people are obviously winging it without public oversight or control (as you make clear). If lucky, they may pull through. If they crash and burn all the contributions of Canadians … (and much worse) no one will face any kind of penalty … for that is the state of our protected and unpunishable bureaucratic elite. The ‘club’ is impenetrable … and is now intricately integrated as between the elected and the appointed.

My contention that a wholly new Party has to emerge to deal with ALL that is reinforced daily. The self-confidence, for instance, of those covering for the huge Criminal actions of the RCMP is indicative. They know the press won’t get on it; that the CBC will rule out any coverage; that it will be buried as deeply as the “club” wants it buried. With such self-confidence www.dialogue.ca

assured, why should they care what a mere citizen thinks??

Letters to MPs are important. That they are ignored or pretended about is to be expected. It is wonderfully instructive that Horgan and Eby have both failed to acknowledge my letter about a Public Inquiry of the RCMP. They could get on that, express amazement that the Christie Clarkers did nothing, and set about an even modest preliminary investigation which records interview material and begins to gather evidence at low cost towards a Blast if that seems indicated. The fact of a refusal to reply tells all… R Response from Erik:

Dear R, What shocked me most is that the CPP legislation and the CPP IB legislation say nothing about ownership of the monies we all have and are contributing and are having contributed by employers, in our names. In both there is no formalization of accountability to citizens. What is worse there is specific provision for the CPP IB officers to escape all accountability. As Brian T. has been saying all along, it is the “crown” that owns it all and has the final and only say as to what is to be done.

Thank goodness for Andrew Haldane of the BoE for disclosing the theme that must be the current thinking

of all central bankers and finance ministers. Us thinking we know what is the “bail-in” plan will matter little because it will always be socialization of bad commercial bank loans or risk unless legal requirements of some kind are imposed upon the commercial banks. I don't see another way because I don't see the chance of political opposition to Andrew's form of bank “ bail-in” mobilizing any time soon. It is a typical kick-the-can-down-the road issue politicians are so good at.

I suggest that if banks need citizen help in the future it should only come after they have demonstrated that they have first helped themselves by the usual methods of bolstering their reserves. Sell equity shares; increase their fractional reserve fraction (that is after all the way they insure depositors now, only in dire times it is not enough).

Canadians have yet to figure out who works for whom. Our current and dominant thinking is taking us further from the charter of rights and more towards the model that puts the sovereign state ahead of all else, like in China. Canada, having a history of being a colony, seems unable to slip that yolk.

Cheers, Erik Andersen, Gabriola BC [Email: twolabradors@shaw.ca ] ♣

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“Have Computer Will Write” ~ Jeremy Arney

What’s next for the Canadian Action Party?

By Jeremy Arney, Sydney BC granpaiswatching@gmail.com

The Canadian Action Party was founded on the principle that all Canadians should have a voice in their government and that our publicly owned bank should be the financial support and resource for Federal, Provincial and Municipal governments as mandated in 1935 by the Bank of Canada Act. Yes, other policies exist as they should, but those, it seems to me, are still the foundation of the Canadian Action Party.

In March of this year, we were deregistered with Elections Canada for failing to obtain confirmations in enough numbers from our members.

What does this actually mean?

It means we cannot provide tax receipts for donations www.dialogue.ca

we receive.

It means we cannot have our party name on a ballot so in essence, all our candidates would be independents.

We are no longer part of the ACPP (Association of Canadian Political Parties) run by EC to confer with all registered parties on election matters. Since most of the voting on any motions had to be unanimous we were always undone by the established parties anyway, still, it was valuable input for EC but frustrating for all the rest of the smaller parties attempting to bring change to politics in Canada.

We no longer have to report our financials to EC as we are not recognized by them as registered therefore we are free from their rules and regulations.

What can we do?

The answer is almost freeing as it is anything we want that does not break a law.

So now is the perfect time to reboot CAP. …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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What do we need?

Well first we need a new leader who is young, charismatic and with a rich voice none of which can I lay claim to. It would be preferred if he or she did not use the interjection “ er” constantly whilst talking off the script, and was fluent in the subjects of the day and in both official languages.

Then we need a national executive which actually works together and can solve problems efficiently. It would be great if we could have younger people from all over the country to take part in this.

We need caucuses in all provinces, preferably with their own executives to coordinate with the national executive. This way we will have the whole country covered as to their own divergent needs.

The workload for these would be greatly eased and simplified if there were subcommittees to each board member.

We need French speakers and members from our great aboriginal peoples.

I hope this sounds logical, and also possible.

Do we keep the name? I think so but that is up to the members of CAP. For those of you who can think beyond today and imagine what you want to pass on to your children and grandchildren, I hope you can find it in your hearts to step up and bring some democracy to Canada. If not our remaining sovereignty is going to continue to be given away by the likes of Harper, Scheer (Harper light) or Trudeau until there is nothing left but corporate control of everything including your ability to speak your mind.

I have created a new email to get your feedback or suggestions if you have any: Reboot.or.new.name@gmail.com Regards to you all, Oct. 7, 2017, Jeremy Arney, Interim Leader of the Canadian Action Party, PO Box 52008, RPO Beacon, Sidney, BC V8L 5V9 / Tel. 250-216-5400 Website: http://actionparty.ca/ Email: iamjema@gmail.com Blog: https://iamjemaletters.wordpress.com/ ♣

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Robin Mathews Uncut

I am brainwashed. You are brainwashed.

We are brainwashed….

by Robin Mathews, December, 2017

intentionally, internationally.

Vast numbers of people (many more than we think, probably) are aware of a major, constant process by ‘Established power,’ by the Mainstream Press and Media, by ‘Imperial Globalization,’ by the Deep State, [there are more names]… to blanket the population in misinformation, ‘disinformation’, misleading reporting, half-finished news and misanalysis of events … to use, in effect, a continuing blanket of propaganda to assure we do not know the truth about the world around us and to make us feel we are the enemies of perfectly self-respecting countries attempting to live peaceful lives ….

Occasionally (with us all) a light shines in and reveals an insight, a small revelation (or a large one). That makes the propaganda process clearer and its magnitude more evident.

Being aware is one thing. Seeing through the propaganda is another … and there are not many who can (consistently) do it – which is what all the named forces above intend. None of us gets … and stays … free.

That’s why the title of this column. We all know we are being brainwashed. But until we replace the present power structure/power system we will not be able to prevent what is being done to us … constantly, daily, 28 dialogue

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Take the on-going repetition of (false) terrorist events in Western countries. They are alleged to be produced by government-connected forces (alleged, that is, by nonofficial, independent investigators constantly at work).

The investigators (most know) are almost all authentic, serious, responsible, even scholarly people concerned about the health of the community. They toil away gratis for the good of the community. Continuous accusations are made that those well informed researchers and critics of sensationally staged (Islamic?) “terrorist” events are “Conspiracy Theorists” who besmirch and ridicule the noble and selfless work of our official “defenders.” But more and more people are less and less sure that the so-called “Conspiracy Theorists” are wrong.

Since the Cenotaph-and-after “ terrorist event” in www.dialogue.ca

Ottawa on October 22, 2014, for instance, a number of researchers (I think of Graeme MacQueen and Barrie Zwicker) have brought telling arguments of a “False Flag” event created by shadow Canadian State operatives to hoodwink the nation and the world. (Once again, a single, semi-insane ‘terrorist’ was killed before any testimony could be gathered from him.) So far the argument for the Ottawa “terrorist event” as fraudulent can’t be proved absolutely. But we have one crystalclear example of a Canadian False Flag: the wholly fraudulent Islamic “terrorist” event at Victoria, B.C., July 1, 2013.

Think of how much secret organization and how much deciding to do criminal things had to go on in order to create the “terrorist event” in Victoria.….

Justice Catherine Bruce … judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia (on the case) … was applied to for corrective action after sitting through the jury trial (that found the two converts to Islam guilty). Justice Bruce had observed much. She struck down the terrorist conviction against the two socially-challenged converts to Islam … and unveiled the judgement that the RCMP (and by implication the federal Conservative government) was planner, initiator, and controller of the whole elaborate sham – using more than 200 RCMP and millions of dollars of unsuspecting taxpayers’ dollars.

Since the replacement of the Conservative government by a Liberal one, cover-up of the event continues, the Liberal cabinet refuses to discuss a Public Inquiry of the RCMP… and an Appeal against the Justice Bruce decision is to take place in the B.C. Appeals Court on January 18, 2018.

No one was killed or maimed in that ‘operation’ but innocent Canadians were jailed, charged, misused … and if the Crown wins the Appeal against the judgement by Justice Bruce, the two accused – declared innocent by Madam Justice Bruce - can go back to jail and serve life sentences!

Historically… the public-spirited investigators constantly at work (for no pay) started investigation of what might be called False Flag activity at a time when the hand of the evil U.S. government and/or Deep State could (almost) be plainly seen. The assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963; the Gulf of Tonkin faked ship battle in August, 1964, (to provide reason to intensify the War in Viet Nam); the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968 brought an intense focus on U.S. government (‘Deep State’) criminality in the U.S.A. It was when the unconvincingly explained murder of leading personalities in the U.S.A. began to be evident that the False Flag investigative process appears to have www.dialogue.ca

gone into high gear. Since the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy up to and including the most recent multiWestern nation “ terrorist” events (still carried out mostly by apparently demented and – usually – singleacting madmen who are almost always shot dead on the spot … making live testimony from them impossible to gain) the number of terrorist events has blossomed … and the propaganda flowing from them has been imprinted over and over and over on the minds of Western populations.

Almost always, ISIS (the demonic, savage, heartless, brutal, and mostly invisible organization) ‘claims’ responsibility… from … somewhere. Thus Islamic evil is established.

The pattern is relentless. Almost always innocent people are killed or maimed, revealing the brutal heartlessness of the perpetrators. But … pause. Pull back. Think a minute….

Surely if there is a powerful, designing force with tentacles into every Western country … through actual contact people … or by wickedly-created terrorist-electronic-contact networks – and is a force with considerable power and influence (and doubtless money) … wouldn’t it make something else happen … as well?

Wouldn’t that force, that evil organization, that unwearying actor on the world stage be able to enlist a few other people than the nut-case truck-drivers and the single shoot-out madmen we have been asked to accept? And … (I suppose what I write next is sort-of kindergarten stuff) – surely the evil organization could pick a few more telling targets than random gatherings of innocent citizens. If the evil force wanted to make the point that it is the enemy of all those who are daily making war against Islamic peoples … wouldn’t it (at least now and then?) pick off a significant political operative, a known intelligence/military person, a major public figure involved in the damnation of Islam? Surely – even if very rarely – wouldn’t it drive one of those trucks into a significant store of weaponry, or a meaningful chemical factory … or … even just a significant anti-Islamic institution?

Now that I’ve said it … mustn’t it strike every thoughtful ordinary person in the Western World as very, very strange that the cruel, wicked, barbaric, brutal Islamic fighters (working in the West) have never targetted a single, meaningful actor contributing to the War Against Islam? If that were to happen, ordinary people in the West wouldn’t be thunderstruck. They would think – ‘yes yes, that makes sense: tit for tat’. Maybe that’s one of the reasons it doesn’t happen. (That doesn’t mean any sane person would want any terrorist brutality.)

The failure of ISIS (or whatever organizations detest …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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the war-making West) ever to undertake attacks on centrally responsible persons in the West leads one to believe that the attacks are not undertaken by Islamic sources at all … and are connected to Islam only through the propaganda channels of Western power and its Deep State. The actual perpetrators of the brutalities visited upon innocent, ordinary people in Western countries might just be part of a force within those countries perpetrating acts of brutality against ordinary people to BRAINWASH whole populations in order to make them learn to despise those who are ACCUSED of the brutalities.

People in Western countries will protest. “Surely no force in Western democracies,” they will say, “would be permitted to violate groups of the wholly innocent, killing and maiming many for propaganda purposes!” But pause again … and think…. Isn’t that precisely what the Western perpetrators of the brutalities against innocent people would depend upon – the essential decency of Western World citizens who wouldn’t believe the cause could possibly be found inside their own democratic countries?

The perpetrators would depend upon that good faith of citizens and would feed that good faith from controlled

government sources, from controlled press and media, from lavishly supplied “eye-witnesses” to the events, from consenting elected representatives who are bought actors or misled innocents who will always mouth the appropriate propaganda phrases….

Looking at the bloodstained sidewalks and the bloodsplattered market stalls where innocents have been brutalized, concerned citizens do ask: WHY THEM? They do not ordinarily ask: “Why not, instead, visible perpetrators of violence against Islam?” or “ How come a person visibly responsible for the endless carnage in the Middle East is never picked off by a terrorist or a terrorist group?”

Is it possible we don’t ask those questions because we have been indoctrinated, manipulated, brainwashed, taught to believe those questions don’t even exist, or may not be asked, or that only madmen and madwomen would ask them? When we think through the meaning of the state of mind we are in … are we looking at what it is to be brainwashed …? And if we are … what do we do about it?

Robin Mathews, Vancouver ♣

The Old Woman

By Robin Mathews The old woman scowls.

She sits bent over a table, writing.

She writes angry poems.

She writes angry letters.

She writes to newspapers That do not publish her words.

She writes to government officials Who send back answers composed by Public Relations firms.

She is indomitable, Rheumy-eyed, dressed out of fashion.

She looks about for someone to speak to But no one in the cafe meets her eyes …

For she is old.

She has the anger of the aged, They think she romanticizes the past – And so hates the present.

That is not the truth she knows.

She fought the past while in it.

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She gained rich experience, that – Once Upon A Time – would have been valued.

Now she places her rich experience Against the despots and desperadoes Tearing apart the things she fought for, The things that made life bearable For the despised of the earth.

She sits motionless awhile, Observing the people’d cafe, Observing the Autumn leaves outside Swirling against the windows.

Then she begins to write a poem: Exulting in beauty, Exulting in the beautiful youth around her, Exulting in the Autumn leaves doing their dance of death At the windows – Exulting at the life still coursing Through her old, arthritic body. …/ www.dialogue.ca

That got me thinking about poems … the writing of poems. The magnificent little poet, John Keats, who died at about 25, said that poems come as the leaves to trees. Many others said they have to be “visited by the muse.” And many – like Shelley mourned the flight of the power; he wrote “Rarely, rarely, cometh thou, Spirit of delight.”

