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VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Welcome to the digital Spring 2020 issue Dedicated to the memory of Maurice J. King, 1927~2019
dialogue is... …an independent, Canadian volunteer-produced, not-for-profit quarterly, written and supported by its readers – empowering their voices and the sharing of ideas. Now in its 33rd year, dialogue provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and an antidote to political correctness. We encourage readers to share with others the ideas and insights gleaned from these pages.
Dear Readers,
Thank you to Anne Anglin for her expressive “wild ride” on the cover. May it inspire us on our journey. What a strange (“Brave”) new world we find ourselves in... Who would have believed, when the year began, that circumstances could evolve so rapidly ~ Maurice, Janet leaving some of us shaking our heads at the audacity & Penny (2019) and/or incongruity of it all… while others seem to take it in stride, adapting ‘responsibly’ to “the new normal.” There are many articles in this issue to give you pause to think about some of the issues behind the unrelenting ‘news.’ (pp. 5-9, 21, 25-27, 29-30, 35, 39, 59) If you would like to share your ideas and become a As always, there are thoughtful – both serious and lighthearted – articles, writer/artist in our magazine, stories and poetry on a wide range of topics, such as Arthur Firstenberg’s please consider this your perinsightful essay on the history of pandemics and 5G (p.7); numerous sonal invitation to participate! perspectives highlighting the serious health concerns surrounding 5G and We also need your support as a other electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) (pp. 4, 7, 9, 21, 59); Erik Ander- subscriber, to help us continue sen’s story of his valiant efforts to bring Justice into the Cdn. Taxation (See P. 58 for details) Your donations and Gift Subsystem (p.14); Derrick Lonsdale’s exceptional article regarding a littlescriptions are also vital to keepknown foundational cause of disease (p.45); and the latest installment ing the magazine going! from Norm Zigarlick regarding the saga of five seniors taking on multiWe receive NO government funding ple levels of Saskatchewan governance, in pursuit of justice. (p.51) and no advertising revenue. We rely totally on the generous support of our Don’t miss the wonderful poetry and the many interesting books disreaders & subscribers. Thank You! cussed… And much more! (see table of contents, p.2). And sprinkled dialogue was founded in 1987 through the weighty topics – to help keep us sane! – are the humorous and is now published quarterly. cartoons that readers have shared in recent weeks. Maurice J. King, Publisher-In-Memoriam Janet K. Hicks, Volunteer Editor Gabriel Communications, the not-for-profit that Maurice created, Digital Issue: Apr. 8, 2020 continues as the publisher of Dialogue – with Maurice’s invocation Also available at www.dialogue.ca to us all is to rely upon our own resolve (and perhaps a little help Annual subscription: $20.00 with proof-reading, bookkeeping and donations!) to ensure that his [including GST, # 89355-1739] legacy continues well into the future. Thank you for your help. Canada Post Agreement No. 40069647 Registration No. 08915 We have established a Legacy Fund in Maurice’s memory, to enISSN: 1184-7042, Legal Deposit: sure that his Dialogue will carry on as a dynamic forum for CanadiNational Library of Canada (409731) ans for years to come. We are very grateful for any donation you are The views expressed in this able to contribute at this time. (Please see p.58 or letter enclosed) publication are those And Thank You for continuing to be part of this venture of of their individual authors. dedicated writers, poets, artists and readers who are pursuing Reprints of published articles are dreams of a better world. included for their educational value. Janet , volunteer editor …and Penny & Lucky! 6227 Groveland Drive Nanaimo, BC, Canada V9V 1B1 IMPORTANT: If you wish to continue receiving the magazine, please ensure your subscription is up-to-date! PLEASE LOOK AT YOUR ADDRESS LABEL on this issue to find your RENEWAL DATE. If your subscription is due, you will find a renewal slip enclosed inside the back cover of the print magazine. THANK YOU! www.dialogue.ca
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Letter to the Minister of Health re the Safety of 5G Networks RE: Canadians’ Mental and Physical Health From: Jeremy Arney, iamjema@gmail.com To: The Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Health for Canada, Patty.Hajdu@parl.gc.ca Cc: Trudeau, Justin, justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca, et al.
Dear Minister, The silence from both your Ministry and Health Canada on the subject of the safety of the 5G is absolutely deafening. Has the Ministry of Health or Health Canada – or will they prior to the actual run out of 5G in Canada – conducted an investigation that is not financed or written by the telecommunications corporations? Just as the big pharmaceutical companies claim such wonderful results from their newly invented drugs have been forced to list the possible side effects up to and including death, in the same way, all the manufacturers of 5G enabled cars, fridges, phones, etc., should be obliged to advise customers that Lloyds of London will not insure these products against 5G failure accidents or harmful electromagnetic smoginduced sickness up to and including death from such sickness as brain or breast cancers. I know that J.G. Flynn, Captain (Retired), Bowser, B.C., a man well versed in electromagnetism and its military history has written to your current department many times as well as to both the Prime Minister and Health Canada; I have not heard that he has received a credible answer yet from anyone. When the largest insurance conglomeration in the world is not willing to ensure against the 5G networks then we have only one recourse left to us in the event that we get sick from electromagnetic smog, whether we use 5G phones, cars, etc., or not and that is to hold you personally responsible, along with Health Canada and other Ministers (Environment and Public Safety) for all and every damage. Please take this as notice that, in the event I, or any member of my family, suffer from such a sickness without my consenting to the exposure from 5G towers, you (along with Justin Trudeau, Bill Blair and Johnathan Wilkinson as co-defendants) will be sued as having been the one(s) who enabled it to happen, should you all choose to ignore the warnings of scientists. “The Nuremberg Code is part of the International Humanitarian Law that states, “It is unethical and illegal to perform experiments on humans without their informed consent.” According to this law, 5G should be 4 dialogue
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illegal as people are not giving their informed consent to be exposed to this radiation.” (Dr Magda Havas) This Code stems from trials conducted during WW2. Warning issued by my cell phone manufacturer: Samsung SGH-a737: “For body-worn operation, this phone has been tested and meets FCC RF exposure guidelines when used with an accessory that contains no metal and that positions the handset a minimum of 1.5 cm from the body.” [My Comment: If there was no safety factor, why this warning and what happens when such a phone is held to the ear during a conversation lasting any length of time?]
Where do you stand on this Ms Hadju? And how will you explain any inaction on your part to your family as they get sick? (‘Couldn’t help it’ – ‘the devil made me do it!’ will not cut it. For “devil” read “corporations.”) This is an attack on the entire human race, indeed all living creatures and as we lose our pollinators we will not have to worry about climate change after all… there will be no food and even the telecommunications people will learn what the Cree said about the white man and his lust for money years ago: "Only when the last tree has died, and the last fish has been caught, and the last river has been poisoned, will they realize that money cannot be eaten". Instead of persecuting the first peoples and taking away their unceded land we should take time to listen to them [https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/01/05/Year-After-RCMPRaid-Wetsuweten-New-injunction/]
From your mandate letter from PM Trudeau 2019: (This is the closest I can find where you are charged with the general or specific health of all Canadians) “We are committed to evidence-based decision-making that takes into consideration the impacts of policies on all Canadians and fully defends the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms. You will apply Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+) in the decisions that you make.” In short, that means that ALL should be protected from a microwave electronic bombardment which has not been proven safe, but which has many scientific warnings and misgivings against it. Please Ms. Hadju, for all our sakes and that of our future children – if they are to have a future – no 5G in Canada. Jeremy Arney, Leader of the Canadian Action Party PO Box 52008, RPO Beacon, Sidney BC. V8L 5V9 Tel. 250-216-5400
If you don't like what you see or hear do something about it instead of complaining.* jeremyarneysblog.com ♣ DIGITAL EDITION
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Putting the Corona Virus (Covid-19) Deaths into Perspective Food for thought re Covid-19, other causes of death, and 5G from Dr. Magda Havas. [FORWARDED BY JUNE ROSS, SHARON NOBLE]
Dr. Magda Havas: "April 1 2020: This is NO April Fool’s joke. The planet is in lock down as we battle the spread of the corona virus and try to minimize the spread of this disease. Very few people saw this coming and there has been a lot of discussion about why this virus became a pandemic so quickly. Lots of misinformation provided on the internet and it is difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction. Time will tell which of the ‘conspiracy theories’ are in fact ‘accurate information.’ “In the meantime, I think it is important to put the number of cases and the deaths from Covid-19 into perspective. Live information is provided on Worldometers.info. I just accessed it at 11 pm (EST) on April 1st, 2020 and this is the latest information from worldometer for the globe.” – Dr. Magda Havas READ IN FULL : https://magdahavas.com/putting-the-
corona-virus-covid-19-deaths-into-perspective/
Total Deaths this year = 14,810,426 [AS OF APRIL 1 2020]
Total Deaths due to the following causes; numbers and (percent of total deaths). 1. communicable diseases – 3,268,793 (22%) 2. hunger – 2,816,117 (19%) 3. cancer – 2,068,012 (14%) 4. smoking – 1,258,755 (8.5%) 5. HIV/Aids – 423,291 (2.9%) 6. traffic accidents – 339,904 (2.3%) 7. malaria – 246,986 (1.7%) 8. water related diseases – 212,043 (1.4%) 9. seasonal flu – 122,424 (0.8%) 10. covid-19 – 47,245 (0.3%) LINK: https://www.worldometers.info/
More people died from the seasonal flu than from covid-19 so far this year! If we truly cared about lives then tackling hunger would be a good place to put our efforts. When it comes to diseases, more people died from HIV/Aids, malaria and water related diseases than from covid-19. More information from worldometer follows at: https://magdahavas.com/putting-the-corona-viruscovid-19-deaths-into-perspective/ www.dialogue.ca
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People with underlying medical conditions are most likely to suffer most from Covid-19 exposure. One such condition is a weakened immune system. Here is a report that summarizes much of the scientific information and provides links to studies showing how EMR and EMF can affect the immune system. “Electromagnetic fields may act via calcineurin inhibition to suppress immunity, thereby increasing risk for opportunistic infection: Conceivable mechanisms of action” [LINK TO PAPER BELOW]
"Frequent anecdotal reports, as well as a number of scientific studies, have shown that electromagnetic field exposures may indeed produce the same effect: a weakened immune system leading to an increase in the same or similar opportunistic infections: i.e., fungal, viral, atypical bacterial, and parasitic infections.... ...Many of these mysterious disease states of unknown etiology have increased exponentially in the last thirty years in proportion with increases in ambient manmade electromagnetic fields. And with this correlation, the question ‘Is there causation?’ begs to be asked. There is more research that suggests there is." (from page 10/17, EMFs and immune system dysfunction/suppression ) LINK: https://tinyurl.com/ssmbc-DJE ♣ ABOUT WORLDOMETER.INFO: What are the sources for the coronavirus COVID-19 numbers? Official reports, directly from Government's communication channels or indirectly, through local media sources when deemed reliable. We provide the source of each data update in the "Latest Updates" (News) section. Timely updates are made possible thanks to the participation of users around the world and to the dedication of a team of analysts and researchers who validate data from an ever-growing list of over 5,000 sources. Worldometer's Covid-19 data is trusted and used by Johns Hopkins CSSE, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, and many others. Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been trusted by: Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, United Nations Rio+20. and many others. ARTICLES ON THE VIRUS AND SHUTDOWN: 5-9, 21, 25-27, 29-30, 35, 39 (44) ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Spinning Fear and Panic Across America. Analysis of COVID-19 Data By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 20, 2020 https://www.globalresearch.ca/ [EXTRACT/LINK]