Generally speaking, real poets know that when “it” happens, it seems to be larger than their own talent. I began thinking of a poem … which I have begun writing … in relation to The Pride Parade. To our generation, Pride goeth before a fall, etcetera. But now Pride is offered as a good. When I pass a firetruck that has written on it: “We Serve With Pride” …

I want to say “couldn’t it be with humility??”

Anyhow my Conscious Mind thought about the idea as a poem … but my unconscious mind/subconscious

mind was at it already; knowing my conscious mind, perhaps, better than it knows itself … and the subconscious was working on the matter in its secret place before the conscious mind realized there is probably a poem in it.

Writers of all kinds, I think, know the reality of the unconscious mind … for instance, going to bed when working on a text, and waking in the middle of the night with the solution to connecting two subjects, or realizing there’s a contradiction in a statement made on page one and a statement made on page four …. some power in the mind going over the text with a fine tooth comb and prodding the body into seeing an error. Poets THINK their operation is a step higher, but that may be professional propaganda.

Robin Mathews, Vancouver ♣

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“Ideas”

DND (Departing from National Defence) David Muir Foster, Port Perry ON, david.foster2@powergate.ca

We Stand on Guard for Free It is silly season as I write this. November 11th and all that. Means hardly anything to the 22 million residents of Canada (the disintegrating ‘nation’) who never fought in the Great World Wars.

You can’t transplant nostalgia. So it is play acting.

Minimize it. ‘Less’ we forget.

If we were forced to consider who ‘we’ are 3 to 5 times a day as the Moslems do, we would weld ourselves into a ‘nation’ strong enough to not have silly seasons. ‘Black Friday’ coming up. In memory of some horrific event we all suffered through? The Plague? The Gunpowder Plot? An unusual eclipse of the sun? No, an American marketer’s tool to resist tax, any tax and encourage the mass of ‘consumers’ to blow whatever savings they might still have after another year of being stuck in the diminishing spiral of per capita gain. If you haven’t got any money left, then borrow. Christmas Season shopping madness of benefit to those who have shares in shops, (the real alien culture we allow to walk freely among us.

Americanism). Insidious Commercial Americanism and Banksterism. And nowhere to talk about it freely.

Fake news. Fake ‘value’ soon to become garbage. www.dialogue.ca

Fake representatives politically, and fake freedoms.

Somehow real responsibility got left behind. Another day in ‘Paradise’, if you can believe what 380 cooperating Investigative Reporters report in the ‘papers’ after 4 years of investigative snooping. ‘All ‘legal’ the rich say... of course, it was their lawyers who framed the Law. On the brink of Nuclear catastrophe, again. And the brink of climate collapse. How peculiar to take a poppy from Flanders and pretend it has no relationship to a poppy in an Afghan opium field. Now we are supposed to send young men armed to the teeth to destroy the opium fields of Asia. And make children think they too have to adopt the play-acting.

Here is an idea... Everyone in parliaments that support the madness of armed foreign intrusion, has to enter a lottery. One in ten must get outfitted like a soldier and join the boys who are sent to Far-off-astan, risking having their asses shot off, their legs or minds crippled for another 40 years. That would include our smiling Political Representatives. Lest they forget. Think about it if you dare. Is there a better way? You have to believe there is. Otherwise what is the Point? Without personal and communal happiness there is no point. …/ Be careful in your howls of rage. You know VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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nothing of me and the service my family gave. In order to be able to freely express ideas for a better Canada.

RRRrrr…

Resuscitation A bunch of local Rotary Klubs where I live north of Oshawa imagine themselves as the KeepeRs of Kanada to the glory of KommeRce. Positioned themselves as THE senioR SeRvice Club.

In their value system, they annually in mid -November give a few of the local oldsters at the poverty level, a Christmas turkey supper with cranberry sauce. If they asked Swiss Chalet, they could have done it for about $7 each as a standard take-out. But no, they had to weave it into an elaborate display of their own power in a huge hall with 100 volunteers, table cloths with Poinsettias and pretence of a Regimental Dinner. 3 hours of propaganda and third class entertainment. Meanwhile the few elderly were turning grey from fatigue and pain. Rotary Members probably 10 hours per person preparation. It seemed the real purpose was to support a new Rotary Branch in multicultural Unionville, where no one knows how to sing carols (there are so few Christians left). The bulk of local Seniors know this from previous years and won’t come.

There was another group that needs their help (if they would give it, but there is no ‘status’ involved). The 25s to 40s in ‘precarious employment’ and totally disenfranchised by both the political system and the economic system under International Corporatism. There is no one to trust, and little hope for the future if you haven’t mastered a Master’s Degree. Most haven’t.

What were coherent families are now crashed and no longer with the resources to help both the elderly in their infirmities and the youth 25 to 40 in their hopes and unrealizable dreams.

In the midst of this, Ian Morrison of ‘Friends of Canadian Public Broadcasting’ mounted a serious publicity campaign aimed at the 364,000 of us who have given some money to help Ian and ‘Friends’ to pressure government and its agencies into resisting Harper-era cultural destruction. The theme was ‘Our Stories’. (‘Our’ meaning those who remember Peter Gzowski and when Anne Murray was young). Oldsters going deaf don’t even turn on the radio any more. CBC has been starved into third class drivel. 1440 minutes to fill every day.

But the 25s to 40s have their stories too. Who can 32 dialogue

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speak for them? They can’t trust anybody... The political system is too badly broken and the mainline media lies about what might be done.

Actually we’d best rip it all apart and start again in view of the new realities of IT. Facebook, Google, Amazon, the multi billionaires who own it all and hide their money off shore ‘All perfectly legal’ (of course it is... their lawyers framed ‘the law’). So we see the background of the British ‘Paradise Papers’ that show us how ‘paradise’ works for some but not the rest (unless you’ve lived a good life and die well and listen in blind belief to angel-clad choirs singing the same damn hymns for Eternity).

So I had a chat in some depth with a few of these the ‘bypassed’. They need their own institutions, their own ‘leaders’. Their own newsletter. Their own ‘dialogue’.

So I pretended I was one of their number, me who was their age 40 to 60 years ago. How can I, on a nothing budget, help them meaningfully? So I offered the attached (BELOW: Age 25-40…) and asked the young man of 35 (who has a girlfriend he can never hope to marry, nor raise a family with), to talk it over as to how to build a voice, many voices and find their own leadership. Too early still to see if I am just whistling in the wind. It turns out Ian Morrison ran ‘Frontier College’ in his younger years. He must be in his 70s now.

I do like turkey and cranberry sauce. But not to promote Rotary. They take their orders from more than 400 staff at their International Headquarters in Chicago. Suck volunteers and money out of locals and do what Bill Gates wants. ‘Have billions... will match money raised’. 30,000 branches worldwide is just American overkill. And the local branches don’t even realize they have been ‘turned’. They actually had the Seniors stand up shakily and sing ‘O Canada’ (very slowly it is true, like a lament. But not ‘God Save our Gracious Queen’). And God help her son now age 68 who comes among us more often than the Press reports. He asks how he can ‘help’. ‘Well now Prince Charles, there is a bit of a list here...’

David Muir Foster, Port Perry, Ont.

Age 25 to 40. Our own dialogue.

(Copy it and Pass It On)

Crying in our sleep.

So we are the unlucky ones, left out of Canada’s prosperity and hopes for a real fair future. No point whining. No one to whine to, just ourselves to consider www.dialogue.ca

each other, and DO something useful. The Political system is both untrustworthy and unhelpful. So to hell with it...

It will be difficult because ‘Men are from Mars and Women from Venus’ (a book by John Gray 1992).

Very insightful of our inherent differences and potentials for conflict. So we have our work cut out for ourselves. Fight and walk away and think we fail… when we probably can create something extraordinary that isn’t apparent at first. Give it 16 weeks of honest effort.

In 1971 a clutch of age group 25 to 40 poor in Vancouver got pissed off over what government was doing about both the environment and Nuclear, and decided to hold a series of folk concerts to raise money, buy a beater boat, and go and confront Americans doing Nuclear Testing off Alaska. Hundreds contributed at the concerts in their own small way. 20 or so did the hard work. Not one of them thought they could do it.

And were surprised when they did.

And so Canadians invented ‘Green Peace’. The name they stuck on the beater boat and sailed bravely off to confront Americans. The whole thing started with music and singing songs. So let’s meet to sing songs and then see where that leads...

It is true we need leadership, but it has to emerge from among ourselves, the by-passed ones. So I’ll tell some ‘Leadership stories’ so you get the hang of it. Leaders have to have High Energy, high social skills and good intellect. Preferably able to work an 18 hour day now and then, and not resent it. Half of that for ‘the man’, but the other half for ourselves. Give it 16 weeks to try to gain traction. Just a few at a time. Sing a bit, strum a guitar/ukele/banjo... beat on a drum. Hold a ‘Dance’.

It will be tough bridging IQ 80 to IQ 150 in various abilities.

And then talk a bit. Make notes and pass them on.

Handwriting, print, not Social Media. We the target group are usually too poor to be able to afford the i-pad/i-phone. So use good old fashioned paper,

ten cents a copy. Make ten copies and pass them out.

Write your own views in less than a page. Pass them on.

It would be ideal if we could borrow a bus that becomes a heated travelling Council/ Concert Chamber, able to move around our territory and include all who want to be included (but I don’t know how to do that...

Insurance, safety standards and all that). The danger is in getting stuck too locally for too few. Never able to break out and include others. It needs a lot of skills on what we CAN do, not what we can’t. How much of what you earn goes right into the pockets of Apple, Bell, etc.? ‘Jobs’ that are ‘precarious employment’ with no hope for the future. But we can change that.

Look at how you spend your day... isolated? unable to connect to a mass movement? So make the effort. Tell others you know.

In 1899 an odd preacher invented the absurd notion of ‘Labourer–Teachers.’ It became ‘Frontier College’ where young men and women of good heart and some education went (and still go) to work with the immigrant labourers off at the mine face or in the bush living in primitive camps. The ‘Labourer-teachers’ doing a full day with the crews, and then finding energy for another 4 hours of holding ‘courses’ to help them with languages, understanding the culture that is Canada.

Usually a summer of contribution, then back to their own lives a whole lot wiser about how it is at the bottom. Well, we can do something similar. Just try.

Who’s for taking a shift on our Newsletter? Write your name and contact information here. Suggest a place to meet. Bounce the idea off your friends 4 or 5 times until they respond. Yes/No/Maybe.

The Maybe’s usually have a trigger they need first.

So find it.

David who slew Goliath. November 17, 2017.

Bootstrap One. You can do Bootstrap Two. Don’t abbreviate it to ‘BS’. Draft One. ‘DO’ David Muir Foster, david.foster2@powergate.ca ♣

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Laughter & ‘Lightenment!

From: John C. McCullough, Richmond ON

1. The location of your mailbox shows you how far away from your house you can be in a robe before you start looking like a mental patient.

2. My therapist said that my narcissism causes me to www.dialogue.ca

misread social situations. I’m pretty sure she was hitting on me.

3. My 60 year kindergarten reunion is coming up soon and I’m worried about the 175 pounds I've gained since then. sjmccullough@sympatico.ca ♣ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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The Sceptical Scholar

Revising Language: Recent Twistings Wilfred Cude, Cape Breton NS

It is scarcely any surprise now that our once-comfortable world of western democracies has been turned upside-down, through a whirlwind of political manipulations twisting our very thoughts into pretzels of what went before. Wherever we live in North America or western Europe, we wake up daily into the turbulence of “fake news” and “alternative facts” and the pernicious prevalence of false equivalency in argument, unable to see much beyond the twinned political and economic disasters threatening civic life all around us – the near-chaotic self-inflicted lunacy spilling out of London’s Brexit, and the stomach-churning parody of principled governance wreaking havoc from Washington D.C. But we must somehow begin to impose appropriate rationality on what is happening, and there’s no better place to attempt such a move than with George Orwell’s ever-relevant essay “Politics and the English Language.” While the piece is open to criticism that might be directed at some of the author’s pet linguistic and political peeves, its main premise is never open to challenge, and remains the perfect reason for its enduring popularity. Convoluted political discourse, Orwell argues “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Wherever language is needlessly flabby and obscure, he insists, it necessarily drifts away from truth, and can thus be deliberately conscripted into the service of outright falsehood.

To illustrate the point, he offers a mock-modern translation of one of the most expressive passages from the King James version of the Bible. Ecclesiastes IX,11 reads: “ I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” After quoting the verse as it stands, Orwell renders it again in what he deems contemporary politicized doubletalk. “Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be 34 dialogue

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commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”

With this example, he demonstrates how readily the clarity of simple and direct statement can be dissipated and thence lost. “ Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make their meaning clearer,” he observes: rather “ it consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.”

Obscurity becomes the handmaid of falsehood, which in turn will eventually emerge in many different verbal guises to subvert all belief in truth itself. So here we are today, floundering about in a virtual tsunami of language wrenched almost out of recognition as having any connection with objectively verifiable reality.

Consider, as the most painfully egregious instance of perverse political thinking, the term “fake news.”

Taken at face value, the term is pretty well self-explanatory. Anything in the public media posturing as true, yet nonetheless can conclusively be shown to be false, should legitimately be exposed as “fake news.”

And entire swathes of western media today could and should – from North America right on through western Europe – be so exposed, and contradicted, and denounced. Starting with one of the longest-established and most profitable exemplars of the genre, the American junk rag National Enquirer. There was a time, indeed not very long ago, that nobody of any seriousness ever took the publication at face value: it blared its inanities from magazine newsstands close by grocery store checkouts, maintaining primacy over an array of equally wing-nut competitors with the sheer startling foolishness of its contents. But that was then, and this is now.

Gone, and long gone, are the days when the Enquirer assured its readers that John Francis Kennedy was alive in a body cast and held captive in Havana.