Who to Believe? According to a report of the WHO (World Health Org.) pertaining to China’s epidemic (which has currently been resolved): Coronavirus: What the Western Media Doesn’t Tell You: High Recovery Rates in China The most commonly reported symptoms [of COVID-19] included fever, dry cough, and shortness of breath, and most patients (80%) experienced mild illness. Approximately 14% experienced severe disease and 5% were critically ill. Early reports suggest that illness severity is associated with age (>60 years old) and co-morbid disease. (largely based on WHO’s assessment of COVID-19 in China) - The Hill, March 19, 2020
And then these “mild symptoms” of COVID-19 are used as a public health justification for the closing down of entire countries, precipitating large sectors of the World population into unemployment, poverty and despair. Bear in mind that, the COVID-19 hits the 60 years+ elderly (most of whom are not part of the
labor force), particularly those who do not have adequate health coverage. In the US the COVID-19 deaths are largely recorded in the 70 years + range. The confirmed death rate from COVID-19 is 1.4% of total “confirmed” and “presumed” cases (CDC data). Compare “the Mild Illness and Recover in Two Weeks” of COVID-19 (barely acknowledged by the media) to the devastating social and economic consequences of the lockdowns ordered by powerful financial interests. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, thousands of small enterprises across the land have been spearheaded into bankruptcy. Millions of families have lost their lifelong savings as a result of the collapse of stock markets. Precipitated into a debt trap, they may lose their homes. And that scenario will not “recover” in two weeks. It’s a long term depression. What we are dealing with is the destabilization of the US economy and an engineered transfer of billions of dollars of money wealth. […] READ: https://tinyurl.com/crg-covid-6785 ♣
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The “Lock Step” Simulation Scenario: “A Coronavirus-like Pandemic that Becomes Trigger for Police State Controls” By Helen Buyniski, Global Research, [EXTRACT/LINK, NOTE DATE: Feb 05, 2020 ]
By now, those following the novel coronavirus epidemic are familiar with Event 201, the pandemic simulation staged by Johns Hopkins University in conjunction with the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and other ruling-class heavy hitters in October. The media establishment has already picked the story clean, set up and eviscerated a straw man (“No, Bill Gates didn’t cause the coronavirus epidemic, silly conspiracy theorists!”), and convinced the group itself to issue a statement denying their exercise was meant to predict the behavior of the actual virus to follow. But few are aware that the epidemic playing out in China and two dozen other countries, including the US, is unfolding in line with a decade-old simulation titled “Lock Step” devised by the Rockefeller Foundation in conjunction with the Global Business Network. The scenario, one of four included in a publication called “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development” in 2010, describes a 6 dialogue
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coronavirus-like pandemic that becomes the trigger for the imposition of police-state controls on movement, economy, and other areas of society. The Lock Step scenario describes “a world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.” In “2012” (the scenario projects, i.e. two years after the report’s publication), an “extremely virulent and deadly” strain of influenza originating with wild geese brings the world to its knees, infecting 20 percent of the global population and killing 8 million people in just seven months – “the majority of them healthy young adults.” It devastates global economies and ruptures international trade. […] It’s also possible the plague may suddenly become more virulent. Certainly the media buzz the first week of February is that coronavirus is close to being declared a “pandemic” by the WHO, which will necessitate the type of control measures hinted at in Lock Step and described more exhaustively in Event 201. From “limited internet shutdowns” and “enforcement DIGITAL EDITION
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actions against fake news” to government bailouts of “core” industries, mandatory vaccinations, property seizures, and other police-state provisions laid out in the Model State Emergency Health Powers Acts passed in many US states in the paranoid aftermath of 9/11, the totalitarian nature of these provisions is limited only by the imagination of the regime carrying
them out. Once events proceed to that stage, it is extremely difficult to reverse them. We would be wise not to allow this to happen. The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Helen Buyniski, Global Research, 2020 www.globalresearch.ca/all-sectors-us-establishmentlock-step-deep-states-latest-bio-war/5702773 ♣
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IS THE SKY REALLY FALLING? By Arthur Firstenberg, https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/ Email: info@cellphonetaskforce.org – March 26 2020
As I write this, the world -- or a very large part of it -is effectively under martial law. To protect against a proposed enemy named coronavirus (COVID-19), schools have been closed, airline flights scrapped, theaters and restaurants shut down, churches shuttered, curfews put in place, public gatherings prohibited, national borders closed, people told not to touch or go near each other, every surface, door knob and human hand smothered with toxic disinfectant, and the population ordered to “shelter in place” in their homes. And the people, from the USA to Norway to Bolivia to Australia to Egypt to Indonesia, have obeyed, not only without much protest, but with enthusiasm. My inbox and voicemail are flooded with contradictory “information” – little of which is verifiable, less of which makes any sense – that is tailored to favorite points of scientific and political view. No one is looking at the big picture. No one is noticing that the mortality rates from all causes are going down, not up in most countries. WHAT CAUSED THE 1918 "SPANISH INFLUENZA"? This is not the first time a scare about a viral pandemic has swept the world. We have previously heard predictions -- none of which came true -- that swine flu, bird flu, SARS, MERS, West Nile virus, Zika virus and Ebola were going to kill millions of people. Notably, all of these scares have occurred after the Internet replaced human contact as the predominant means of communication, and words and pictures on a screen replaced reality. Today, this has gone so far that people are finally willing to shut down the world rather than notice what is going on around them. I do not pretend that there is no basis at all for these predictions. Behind all the hysteria is a fear that the catastrophe that was the “Spanish Influenza” of 19181921 will repeat itself. The 1918 flu, after all, www.dialogue.ca
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sickened one-third of the world’s population and killed an estimated fifty million people. But there are a number of important facts about the 1918 flu that are not widely known: • The 1918 flu was not caused by a virus. • The 1918 flu was not contagious and did not spread by direct human-to-human contact. • The 1918 flu began on U.S. military bases where soldiers were being trained in wireless telegraphy. It spread throughout the world on ten thousand U.S. Navy ships equipped with state-of-the-art wireless stations. It became much more deadly in September 1918 when the first round-the-clock voice radio station powerful enough to be received in most parts of the world went on the air in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in service of the U.S. war effort, thereby launching the modern era of radio communication. Efforts by doctors working for the U.S. Public Health Service to prove the contagious nature of the 1918 flu were heroic and resulted in resounding and repeated failure. In November and December 1918 and in February and March 1919, they attempted to infect one hundred healthy volunteers with influenza in the following ways: • They put secretions from the mouth, nose, throat and bronchi from hospitalized influenza patients into the nose, throat and eyes of volunteers; • They injected blood from sick patients into volunteers; • They filtered mucous material from sick patients and injected it under the skin of volunteers; • They had volunteers shake hands with sick patients, talk to them, faces close together, for five minutes, then had the patient breathe out as hard as he could while the volunteer, two inches away, was breathing in, then had the patient cough directly into the face of the volunteer, five times.
None of the volunteers in any of these experiments got sick in any way. Similar attempts to infect healthy horses with secretions from horses sick with …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Arthur Firstenberg: Is The Sky Really Falling, cont’d.
influenza resulted in the same resounding failure. These experiments, and other facts about the 1918 flu, as well as about influenza in general, are thoroughly discussed and documented in chapters 7, 8 and 9 of my book, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life (AGB Press 2017, Chelsea Green 2020).* Historically, influenza was an unpredictable disease that struck without warning and without a schedule and disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as it had arrived, not to be seen again for years or decades. It did not exist on this earth as an annual disease prior to the worldwide deployment of AC [Alternating Current] electricity for lights and power that occurred in 1889. Many of the doctors who were flooded with influenza patients in 1889 had never seen a case before. But influenza has not been absent anywhere on earth since. What is most difficult for people to let go of is the notion, so deeply engrained in our society, that a disease is the same as a bacteria or a virus. This way of looking at the world, as a battlefield instead of a community, is wrong. Yes, there is a respiratory virus associated with influenza. No, the virus does not cause the disease. Influenza is a neurological disease that can affect almost every organ, with or without respiratory symptoms. It is caused by electricity. Especially now, the world needs to know these things. Once it is understood that the 1918 flu was not caused by a virus and was not spread by contagion, but was instead caused by the sudden spread of radio communication throughout the world, the hysteria should die down and the world can get back to normal, and go about the necessary business of getting rid of wireless technology. Radio waves have sickened and killed more of humanity in the past century than all of the bacteria and viruses combined. Also heart disease, diabetes and cancer (chapters 11, 12 and 13 of The Invisible Rainbow) are caused primarily by the sea of radiation with which our cell phones, cell towers, radio towers, radar stations, security systems, baby monitors, wireless computers, and other wireless devices and infrastructure have flooded our precious and fragile world. The Coronavirus and 5G I have been asked if I think the coronavirus disease is 8 dialogue
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caused by 5G, and my answer is: not directly. But the parallels to 1918 are striking. Remember, the 1918 flu was not caused by a virus but by the proliferation of radio technology, to such an extent as to modify the electromagnetic environment of the Earth itself. The first, mild wave of the flu in the winter, spring and summer of 1918 was caused by the proliferation of thousands of wireless telegraphy stations, each having a limited geographic range and operating for a limited number of hours per day. The second wave, which lasted three full years, sickening one-third of humanity and killing ten percent of those it sickened, was caused by an escalation of radio from telegraphy to voice, part time to full time, and short-range to planet-wide. That is parallel to what is happening today. 5G is escalating the radio assault on our planet to a new level, using much higher frequencies, much greater bandwidth, and much greater power levels. The first wave of the coronavirus has accompanied an enormous proliferation of 5G stations on the ground, each having a limited geographic range. This is shortly to be escalated from short-range to planet-wide, and from an indirect to a direct assault on the ionosphere, when thousands of 5G satellites go into operation this year and next. A clue to the electromagnetic nature of the present pandemic comes from an interesting observation: as many as two-thirds of the people who test positive for the coronavirus have lost their sense of smell, and often that is their only symptom and they are otherwise not sick. (“Loss of sense of smell as marker of COVID-19 infection,” ENT UK1). Loss of sense of smell is a classic sign of the disease that was called radio wave sickness in the former Soviet Union, and that is called electrical sensitivity today; often it is the only symptom of exposure to radio waves in otherwise healthy individuals. (“Investigation of the Olfactory Sensitivity in Persons Subjected to the Influence of UHF,” Ye. A. Lobanova and Z. V. Gordon, in The Biological Action of Ultrahigh Frequencies, A. A. Letavet and Z. V. Gordon, eds., Moscow 1960, JPRS 12471, pp. 50-56).