Those days dwindled into history after the Enquirer assured its readers, during the frenzied 2016 Republican party primary campaign, that Rafael Bienvenido Cruz had been photographed assisting Lee Harvey www.dialogue.ca

Oswald just prior to President Kennedy’s assassination. Pastor Rafael Cruz is the father of Senator Ted Cruz, who was then Donald Trump’s chief rival for the party’s presidential nomination, and The Donald used the story to hint broadly on Fox News that his rival’s father was guilty of complicity with North America’s most notorious assassin. And not content with that, The Donald immediately went on to laud the Enquirer in language never before applied to such a tacky outfit. “This is a magazine that should be respected,” he allowed, an “outstanding journal” worthy of “Pulitzer prizes.”

That was a key publicity stunt instrumental in propelling Trump towards the presidency, for mainstream journalists seized on the entire fabrication, pursuing Ted Cruz’s denials, interviewing photography experts on the plausibility of the grainy picture the Enquirer posted as evidence, and even speculating – especially Sean Hannity of Fox News – that the absolutely bizarre yarn might conceivably be true. Which of course it obviously never was. But no matter. The Enquirer, thus endowed with faux authenticity, assumed totally unwarranted credibility with millions of gullible readers: and the full wacky incident constitutes our most daunting evidence to date that the media philosophy of Adolph Hitler’s mastermind of vile misinformation continues unabated into our era. “It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent,” said Joseph Goebbels, “its task is to lead to success.” And in what might well have been the inspiration for Steve Bannon of Breitbart News, Trump’s guru of far-spanning falsehood, Goebbels exhorted all wannabe imitators, “ think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play:” and he added, most tellingly, “ words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”

But even Goebbels would have been astounded at the overwhelming success his thinking has achieved throughout the major western democracies during this profoundly disturbing year. Ranked behind the Enquirer in North America is a phalanx of Alt-Right propaganda, headed by Breitbart News, supported by untold anonymous internet websites, and surreptitiously funded by Russian intelligence. And positioned ahead of the Enquirer in North America is the supposedly mainstream media empire of the extremely right-wing mogul, Rupert Murdoch, which runs from the respected conservative Wall Street Journal to the not-so-much respected television Fox News. www.dialogue.ca

And oozing out of this vast mechanism for the proliferation of flat-out lies, oozing from an undercurrent of mind-boggling stupidity circulating through the nether regions of Google and Facebook, came stories so other-worldly that one cannot fathom what sort of imagination could create them. Like “Pizzagate,” postulating Hillary Clinton as coordinating a paedophile sex ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza parlour, prompting one semi-crazed armed vigilante to attend that same restaurant and fire a few rounds, terrorizing the customers as he conducted his own personal investigation.

Honestly, folks, as recently as two or three years ago, you could not make this stuff up. Yet here we are, with President Donald J. Trump in office twelve months and change, with his own personalized response to the mordant crisis of “fake news” gnawing away at truth everywhere. In a simple stroke of logical inversion, one that would have left Goebbels himself breathless in admiration, the President of the United States, pronouncing from his high eminence, declares the “fake news” supporting him to be the genuine article – and the genuine article questioning him to be the actual “fake news.” And it’s working!

Not with everyone, clearly: but with the crowd that elected him, it is going down well. Tens of millions of American voters continue enthralled by this gobbledegook, shunning the mainstream media as “lamestream,” endorsing whole-heartedly the President’s hour-long press conference tirade on 15 February, 2017, which featured abuse of the “failing” New York Times and the “fake” reporting of CNN, as well as effusive praise for the Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends.” Basically, the pitch is stunningly straightforward: news supportive of Donald Trump is real news, and news critical of Donald Trump is “fake news.” And for tens of millions of American voters, that’s just fine.

Looking back in bemused hindsight, we just might have seen this coming. The whole scenario was prefigured in real time, looming up with the jaw-dropping debacle of the United Kingdom’s Brexit folly.

Instead of Donald Trump, there was the flamboyantly vacuous Boris Johnson, a clone of the other, right down to the haircut. Instead of Steve Bannon, there was the querulously malignant Nigel Farage, founder and head of the Alt-Right United Kingdom Independence Party. Instead of the National Enquirer, there was VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid press empire, primarily The Sun and The Sunday Times, fostering animosity towards the European Union and thumping the tub for Brexit. And lurking completely unrecognized in and about the reaches of Google and Facebook, there was that cousinage of subversive websites (funded by Russian intelligence?), all grinding out anti-immigrant hatred to further Brexit’s isolationist theme. And topping it all off, there was the repeated and totally unsubstantiated big lie, Boris Johnson’s claim that a successful Brexit would mean the United Kingdom could divert a weekly sum of 350 million pounds sterling from EU funding to the British National Health Service. It wasn’t true then, and isn’t true now, but that doesn’t stop Johnson from constantly saying it.

At this stage, we really haven’t begun to reckon the havoc all this is unleashing at the very centre of our fundamental intellectual and social structures. The Johnson/Trump adaptation of the philosophy of Herr Goebbels infects far more than politics, as dangerous and disruptive as that must indisputably be. Far more dangerous and disruptive is the attendant extension of that philosophy into what presently goes under the rubric of “alternative facts.” To say “Black is White” and “Down is Up” in politics is one thing, quite awful enough: but to persist with the same approach in regards to physical reality is quite another thing altogether, actually distorting perception – right on down towards mental derangement. Notwithstanding the perils of that dreadful prospect, we have gone that far already, given the Trump crowd’s behaviour in office with respect to every dimension of environmental stewardship. […] (1475 words*) And perhaps Salman Rushdie put the matter most eloquently and succinctly. We are now blundering about within a conceptual framework of “damaged reality,” he commented during an interview with Fareed Zakaria. And by that, he meant the tragic refashioning of our perceptions of reality, much to the detriment of us all. Truly, as the apocryphal Chinese maxim would have it, we live in interesting times.

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

*Please continue reading Wilf Cude’s essay online at: http://www.dialogue2.ca/wilfred-cude-revising-languagerecent-twistings.html / If you would like to receive a printed copy of the full essay (3253 words), please phone Janet at 250-758-9877 or email dialogue@dialogue.ca

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Wildred Cude is the author of A Due Sense of Differences, The PhD Trap, 1987, and The Ph.D. Trap Revisited, 2000, and Weapons of Mass Disruption: An Academic Whistleblower’s Tale, 2014. He has lectured at colleges and universities across the country. He lives in rural Cape Breton.

BOOKS BY WILFRED CUDE: The Ph.D. Trap Revisited, by Wilfred Cude When The Ph.D. Trap was first published in 1987, it hit academe like a bombshell. Wilfred Cude dared to pull back the veil of graduate school life to expose the harsh realities of modern advanced study. Using statistics, academic history, and diverse intellectual traditions, Cude revealed the Ph.D. program in most disciplines to be savage, mechanical, and cruel - an exploitative construct that often frustrates legitimate intellectual inquiry, shatters viable career expectations, and mangles personal and professional relations.

In the years since, an outpouring of books, articles, and statistical data delineating serious weaknesses in contemporary higher education has provided a wealth of evidence supporting Cude’s original thesis.

The Ph.D. Trap Revisited amplifies Cude’s arguments, with a synthesis and analysis of new data and information. Topics examined include the grad school numbers game, the rogue professor, muddles in methodology, the perils of apprenticeship, ethics and economics, existing alternatives, and recommendations for change.

In an age of increasingly unchecked proliferation of the Ph.D. degree throughout academic institutions in the western world, Cude’s work is a tonic.

Paperback: 336 pages, Publisher: Dundurn (Oct. 1 2000), ISBN-10: 1550023454

Weapons of Mass Disruption: An Academic Whistleblower's Tale, by Wilfred Cude M.A. Weapons of Mass Disruption is unlike any book you have read. Although its subject matter is education – and particularly one man’s long and tortuous struggle to gain justice in a corrupt system – this riveting read has the pace and potency of a thriller. It is witty, funny, incredibly sad and absolutely dead on. Cude thrusts us into his life with heart-stopping stories about himself and other graduate students fighting a ruthless educational establishment. The author’s understanding of the PhD Trap (the title of his first book on the subject), the clarity of his thought and his deep affection for literature and teaching makes Weapons of Mass Disruption a classic. This is a book that will change the way you think about education and the world.

Paperback: 350 pages, Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (Oct. 28 2014), ISBN-10: 1500785040 VISIT WILF CUDE’S WEBSITE: www.wilfredcude.com ♣ www.dialogue.ca

‘Zionism Has Nothing to do With Judaism’ – Dr. Hajo Meyer A 2011 Interview with Holocaust survivor Dr. Hajo Meyer (1924 – 2014)

by David Zlutnick, at InfiniteUnknown (links below) RECEIVED FROM S. McDOWALL Dr. Hajo Meyer was a Holocaust survivor and antithis dominant group must first be dehumanized in Zionist activist. He was conducting a speaking tour a way themselves by diminishing their empathy due to propaganda and indoctrination to enable titled "Never Again For Anyone," sharing his expethem to be as cruel as some were. But the same holds riences of surviving Auschwitz and his perceptions of Zionism and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. nowadays for [Israel's propaganda and dehumanization, in education and in the military training] … I am [Video and Transcript links at the end] deeply appalled how hateful, how dehumanized [they “My name is Hajo Meyer, I was born in August 1924 are] that they do not see any human aspect in any in Beilefeld, western Germany. And so I am 86 years Palestinian anymore. It’s terrible. old (in 2010). And I had to leave Germany in January “[For a long time] I still believed more or less the 1939 because from November 1938 on I was not alpropaganda lies from the Israeli side. I mean, the real lowed to go to school anymore. When in the Nethereye-opener, how it happened for me – I’m afraid it lands I made my entrance examination to the univerwas quite late – especially about the ’48 war, was Ilan sity still under the German occupation… Then I went Pappé’s work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. underground and about a year later I was caught and brought to Auschwitz and survived 10 months in Before that– Look, they have such a strong propaganda Auschwitz. machine that it takes you a hell of a lot of study and “I was educated in the tradition of enlightened Reform knowledge and travel to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to see what the reality is… and then my Judaism, without any relation to the prescripts of Haeyes started to open. So it took me quite awhile. lacha [Jewish religious law] but just to the socio-cultural heritage and the enlightened parts of Judaism…

“The Zionists have not any right whatsoever to use the [In my view] this ethical tradition is absolutely conHolocaust for any purpose because they consider peotrary to everything which is at the basis of Zionism. ple like me– they talked about us as “useless human Because Zionism was created… at the end of the 19th material.” So, first of all I’m not useless. And secondly, Century, and in that era it was commonplace to be co- I am human, but I am not material. So I feel deeply, lonialist, to be racist, to be super-nationalist, to adore deeply –I could feel if I did not despise these people the nation-state–so the idea of France for the French, who use such words so much, I could feel offended…

Germany for the Germanics, and then some state for “And like Netanyahu did the other day in the General the Jews. This all formed the basis for Zionism.

Assembly of the United Nations, he used the number “Zionism and Judaism are contrary to each other. Beon my arm– or the number on our arms– to defend a cause Judaism is universal and humane, and Zionism coming attack on Iran. They have nothing to do with is exactly the opposite. It is very narrow, very nationeach other… [Zionists] have given up everything that alistic, racist, colonialist, and all this. There is no “Na- has to do with humanity, with empathy, for one thing: tional Judaism.” There is Zionism and there is Judathe state. The “blood and soil,” just like the Nazis. I ism, and they are completely different. learned in school about blood and soil, and that’s exactly their idea, too. […] “[Zionism] has nothing to do with Judaism. Because Judaism, as I learned it – the Reform Movement – is The above are excerpts from a video interview by highly, highly ethical. And so, you cannot connect David Zlutnick: https://tinyurl.com/DZ-dr-h-meyer; Zionism with “highly ethical.” Inter-human ethics is a Transcript: https://tinyurl.com/dz-hm-transcript product of evolution. So we have a center in our brain ********* that gives us the feeling of empathy so if we see some- Hajo Meyer (12 August 1924–23 August 2014) one suffer we get the impulse, “Can I help you?” was a Jewish German-Dutch physicist and an antiZionist political activist. Born in Bielefeld, in 1938 “That is a very important insight that I saw in AuschMeyer fled Nazi Germany to the Netherlands alone, witz—that if a dominant group wants to dehumanize without his parents. He went into hiding in 1943, …/ others, so as the Nazis wanted to dehumanize me, www.dialogue.ca

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but was arrested after a year and spent ten months in Auschwitz. His parents, who had also been deported to Auschwitz from Germany, did not survive.

After the war, Meyer returned to the Netherlands, and studied theoretical physics. He eventually became director of the Phillips Physics Laboratory (NatLab).

After his retirement he took courses in England and worked as a builder of new violins and violas. In his later years, Meyer became politically active, including as director of A Different Jewish Voice. He wrote Het einde van het Jodendom (The End of Judaism) in 2003, which accuses Israel of abusing the Holocaust to justify crimes against the Palestinians. He was a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist

Network. He participated in the 2011 "Never Again – For Anyone" tour. He claimed Zionism predates fascism, that Zionists and fascists had a history of cooperation (Nazi/Zionist cooperation was the subject of 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, which was collected and edited by Lenni Brenner), charging, among other things, that Israel wants to foment anti-Semitism in the world to encourage more Jews to migrate to Israel. Meyer spoke in favor of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

Meyer was a member of the Dutch GreenLeft. On 23 August 2014, Meyer died in his sleep in Heiloo, Netherlands at the age of 90. [Wikipedia] ♣ SEE ALSO: HUFFINGTON POST, https://tinyurl.com/hp-8660

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Much ado about something Stan Smith, Nanaimo BC

Thanks to Shakespeare for the title of his play about Nothing. Each moment in the life of each person (real and fictional) is in the “here and now” but is only part of the reality of the distant past (the moment of the Big Bang) and the possible future.

Belief systems (religious/atheist/ideological/philosophical) have different views of the past and future.

Among the belief systems we have: The Hebrews with their God’s “ promised land;” Thomas More (canonized in 1935 by the Roman Catholic Church – he lived 1478-1535) with his “ Utopia;” ISIS in today’s news (going back to Mohammed’s Koran – he lived 570-632) and their dream of a caliphate; Sikhs (the principles of Khalsa or the Five 'K's of Gobind Singh in 1699) with their dream of a Khalistan,

Punjab area of India; atheistic Communism, with their dream of a planet that does not believe in a spiritual God but a “ God that is matter only;” Jehovah’s Witnesses (founded by Charles Russell in Pittsburgh, USA, in the 1870s) who join Jews and Muslims in their negation of Jesus as God, that is, no Trinity, and believe only 144,000 will go to heaven, the rest of their saints remaining as part of God’s kingdom on this planet after Armageddon; Protestants reject a Roman Catholic “ Holy Quartet” (the Trinity + Mary).