Another clue is the frequently reported effects of the coronavirus disease on the cardiovascular system, including “arrhythmias, hypotension, tachycardia, and a high proportion of concomitant cardiovascular disease in infected individuals.” This was reported on March 6, 2020 in Cardiology Magazine. These are also classic effects of exposure to radio waves. A third clue is the astonishing variation in the severity DIGITAL EDITION
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of the current pandemic, regardless of the measures taken by governments to prevent person-to-person contact. Why, for example, does Italy have 74,000 cases of coronavirus disease, and Japan only 1200? Eighty percent of the cases identified in Japan have not passed on the infection to anyone else. Tokyo, among the world’s most densely packed metropolitan areas with a population of 38 million, has almost no disease. This despite a nationwide quarantine and a shutdown of society in Italy, and few measures taken against the disease in Japan. There is no quarantine in Japan and bars, restaurants and clubs are busy and bustling. Temples are packed, and parks are filled with people viewing cherry blossoms. The subways are packed, and people are going to work, yet the disease does not spread. Japan has close contact with China, and did not even stop incoming flights from Hubei until February 1. Japan has an older population than Italy, and a higher rate of tobacco smoking. The electrical nature of the disease would explain this too. Almost all of Japan is volcanic, and the electrical conductivity of the earth underneath Japan is higher than underneath most of Italy. Residents of Japan are therefore better grounded than residents of most of Italy, and are less affected by the radio waves around them. The volcanic regions of Italy -- Sicily and Campania -- have much lower rates of coronavirus than the rest of Italy. Patricia Ormsby, who lives in Japan, told me years ago that when she is in the United States she can feel a cell phone from a distance of 6 meters, but when she is in Japan she does not feel a cell phone until it comes within 3 meters of her. I live in Santa Fe for the same reason: I do not feel all the cell towers here because the conductivity of the earth underneath Santa Fe is so high. Regardless of the origin or severity of the respiratory virus that is called COVID-19, the rollout of 5G is playing a large role in the current pandemic. Fear,
social isolation and the shutdown of society are doing far more damage to the fabric of life than the virus ever could. It is time for society to get over its obsession with this microorganism and to turn to the emergency posed by wireless technology, on Earth and in space. Arthur Firstenberg
* NOTE ABOUT PURCHASING MY BOOK The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life was originally published in hardcover by AGB Press on Earth Day in 2017. I still have about 100 copies of the hardcover edition left, which will be for sale on my website for a few more days: www.cellphonetaskforce.org/buy-the-invisiblerainbow. The book was just re-published, in paperback, by Chelsea Green: www.chelseagreen.com/product/theinvisible-rainbow. Continue online to read MORE REPORTS OF DYING AND DISAPPEARING INSECTS AND WILDLIFE, LINK: www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Is-the-Sky-Really-Falling.pdf
Donations needed for new organization: In my last newsletter, I asked for help in taking the fight to save the Earth to the next level: I proposed to create a new organization whose members do not own cell phones and whose mission is to end the use of cell phones on Earth. People from 24 countries have contacted me wanting to create this organization, and I am hiring an assistant to help me with the work. Among the other projects that need funding are: outreach to the world’s major environmental organizations; a media campaign; outreach to Elon Musk and the board of directors and funders of SpaceX; and the ongoing litigation against 5G in federal court in New Mexico. Donations in any amount are appreciated. LINK: https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/donate Arthur Firstenberg, P.O. Box 6216, Santa Fe, NM 87502 USA; phone: +1 505-471-0129; Email: info@cellphonetaskforce.org Website: https://www.5gSpaceAppeal.org A pdf of this newsletter is available online, LINK: https://tinyurl.com/cptf-itsrf FOOTNOTE: 1. LINK re Loss of sense of smell as marker of COVID-19 infection: https://tinyurl.com/entuk-smellmarker [ENT-UK = Ear, Nose & Throat Association of the UK] ♣ Article rec’d from June Ross, Nanaimo BC♣
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HIDDEN DANGERS: 5G ~ by Jerry Flynn, 2019 Paul Hellyer recommends the new book by Jerry Flynn: “Ret. Naval Captain Jerry Flynn … has written a wonderful book titled Hidden Dangers 5G: How governments, telecom and electric power utilities suppress the truth about the known hazards of electro-magnetic www.dialogue.ca
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field (EMF) radiation. You must read it because he is a Retired Electronic Warfare Specialist, and probably our most knowledgeable expert in the field.” Warmest regards, Paul Hellyer pthellyer@gmail.com ♣ More from Jerry Flynn in the next issue. VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Remember When… There Were Other Topics In The News? Hereditary chiefs launch a landslide By Jim Taylor, Okanagan Centre BC, Feb. 23 2020
For a writer, it’s freeing to know that almost anything I say about the Wet’suwet’en affair will be denounced as wrong, misguided, misleading, and/or prejudiced. After all, this single issue combines aboriginal rights, colonial injustice, social stereotyping, racial discrimination, capitalism, fossil fuels, the law, the economy, global warming, global trade, and the rights of nature. How could it help being divisive? And yet at the heart of it stand just nine men -- the hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suwet’en people in northern B.C. The Wet’suwet’en homeland includes most of the Bulkley River watershed – roughly 22,000 square km from Fraser Lake to Hazelton -- and parts of the Skeena River’s headwaters. A natural gas pipeline running from Dawson Creek to Kitimat on the B.C. coast would have to pass through Wet’suwet’en territory. I have an emotional stake in that territory. I worked up there for four years. The best summer of my life, I covered some 55 miles of the Kitimat River valley on foot, camping and backpacking. Like the Wet’suwet’en chiefs, I would love to see it remain pristine wilderness. But I also know it can’t, and won’t, stay as I once knew it. Two kinds of authority The Wet’suwet’en have five clans, divided into 13 houses. Each house has, or could have, its own hereditary chief. But four of those chieftainships remain currently unfilled. “Hereditary” does not mean that the title is automatically passed to an eldest child, like the British monarchy. The title is bequeathed to a chosen person, more like the picking of a new Dalai Lama. Hereditary chiefs are the “keepers of the vision” – my phrase, not theirs – for the land and the people. They maintain what’s important. On the other hand, the elected chiefs (and councils) make rules and enter into legal agreements. In this case, 20 elected Band councils signed agreements with Coastal Gaslink. 10 dialogue
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But elected chiefs and councils are a product of the Indian Act of 1876, a European style of governance imposed on an aboriginal culture. They are therefore as foreign as floral wallpaper pasted onto log walls. Misplaced negotiations Legally, elected chiefs and councils have jurisdiction only over the reserves assigned to them by the colonial government. Hereditary chiefs see their role covering the whole territory once occupied by their nation. But B.C. never had any treaties creating reserves (with a few recent exceptions). So, for what territory do elected chiefs and councils sign contracts? As a corporation, Coastal GasLink is also a product of western legal systems. Naturally, it deals with other legal entities, the elected Band councils. However, in the Delgamuukw decision of 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that indigenous common law and ancestral customs, transmitted orally, were never extinguished, and remain as valid as the written traditions of European immigrants. At the root of the current contretemps, then, seems to be the hereditary chiefs’ conviction that any pipeline should have been negotiated with them, not with elected councils. And they’re opposed to it. Although they do not, apparently, oppose the highways, rail lines, and towns which have already altered their territory above ground. Leaping onto a bandwagon But then, the other factions have seized upon the pipeline dispute to advance their own agendas. Protests have shut down Canada’s rail system. Blocked ports. Closed highways. Thrown thousands out of work. Even barricaded the B.C. Legislature. Their motives vary. Some scorn the whole capitalist system. Some believe that indigenous peoples have been badly treated by “white” governments, and want to redress the balance. Some oppose all fossil fuels, & fracking in particular. Some see the RCMP as a pawn of people in power. And some may even be protesters who join anything that pokes the establishment in the eye. …/ DIGITAL EDITION
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All of which effectively holds to ransom millions of people who had no personal stake in the Wet’suwet’en dispute itself. What started as a local confrontation between Wet’suwet’en chiefs and the RCMP, enforcing an injunction obtained by Coastal GasLink over work camps built in preparation for the pipeline, has proved more contagious than the corona-virus. As a direct result, I sense a growing impatience with Wet’suwet’en demands. Even hostility. And frustration with apparently ineffective governments. I worry that as the ripples of inconvenience spread, the Wet’suwet’en impasse may backfire.
As Ken Coates, a senior fellow with the MacdonaldLaurier Institute and the author of #IdleNoMore and The Remaking of Canada, commented, “What a bitter and destructive irony if the willingness of the environmental movement to engage in the politics of Indigenous rights ends up weakening the people they claim to be supporting.” Jim Taylor **********
Copyright © 2020 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved. To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca (and send a copy to dialogue@dialogue.ca too, please!) ♣
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“Have Computer Will Write” ~ Jeremy Arney As I write this there is a rebellion … Jeremy Arney, Sydney BC
As I write this (in mid-February) there is a rebellion, long overdue in my opinion, by First Nations peoples with support from Mohawks and concerned people across Canada. I should point out that by the time this comes out the problem may or may not have been solved, but I somehow doubt it. The demands being made particularly by the opposition party that this situation be solved immediately as they claim that foreign money is being used by radical anti-oil and gas resource and trade activist is so ridiculous that it should be ignored as pure propaganda. No proof has been offered and it is actually an insult to the First Nations and those who support the struggle that they have been enduring for centuries that this should be solved immediately by force up to and including lethal if necessary. For decades, no actually centuries, the original peoples of this land have been lied to, stolen from, made sick and herded into reserves to keep them under control. Their lands have been stolen, mined, desecrated with no regard for what they need, feel or want. To cap it all under the Indian Act – a piece of legislation passed by white men supported by greedy corporations – made it important to state that all Indian bands should have elected councils to determine how what scraps of money were passed their way by governments of various levels should be spent. Of course, these were politicians and like all politicians www.dialogue.ca
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were subject to threats, bribes, promises (which meant nothing) and lobbying by money making corporations. It was, and still is, in the interest of these corporations to make money and to have no feelings for people of any stripe. This in itself is self-serving and yet short sighted. Without people buying useless things they would have no access to the wealth they sought and still seek. The planet is in a very bad way due to the increasing pollution on both land and sea, and now the air is following as well with constant spraying of foreign compounds into the atmosphere. In the First Nations culture there are still hereditary chiefs, because they have yet to be outlawed by governments (a difficult task on unceded territories), and their job is to look after the land, water and air along with the history of their peoples. This task was not given to them by governments but by their Creator and they carried out that task for millennia until the rapacious white man arrived to start his evil destruction. So now, finally there are some Hereditary Chiefs who have had enough of this destruction of what means so much to them. The “white man” to whom creature comforts mean everything is now being deprived of what he/she considers essential, and more importantly the greedy profit seeking corporations are being deprived of the very thing that makes them successful – income and therefore profit. It is somewhat depressing but not surprising that the various political “beings” in Canada are crying …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Jeremy Arney, As I write there is a rebellion, contd.
wolf. Men and women politicians, whose integrity is very much in question and who still swear allegiance to a Queen in another country rather than to the people of Canada they are supposed to serve, are angry that they cannot deal with people who have been trying to deal with them for centuries and have been repelled at every effort. The bleat is that the law of the country should be upheld. Now the question that should be asked is: Whose law? The law and practice of the original peoples and their Creator or the law designed to protect the “for profit” corporations? The law of Corporate Canada is flawed to the point where it is so one sided and blind that one has to question why any self-respecting person should obligingly obey the minions who try and enforce it in the guise of protecting the people. Protecting them from whom? one might wonder. Yes, there is a need to protect people from predators and yet that is precisely what the Hereditary Chiefs are trying to do on their lands is it not? People such as Kenney of Alberta bleat on about the law and yet is he not under investigation for election fraud? Scheer does the same and yet he was willing to have the government of the day override his ruling in the case of Butt lying to the House of Commons not once but twice on the same day. He wasn’t even in the Speaker’s chair to accept the veto of his ruling! The current government has claimed to make the nation-to-nation relationship with the First Nations, Inuit and Métis of the utmost importance; and yet that is such a hollow promise that they deserve to be in the predicament they are in now. Talk of compromises with people they have ignored (as with so many federal governments of the past) is falling upon ears that have heard this for years and no longer believe those false words. Governments can no longer be trusted and they have taken steps to demonstrate that. We may not like it as our little comforts may be interrupted but, to my mind, our Indigenous peoples have every right to stand up and demand a change in that condescending colonial attitude. Our media seems to skirt around this whole situation as if it is all the fault of the objectors. Endless panels on our biased CBC bemoan what is happening and claim that Trudeau should do something about it; but the real cause of this is not the pipeline itself but 12 dialogue
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where it is going. The route takes the pipeline along a sacred trail on which thousands of warriors have been buried and is therefore sacred ground. Has any effort been made to alter the route? I haven’t heard of any. Chiefs have been arrested and the rent-acop RCMP have acted with, for the most part, contempt for those who would protect their sacred land. I have noticed that with the industrialization of the Victoria airport, large semi tractor-trailer units are trying to make a tight right-hand turn from West Saanich Road onto Mills Road past a Christian church and its accompanying grave yard. These units have to take up both lanes on both roads to safely make the turn, when it would seem – by the same concept used in building a pipeline along First Nations burial grounds – that an entry lane onto Mills Road should be built through the burial ground at that corner. After all, it is in support of the companies that operate those transport units and their safe operation – safe for all road users that is. What an outcry that would cause! Yet where is the difference? One religion is as good as another is it not? But back to the current problem. It just so happens that the previous government of BC – a libertarian one at that – was more interested in further destroying the Sacred Headwaters in north east BC than in the potential negative impact of massive fracking, water contamination, earthquakes and fish destruction, not to mention the possible disruption to the millennia-old Cariboo movements. They gleefully promoted the natural gas potential along with the consortium of fossil fuel companies and yet one of the original investors – Petronas - pulled out. Why I wonder. If the First Nations people across Canada stick up for their rights under UNDRIP then we are in for a long troubling time, and any thought of Canada being on the UN Security Council will be out of the question. Has there ever been a time before in Canada when protests have been so wide spread, so supported and so destructive because of that? Maybe there is a lesson in that for current and future politicians to actually keep their word and to also actually listen to and represent the people who elected them. Well PM Trudeau, you wanted the job and you ignored your promise of a nation-to-nation relationship (and many other promises) and now you have a
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real and difficult problem only partially of your making, but you have aggravated it. Sunny days seem so far away now do they not? Jeremy
P.S. Teck Resources has abandoned its Frontier mine plan. Jeremy Arney, iamjema@gmail.com Letters at: https://jeremyarneysblog.com/ And at: iamjemaletters.wordpress.com ♣
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“Shoving a Pipeline Down Your Throat…” From Susanne Lawson, Wickaninnish Island
I always love the magazine, so much in it, so many good people, thank you for making it possible to know and hear so many of them. I am very grateful. I hope you are doing well despite the loss of such an amazing man. You have been the backbone of it all, with wonderful input from him and so many. Women often are the backbone and we must keep our strength. Sending love and good wishes always, Susanne The following poem (right) is something I wrote when I saw the Wet’suwet’en Matriarchs being taken off to prison. If it seems too much, don't print it but it says it like it is.
Shoving a Pipeline Down your throat... You will pay for it And provide profits and gas to foreign countries While your land and waters, forests, soil and air are destroyed. Young women will be in jeopardy near camps, some will disappear. Wildlife will be poisoned or shot. Leaks, breaks, spills and accidents will happen. Bullying and force are the name of the game With the backing of the military and police to protect industry, Not land, waters and people. Goodbye Canada, Goodbye Indigenous People ♣ Choke on that.
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A future for our species... From Gunther Ostermann, Kelowna BC
Yes, dear Helen,* you’re so right, when you say that women have the fate of the world in the palm of their hands.* Like you, I don’t believe in a man-made god either. However, please consider a new way of thinking. Let us assume that, before the visible universe, there was an Intelligence; HE-SHE-or-IT, that used the big bang to start it ALL; with the simplest form of matter first, the hydrogen atom, infused with software, before creating anything else; with the process of ‘Creavolution.’ * Read Helen Caldicott’s Credo at The Independent, LINK: https://tinyurl.com/h-c-5331255
WHIRRRLO: I have created a toy game based on a simple model of the hydrogen atom. Young people, who are very anxious about their ‘future,’ would be especially, inspired with this scientific www.dialogue.ca
fun game of skill, and with this slogan. I – LOVE OUR PLANET – It’s THE ONLY ONE WE HAVE https://youtu.be/HOawYNFTxPI - I have offered it for free (but it is also for sale now). See also: www.countercurrents.org/ostermann190708.htm ,
How much is a healthy planet worth? Smile. Imagine this tiny electron (steel ball), is travelling with about 2200 Km per second (Jefferson lab) around the nucleus, and in so doing makes matter real to us time/space creatures? Nobody knows, why or how this happens, say Dr. Henry L. Richter, and physicist/astronomer Harald Lesch. How could this be an accident? 10 to the 80th power; the approximate number of atoms in the universe! Sincerely Gunther Osterman gco@shaw.ca (250 765 8726) ♣
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“Prévoyance”
Appealing to the Tax Court of Canada for Justice To uphold “Good Faith” over “Unfairness, Unconscionability and Duress” Erik Andersen, Gabriola Island, BC
Below is our letter to The Tax Court of Canada regarding our 2019 appeal of a taxation decision by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). My greatest hope is to persuade the Court to embrace reform and find ways of being egalitarian and fair for Canadians. When the PM goes on national television and cuts to the chase, saying "rule of law" must prevail over all, it reminded me of his dad who in the mid-70s imposed "wage and price controls" just like all undemocratic governments did and do. Senator Lamontaigne told Trudeau Senior that he was wrong blaming inflation on organized labour but T. Sr. was not interested nor was Regan or Thatcher. The “blame labour” theme suited the 1 %. The word "order" in the BNA was no accident as J. R. Saul said. It is intended to create a directed/ command economy, not a sovereign democracy. The First Nations understand the differences. Cheers from Erik [Please note that attachments with this letter were submitted under ‘tabs’ as referred to in the letter. Text lightly edited for clarity.] From: Erik Andersen, February 14, 2020 635 Rollo Road, Gabriola Island, BC, VOR 1X3 To: The Tax Court of Canada 900-840 Howie Street, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2S9 Re Erik & Catherine Andersen v. Her Majesty The Queen Appeal Nos. 2019-1171 (IT)I & 2019-1172 (IT)I
To the Court: Our appeal, nearly 2 years ago, was that we were “unaware of a provision in our life insurance contracts that created tax liabilities, the result is arbitrary and punitive, you (we) have been targeted as low-hanging fruit, and the tax is regressive” (from Tax Court letter under second tab).