All this is a recipe for disaster if we don’t keep it out of politics. We are 7.7 billion human beings wandering about on our planet, a speck in our 13.8 billion-year-old cosmos, all wondering what it is all about. Each moment given us is a new moment, a full moment, the full spectrum. All is MYSTERY. ♣

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Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune by Claude Debussy Alexandra Bruce, ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.net

In a recent phone call with my beloved stepfather, he expressed dismay over what’s happening in modern culture. The idiot box vomits new lows of endless hideousness. Not even football is fun. He said, “Nobody cares about art. Nobody cares about music.”

I agree. I’ve had it with this horror show of violence, corruption, sexual assault and other vileness. I don’t want to weigh in on it, let alone waste another second of my attention on it! If we want to improve culture maybe we should focus on culture. So, imagine being a lucky member of the Parisian audience in 1894 who were the first to hear this composition by Claude Debussy performed live. It astonished them so much, 38 dialogue

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they demanded that the work be repeated immediately. It’s been described as a quiet revolution. Modernity was born here. As you listen, you will know how many other important works were influenced by this Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. Maurice Ravel, a colleague of Debussy’s said of it, “If there is music to be heard at the Gates of Paradise, it is this.”

Debussy was very clear about what he was doing. He said, “I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art… Music should humbly seek to please; within these limits great beauty may perhaps be found. Extreme complication is contrary to art. Beauty must www.dialogue.ca

appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.”

He also said, “There’s no need either for music to make people think! … It would be enough if music could make people listen, despite themselves and despite their petty mundane troubles, and never mind if they’re incapable of expressing anything resembling an opinion. It would be enough if they could no longer recognize their own grey, dull faces, if they felt that for a moment they had been dreaming of an

imaginary country.” This prélude takes you there.

Listen. Your soul deserves this.

LINK: https://tinyurl.com/fktv-debussy (10 min) ALSO FROM FKTV – On Addiction: A very brief animated documentary that offers a new understanding of addiction: “Addiction is just one symptom of the disconnection that is happening all around us. … The opposite of addiction is not sobriety… it is connection” (with laboratory experiments to back it up) https://forbiddenknowledgetv.net/addiction/

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How to Find Inner Peace – Why Reconnective Healing® Now Anna Christine Doehring, Nanaimo BC

During this intense time period many are not aware what is happening in many areas of the world. They feel something is going on and that results in anxiety.

When they will learn about the truth of everything they believed in... our history, religion, some of our politicians and many events ... then many will be not strong enough emotionally, mentally, and spiritually to handle this. I have no idea how people will then react. Most will not be able to deal with the Truth in a calm way. Already now, writing this, a high percentage of us is taking medication against anxiety, panic, attacks, sleeplessness and depression. Others are taking drugs or commit suicide. This shows how emotionally and spiritually unbalanced and unstable a large part of society is.

We need to re-connect to each other to find security in the group. We need to be calm and understanding when others behave unreasonably. There is always a reason the observer is not aware of. Perhaps instead of “giving the finger” we need to ask ourselves WHY a driver cuts us off. We need to be able to respond calmly to others instead of yelling and slamming the door.

We all choose our thoughts. These are the creators of our reality. Only 2% of the people are positive all the time. People want a change ... a change from negative thinking to a much more collective understanding and a level of higher consciousness. The pending quantum shift, caused by high levels of energy coming in from the universe, might happen in the blink of an eye.

How we will get through that is determined by the level of consciousness (peace, love, compassion, and joy) we have reached.

We need a Reconnection to our original blueprint, our true self, to the powerful being we once were ... www.dialogue.ca

therefore we have now Reconnective Healing® and The Reconnection®. A state of inner balance and the ability to respond calmly is happening after about 3 – 5 Reconnective Healing® sessions. Dr. Eric Pearl mentioned 25 years ago 1 –3 sessions are enough most of the time. Life was quite different at that time.

First we need to re-connect to our heart, to reach inner peace ... then we can be re-connected to the true potential we once had. Nobody has an idea what is awaiting us during this time period. A few know the truth, but how will the masses react when they are confronted with it? The media tries to program us to be fearful. Stop watching TV. A fearful person’s reaction can be quite dramatic.

Meditation and being in nature as much as possible is helping us. Another way is Reconnective Healing® ions. It is a new and powerful form of healing. It can also be done as Distance Healing. Its frequencies have different properties than all energy healing techniques known. Quantum Physicists are surprised about its totally different frequencies. When a state of wholeness and inner balance is reached disease can fall away.

Some might chose the personal Reconnection® which is reconnecting us to our original blueprint and state of inner power. It is only necessary once in a life time and consists of two sessions. It has to be done in person. Through The Reconnection® many get more clarity about their life and what their purpose is. Over time we will be fully re-connected to the Ley-lines of the planet and from there to the Cosmos. This connection got cut off long time ago and stopped us in the originally planned process of our evolution. More insight about electrical medicine in chapter 314 (Recconnective Healing) and about astrophysical medicine in chapter 317 (The Reconnection®) in ‘The Book …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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of Knowledge – The Keys of Enoch’, by J.J. Hurtak.

More on https://keysofenoch.org/teachings/overview/

Anna Christine Doehring

Anna Christine Doehring, RHFP, RCP, Reconnection Certified PractitionerTM, Energy All Around Therapies, 250-756-2235 – www.energy-all-around.com – www.ReconnectionToTheCosmos.com ♣

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Stories from Magical Moon Lake

The day I stopped eating meat Karl Backus, Holland Centre ON

During the senseless World War II created by our 'leaders” I lived through the total destruction of Hamburg with 300,000 destroyed homes and 2900 sunken ocean-going ships. I grew up next to the main gate of this huge port that was my playground I had to deal with rubble anywhere I looked.

At Moon Lake I wanted to experience the opposite of the dark side of destruction. Perhaps this was part of my endeavour and desire with the help of God and nature to bring back to life the over 200 acres I have lived on now for over thirty years.

According to my neighbour he called this once desolate land “the moon” when he was a boy playing here. Destruction and death makes life in all of its forms more precious. We all have the potential to make this planet a bit better than what it was before we arrived here.

Sometimes we need a divine spark that starts our life in the right direction. There were many such sparks for me but the spark for stopping to eat meat came rather unexpectedly close to 25 years ago. I never ate much meat and at the time it did not seem wrong to enjoy a barbeque steak on the weekend. Everyone around me did the same thing. But today I am aware that we are not only eating the meat to feed our bodies, we are also ingesting and absorbing residues of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, PCB's, heavy metals and potential disease plus making our bodies acidic as a base for many diseases to take hold in us.

A most important factor in eating meat is often overlooked and perhaps rarely considered. By eating meat we are absorbing the fear of the animal when it knew that it would be killed. Fear results in increased adrenalin in the blood that feeds every living cell.

A fish farmer once told me that slowly dying fish taste better but at what price? Today hardly anyone is without fear. Fear and violence go together. A female friend once told me that when her husband and son stopped eating meat they became less aggressive.

One cannot tell anyone not to eat meat, fish or 40 dialogue

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whatever, but as conscious beings who want to live in harmony with nature for generations to come, at least it does not hurt to know what is what and to look at consequences before making choices.

My own journey to get out of an old groove began in the early eighties when I was little prepared to stop eating meat from one moment to the next. The looks people gave me who knew me, their difficulties and apologies for feeding me when I was invited were quite dramatic. No one could understand me. But I am very happy that I stuck with my decision. Meanwhile more people came on board and today vegetarian meals are found on menus. My sudden change of attitude began with the day I was on my way to Toronto.

I wanted to stop at a country butcher shop to buy European sausages and Black Forest ham. I knew that on this Wednesday the shop was closed for the public, but the German butcher who knew me had given me a blank invitation to stop-by anytime and come in through the back door.

I did not know that I had come on the day animals were slaughtered. The instant of my arrival was quite horrific. With great effort the butcher was pulling in a very large sow that was struggling to resist. It was screaming and terribly squealing. It was obvious that the pig knew what was going on and with all its might did not want to die.

Finally a freshly sharpened long knife made an end to this drama. The pig became quiet, still trembling for a while. Soon the pig would be gutted and opened up into two halves and then hung onto hooks to cool down. The whole scene was heartbreaking for me.

Suddenly I realized that this sow would produce the material for the next batch of fine European meats.

These meats look very tempting when one is entering through the front door. I forgot why I had come to the butcher and ended up not buying any meat that day and have never touched meat since. I did not want to be part of this continuous mass slaughtering of animals any longer. …/

www.dialogue.ca

I realize that I am only one person, but if many would follow it would have an effect. The origin of hamburgers is not much different, only on a much larger scale.

Thousands of beef cattle, slaughtered in fear, daily end up in monstrous grinders for a consistent “ quality” product that is distributed all over the world, then nicely cooked, spiced and packaged with all the trimmings for customers coming through the front door.

Ever since the time I stopped eating meat, it seems to me that the animals around Moon Lake and places I visit sense or perhaps even know that I do not eat animals and that they do not have to fear for their lives.

I can imagine that the food we eat has an influence on subtle electrical charges within our bodies that animals can easily detect. It is said “we are what we eat” and we can also say we eat what and who we are.

Our attitude towards the Creator and Creation is reflected in what we decide to eat and how we treat the world around us. Like a mirror, we can see ourselves in how people as well as animals respond to us. I am quite certain that thoughts of fear and violence in people would gradually fade if we would be willing to learn to discern and then decide the kind of world we would be happy to live in.

PS. In the 11/05 National Geographic Magazine on “The Secrets of Living Longer” (on the second to last page), at 'Do It Yourself' and 'Go Vegetarian,’ hints on vegetarian food are given. A good place to start is the USDA's vegetarian resource list: LINK: https://tinyurl.com/usda-veg-pdf (2014) Inset #9, From Magical Moon Lake, pp.79-80)

Karl Backus, Holland Centre ON ♣

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Bombshell science paper documents the depopulation chemical covertly spiked into vaccines: NaturalNews.com & GreenMed Info From Inge Hanle, CDSAPI, Vancouver BC

Mike Adams (at NaturalNews.com) clearly and unequivocally identifies the Agenda that almost everyone refuses to believe (because they cannot conceive of such evil) – which results in the Greater Agenda proceeding unimpeded, covertly, never mentioned in the corporate-owned, lying, parroting mainstream media – an Agenda hidden and camouflaged with “positive propaganda (fabricated pseudo-science)” to brainwash the public into believing that “it is all for their good, to protect their health” -- when the FACTS demonstrate the diametrically opposite “destructive genocidal reality.”

The Technological Dictatorship/Science Dictatorship/ Medical Dictatorship not only operates in our midst, but does so in plain sight, fully sponsored by governments that have been operationally infiltrated, and are now “ run” by these “ wolves in sheep's clothing.”

This Dictatorship is being ‘legalistically’ implemented with alarming rapidity – with impunity, no accountability or liability. “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” Apparently only when the dirty deed has been completed will uninformed, brainwashed people begin to “connect the dots.”

Vaccines are but one arsenal used in The Science of Population Extermination – better identified as targeted generational genocide.

In the article at the link, below, Mike Adams covers www.dialogue.ca

many the rest of the arsenal – also reprinting a solid analysis of all this from Jafferey Jaxen writing for GreenMedInfo.

AWARENESS is the first prerequisite to halting this attack on our survival. Please also watch the 56 min. video on this link: “The Science Agenda to Eliminate Blacks” LINK: https://tinyurl.com/nn-fertility-vaccine ♣ ******

How & Why Big Oil Conquered The World: Corbett Report Oil. The 19th century was transformed by it. The 20th century was shaped by it. And the 21st century is moving beyond it. But who gave birth to the oil industry? What have they done with the immense wealth and power that it has granted them? And what are they planning to do with that power in a post-carbon world? This is the remarkable true story of the “oiligarchs” and the world they have created.

PART ONE: HOW BIG OIL CONQUERED THE WORLD PART TWO: WHY BIG OIL CONQUERED THE WORLD PART ONE. TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:

https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=16888 PART TWO. TRANSCRIPT AND MP3:

https://www.corbettreport.com/bigoil https://tinyurl.com/yt-big-oil-why

As the "post-carbon" era of the 21st century comes into view, there are those who see this as the end of the oiligarchy. They couldn't be more wrong. …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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This is the remarkable true story of the world that Big Oil is creating, and how they plan to bring it about.

From Inge Hanle, cdsapi@telus.net - CDSAPI, Citizens Demand Scientific, Academic & Political Integrity ♣

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Hypertension

“Your Health Matters”

Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, M.D.

A very curious announcement on blood pressure was recently announced in the United States.

Apparently the medical profession has decided that the old “rules” for hypertension are to be replaced by edict.

As most people know, the part of the blood pressure known as systolic is when the heart is contracting and the diastolic is when it is relaxed. Anything over 140 mm Hg systolic and 90 mm diastolic has been classified for many years as hypertension. The new “rules” states that 130 systolic and 80 diastolic are now regarded as the maximum of normal. This new edict has immediately confirmed that 50% of the United States population have hypertension and are said to be in danger associated with the complications of high blood pressure. As a practicing physician of 61 years, this is a pure example of a reduction to absurdity. Let me try to explain why.

The nervous system Most people are aware that we have two types of nervous system. The one that we use to express a willed action is known as “voluntary” and operates while we are conscious. The other nervous system is automatic, operates 24 hours a day and is known as the “autonomic system.” Although it has vital connections with the voluntary system at various levels within the body, its primary action is to control the action of body organs. Like an orchestra, the conductor of this system is in the lower part of the brain. Each organ, consisting of specialized cells, like the instrumentalists in various sections of an orchestra, have to work together to perform all the bodily functions under the “baton” of the brain conductor.