Before starting into our supporting evidence, we wish the Court to recognize that our presentation is not framed as would happen with a lawyer but is framed by a now-retired professional economist, with fifty years of experience dealing with matters of social justice and fairness. This experience came from employment as an economist by the Federal 14 dialogue
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Government of Canada, private sector corporations and the United Nations (ICAO). A beginning point for our submission is the "Mission, vision, promise and values" statement by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). These are a very laudable statements, but as in all social issues it may matter what is said but it most importantly matters what is done by the self-proclaimers. Close to the bottom of the first page is the heading "CRA values – Our guiding principles" and the first sub-heading reads "Integrity is the foundation of our administration. It means treating people fairly and applying the law fairly." “Fairly” is a social justice term and should not be found comfortably in the same sentence as "law". One does not get "fair" automatically from the law. Just look our Prime Minster who yesterday publicly took refuge in "rule of law" when the matter needed a social justice process and response. Behind the first tab is what we consider to be the centre piece of our representation to the Court. It is the report titled "PROPOSALS FOR UNFAIR CONTRACTS RELIEF" - dated September 2011 (BCLI Report no. 60). We were shocked to read the existence of this report and then to read its message. A very grand number of legal minds came together to fix what was to them a seriously legally flawed system of contract law. Their discussion included "Unfairness: Unconscionability, Duress, and Undue Influence," "Good Faith"; and "Misrepresentation" (pages xii and xiii). In our personal cases, we think that our contracts for life insurance did not meet the test described in the first part of these two pages: "Unfairness: Unconscionability, Duress, and Undue Influence". Most importantly the statement: "It expressly declares that a reviewing court may only consider facts and circumstances known by the parties before the contract was made." It may be instructive to the Court to read, on page 61, a list of 10 of the many who helped with the preparation of this report. A standout for me was the "Department of Justice Canada." Before moving to the next section, in which we present evidence of the inegalitarian management of DIGITAL EDITION
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the Canadian tax system, we wish all readers and listeners know that nothing suggested in this Contract Unfairness report has made its way into law. Nearly a decade after the tabling of these suggestions, nothing has transpired by way of making Canadian/BC contract law fair; that (inaction) is deliberate and cruel. This acceptance of unfair law had its genesis in 1866, when the first constitution framers of our country were double crossed by the British Government. Using what had been learned from the First Nations, the phrase in drafts from Canada used the words "Peace, Welfare and Good Government" (J. R. Saul: "A Fair Country," p. 153). In order that Canadians would always be colonists (renters, never owners), the word "Welfare" was replaced with "Order" (i.e. Rule of Law). And it has been "rule of law" for the benefit of the 1 % ever since, no matter the (contrary) propaganda. Kenneth Galbraith was the more well-known of those who understood the differences in the meanings (and consequences) of the two terms. Under the next tab is a letter to us from an officer of the Court, advising that we will lose our appeal because 'The Tax Court is not a court of equity and fairness and is not able to make decisions on compassionate grounds." There it is and as plain as can be. The Canada Revenue Agency and its elements do not, will not try to be fair to citizens. The use of the word fairness in the CRA Mission Statement is meaningless. As mentioned, we are next showing the Court reports/ articles that illustrate how inegalitarian Canada's taxation agency is in its work. First is the news release by "Canadians for Tax Fairness" that describes the use by Canadians of "Tax havens". This news release is followed by a report on the ineffectiveness of the CRA in recovering unpaid taxes by those Canadians identified in the "Panama Papers". The next report by Canadians for Tax Fairness is titled "Corporate Income Tax Freedom Day; 7 January 2020." By this report the reader can track how fewer and fewer corporations are carrying any of the financial burden that is needed to support civil society. The resulting concentration of wealth and incomes is well documented, especially by French economist, Thomas Piketty. Concurrently, by borrowing, Canada is running a deficit budget and spending money on projects that would www.dialogue.ca
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have dear Mr. Pickersgill (one of my old bosses) rolling in his grave. To cap this off, the Auditor General of Canada report, in the fall of 2018, found that "compliance activities by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) confirms what we've heard from Canadians and from CRA professionals as well: Canada's Revenue Agency is more lenient in many ways with international and large businesses and taxpayers with off-shore transactions than they are with individual Canadians." From the preceding evidence these are our conclusions: First off is the unfairness of Canadian contract law. In our case the CRA has taken a unilateral action claiming to be a participating party in our life insurance contracts without it being agreed to by ourselves at the outset or during contract ownership. Secondly, the CRA does not operate an egalitarian tax system and until such time it hopefully does, it needs to recognize taxation unfairness in a way that incorporates social justice rather than exclusively using the rule of law. It is evident that some tax-paying citizens and enterprises are more EQUAL than others and if that divisiveness persists it will create deep and lasting divisions in Canadian society. We therefore request refunds of taxes paid in respect to the cashing out of our life insurance contracts. If the Court is only able to tell us what it can't do would it please tell us where we can go for fairness and our refunds. With respect, Catherine and Erik Andersen CC: Canadians for Tax Fairness. Ottawa, Ontario
Re Tax court appearance on 3 Mar 2020 Update from Erik Andersen
There are several important lessons learned. First off: It is important to bring a witness along. Cliff volunteered to be mine and I am forever grateful he was there. The Judge noticed his presentence right off so I had the opportunity to introduce Cliff as a consultant. I think that might have concentrated the minds of Judge and CRA lawyer. As we followed the judges' direction (present evidence then go to arguments) it became clear that my evidence of inegalitarian conduct of the CRA and my evidence of unfairness was not wanted and would not be taken into account when arriving a decision. Because I ‌/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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was pressing the issue of CRA unfairness, the Judge took a moment to tell me that fairness was not something his court could entertain. This was a restatement of fact that was made part of the recording of the hearing. That said, the Judge seemed to take sympathy in our pleadings and denial of tax liability. This came into focus when the Judge took to cross examining the CRA lawyer on our behalf. It also showed up when the judge took a considerable interest in the terminology – mostly because the lawyer and CRA were sloppy in their use of the terminology. The judge seemed to embrace our concern re the CRA process of just sending a demand notice without a detailed presentation of how the amounts owing were derived and what specific legislation was used to make these calculations. To the disappointment of the CRA lawyer, we ended with a decision not to make a summary decision. Regardless of what will be the final decision, we were given an important fact and that was that the Tax Court and the CRA are not nor will be able to use their judgement in any tax matter that requires thinking about fairness. This is a deliberate road block to citizens of Canada and is a reaffirmation that we live as colonists.
The next step re the Canadian tax court Following a review of the Tax Court experience of yesterday (Mar. 3, 2020), we have decided to take the next step, as suggested by the Judge. It is now on the public record from both a Tax court
lawyer and a Tax court judge that fairness in Canada's tax courts is unobtainable. As this is a fact known by the Court and CRA, so much so that stating this condition publicly does not appear to be an embarrassment. We will be turning this fact around, meaning that taxation unfairness is not accidental, not considered evil/unlawful and is the normal state of taxation in Canada. In fact, it is confirmation about the unfairness of contract law identified by the BC Law Institute in 2011 and that legislators have so far managed to avoid introducing any corrective action for. Should a reader wish to make a suggestion that will help our representation to parliamentarians, we are happy to hear from you. Cheers Erik ERIK ANDERSEN, Gabriola Island, BC twolabradors@shaw.ca *************
Also from Erik… Here is a video link to Leonard Cohen's song written in response to the 2008 financial meltdown. Thought it appropriate today. – Erik Leonard Cohen; Anthem (in London, 2008) https://youtu.be/48AJBXs5dNc
Ring the bell that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the lights get in
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Where to go from here…. A Meme With Potential Mike Nickerson, Lanark ON
Fairytales about growth everlasting are spread steadily by governments and media. Yet our planet is already stressed. Even its most clever species is at risk. We could be heading toward an order that respects the needs of all people and the Earth. The knowledge exists to do so and most people would choose that direction if given a chance. What is stopping us? How might we slip the new vision through the barrier that guards the conventional wisdom? More Fun, Less Stuff. These four syllables can provide good-natured access 16 dialogue
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to the better vision for our world. What does a viable world look like? Our enormous technical skills could be applied to making necessary items durable and easily repaired. Our powerful communication abilities could re-inspire appreciation for durable and familiar products. It could also illuminate the unlimited, and enduring satisfaction offered by living life well. Once material sufficiency is met by ecologically sensitive systems and durable products, there are unlimited opportunities to be gathered from learning, love and laughter, creativity, sport, music, dance, appreciation and other life-based activities. We humans can be leading fulfilling lives without stressing the Earth or requiring dangerous technologies. …/ DIGITAL EDITION
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We don’t have to grow until we drop! “More Fun, Less Stuff” implies the basic cultural shift. People will sense that it isn’t about giving things up, it is about celebrating the richness of living. Our lives can be so fulfilling that we won’t have time to consume or to pollute on a dangerous scale. When the big challenges of our day come up at a meeting or in conversation, why not try interjecting the phrase, “More fun, less stuff.” The message is clear, unifying and memorable. A positive human future is within reach. Please help. * * * * * *
More Fun, Less Stuff on Facebook www.facebook.com/groups/722743128255517/
If this link doesn’t open, search for More Fun, Less Stuff group on Facebook. Spread this around by any means.
More detail about a better world we can create at:Three Potent Steps to a Sane Economy: www.sustainwellbeing.net/3potentsteps.html Learning, Love and Laughter; A Key to Sustainability: www.sustainwellbeing.net/life.html A Meme With Potential: www.sustainwellbeing.net/MFLS.html "When we develop the right story, and learn how to tell it, it will infect the minds of people across the political spectrum." – George Monbiot 15 MINUTES WELL-SPENT (VIDEO): Monbiot explains how stories change the world and offers one for today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDKth-qS8Jk ♣
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A needed shift of perspective… From: Christina Stafford, Nanaimo BC
cm.stafford@shaw.ca I found this article, How Economists Tricked Us into Thinking Capitalism Works (link below) one of the best on “economics” that I’ve seen anywhere. Although it focuses on capitalism, it sees through a much broader lens and looks at the deeper issues of human nature – which is a vital piece of the puzzle in our current crisis… It’s valuable in warning us about the particular class we associate with money and power – in Government and Corporate Commerce – that small group, and the personality of many or most within it; the Homo economicus personality is an extremely rare one. This is going to be very important for the future… particularly since so many young people - like Greta Thunberg - have been pleading with “these people holding political and governmental power” - to trust the “Science”…. But some of the humans who represent “the science” are themselves vulnerable to the influence of financial manipulation by positive promises or negative threats (and punitive smear campaigns if they dare to become whistleblowers…) There is a growing urgency amid the comparatively small number who inhabit the powerful (now billionaire) class. Although they have been using coercive tactics to insure co-operation very successfully all along… this global, political/economic system has nearly maxed out at this point with nothing much left www.dialogue.ca
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to acquire and profit from. But it has also created innumerable toxic side effects and imbalances that negatively affect 'the many' in countless ways. And technology has for the first time allowed the many a global potential for interrelating… and for recognizing and objecting to the imbalances. Nevertheless, the powerful are not going to accede gracefully to reversals of everything they’ve believed in for generations - or relinquish “control” - which they’ve had and used to great advantage for thousands of years…. So it is essential for us to shift our own narratives from that of homo economicus – to homo holistica absolvere…. I’m attaching an “a” to symbolize the feminine in holistica – and absolvere to emphasize an association with freedom from slavery – because the silenced truth of commonality, co-operation, empathy and love have been missing from our misinformed worldview long enough! Christina Stafford LINK TO REFERENCED ARTICLE:
How Economists Tricked Us Into Thinking Capitalism Works:
Our species has survived through caring and sharing, not competing in markets as economists claim. Article by Robert R. Raymond, Truthout (published Jan. 5, 2020) LINK: https://truthout.org/articles/how-economists-tricked-us-into-thinking-capitalism-works/ ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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BOOKS
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power QUOTED FROM BOOK COVER, INTRO, CONTENTS:
IN THIS MASTERWORK of original thinking and re-
search, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Brother" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit — at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future — if we let it. BACK COVER:
"Brilliant and essential. Shoshana Zuboff reveals capitalism's most dangerous frontier with stunning clarity: the new economic order of surveillance capitalism founded on extreme inequalities of knowledge and power. Her sweeping analysis demonstrates the unprecedented challenges to human autonomy, social solidarity, and democracy perpetrated by this rogue capitalism.... A masterpiece of rare conceptual daring, beautifully written and deeply urgent." —ROBERT REICH, author of The Common Good and Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few.
"From the very first page I was consumed with an overwhelming imperative: everyone needs to read this book as an act of digital self-defense. With tremendous lucidity and moral courage, Zuboff demonstrates not only how our minds are being mined for data but also how they are being rapidly and radically changed in the process." —NAOMI KLEIN, author of This Changes Everything and No Logo. ***
"A panoramic exploration of one of the most urgent issues of our times, Zuboff reinterprets contemporary capitalism through the prism of the digital revolution, producing a book of immense ambition and erudition." —ANDREW KEEN, author of How to Fix the Future. ***
"In the future, if people still read books, they will view this as the classic study of how everything changed. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is a masterpiece that stunningly reveals the essence of twenty-first-century society, and offers a dire warning about technology gone awry that we ignore at our peril. Shoshana Zuboff has somehow escaped from the fishbowl in which we all now live, and introduced to us the concept of water." —KEVIN WERBACH, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania ***
"Zuboff's book is the information industry's Silent Spring." —CHRIS HOOFNAGLE, University of California, Berkeley. ***
"My mind is blown on every page by the depth of Shoshana Zuboff's research, the breadth of her knowledge, the rigor of her intellect, and finally by the power of her arguments. I'm not sure we can end the age of surveillance capitalism without her help, and that's why I believe this is the most important book of our time." —DOC SEARLS, author of The Intention Economy and editor-in-chief, Linux Journal. *** ISBN-13: 978-1-61039-569-4 $38.00 US / $49.50 CAN Hardcover, 691 pages Publisher: www.plublicaffairsbooks.com
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THE DEFINITION: Sur-veil-lance Cap-i-tal-ism, n. 1. A new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales; 2. A parasitic economic logic in which the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new global architecture of behavioral modification; 3. A rogue mutation of capitalism marked by concentrations of wealth, knowledge, and power unprecedented in human history; 4. The foundational framework of a surveillance economy; 5. As significant a threat to human nature in the twenty-first century as industrial capitalism was to the natural world in the nineteenth and twentieth; 6. The origin of a new instrumentarian power that asserts dominance over society and presents startling challenges to market democracy; 7. A movement that aims to impose a new collective order based on total certainty; 8. An expropriation of critical human rights that is best understood as a coup from above: an overthrow of the people's sovereignty.
TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Home or Exile in the Digital Future, 3 PART I – THE FOUNDATIONS OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM 2 August 9, 2011: Setting the Stage for Surveillance Capitalism, 27
3 The Discovery of Behavioral Surplus, 63 4 The Moat Around the Castle, 98 5 The Elaboration of Surveillance Capitalism: Kidnap, Corner, Compete,128 6 Hijacked: The Division of Learning in Society, 176 PART II – THE ADVANCE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM 7 The Reality Business, 199 8 Rendition: From Experience to Data, 233 9 Rendition from the Depths, 255 10 Make Them Dance, 293 11 The Right to the Future Tense, 329 PART III – INSTRUMENTARIAN POWER FOR A THIRD MODERNITY 12 Two Species of Power, 351 13 Big Other & the Rise of Instrumentarian Power, 376 14 A Utopia of Certainty, 398 15 The Instrumentarian Collective, 416 16 Of Life in the Hive, 445 17 The Right to Sanctuary, 475 CONCLUSION 18 A Coup from Above, 495 Detailed Table of Contents, 526 Acknowledgments, 532 Notes, 537 Index, 665 ♣
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Capital and Ideology, new book by Thomas Piketty [PUBLISHER’S NOTES] The epic successor to one of
the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system. Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the TwentyFirst Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit www.dialogue.ca
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of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it. Thomas Piketty is directeur d'études at l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), professor at the Paris School of Economics, and Centennial professor at the London School of Economics new International Inequalities Institute. Published by Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press (March 10 2020); Translated by Arthur Goldhammer; Hardcover, 1104 pages; ISBN-10: 0674980824 ♣
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Changing Course for Life, In Defence of Life Zero Carbon, 5G Denial and Green-Fascism By Julian Rose, http://www.julianrose.info/
Why is it that the two words ‘Zero Carbon’ send a cool shiver down my spine? Is it the ‘zero’ or is it the ‘carbon’? Or is it particularly the combination of the two? I wasn’t sure, until I looked-up ‘zero carbon’ within a scientific context addressing greenhouse gasses, and the answer that came back was this “If there were no greenhouse gasses the average temperature on Earth would be about -18 degrees celsius”. Now I know why the cool shiver passed down my spine. The high profile use of this zero carbon goal, particularly via Green New Deal proponents upping the pressure on governments to follow-through their commitments to the Paris climate change treaty, carries with it the overtones of a global crusade. And the missionary zeal behind global crusades is often drummed-up by people and institutions guided by dogma rather than by conscious and humanitarian instincts for a better world. An exploration of the roots of the ambition to achieve ‘zero carbon’ reveals a direct link to ‘climate action’/’climate emergency’ measures promoted via Extinction Rebellion, advocates of a Green New Deal and the ‘sustainable development’ edicts of the United Nation’s Agenda 21 – now renamed Agenda 2030. All of these ‘stop global warming’ institutions/movements are heavily backed by money derived from sources that have no record of following a transparently ‘green’ commitment within their own ethos or business practices. Now this immediately raises the question: if the backers are not ethically in line with the supposed aims of those they are funding – could those that they are funding be influenced to adapt to the values of their backers? Might they be drawn into something quite contrary to the original ideal they set out to achieve? Well, quite obviously the answer is yes, they could. And a quick review of the fate of such organisations as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth shows that this is exactly what happened. High ambitions of the sort embraced by Greenpeace, for example, led to it becoming embroiled in ‘the art of compromise’ for the sake of rapid growth and 20 dialogue
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influence. Very soon genuine green credentials become tainted by the influence of the corporate and/or political backers, whose funds come with the proviso to adhere to certain criteria and conditions, in order for further funding to be guaranteed. It’s a trap that a large number of ambitious NGO’s have fallen into and never recovered from. The truth is that leading parties in green NGO organisations focused on a prize which conformed to the standard definition of neo-liberal globalisation ‘success’, rather than holding true to the founding principles of the organisations they were steering. The green movement that jumped onto the band-wagon called ‘stop global warming’ has, however, got an even bigger problem to deal with, one which is far more devious than the familiar ‘art of compromise’ that has undone so many once well-intentioned movements. This is the fact that ‘the problem’ it is addressing is an invention, not a reality. An invention pushed into prominence by the United Nation’s body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A body with direct links to the most powerful grouping of corporate institutions on the planet with the addition of a coterie of multi-millionaires determined to set the planet’s top-down ‘green’ agenda for the indefinite future. An agenda that has little or nothing to do with the environment – and everything to do with the survival of the neo-liberal ‘big’ global economy, as admitted by Dr Otmar Edenhofer, head of Working Group 3 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The actual causes of climactic change – and yes, it is happening – are to be found in a composite of manmade and natural events, ranging from HAARP’s gross interference via heating-up the ionosphere, atmospheric aerosol geoengineering (chemtrails), the residues of perpetual war, natural solar activity, the Pole shift, a weakening magnetosphere, intense electro smog and ozone depletion; CO2 making only a tiny contribution. Julian Rose, http://www.julianrose.info/ Rec’d from: John Shadbolt, shadbolt617@gmail.com More articles by Julian Rose at Global Research: https://www.globalresearch.ca/author/julian-rose ♣ DIGITAL EDITION
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That’s My Take On It… At what point will Mother Nature give up? John Shadbolt, Acton ON
[Although I wrote this in 2013, it is even more relevant today.] As I sit in my garden each and every year it becomes more and more like a dead zone. No more butterflies, no bees, a very few wasps and bumble bees, no frogs croaking or crickets singing, no bats overhead and this year very few birds. I wonder if others have the same experience. No one seems to notice, or care. All over the planet, marine creatures are mysteriously dying. Bats and snakes have fungus, the plants and trees are under attack by genetic engineering and herbicides. Our water is poisoned by fluoride and many drug residues. Our food is poisoned by a huge number of products that are governmentapproved. Big companies are busy destroying the earth for minerals, oil, etc. Monsanto is busy promoting the killing of the insects that all have a reason to exist, even if we do not understand why. It seems to me, as an observer of all wild creatures, that mankind has somehow decided that we know better than Mother Nature does. Since Mother Nature has looked after the human race for a very long time, by providing food and shelter and natural medicine, it must come as a very rude shock to be under attack from so many humans and companies, that really only care about money. I guess a better word is greed. People have no idea what the consequences of fracking, genetic engineering, pollution, pesticides, etc. are doing to us all. We will be living (if we survive as a species) in a desolate planet. All of the beauty will
have been destroyed. Our food will be sold to us from big companies that could care less about us as long as we purchase their product. It’s all about money. Can we change things? One cannot give up. One must keep trying. For Mother Nature’s sake, and our own.
On Vitamins: Quercetin & Ashwagandha Quercetin, a bioflavonoid – found in red onions, blueberries, red wine, green tea, buckwheat & apples – is one of the top virus-fighting natural compounds. Quercetin has other big benefits including lessening reactions to allergies, as well as fighting aging and free radicals…According to most research, the usual dose is 500mg to 1,000 mg a day. As a supplement, Quercetin is often taken with a digestive enzyme like bromelain, plus Vitamin C, to improve absorption. Ashwagandha is an adaptogen that has been used for thousands of years for multiple health benefits – such as reducing anxiety & depression and blood sugar & cortisol levels. [Article by Alanna Ketler - www.collective-evolution.com/2020/03/06/the-health-benefits-of-ashwagandha/ ]
A VERY GOOD VIDEO ON EMF: PLEASE FIND TIME TO WATCH THIS VIDEO!