The autonomic nervous system There are two separate channels that make up this system and a brief explanation is necessary. One channel, known as the sympathetic branch, prepares us for emergency physical and mental action. Of many 42 dialogue

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reflexes that it can initiate, its best known one is the fight-or-flight. It is designed to be activated by any perception of danger, producing action that results in survival. On completion of the action, the other branch, known as parasympathetic, is activated.

Let us see how this would work in a human being living in the wild.

The sympathetic branch Imagine a caveman who is confronted with an enemy in the shape of either a wild animal or a human aggressor. The situation is detected and the normal fightor-flight reflex is initiated automatically. The physiological actions can be understood in the light of the threatened danger. The heart is accelerated and the blood pressure goes up, delivering a load of oxygenated blood to create energy for action. The pupils dilate, ostensibly so that he has a wider field of vision.

Superficial blood vessels are closed down so that the face becomes pale and the blood supply to the muscles of action is accentuated. Hairs on the body are elevated and this has been thought to suggest to the enemy a more aggressive appearance. This is the explanation for the fact that an acute stress will often be associated with hair follicles on the body being raised to form “goosebumps.” Erection of hair on the back of the neck is also known to occur. Bronchial tubes are dilated, allowing a greater concentration of air to enter the lungs. The part of the brain that activates this reflex also controls the emotional situation and fear, anxiety, and rage dominate the mental state of our caveman. All aspects of the reflex, including those associated with aggression (killing the enemy), are designed for actions that result in survival.

The parasympathetic branch When he has vanquished his enemy or has escaped from the threat to safety, the actions of the sympathetic system are withdrawn and the parasympathetic system is activated. This enables him to sleep, eat and carry out the bodily actions that can be performed in a place of safety. …/ www.dialogue.ca

The amazing thing is that all of this is dominated by reflex mechanisms controlled by a part of the brain that does not think: it automates. The thinking brain is well aware of what is happening but has little or no power to quench the reflex under extreme conditions.

It can modify the reflex by conscious will when it is initiated without life-threatening danger. An example might be a fierce quarrel where an affected individual “comes to his senses” and finally settles the issue with a handshake. I must emphasize that these are all components of a normal reflex.

Hypoxia inducing an abnormal reflex The term hypoxia is used to mean that oxygen concentration in tissues is less than normal. When this happens in the brain for any reason, it is an obvious threat to survival. The fight-or-flight reflex will be activated with a varying degree of severity, depending on how critical is the lack of oxidative function. In a normal reflex, initiated to meet adaptation to a form of mental or physical stress, oxygen is consumed at an accelerated rate. If the oxygen concentration delivered by the blood to the tissues is abnormal, oxidation is compromised. The reflex may be abnormally fragmented.

Pseudo-hypoxia The presence of oxygen in brain is of no value by itself. In order to produce energy, it has to be consumed in the process known as oxidation. This involves the use of enzymes that, in turn, are dependent upon vitamins derived from diet. If this element is compromised, its effect is the same as lack of oxygen and is termed pseudo-hypoxia. Note that the reflex in this case is initiated for abnormal reasons and is therefore not strictly normal in itself. For example, it is now known that panic disorder, a common cause of medical consultation, is nothing more than a disordered fight-or-flight reflex being initiated because of pseudo-hypoxia.

other common symptoms that are often diagnosed as psychosomatic.

Hypothesis Having witnessed thiamin deficiency for years of medical practice as a common form of malnutrition, I am suggesting that the inordinate consumption of simple sugars in many different forms creates an abnormal calorie/thiamin ratio that would be the equivalent of a low thiamin concentration in a normal diet. The result is pseudo-hypoxia and the clinical result is dysautonomia (abnormal function of the autonomic system). For many people experiencing some form of chronic stress, this might result in a blood pressure higher than normal. We have known for years that the autonomic nervous system provides an important part of blood pressure control. As long as the malnutrition continues without being recognized as the cause of many symptoms, it could be expected that permanent damage would result and the associated symptoms would become irreversible. Coupled with dietary indiscretion, the stress of modern civilization may well be the underlying cause.

The best known practical example of pseudo-hypoxia is the thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency disease, beriberi. Because the lower brain is peculiarly sensitive to this deficiency, the autonomic nervous system is activated, producing abnormal action of this system. If the sympathetic branch is turned on, the individual will experience variable expressions of the fight-or-flight reflex. Heart rate will accelerate and blood pressure will increase. Both will be accompanied by a sense of anxiety or fear. There may be bloating, recurrent abdominal pain, irritable bowel syndrome and many

Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition explores thiamine and how its deficiency affects the functions of the brainstem and autonomic nervous system by way of metabolic changes at the level of the mitochondria. Thiamine deficiency derails mitochondrial oxidative metabolism and gives rise to the classic disease of beriberi that, in its early stages, can be considered the prototype for a set of disorders that we now recognize as dysautonomia. This book represents the life work of the senior author, Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, and a recent

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– Derrick Lonsdale, M.D., Strongsville OH “ Everything is connected to everything else.”

Dr. Lonsdale retired in 2012 at the age of 88 years; he is a retired Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a Certified Nutrition Specialist. Website: www.prevmed.com/ Blog: http://o2thesparkoflife.blogspot.com/

Dr. Lonsdale is author of: A Nutritional Approach to a Revised Model for Medicine – Is Modern Medicine Helping You? and also Why I Left Orthodox Medicine, Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition (Aug 2017) More below. ♣

Dr. Lonsdale’s new book…

Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition

by Derrick Lonsdale (Author), Chandler Marrs (Author) Kindle and Paperback editions.

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collaboration with his co-author Dr. Chandler Marrs.

• Presents clinical experience and animal research that have answered questions about thiamine chemistry • Demonstrates that the consumption of empty calories can result in clinical effects that lead to misdiagnosis • Addresses the biochemical changes induced by vitamin deficiency, particularly that of thiamine. …/ A Review by Kelly Brogan, M.D. As a conventionally-trained physician who came to see the limitations of the allopathic approach, I am so grateful to have this science-based text supporting the

vanguard of natural healing. The truth is that we are getting sick in more and more complex ways, and dysautonomia is emblematic of the ways in which our bodies are struggling in the setting of malnutrition and toxic burden. This text is clinically relevant, evidence-based, and entirely readable. In fact, a deep desire to contribute to the healing of “mysteriously” sick patients comes through in the tenor of this writing. For clinicians and struggling patients alike, this text is a one-of-a-kind essential resource on the newest biology of healing.

Paper: ISBN 0128103876 / Kindle: ASIN B073NCFNLX ♣

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Killing Us Softly—Glyphosate Herbicide or Genocide?

By F. William Engdahl, 9 November 2017 www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO9Nov2017.php [EXTRACTS & LINK] One of the more bizarre actions in

terms of the health and safety of EU citizens is the saga of Monsanto and its toxic herbicide or weedkiller, Roundup, the most widely used weed-killer on the planet. On October 25, 2017 the European Union Commission again announced that it lacked the necessary member state votes to approve a ten year license extension for weed-killer glyphosate. They will try again. Behind this seeming routine announcement is one of the hottest battles over food and human health the world has seen since the 1972 USA decision to ban spraying of deadly DDT pesticides on crops. This time the stakes go far beyond the ban on glyphosate. It affects the future of human fertility or lack of it. […]

The dimensions of the human and animal exposure to the enormous quantities of glyphosate-based weedkillers in the world food chain are only dimly beginning to be appreciated. The reason is the enormous clout of the agro-chemical industry lobby around companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer AG, soon to be the owner of Monsanto. They have so far managed to use their financial resources and their legal resources to distort test results and to win regulatory approval from the demonstrably corrupt Monsanto-influenced Washington Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.

From there it has spread to the EU Commission and relevant agencies such as EFSA and European Chemicals Agency, this despite the overwhelming popular rejection of GMO crops.

A recent study published by the Journal of Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology–a study given 44 dialogue

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no visibility in mainstream media–sounds the alarm over the effects of long-term human exposure to glyphosate for the healthy production of human sperm, an issue that is beginning to be cause of great alarm across the western countries where chemical herbicides and pesticides are used in massive doses by agro-industry producers.

The study, which definitely warrants major follow-up studies, found effects of a glyphosate-based herbicide after an 8-day exposure of adult rats, including “a significant and differential expression of aromatase in testis.” … The authors concluded that, “The repetition of exposures of this herbicide could alter the mammalian reproduction.” Ample tests now exist, independent of Monsanto and other corrupt industry sources demonstrating to an alarming degree that the exposure of human and animal species to glyphosate-based herbicides or weed-killers can cause cancer tumors but can also be damaging to human sexual reproduction, that is, as in the future of the human species.

Engdahl Newsletter Five, Dec. 4, 2017 – “The Incredible Seralini Affair”

In this installment I want to share with you something I have written on one of the most shocking corruption scandals in the history of a very corrupt European Union Commission together with corruption by Monsanto and the related GMO agribusiness industry.

Today Monsanto is being fused in a takeover with the giant German chemical group, Bayer AG, another advocate of GMOs and of toxic herbicides and pesticides. The arbitrary June 2016 decision by the EU Commission to ignore massive opposition on health safety grounds to a relicensing of the widely-used www.dialogue.ca

weed-killer, glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, and to relicense glyphosate for use in the EU another 18 months indicates the pervasive extent of this life-threatening corruption. If you find

this piece to be useful, I would suggest you buy a copy of my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. Thank you for your support - F. William Engdahl, www.williamengdahl.com ♣

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THE PASSING PARADE

Ramblings

Randy Vancourt, Toronto ON

I love Christmas and I’m not afraid to admit it. I enjoy everything about the holidays; the music, the decorations, the outdoor lights, the baked treats, the halfbaked TV specials – there’s not much about the season that I don’t embrace.

When I was still in elementary school I made the decision that every year prior to Christmas, I would be sure to read Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in its entirety. I revisited that story so many times that I can still recite entire pages from memory, a feat I have performed at many holiday parties, usually after a few eggnogs and not always with the encouragement of fellow guests.

It’s no revelation that these days Christmas preparations, at least at the retail level, begin about the same time that we are all enjoying our Thanksgiving dinners. This seems far, far too early to start the Christmas countdown. When I was a kid I counted the days leading up to December 25 from a different starting point: the Santa Claus Parade.

The Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade was a Christmas tradition dating back to 1913. I was always amazed to think that the parade I enjoyed every holiday season was the same one that my parents had experienced as children. Many of us know the parade as a Toronto institution but starting in 1925 it also traveled to Montreal every year and thrilled the crowds there.

Even though I grew up in Quebec in the 60’s and 70’s, our family never did head downtown to see the www.dialogue.ca

parade live. By the time I was old enough to consider making the trip myself, the parade’s Montreal visit was long cancelled, a victim of the upheaval caused by the 1969 FLQ bombings.

I had to content myself with watching the Toronto parade every year on television.

I didn’t mind because I found the entire thing exhilarating. I would sit in front of the TV and watch with amazement as the colourful floats, clowns and marching bands passed across the screen. It seemed the most glorious reason of all, to have an entire parade to welcome Santa Claus to town.

Parades were not something I saw every day. At that point my small hometown only held one parade a year and that was on Remembrance Day. Of course it was a somber affair; its point was definitely not to entertain and delight the spectators. The only marching band was from our local Legion and was made up of about 20 men; their entire complement of instruments amounted to 18 drums and two glockenspiels. The only song they seemed to know was “Bridge on the River Kwai” and even then they managed to make numerous loud mistakes each year.

Unfortunately it never failed to provide great amusement to the younger onlookers, which I imagine was the complete opposite of its intended goal.

Our town eventually began its own Santa Claus Parade which continues to this day; it became yet another exciting tradition that I anticipated each Christmas. As wonderful as it was it couldn’t hold a candle to the Eaton’s parade; I lived in hope that some day I would finally get to see the pageantry in person. …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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I thought this dream was finally coming true when, in September of 1982, I unexpectedly moved to Toronto.

I recall my excitement that in a few short months I would actually be able to see this miraculous parade live. I counted the days with great anticipation, and then just as it was within reach... Eaton’s announced they were cancelling the parade! The same parade I had been waiting to experience my entire life. Sadly I think this was the first of many poor marketing decisions they made that helped lead to the store’s ultimate demise.

Miraculously within 3 days of Eaton’s announcement, two Toronto businessmen formed a non-profit organization and saved the parade. They reached out to 20 companies that each sponsored a float and the parade managed to be back on the street without missing a year.

It continues to this day and now I am privileged to

introduce my own kids to this amazing tradition. This year my 3-year old son is finally old enough to understand what’s happening, and his absolute excitement is a joy to watch.

My brother has the good fortune to have an office that overlooks the parade route. Each year we get sandwiches, snacks and drinks and sit in the warmth of the Victorian-era Christie Mansion (he of cookie fame), watching the parade pass by just a few feet from the large front windows. Not only is it wonderfully warm and comfortable but watching the parade from this historic building makes you feel like Dickens himself might pop by at any moment to enjoy a bowl of festive punch. It also has the added bonus of keeping the kids in a contained area, and easy access to washrooms! It’s truly a Christmas miracle.

Website: www.randyvancourt.com ♣

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“Stirring the Soup”

THY NAME IS REBELLION Thoughts on a little Rose and the making of a Rebel…

[Article #53]

with the passion of the Christ.

Upon my birth, I was given the name In retrospect though, it could have been so much “Rose-Marie,” a commanding, worse. I may have inherited a really horrific name acrespect-inducing French-Canadian cording to my daughter, the family historian, who name. A year later when my sister shared with me some favorites she’s found in our (the 15th child in line to the farming genealogy from back in the day … Graziella, throne) came along, she usurped the Jacquette, Ambroise, Perrine, Martine, Radegonde or first half of my name (Rose) and my Guillaumette – Yikes! first name became Marie.

Years passed and I rowed the tides of destiny, thrashI went from being a sweet-scented flower to one of a ing out of bad times and threading my way into good, kajillion Marie’s throughout the world. All of my sisbattling challenges and claiming victories, brawling ters had Marie as a middle name. Most my way through the lows of of my female relatives had Marie as eilife to sail into the highs. I ther a first or middle name. The nuns grew into the woman I that taught us were each named various wanted to become. Always versions of Sister Marie-something-orwith my eyes on the prize other. There were copious Marie’s at though, always knowing I school. Bullies loved to call me “Saintewanted to stand out, to be Marie,” referring sarcastically to Jesus’ UNcommon, UNlike everymother. Even later in life in the workone else, my own unique perplace, corporate bullies would mockson with strengths and ideas ingly bow down to me and recite the and influence, a person to be A rose from Mission Hill Vineyards in Kelowna “Holy Mary.” reckoned with.