Artificial microwave radiation – an environmental and health disaster No. 1 - Nov 24, 2013 LINK: https://youtu.be/xVt05ZdbNlw John Shadbolt, shadbolt617@gmail.com ♣
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Laughter & ‘Lightenment Timely Funnies from Herb Spencer and/or Susanne Lawson
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Robin Mathews Uncut
The ‘Lying’ Mainstream Press and Media in Canada (Including the ‘Castrated Broadcasting Corporation’) may read.” (and who will profit from it.) Think about By Robin Mathews, January 2020 that …. (Where is Andrew Coyne?) PART ONE. More and more… reasonably informed Canadians beWHY, for instance, is there no genuinely fact-inlieve ‘the Main Stream Press and Media’ constitutes a formed argument for Canada to get out of NATO. ‘lie factory’, a ‘manipulator of public response’ in the NATO is an arm of U.S. Imperial Policy: period. service of real power in the country. Canada’s MSPM, Why… in addition … do we hear nothing – ever that is, exists to help ‘the Deep State’. To help the Corabout Canada’s despicable and repressive role (over poratocracy. To help the Imperial Master. To help the decades) in Haiti? Silence. Why does no reasonably people Stephen Harper’s group governed for … and the intelligent and informed commentator cut through the same people the Justin Trudeau group governs for with, wholesale truckload of lies about the voracious, calcuperhaps, a little more ‘panache’... and cover-up. lated, perverse U.S. assault on Venezuela [and any other Central and South American country that seeks Stark proof of Canadians’ dark and suspicious belief about the MSPM was provided in the first election Jus- real democracy and independence]. And especially … tin Trudeau won ... and after. The Globe and Mail beat why is there no attack on Canada’s sad and shameful backing of the U.S. in every vicious act against those the drums to keep the corrupt Conservative Party of countries? Why does no “mainstream” Canadian Stephen Harper in power … fighting up to the last hour. And … now … that one of Harper’s worst, rab- newsdealer ever even mention that the extermination of Palestinians is being pursued … a slow and steady bit-skinned hatchet-men, makers of ugly, anti-democprogram is being pursued…? racy legislation is running for leader, you may be sure no one in the Mainstream Press and Media (MSPM) Andrew Coyne writes (“what (he) really thinks”) – a will review his ugly past doings. Not even Andrew column in support of NATO, (Jan 11, 2020, p.02) ringCoyne, star commentator for the Globe and Mail who ing all the False Bells, accepting U.S. hegemony, lik– in a large recent advertisement tells readers “I can ing it, taking for granted an unbrokenly divided world. just write what I really think”. He chooses, of course, to forget the ‘non U.N.- apWhat Canadians face with the likes of Andrew Coyne proved’ murderous “NATO” actions in the old Yugoslavia; to forget Canada’s shameful part in the whole… and all the rest, I allege … is not only (as we will see) ‘fudging’ of stories to protect the Corporate Rich, sale murder and relentless destruction of the country with the highest standard of living in Africa, Libya … but outright failure to surface and deal with “facts”, “news”, “information” Canadians have a right to have in the erasure and gruesome murder of the leader of that country moving his people to decent life. Twelve (and need to have) in order to act positively for the hundred Libyan students were studying in Canada country. How is it (for instance) that (unreported/uncommented when Muammar Gaddafi was murdered … to the public gloating joy of Hilary Clinton and (may we asupon) Canadian publishing that flowered in the post1968 period to become a major economic and cultural sume?) Andrew Coyne …? Why is there never news about the failure of the Bank activity (as it should be) in Canada is now of Canada to restore its special lending powers to DESTROYED – without as much as a mournful sigh make possible necessary infrastructure, low-cost housfrom the (sold out) representatives of the MSPM, let ing, hospital and educational building … and more? alone full-dress reporting to Canadians of the facts. Today, fewer than 5% of non-fiction books that Cana- That policy paid for the Second World War, the building, after it, in Canada … and much more… without dians buy are produced by Canadian publishers! Cansignificant debt!! It was trashed by Pierre Elliot Truada’s whole book trade is – for all intents and purdeau in 1974 at the instancing of the Bank of Internaposes – a branch activity of foreign (mostly Imperial tional Settlements. (For the meaning of that name U.S.) publishers. “We will tell Canadians what they 22 dialogue
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read: the U.S. hegemony over all Western nations/NATO nations after the 1944 meetings to lay out power distribution in the after-war-world, held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.) Why is there almost never informed, inclusive, critical comment about ANY of the shared (or unshared) Defence, Policing, Private Corporation Activities, Environmental Actions, Foreign Aid, and Military Hardware sales where Canada and the U.S.A. impinge on one another? Canadians are kept almost completely ignorant of major matters concerning … Canada. Especially … why are Canadians kept in the dark (purposefully) about the gigantic subject of large Canadian corporations acting abroad … and, indeed, about any profit-seeking activity … whether the Pirate-Looting by cell-phone-plus suppliers in Canada or the untenable treatment of workers and the bribery of corrupt others in foreign locations around the globe…? Where is the MSPM?? Andrew Coyne writes about a foreign-acting Canadian corporation, SNC Lavelin (Dec. 21, 2019, p.02, “SNC’s GUILTY PLEA…”) on tip-toe (so-to-speak), missing, many would say, the point absolutely. But
why not? As he says in his big ad: “I can just write what I really think….” Or, perhaps, it would be better to say “I can just write what the wealthy owners of my job really think….” We will look at Andrew Coyne’s efforts to “think” (in Part Two of The Lying Mainstream Press and Media in Canada, below) and see if we can show the strange, guileful, warm, charming, slippery, open-hearted process of completely misleading Canadians … by its Mainstream Press and Media (which includes the Castrated Broadcasting Corporation). Before leaving Part One… think about the fact that the Castrated Broadcasting Corporation NEVER touches Palestinian Extermination; Haiti; the sell-out of Canadian publishing; “the NATO Question”; the “takeover” (by the Bank of International Settlements) of the Bank of Canada; Canada’s shameful ‘me-too’ foreign policy in the suppression and devastation by the U.S.A. of Central and South American countries and people; or the behaviour of Canadian Corporations overseas …. Think about ... that… and add your own contribution to the list of endless failures “achieved” by Canada’s Mainstream Press & Media.
PART TWO. The Lying Mainstream Press & Media in Canada. By Robin Mathews
For the moment … and because the issue is GIANT (though obsessively downplayed) let’s look at Andrew Coyne (Globe and Mail) and SNC LAVALIN. It is fair, I assume, to point out that the GIGANTIC illegal activity in which SNC Lavalin was involved has not received anything like the coverage required to inform Canadians (a task, surely, that could – should be carefully undertaken by the CBC, but … isn’t, of course). Nor have the wrongdoings of SNC Lavalin received anything (from MSPM) like the necessary insistence that the Criminal Code be made more strong in the matter… fixing especially upon persons responsible, to be subjected to prison sentences. (See below, the “sentencing” of SNC Lavalin: the Whitewash). The story is GIANT because SNC Lavalin, it would seem, instructed the Justin Trudeau government (during about 89 Lobbyist meetings in past months) to arrange Corporate Law so that corporate officers would be exempt from the reach of the law and from the principles of law under which other Canadians must live. Public Prosecutions Service Of Canada released a statement on December 18, 2019 to the effect that an www.dialogue.ca
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arm of SNC Lavalin had pled guilty to fraud (not to the bribery in which SNC Lavalin was engaged). It had paid something in the range of $125 million to gain contract benefits, etc. in Libya … by BRIBERY. The branch of SNC Lavalin (SNC-Lavalin Construction Inc., SLCI) declared guilty of fraud, made a joint (???) submission with The Public Prosecution Service of Canada to pay a fine of $280,000,000 (with no person convicted), and with all other charges dropped…. Things are so easy for the Corporatocracy! Neither Andrew Coyne nor anyone else I have observed has noted the most wonderful coincidence in the matter… one that just happens to follow a worn and familiar path. If (embarrassing) legal decisions, findings, judgements can’t be suppressed altogether … then they should be released when the largest part of the population is most likely to be directing its attention elsewhere. The matter most diverting in Canada is … of course … Christmas. And so – by the merest coincidence – the Public Prosecution Service of Canada presented news that SNC Lavalin Construction Inc. pled guilty and would pay a fine … on …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Mathews: The ‘Lying’ Mainstream Press/Media, contd.