As you can imagine, I grew to dislike my name At some point in my journey, I realized that I had Marie Gaudet, Edmonton AB

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formed a real attachment to my abbreviated name. (which still wants self-gratification but also considers Still wondering though, if having kept “ Rose-Marie” other people’s needs), and the Superego (which govas my erns one’s morals and value system, these imparted by permanent name would have had any effect on my our parents). He also believed that a healthy person has a stronger Ego so that it can satisfy the needs of life, one day I decided to look up the meaning of each the Id, not upset the Superego, and still consider the name and found this: Rose-Marie is a French name reality of every situation. I think I just chose to tweak meaning 'flower of the sea” ; and Marie is a Hebrew my personality a bit, weaving a saucy little rebel into baby name meaning either ‘bitter’ or ‘rebellion.’ I’m not sure how the meaning of a name is established but my Superego because I truly believed I needed the protection that a bendy little flower would not be able usually they’re pretty dead on. And while I’ve tasted to provide. of the ‘bitter’ pill several times during my life, the meaning I could really relate to was ‘rebellion’.

He, my rebel, took charge immediately, further deconstructing the Superego my parents had instilled Aha, I thought, it was not in my DNA after all to be a and reconstructing that particular trait to a much saner sweet-smelling, bend-with-the-wind, welcoming and version more relevant to my reality. This helped me to easy-going little posy like my sister Rose was, but a survive. The little flower that I had thought to be so warrior, as I had always thought myself to be! I had weak and wimpy just kept poking her head up whenrejected being “one of a kajillion Marie’s throughout ever she was needed. She bent (but didn’t break) to althe world,” refused to be a common, everyday human low the rebel to change my Superego. She incessantly being, a drone in an army of Marie’s, a rose by any radiated unasked-for love and compassion in what one other name. I had battled for my individuality and I counsellor once called my “ heart of divine tendercompletely accepted this definition of my name as ness” so that I was forced to open myself up to peoproof. “Marie, thy name is Rebellion!” became my ple. No matter how hard the rebel fought mantra. to harden my heart, the flower would But did I choose to become the recounter with a flood of unyielding empabel due to my dislike of the name? thy, refusing to let me become tough and Or maybe from stewing about my callous. Bloody annoying tenderheartedplace in the familial hierarchy ness, I’ve often grumbled. where the youngest were peons?

But I’ve come to realize that I am both Did my disgust with domestic and flower AND rebel. I may have been born a other bullies push me to make the best life for myself I possibly flower but when life hurled its trials my could? (If so, I guess I owe those way, I had to choose fight-or-flight and so bullies my thanks)! Was I born to I called on the rebel, who took over at that be a rebel though, or did I become point to help me survive. I’m still a flower A photo of my grandson a rebel when my name changed? on the inside but I’ve been so busy Bace in a Photobooth prop fighting (out of habit, I think) that I’ve beDoes a name have that much power? Or do your life experiences, or maybe your come ashamed of my ‘rose’ and tried to hide her. Now that I appreciate how much stronger my rose is than I reaction to these experiences, create your reality?

Yet, you must already own your personality when you ever gave her credit for, the challenge will be to let her come into the world. If you’re going to be a fighter, come out again and stand, tall and proud, in the foreyou’d be born with those personality traits already ground. built in, right? Same thing if you’re meant to be a Of course, I will need to convince the rebel, who has flower, you’d be born with the natural predisposition always been front and center ready to protect me, that to attract honeybees and hummingbirds and to emit there’s no longer so much need in my life for a warheavenly fragrances that make people happy. So what rior, and that it’s OK to step back and let the ‘rose’ was I really -- a flower or a rebel? come out now and spread her welcoming arms wide Freud believed that our personalities have three differ- open to love, friendship and the durable relationships ent parts: The Id (driven by self-gratification), the Ego I so long for. In essence, my rebel can take a …/ www.dialogue.ca

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semi-retirement after a lifetime of very dedicated work. And the rose, in memory of my sweet sister, can come out for some fresh air and sunshine and help me attract the loving, balanced, respectful and committed tribe I’ve been looking for my entire life (though I probably won’t begrudge it its thorns).

My Ego is nowadays very healthy, despite that my Superego continues to fight the good battle for dominion.

And as for my Id, I chose to put it aside for so many years as a wife and mother that now, I self-gratify a lot so my Id and I are BFFs. This whole new arrangement of my personality that I’ve built, though perhaps not what Freud intended, is working quite nicely for me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that many parts of me stand to win with the promotion of the rose to a

managerial position. My rebel, no longer in constant fight-or-flight, will be able to kick back and enjoy a well-earned rest, despite always being on-call. My Ego will enjoy some downtime now, having to mediate less and less between the desires of the Id and the Superego. And my “heart of divine tenderness,” no longer being pulled in different directions, will have a restored balance and can settle in to simply doing its job. Man, that sounds like a nice lifestyle for my poor overused psyche!

Who would’ve guessed one little rose could pack such a punch? But then, that’s what I said about my sister too…

Marie Gaudet, Edmonton acadian.lady@hotmail.ca ♣

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Continuing Tales from Fruitvale…

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC

SUNSET, SUNRISE The black mountainside bathes in a bright orange sunset, tall firs and spruce trees silhouette against the sky.

Sunset magnifies Earth’s beauty, a stellar gift of etheric garments to robe Earth’s mantle with light and colour.

The planet slowly spins into darkness making time appear to slip away, spurring my memory of things done so far or opportunity lost.

As I gaze at the light receding and sleep becomes the new horizon I hope to wake once again to watch the sunrise over the rugged peaks.

Then I might accomplish one more thing, to rake or sweep or shovel snow, to see what life brings and to feel alive once more in the new day.

Sleeping brings to pass our dreams, which, like a seed within the earth may germinate and reach for the light of possibilities.

Being awake, reminds me of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, he was awake to the sun, catching the sultan’s turret in a noose of light.

We must be awake to safely cross the road, or to fathom the wisdom of our daily choices.

We have to be awake to play an instrument, to learn the notes, remember the melody or to conjure an unknown tune.

The melody of life is played in consort with Time, just as life and death, night and day are intertwined.

Earth is like a pendulum in motion swinging around the sun each year our moon tempers the suns radiant power, claiming cycles of growth.

The great cosmic wheel of the universe turns, as perhaps, “The One without a Second” broods upon the pace of eternity.

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Paul Bowles

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The Mystery within Which We Live RANDOM ELEMENTS of ‘A Universe from Nothing’ * (by Lawrence M. Krauss)

By Paul Bowles

In short, the explanation of the above title, as you might expect, would be... atoms, electrons, protons and neutrons etc. I refer to the work of erudite particle physicist and convert to cosmology, Lawrence Krauss, who is trying to get to the bottom of The Big Bang and its resultant universe of ours that we somewhat know and love. ‘Nothing,’ in his context would seem to be with caveats of some sort, like admitting to virtual particles in a quantum vacuum popping in and out of existence, and ‘Nothing’ referring to calculations of empty space amounting to zero gravitational energy, also ‘Nothing,’ definitely meaning no Godlike core, or prime cause of being, as well as, in his words, “A universe with no purpose, or guidance.”

Krauss states, “God seems to me a rather facile semantic solution to the deep question of creation.”

The ‘No Purpose’ part of this book bothers me because I look out onto the garden and beyond and everywhere I see GROWTH. So to me, the Purpose of the universe is to seed life and growth, but I am not a physicist and Krauss is not a biologist (me neither) but Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) is, and he wrote a glowing afterward of this book, I wonder why he didn’t see it. Although I do understand him preferring to acknowledge that ‘Nothing’ was responsible for life and growth. Both he and Krauss are ‘life-by-accident’ guys, who see matter and life evolved by chance and then into the miracle of multiplicity and beauty, rather than the other way around – which would be: a miraculous and splendid occurrence blowing matter and life into existence.

Krauss does acknowledge that the debate over the HOW of creation is persistent between the two sides, science and religion. Personally, I don’t see a problem with God as virtual particles, or as a power, void of things before the Beginning and integral to things and people afterwards. The core power of creation manifesting on Earth could remain out of the picture until consciousness in man is raised sufficiently to conceive of an inspiring source that guides one to a sense of brotherhood with man. After which, life on this physical plane could evolve with purpose of growth and hope for a better life than war and strife that we have now. www.dialogue.ca

Krauss as physicist likes to look for energy from matter kinetically, as from the particle accelerator, splitting atoms in the Hadron Particle Collider to find the Higgs Boson or so called God particle. This is a kind of search in pursuit of the universal principles of existence but only in part. This search for the primal elements of cosmic origin is a purely physical one, like a tangible ‘Muon’ or something to identify with and discover what use we could make of it and of course to see how close it is to the first ejection from the Big Bang, because we can’t stand not knowing, no matter how much it costs. And further to that point, since the current collider hasn’t produced anything like the expected element, other than a glimmer years ago, we are considering building a completely new one twice the size.

Regarding the search for universal principles of existence in that Big Bang, physical substance is only one out of possibly three aspects of the true God particle. The body of the cosmos is studied here but not the mind.

The ‘Idea’ of existence may rest in the domain of philosophy to expound upon the active intelligence of existence as in the interrelationships like the Earth with the Moon and the Sun and the ecosystems of the world with the weather and environment and the roles of the creatures of the Earth. The third aspect of the universal principle of existence is Love and would be expounded by the humanities of life as the moral sense. For if we are the universe expressing itself as a life form, we have: will power, active intelligence and love. We just have to learn how to do right with those universal principles of existence, and they may not be equally balanced in one person we each may have more or less than one or the other.

Humans operate on an emotional energy for good or ill. The energy driving the worlds hatred, violence, terror and war seems always at odds with the power of love or caring for others, order and acceptance.

Unless there is a sense of universal principles of existence or God (particle) as a builder of life, we will destroy our planet and each other. This is a planet of conflict where we seem to be tried in the crucible of suffering, if not from human hand or sickness, and accident but from earthquakes fire, flood and loss. We prevail somehow drawing upon inner resources, …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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cooperation and compromise with others. In the world of physics, positive energy exists with negative energy. Matter with anti-matter annihilates each other until there is a portion of matter remaining to carry on.

God or no, we have to face conflict of some kind in our future. Respect for the Earth and tolerance for the other ought to be a law, but that’s free will for you, we have the choice, ergo our world of positive and negative duality, but we hopefully grow from this tension, evolving on a human scale, trying to be happy and not to worry.

Krauss uses his free will as a scientist just like Einstein to grapple with explanations, it fires their neurons: gravity, speed of light, dark matter, curved space, red shifts, supernovae, cosmological constants, event horizons, and accelerating universe. So much to think about, I like E=mc2 as much as anybody, the beautiful equation that means energy equals mass times the squared velocity of light. I also like “Let there be light,” nebulae, galaxies, suns, and as Krauss says, even our bodies are resultant of the elements emitted from exploding stars. Our bodies grow but it’s the mind that I wonder about, thought can even interfere with light. In laboratory experiments, the presence of an observer can affect light going through the slits, changing from wave to particle. In other words, thought is energy also. The seed of thought is efficacious when well thought out, unless, as it could do, it falls by the wayside. Ideas grow just like natures seeds ready to proliferate.

I have a very large weed in my yard and I pray to some God of the quantum field that my wife doesn’t rip it out.

It is a single stem from which a plethora of branches extend, displaying multiple yellow flowers which transform into huge gossamer globes of fibres that assemble into six sided pattern parachutes for seeds, waiting in potential for flight upon a gust of wind. Laws of creation here take the breath away indeed.

Lest I wander too far from the essential, or as I have chosen, random elements of this book into realms of purpose and growth, the aspect of ‘Nothing’ which is the building block of Krauss’s argument in ‘A Universe from Nothing’ should at least be briefly explored to be fair to the very expansive thought of the author. To reiterate, this premise is a consequence from the discovery that the energy of empty space is zero, known as the cosmological constant. What is perplexing is that Krauss also says “empty space 50 dialogue

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indeed HAS energy,” ...enough to accelerate the universe anyway. However, when the questions of alternative universes are considered, the same energy value may not apply. In what is called “ The coincidence problem” Krauss graciously offers, although not necessarily being in favour of, that our universe may not be unique but the potential existence of a ‘Multiverse’ could be the case because of the phenomenon of inflation. Inflation is, when a huge energy temporarily dominates some region of the universe, this region will expand, hence, and here I am personally projecting, ...other sources of life may exist, spiritual spheres maybe. In this regard, string theory also provides for other dimensions, domains hidden from our fundamental particle existence. But, Krauss says that “There is a difference between domains of spiritual and religion here because they are only accessible in principle.” However, he says, “Not beyond the boundaries of possibility.” Krauss goes even further: “ We can imagine an infinite number of universes stacked up above a single point in our space, invisible to us but each of which could exhibit remarkably different properties,” ...a growth potential possibly.

William Blake the poet said that energy is eternal.

Krause says “We are composed of protons and neutrons which contain quarks but also virtual particles jumping in and out of existence which create fields that contribute most of the energy of the protons and neutrons that are us.” Virtual particles are potential energy which Krauss says contributes to our physical energy but he also says elsewhere that “the potential to exist is no energy worth considering.” I imagine that is because it is not measurable yet it is recognised, such as the soul waiting to take on a new vehicle or body for manifestation in Earth time. In the book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi,’ Yogananda, in a test of his power he is asked to perceive the moment of birth of an old soul, known in an earlier lifetime and to find the location of his birth place, his new opportunity for growth. Read the book to discover if he managed it.

Regarding existence, Krauss has stated, “What it would be like to be dead is to imagine how it felt to be before you were conceived.” This I personally take him to mean... Nothing before death, nothing after death. However, if he put particle physics aside for a moment with its twists and turns and nothing is for sure but calculation and empirical evidence, he might find some guidance from the universe on the question www.dialogue.ca

of life after death. Which would mean more opportunity for growth.

On the subject of guidance, read Maclean magazine, ‘The Heaven Boom’ by Brian Bethune, just to save time in sifting through the endless material available on the subject of Near Death Experiences, which pose the existence of life after death and subsequently before conception. Of course the skeptical enquirer is quick to condemn such claims but, just for one example, what fantasy world or pseudo-science does a Harvard trained neuro-surgeon live in? Dr. Nathan Alexander survived a NDE and put his reputation on the line to bring his out-of-body experience to the world. Read the book ‘Proof of Heaven,’ to blow your mind.

Krauss says there is no purpose or guidance to the universe; perhaps he hasn’t looked sufficiently in this world for testimony of continuation of growth in the next, or more likely he has but discounts it. Lawrence Krauss looks two trillion years ahead, stating that the universe will have expanded so far, accelerating at the threshold of the speed of light; he says that the longer we wait as observers, the less we are able to see in the realm of galaxies that we like to look at. All four hundred billion of them will have disappeared from our view and the dark energy will be responsible for it.

On the other hand, he says, “We can’t be sure of that.”

Science likes to look ahead but reality is in the Now, as in God, being “The One without a second.”

Have I learned anything ...some random elements perhaps, but Krauss also adds a possible fact to go out on and that is, the light energy of our sun will be extinguished in five billion years? He says, “This knowledge, and much more, we draw from the modern revolution in cosmology, which underscores what some may view as the ultimate futility of our brief moment in the sun.”

Our moment in the sun is brief maybe when viewed as

one lifetime for the body and futile if nothing worthwhile is accomplished. However, if we are seeded by the indwelling core of creative purpose, to find ourselves as meaningful beings in a challenging world, perhaps evolution can take its course in the chain of possibilities, changing seasons, relationships and continuity of the spirit within, from life to life. We know all things pass, even the universe may not be infinite; yet, perhaps, it is a universe FROM infinity, recycling itself just as spring for us on Earth, so we may learn to grow in body and in mind.

All potential (things) are held in the suspended thought of infinity, called by the Buddhists, The Luminosity, before becoming substance when released into time. I must dust off my old Tibetan Book of the Dead. It has been almost a lifetime since being on that journey through the ‘Bardo’ of countless realms of ever less substantial forms through which the soul travels until it becomes the blazing light of consciousness in the core of unreality which is spirit. Our Earth is at the bottom end of the chain of realms, a crystallisation of a higher and purer conception. In those ancient days, the wise ones didn’t need a collider, they penetrated the higher truths with mind.

So, in the respect that God is No Thing, perhaps Krauss was right after all, the universe must come from nothing, but, with an alternative perspective, I contend, a universe with more promise, the promise of growth.

“Eternity brought forth time. The Boundless gave birth to limit. Being descended into generation. Life is a myriad of means by which the spirit of God communicates.” – Madame Blavatsky Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC * A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing, Jan 1 2013, by Lawrence M. Krauss (Author), Richard Dawkins (Afterword), ISBN-13: 9781451624465; Also by LM Krauss: The Greatest Story Ever Told...So Far, Mar 23 2017, ISBN-13: 978-1471158377 ♣

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Quantum Egg = Cosmic Egg Herb Spencer, Surrey BC

For all of you with limited time (or concentration) to watch the one-hour interview (referenced 2nd next page) with Joe Pearce, then do NOT miss# this essential six-minute interview, LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mws5kCFLrDg www.dialogue.ca

Yesterday, after a 10 year effort, I cracked the “Quantum Egg” * which reminded me of the more famous book (Crack in the Cosmic Egg, below). This led to this UTube interview with the author, Joe Pearce: Wisdom of the Heart. This is pure GOLD, especially around 15:00 min. [Darwin 1 and 2 – Survival of …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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the Fittest and Descent from Love and Altruism, caring for those in need.] LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExDCFlARrlk [EXTRACT] We interviewed Joseph Chilton Pearce at The Monroe Institute in Favor, Virginia as part of the 40 Days and 40 Nights Video Tour in October 2011.

For nearly half a century, Joe has been probing the mysteries of the human mind. Author of The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Magical Child, Magical Child Matures, Bond of Power, and Evolution's End, one of his overriding passions remains the study of what he calls the “unfolding” of intelligence in children. He is a selfavowed iconoclast, unafraid to speak out against the myriad ways in which contemporary American culture fails to nurture the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual needs and yearnings of our young people.

Part scholar, part scientist, part mystic, part itinerant teacher, Pearce keeps in close touch with the most brilliant men and women in each field. He creates a unique synthesis of their work and translates the results into a common language. His most recent book, Death of Religion and the Rebirth of Spirit: A Return to the Intelligence of the Heart (2007), is critically

important for where we are now. Our organized religions are stuck in centuries of a particular way of thinking that makes it very difficult to address the changes going on the world of thought today. Over and over on this tour, we met brilliant thinkers and scientists who are making the journey from the intellect to the heart along an unchartered and unmapped path. In our interview, Joe shows us the importance of living from the heart, regardless of what the mind says.

‘Man’s mind mirrors the Universe that mirrors man’s mind – the strange loop effect…’ - - ‘Creation and creator bring each other about.’ # Watch this video! – especially if you are involved

with young children… or want to begin to understand yourself and others…!

* “Quantum Egg” – Herb explains: Basically, the orbits in the Hydrogen atom are elliptical (egg shaped) and NOT circular. Also, the electron jumps straight ACROSS the space, reversing only at the ‘Egg’s Shell’.

Everyone else has the particle moving ON the surface.

Thus, Quantum Mechanics is wrong conceptually. Newton’s mistake was to see Time as Egg-Shell thin (Infinitesimal). The key is: Time is discrete and finite, not continuous like space.

Best wishes, Herb, spsi99@telus.net ♣

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Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg by Joseph Chilton Pearce [FROM THE BOOK’S BACK COVER] “Pearce's Explor-

ing the Crack in the Cosmic Egg is a brilliant analysis of the human condition, one of the very best I have ever seen ... it is a must read.” – CHARLES T. TART, PH.D., author of The End of Materialism and Altered States of Consciousness In this classic follow-up to his bestselling The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Joseph Chilton Pearce explains the process of acculturation and the mechanisms that create our self-limiting “cosmic egg” of consensus reality.

Laying the groundwork for his later classic, Pearce shows that we go through early childhood connecting with the world through our senses. With the development of language and the process of acculturation not only do our direct experiences of the world become much less vivid but our innate states of nonordinary consciousness become suppressed. Trapped in a specific cultural context – a “cosmic egg” – we are no longer able to have or even recognize mystical experiences not mediated by our culture. Motivated primarily by a fear of death, our enculturation literally splits our minds and prevents us from living fully in the present.

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Drawing from Carlos Castaneda's writings about Don Juan and the sense of “body-knowing,” Pearce explores the varieties of nonordinary consciousness that can help us return to the unencumbered consciousness of our infancy. He shows that just as we each create our own cosmic egg of reality through cultural conditioning, we also innately create a “crack” in that egg.

Ultimately, certain shifts in our biological development take place to offset acculturation, leaving an avenue of return to our primary state. Pearce examines the creation of the “egg” itself and ways to discover its inherent cracks to restore wholeness to our minds, release us from our fear of death, and re-establish our ability to create our own realities through imagination and biological transcendence.

[Published 1974] PARK STREET PRESS, ROCHESTER, VERMONT, www.ParkStPress.com -- ISBN: 978-162055254-4

JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE is the author of 11

books, including Magical Child, and The Biology of Transcendence ♣ www.dialogue.ca

I have a new identity!

Norm Zigarlick, Saskatchewan

Thanks to Kim Jong Trumpun and the ongoing blather war, a new name has emerged for crazy old men who rant about things in general. I think I officially qualify as a "dotard." In fact I am going to get a hat made that says: MAKE DOTARDS GRATE AGAIN! I will promote a new organization called Dotards of America and register the trademark D.O.A. Back when Fermi and Openheimer and a couple of other guys started building something they would later call an atomic bomb, they had concerns it could lead to a lunatic have control over that kind of power.

Well they were wrong by half...there are two lunatics.

Not to fear. We Dotards are here. We can handle this... look how well we managed the planet before we discovered pension cheques. We don’t fear things like carbon dioxide...uh...uh... we recognize real threats, things like polonium 210 and real warming like 10,000 celsius for a moment or two.

We recognize progress when we see it. The British and English had seven years of war. Way back when... my guys could cut that down to 25 minutes (if you include the flight time of an ICBM).

Dotards refined the art of fish farming. I'll admit my ancestors in Poland got off to a bad start on that but once they figured out it worked better if you planted them in water it really caught on.

Now we have Norwegians (who apparently have no Atlantic coastline of their own) planting Atlantic Salmon in the Pacific. Oddly we also have a Dotard gov’t (2 if you count the protards that would be the provincial folk) that say Atlantic Salmon wouldn’t normally survive in the Pacific, but thanks to our technology we have needlessly made that happen.

And what’s with the fake news that’s coming from this new generation? First they tell us global warming is going to change weather patterns then for three weeks straight show us a bunch of diagrams and pictures of palm trees swaying in the wind and tell us there are three hurricanes in the Atlantic and one in the Pacific all at the same time. Do they think we Dotards will fall for that just because Chicken Noodle News says it’s true? I am in Saskatchewan, there is hardly enough wind here to blow the dust off the drought-stricken crops.

Did you ever notice that on CNN the bad news always happens someplace else? Did you notice they never ever report a hurricane in Saskatchewan, at least not to the audience in Sask anyway.

Seriously though… call Trump what you like, but really he is a Dotard well ahead of his time. Just a couple of days ago in a speech to an international audience he made note of the strong health care system in Nambia.

You would think that at the United Nations General Assembly those people would have known where Nambia was but nope. Not even the people from Namibia knew where to look. That’s because Trump is a visionary that sees a new nation somewhere in the future that will have great health care. The non-Dotards don’t seem to understand his profound knowledge of what hasn’t happened yet.

Where was I?... ahhh, yes – Dotards aren’t rambling old men.....where the hell would you get an idea like that?

Long live DOA!!!!

Normzig [Email: normzig56@gmail.com ] ♣

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“The Vagabond Writer”

THE GOOD WEEDS Wayne Allen Russell Clearwater BC

I hope readers enjoy these stories, they will bring laughter and a few tears to you. Taken from truth, but the “Family Weed” is fictitious.

The family: Archibald (‘Pop’) & Mary Elizabeth/Loretta (‘Mom’) George (‘Donkey’), Aug. 17, 1930 Ben (‘Shooter’), Apr 2, 1932

www.dialogue.ca

Bob (‘Stretch’), Oct 10, 1934 Tom (‘Weasel’), June 4, 1941 Sam (cousin), December 26, 1931 Ray (my buddy) Shirley (Grouch), May 19, 1925¨

Adam (‘Flyer’), Jul 30, 1936 Marian (cousin), Aug 21,’ 25 Bobby (cousin), May 3, ‘35 Joe (Ray’s brother) Juniper (June)

This car had guts George always thought he was a hero as he got to hang out with guys older than he was. The older boys from town and the neighbourhood came to visit him as …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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often as possible. He finally figured out that these older boys were visiting him just to get a chance to talk to, a date, or at least a good look at June and Marian. These boys eventually figured out that if liked by Mom, their success was better to get closer to the girls. The smartest ones would cosy up to Mom first by bringing her hand-picked flowers or vegetables. These, they robbed from their own mom’s garden. Of course Mom would never even consider them doing this.

The two girls could be choosy as they had lots of admirers. They were not dumb by any stretch of the imagination. They always, at the discomfort of the poorer boys, picked the boys with good cars. These cars could be the boy’s own or belong to their fathers; it didn’t matter, as long as they were nice cars. Mom would not let either girl out on dates without the other one along, so they were stuck with double dating if they wanted to get away from the farm for a day or an evening.

One day they had a date with Donald and Peter. They had planned on going to the larger city and a movie show. Donald was June’s date and Peter was Marian's date. They left after Mom was finished lecturing the boys and the girls about everything from driving safely to the time they had to be home with a few demands in between. Away they went down the gravel road from the old farmhouse in a cloud of dust.

Heck they were not even onto the paved road before the boys offered the girls a drink of beer. This time June was only too glad to have one but Marian protested that Mom would catch them and this would be the end of dating for them. June just shushed up Marian and sipped on a bottle of beer.

Eventually Marian agreed to have a sip or two of Peter’s beer. They drove onto the paved road clipping along at a good rate for a Model ‘A’ Ford. It was not a new car but it still smelled like new, and had been well looked after. Donald had bought it himself and was so proud of it.

They were about twenty miles from home; about halfway to their destination, laughing, talking and just having a great time as teenagers do. It was the middle of August and a very warm day so all the windows were down for some cool air. Out of the blue and for no apparent reason, the car went into a skid, swapping ends and finally slid into the ditch backwards, hitting a telephone pole. This didn’t knock the pole over as the 54 dialogue

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car had slowed down some. Donald quickly asked if everybody was okay. A chorus of, “yeah I’m good, I’m okay, I’m okay too,” came from the other three in the car.

Donald said, “Did one of you get sick in my car?” An answer of, “Not me,” “Not me,” “Nor me,” came from the group. “Then what in hell is that stinky smell?” Peter said, “Check for brown spots on your shorts Don, I think you did it!” Everybody except Donald laughed at this. Not for long though, as the smell got worse.

Donald said, “Stay put and I’ll check things out.” He opened his door and stepped out onto the paved road.

As soon as both feet hit the road; those in the car saw his head disappear and his feet come into sight at the window level. Had he killed himself; the others would still have laughed at this! Still laughing, they all stuck their heads out of the windows to see what had caused this to happen. On the highway were pig innards, splashed along the road for as far as they could see.

This accounted for the smell and the slippery road.

They found out later that a dump truck from the slaughterhouse, loaded with this stuff had lost it when the tailgate came open. The girl’s couldn’t stand it any longer so they climbed out of the ditch side of the car and went over into a field moving upwind from the smell. It was a good thing they did because the next car that came along went into a skid and just missed hitting Donald’s car.

Donald and Peter took turns working on changing tires. Both had thrown up at least twice on this job.

When the car slid into the ditch, the force had pulled two tires right off the rims. These tires were twentyone inch hub size and only four inches wide. Because they only had one spare, they came up with the idea of filling the other tire with green clover from the field.

The girls helped pick this but stayed clear of the car and smell. The boys stuffed as much clover into the tire as they could; they put it back on the rim and then put it onto the car. They knew they were not going to make the movies, so decided to head for home.

By the time they took off for home two more cars were in the ditch. They passed the police cruiser heading to the accident site. Donald said that being as he had, had a beer he would just as soon not talk to the police.

Here they were, four of them going along the highway as fast as that clover tire would allow, all with heads www.dialogue.ca

and chests as far out the windows as they could stretch. Donald being the driver could only stick his head out the window. By the time they reached town they were only too ready to bail out of that stinking car. All four were gagging and spitting. The tire with the clover was steaming and spitting out hot, green juice. This of course, set off an uncontrolled fit of laughter from all, including Donald.

Donald took his car, his pride and joy into the garage to get it checked and the mechanic put it up on the hoist. The whole under-carriage was covered with sour, stinking pig innards. It was cooking on the muffler and the motor. On viewing this, the mechanic gagged and threw up instantly. He lowered the car and told Donald, “You boy! Get this damn car out of my garage and never bring it back.” None of the others would get back into the car, so Donald drove it home alone. Peter and the girls walked to his home where he borrowed his dad’s car and took the two girls home.

As soon as the girls walked into the house, even though they had not even touched the stuff, Mom could smell the odour on them. As the girls were telling, or trying to tell what had happened to them, Mom was ordering George to get the big washtub into the house, fill it with water from the stove’s hot water reservoir, then take the other boys out of the house. The brothers knew the routine; when the girls bathed, the boys went outside or to bed. It seemed that we spent as much time in our room for the girl’s problems as our own.

The car? Donald tried everything to rid it of that smell, but he just could not get rid of the smell. Even he couldn’t ride in it. It was just too sickening. He finally tore it all apart and sold the parts.

So it seems; the good Weeds girls had as many good Weed days as the boys.

-- Wayne Russell, slyolfart@gmail.com ♣

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“Observations from Lithuania”

Ken Slade, Vilnius

The Fountain of Youth-speak . . . a/k/a: ‘Dumbing-down’ English

by KR Slade [CONTINUED FROM THE LAST ISSUE]

The Essential Key-words A simplified lexicon is ideal for anyone who is vocabularychallenged. The list of these ~40 words completely eliminates the general concept of any necessity to learn 2,000 essential-words in the study of a language; thus, this new youth-English becomes the simplest of all languages to learn / speak / write.

(Note: one or more -- and/or repetitions -- of these keywords must be used in every phrase) ● absolutely -- should always be the first word you use when you respond to anything that is said to you; this shows your agreement, and makes people like you ● actually -- used for emphasis; same as really, infra; unrelated to actual(ity) ● amazing -- means ‘interesting’, not usually ‘amazement’ ● ‘And stuff like that’ / ‘and things like that’ -- used after one or two nouns / adjectives / adverbs, to indicate there are more, but you can’t think what they are www.dialogue.ca

● awesome -- meaning very-good, and indicating approval; unrelated to ‘awe’ ● beautiful -- indicates that you are in agreement; unrelated to ‘beauty’, except that your frequent use communicates that you are beautiful ● big -- means ‘important’, or ‘not small’; always try not to use any synonyms for ‘big’; simple language is always better ● bling -- means expensive; related to glam, infra ● boring -- means a desire to change the subject ● crazy -- [example: “ It’s crazy!” ; meaning: I like/love it, or I don’t like it, or it is absurd] ● creepy – means “ I don’t like’’ ● dated -- means out-of-date / old-style: anything more than a couple of years old ● diet -- always talk about your diet, and about how special is your current diet; ignore the fact that ‘diet’ is whatever you eat ● different -- having some quality that you cannot describe ● do some nature -- means out-of-doors activities ● exactly -- indicates some/general agreement / approval; not related to ‘exact/precise’ ● fantastic -- an indefinite adjective; unrelated to ‘fantasy’ [example, “ You did a fantastic job you should be proud of yourselves.” The Duchess …/ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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of Cornwall, 2017-06-26] ● feelings -- when there is no reason(ing), then use ‘feeling(s)’; means: ‘whatever I want to do / think’ ● fun -- what ever makes you and your friends smile ● glam -- short form of ‘glamorous’; means expensive; usually for something shinny ● global -- means: ‘not small’; unrelated to international, or ‘globe’, or the planet earth ● good -- used to change a subject; does not necessarily imply approval or agreement ● great ! -- means agreement; does not mean large/significant ● happy -- means the ultimate state of well-being; everyone likes everyone who is happy ● hard -- means ‘difficult’; no longer any relation to tactile touch ● horrendous -- used when the only-two brain cells functioning at any one time are overwhelmed, and no other reaction is possible; does not mean dreadful / horrible ● huge -- means ‘much’; usually does not refer to physical size ● I guess -- non-committal, especially when reaction is required / expected ● I know -- if you recognize one word in what someone says, then you are entitled to say that you know/understand what they have said ● I want -- replaces ‘I would like’ ● incredible -- no longer means ‘lack of credibility’; often used to indicate approval, but is used anytime an adjective/adverb is needed by, but not readily available to, the speaker [example, “I think you are all incredible. It must have been incredibly difficult for you.” The Duchess of Cornwall, 2017-06-26] ● insane -- does not mean ‘crazy’; means ‘very-good’ or ‘very-bad’ (especially if you are uncertain which) ● interesting -- used to comment when you do not know what else to say; does not mean that you are interested ● it’s -- used when you are not certain what is the subject, or have no idea what you are talking about, and/or when you do not want your listener to precisely identify a/any subject ● like -- usually used without any further word [example: “I actually really mean, like, like, you know . . .” ● literally -- used for emphasis; unrelated to ‘literal’ ● little -- traditional meaning of ‘small’; however, should be used frequently because it is such a 56 dialogue

WINTER 2017-18, VOL. 31, NO. 2

‘cute’ word ● love (of objects/things) -- try to use ‘love’ when talking about inanimate objects to replace use of ‘like’ [note: everyone loves a person who is full of love (i.e., you)] ● my bad -- means ‘my mistake’ ● my culture -- this allows you to believe, to say, and/or to do: whatever you want; because your culture is sacrosanct, and therefore not subject to any legitimate (or socially-acceptable) criticism; contemporary political-correctness prohibits any comment that would be disrespectful to your culture (or lack thereof) ● my friends -- your friends are the most-important thing in the world, and you want the world to know that you have many friends, and whom you are always thinking about; therefore, these two words should be used often ● my religion -- this allows you to say or do anything you want, because you are entitled to ‘freedom of religion’; anyone who disagrees with what you say, or do, is discriminating against your religion, which is illegal ● natural -- based on the idea that ‘whatever is natural is good, and anything natural cannot ever hurt you’ (Caveat: in fact, most poisons are natural) ● nice -- the traditional meaning of ‘pleasing’; should be used frequently because it is such a ‘cute’ word ● oh ! -- used to indicate a pause of brain function, instead of any verbal reaction ● pretty -- same as beautiful, supra; should be used frequently, because it reflects that you are pretty ● really -- used for emphasis; same as actually, supra; unrelated to ‘real(ity)’ ● ridiculous means that you don’t like ● sick -- refers to anything that you do not like, or which is different (whether good or bad); unrelated to any medical condition ● start -- the exclusive term, to the exclusion of all other possible synonyms, to indicate ‘begin’ ● super -- means ‘I love that’; unrelated to ‘large’ unless as ‘super-size’ ● ton -- meaning ‘much’; unrelated to weight [example: ‘a ton of space’, ‘tons of love’] ● uber -- means ‘very’ / ‘top’ -- ‘highest’ / ‘much’ ● unbelievable -- same as incredible, supra ● upgrade -- meaning to spend, or over-spend, money ● you know -- used when you cannot find a word to …/ describe something www.dialogue.ca

● you need -- used when you want someone to do something that you want ● wish-list or bucket-list -- things that you may want to do, although probably will not do [Note: for further examples, Google ‘overused words’]

The New Meanings for Old Words ● glad becomes a proper word-choice to be at a funeral. BBC (on 2017-08-23) reported that: Prince Harry ‘very glad’ to walk behind Diana’s coffin ... http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41017659 ... ‘glad’ to walk behind a coffin?? Well, no one has ever accused the British press, or any British royal, to be guilty of the crime of fluency-in-English . . . our required duty must be to accept and follow, and not do ‘Lèse-majesté’ ● pay tribute means to acknowledge, as ‘pay homage’ / ‘pay respect’ (now unrelated to pirates / extortion / political or military threats, etc.) ● Renaissance becomes ‘re: non-sense’, meaning useless and silly old-thinking

● think out-of-the-box -- means to change the way that you think; conventional is inferior to anything new ● since (originally referring to time), and because (originally referring to reasons), should be switched in all usage(s) ● wake-up call means ‘get real’-- get out of your fake-world; unrelated to awakening after sleeping Note: also, all prepositions are equal, and completelyinterchangeable, which creates more-interesting discourse [Example: read BBC news of the non-posh (and non ‘received pronunciation’) reporters] Ken Russell Slade, B.S., M.Ed., M.R.E., J.D. All Rights Reserved: kenmunications@gmail.com ♣ [TO BE CONCLUDED IN THE NEXT ISSUE] Kęstutis Sladkevičius / english.lithuania@gmail.com mob. tel. (+370-6) 035-9513 Writer & English Language Consultant, Text Editor, & Instructor / Rašytojas, privatus anglų kalbos konsultantas, redaktorius ir mokytojas / Accredited media reporter, by Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Reporteris, akreditavamo Kortelė Nr. 17338 (Lietuvos Respublika, URM) ♣

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Ponder These…

Laughter & ‘Lightenment!

From John Shadbolt & Susanne Lawson

1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

3. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

6. War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

7. Evening news is where they begin with 'Good Evening,' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

9. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

10. I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.

11. Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that www.dialogue.ca

says, 'In case of emergency, notify:' I put 'Doctor.'

12. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

13. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

14. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a successful man is usually another woman.

15. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.

16. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

17. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so they can't get away.

18. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.

19. You're never too old to learn something stupid.

20. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

21. Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

22. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

23. Where there's a will, there's relatives. ♣ VOL. 31, NO. 2, WINTER 2017-18

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Contributors in Andersen, Erik, BC…........25-27 Arney, Jeremy, BC …………..27 Backus, Karl, ON…………….40 Blair, Andrew, AB………...19-21 Boese, David, ON……………07 Bowles, Paul, BC…......48-51,59 Bubar, Ron, NB………………23 Bruce, Alexandra, FKTV…38,59 C4DD, ON……………………24 CCPA/COC……..……………05 Ctr for Global Research, QC 22 Cude, Wilfred, NS ……….34-36 Dauncey, Guy, BC…………..11 Dobbin, Murray, BC………….05 Doehring, A.C., BC………..39 Ellis, David, BC…………….10 Engdahl, F.W.(extract/link) 44 Erkiletian, Jim, BC……..….09

dialogue, Vol. 31 No. 2

Ernst, Jessica, AB…………...04 FKTV, Alexandra Bruce…38,59 Foster, David, ON……..…31-33 Gaudet, Marie, AB….........46-48 Gourlay, Laurie, Remember, 11 Guardian, The, UK (link)…….12 Great Lakes Commons, ON...59 Hall, Anthony (from/about)...4,19 Hanle, Inge, CDSAPI, BC……41 Joseph Campbell Foundation, 11 Kazdan, Larry, BC…………...07 Lawson, Susanne, BC……..9,57 Lippman, Abby, QC (from)….19 Lonsdale, Derrick, M.D.,US…42 Mair, Rafe (reprint-legacy,link), 7 Mathews, Robin, BC……..28-31 McCaslin, Susan, BC 1,2,14-16 McConnell, Kim, ON………..22

McCullough, John, ON……..33 McDowall, Step, BC…..…12,37 Meyer, Dr. Hajo, (quotes) 37 Miller, Alexander, BC…….18 Morton, Alexandra, BC…..10 Neilly, Michael, ON…………08 Nikiforuk, Andrew, BC (link) 04 Olsen, Bradley (JCF)……….11 Petrik, Denny, BC…………...

Porter, Daniel, ON……...…1,13 Porter, J. S., ON……….1,13,15 Porter, Kaizen, ON…….……13 Ross, June, BC (from)……...11 Rouse, Bonna, ON………….18 Russell, Wayne, BC…….53-55 Shadbolt, John, ON…..…22,57 Skinner, Derek, BC…………21 Slade, Ken, Lithuania…...55-57

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Smith, Stan, BC……………..38 Spencer, Herb, BC………22,51 Taylor, Jim, BC………….…..17 Tyee.ca (extract/link)……..…04 Vancourt, Randy, ON…….....45 Weygang, Peter, ON………...24 Williams, Sherry, BC………...59 Woodsworth, John, ON…….23 Zigarlick, Norm, AB/SK……..53 Zlutnick, David (interview by) 37

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P.59 TO ACCOMPANY IMAGE

The Rut My home is the damp forest floor. My world is lush, verdant and emerald green. A myriad of scent fills my nostrils till I am intoxicated by it all; rose, pine and moss infused with the sweetness of poplar sap, swirl together. The heady pungent odor of wild cranberry is everywhere, even in my coat. The fallen leaves create a dying mosaic on the forest floor, orange, crimson, rust and gold as they release the long days of summer, making room for the blanket of stars that will light the long nights of winter.

I am the thunderous clack, clack as antler meets antler in the heat of the fight. I am the velvet, peeling like flesh leaving bone as my essence is shredded against the fragile, opalescent birch bark. I am the rise and fall of the chest, breath like fire in my lungs, the pounding pulse in the early morning fog. My name is Rut and the survival of my kind depends on this battle, this pulse, that is as primal as life itself. Fear has no place as I charge through the forest, my mind focused, my body poised, muscles quivering, target sensed. Do not stand in my way, nor threaten to claim my prize. It is mine and mine alone.

Sherry Leigh Williams

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