December 18, 2019… just seven days before Christmas. Andrew Coyne doesn’t draw attention to that coincidence. But to his credit… he does skate over thin ice daringly enough to have me infer he is telling his readers something staggering. Remember the long and agonizing revelations by Jodi Wilson-Raybould that the prime minister and powerful others acted improperly to try to force her to direct Public Prosecutions to arrange a “deferred prosecution agreement” rather than a criminal trial of SNC Lavalin? Well, I infer from Andrew Coyne’s December 21, 2019 column that he is telling his readers the new Jodi Wilson-Raybould – a man called David Lametti (Minister of Justice and Attorney-General) and probably Justin Trudeau did very probably direct the Public Prosecution Service of Canada to allow a subsidiary of [SNC Lavalin] to plead guilty to one count of fraud (not mentioning bribery)… and then to stay all other charges related to the bribery of the Ghadaffi regime…. the Whitewash. Indeed, Andrew Coyne goes on to write that Public Prosecutions accepted a plea of guilty from only a subsidiary of the Corporation … and, he writes, “dropped the charge of bribery in a case that was wholly about bribery”…. Andrew Coyne doesn’t go nearly far enough in his revelations … which is par for the course in our Main Stream Press and Media. But the story of SNC Lavalin, its apparently marauding criminalities, and the apparent on-going entanglement of the Attorney General, the prime minister, and high-ranking political others with SNC is so outrageous that to scratch the surface is to risk opening a boiling stew pot of corruption involving some of the most powerful people in the Liberal cabinet … nailing especially Justin Trudeau. It is fair to believe that he is the one person who could nip corruption in the bud when it appears in the cabinet itself. And so when it appears to flower there … the conclusion may seem obvious. If the December 18 date for the release by the Public Prosecutions Service is a coincidence … there may be another. During the last federal election campaign … remember … one of the strange ‘issues’ that took up a great deal of MSPM time and attention was (some of us thought) the absolutely trivial revelation that Justin Trudeau had – more than twice – gone to parties “in Black Face” and that was (we were told) a Hideous, 24 dialogue
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Outrageous, RACIST thing to do … which Trudeau humbly apologized for… The outcome (utterly predictable) was that the Canadian population didn’t really think the actions bad enough to change its vote. That brouhaha, however, turned attention away from Trudeau’s alleged corrupt actions in the SNC Lavalin case … which may very well be the reason “the Black Face Revelations” were brought to the surface (by friends of the Liberal Party???) as a major issue in the election. A proper concentration by the MSPM on Trudeau’s involvement with SNC Lavalin might have significantly changed numbers (and seats) in the election …. The air-brushing of the Trudeau involvement is typical of the Main Stream Press and Media. So is Andrew Coyne’s statement that the 280 million dollar fine SNC Lavalin has to pay is probably “not out of line”… especially since he takes pain in the column to make clear the whole process was probably rotten in every way. But … then … as a kind of comment on anything the MSPM passes on to the public, Coyne’s column is a marvel. The things he should call for … he doesn’t. In my opinion, he lets the prime minister off the hook … who, coincidentally, is a relation of his, I believe. Andrew Coyne – unless I am mistaken – is the uncle of Justin Trudeau’s half-sister…. Coincidence… coincidence (look back in history). The “Lying Mainstream Press and Media”, frequently, coincidentally, miss major news!! An example from history follows: neither the MSPM in French Canada nor in English Canada reported the following: When James Cross, the British Trade Commissioner, was kidnapped by the FLQ on October 5, 1970 … the one known “English” member of the FLQ, coincidentally, was involved. And when it was discovered that poor James Cross had to have prescription drugs to stay alive … it was, coincidentally, the “English” member of the FLQ who boldly and brilliantly eluded all police nets and delivered the drugs to the secret FLQ hideout holding James Cross. Coincidentally, the Montreal Police were strictly forbidden to search for James Cross in the neighbourhood where he was held. And, coincidentally, a journalist for Radio Canada found the (silent and terrified) couple who had been removed from the apartment next to Cross and his kidnappers so that Canadian police could occupy that adjoining apartment for the whole, long period of the kidnap (during which time no one in Canada, Canadians understood, knew where James Cross was being held). DIGITAL EDITION
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By coincidence, James Cross was held a captive for two months … his whereabouts a complete mystery to all Canadian Law and Order forces, which were searching, searching for Cross …while some of them, just coincidentally, occupied the neighbouring apartment for the full period of the kidnap, observing and bugging the kidnap members.… By some coincidence none of the Lions of Canadian Journalism discovered any of the above facts… EVER: testifying to the power of coincidence in the history of Canadian journalism. Coincidentally, one may suspect the prime minister of the day was in on the whole fake kidnap of James Cross. The prime minister’s name was Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And … as a fitting footnote … the “English” member of the FLQ was the only one – until enormous pressure was put on the ‘authorities’ very late in the history – to avoid any kind of prosecution. Andrew Coyne’s coincidental family relation to Justin Trudeau may make no difference, whatever, to
Coyne’s reporting and commentary. Who knows? But when some Canadians say that the truth in Canada – about the Mainstream Press and Media and the Corporatocracy (with the government in its pocket) - is a story of unending corruption, they may be correct. In this case the RCMP appears to have provided sound evidence to the Public Prosecutions Service of Canada … doing something to improve the Mounties’ increasingly tarnished reputation by (alleged) Islamic False Flags and the more than ten years of mess (and court cases) over the RCMP (alleged) murder of Robert Dziekanski in Vancouver International Airport in October 2007… and its acting against Indigenous protesters with RCMP officers dressed like drunken U.S. Marines in Viet Nam. Perhaps “some Canadians” are hitting the nail squarely on the head when they claim the “lying MSPM” is not only bad … but actively and by intention bad ... in the service of its corrupt masters. Robin Mathews, rmathews@telus.net ♣
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China Locked in Hybrid War with US By Pepe Escobar, Global Research, Mar 18, 2020 LINK: https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-lockedhybrid-war-us/5706687
Among the myriad, earth-shattering geopolitical effects of coronavirus, one is already graphically evident. China has re-positioned itself. For the first time since the start of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978, Beijing openly regards the US as a threat, as stated a month ago by Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Munich Security Conference during the peak of the fight against coronavirus. Beijing is carefully, incrementally shaping the narrative that, from the beginning of the coronavirus attack, the leadership knew it was under a hybrid war attack. Xi’s terminology is a major clue. He said, on the record, that this was war. And, as a counter-attack, a “people’s war” had to be launched. Moreover, he described the virus as a demon or devil. Xi is a Confucianist. Unlike some other ancient Chinese thinkers, Confucius was loath to discuss supernatural forces and judgment in the afterlife. However, in a Chinese cultural context, devil means “white devils” or “foreign devils”: guailo in Mandarin, gweilo in Cantonese. This was Xi delivering a powerful statement in code. www.dialogue.ca
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When Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, voiced in an incandescent tweet the possibility that “it might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan” – the first blast to this effect to come from a top official – Beijing was sending up a trial balloon signaliing that the gloves were finally off. Zhao Lijian made a direct connection with the Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019, which included a delegation of 300 US military. He directly quoted US CDC director Robert Redfield who, when asked last week whether some deaths by coronavirus had been discovered posthumously in the US, replied that “some cases have actually been diagnosed this way in the US today.” Zhao’s explosive conclusion is that Covid-19 was already in effect in the US before being identified in Wuhan – due to the by now fully documented inability of US to test and verify differences compared with the flu. Adding all that to the fact that coronavirus genome variations in Iran and Italy were sequenced and it was revealed they do not belong to the variety that infected Wuhan, Chinese media are now openly asking questions and drawing a connection with the shutting …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Escobar: China Locked in Hybrid War with US, contd.
down in August last year of the “unsafe” military bioweapon lab at Fort Detrick, the Military Games, and the Wuhan epidemic. Some of these questions had been asked – with no response – inside the US itself. Extra questions linger about the opaque Event 201 in New York on October 18, 2019: a rehearsal for a worldwide pandemic caused by a deadly virus, which happened to be a coronavirus. This magnificent coincidence happened one month before the outbreak in Wuhan. Event 201 was sponsored by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (WEF), the CIA, Bloomberg, John Hopkins Foundation and the UN. The World Military Games opened in Wuhan on the exact same day. Irrespective of its origin, which is still not conclusively established, as much as Trump tweets about the “Chinese virus,” Covid-19 already poses immensely serious questions about biopolitics (where’s Foucault when we need him?) and bio-terror. The working hypothesis of coronavirus as a very powerful but not Armageddon-provoking bio-weapon unveils it as a perfect vehicle for widespread social control – on a global scale. The “people‘s war” against Covid-19 Just as a fully masked Xi visiting the Wuhan frontline last week was a graphic demonstration to the whole planet that China, with immense sacrifice, is winning the “people‘s war” against Covid-19, Russia, in a Sun Tzu move on Riyadh whose end result was a much cheaper barrel of oil, helped for all practical purposes to kick-start the inevitable recovery of the Chinese economy. This is how a strategic partnership works. The chessboard is changing at breakneck speed. Once Beijing identified coronavirus as a bio-weapon attack the “people’s war” was launched with the full force of the state. Methodically. On a “whatever it takes” basis. Now we are entering a new stage, which will be used by Beijing to substantially recalibrate the interaction with the West, and under very different frameworks when it comes to the US and the EU. Soft power is paramount. Beijing sent an Air China flight to Italy carrying 2,300 big boxes full of masks bearing the script, “We are waves from the same sea, leaves from the same tree, flowers from the same garden.” China also sent a hefty humanitarian package to Iran, significantly aboard eight flights from Mahan 26 dialogue
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Air – an airline under illegal, unilateral Trump administration sanctions. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic could not have been more explicit: “The only country that can help us is China. By now, you all understood that European solidarity does not exist. That was a fairy tale on paper.” Under harsh sanctions and demonized since forever, Cuba is still able to perform breakthroughs – even on biotechnology. The anti-viral Heberon – or Interferon Alpha 2b – a therapeutic, not a vaccine, has been used with great success in the treatment of coronavirus. A joint venture in China is producing an inhalable version, and at least 15 nations are already interested in importing the therapeutic. Now compare all of the above with the Trump administration offering $1 billion to poach German scientists working at biotech firm Curevac, based in Thuringia, on an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, to have it as a vaccine “only for the United States.” Social engineering psy-op? Sandro Mezzadra, co-author with Brett Neilson of the seminal The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism, is already trying to conceptualize where we stand now in terms of fighting Covid-19. We are facing a choice between a Malthusian strand – inspired by social Darwinism – “led by the JohnsonTrump-Bolsonaro axis” and, on the other side, a strand pointing to the “requalification of public health as a fundamental tool,” exemplified by China, South Korea and Italy. There are key lessons to be learned from South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. The stark option, Mezzadra notes, is between a “natural population selection,” with thousands of dead, and “defending society” by employing “variable degrees of authoritarianism and social control.” It’s easy to imagine who stands to benefit from this social re-engineering, a 21st century remix of Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Amid so much doom and gloom, count on Italy to offer us Tiepolo-style shades of light. Italy chose the Wuhan option, with immensely serious consequences for its already fragile economy. Quarantined Italians remarkably reacted by singing on their balconies: a true act of metaphysical revolt. Not to mention the poetic justice of the actual St. Corona (“crown” in Latin) being buried in the city of DIGITAL EDITION
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Anzu since the 9th century. St. Corona was a Christian killed under Marcus Aurelius in 165 AD, and has been for centuries one of the patron saints of pandemics. Not even trillions of dollars raining from the sky by an act of divine Fed mercy were able to cure Covid-19. G-7 “leaders” had to resort to a videoconference to realize how clueless they are – even as China’s fight against coronavirus gave the West a head start of several weeks. Shanghai-based Dr. Zhang Wenhong, one of China’s top infectious disease experts, whose analyses have been spot on so far, now says China has emerged from the darkest days in the “people’s war” against Covid19. But he does not think this will be over by summer. Now extrapolate what he’s saying to the Western world. It’s not even spring yet, and we already know it takes a virus to mercilessly shatter the Goddess of the Market. Last Friday, Goldman Sachs told no fewer than 1,500 corporations that there was no systemic risk. That was false. New York banking sources told me the truth: systemic risk became way more severe in 2020 than in 1979, 1987 or 2008 because of the hugely heightened danger that the $1.5 quadrillion derivative market would collapse. As the sources put it, history had never before seen anything like the Fed’s intervention via its little understood elimination of commercial bank reserve requirements, unleashing a potential unlimited expansion of
credit to prevent a derivative implosion stemming from a total commodity and stock market collapse of all stocks around the world. Those bankers thought it would work, but as we know by now all the sound and fury signified nothing. The ghost of a derivative implosion – in this case not caused by the previous possibility, the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz – remains. We are still barely starting to understand the consequences of Covid-19 for the future of neoliberal turbocapitalism. What’s certain is that the whole global economy has been hit by an insidious, literally invisible circuit breaker. This may be just a “coincidence.” Or this may be, as some are boldly arguing, part of a possible, massive psy-op creating the perfect geopolitical and social engineering environment for full-spectrum dominance. Additionally, along the hard slog down the road, with immense, inbuilt human and economic sacrifice, with or without a reboot of the world-system, a more pressing question remains: will imperial elites still choose to keep waging full-spectrum-dominance hybrid war against China? This article was originally published on Asia Times. Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. Copyright © Pepe Escobar, Global Research, 2020 ♣ Forwarded by Herb Spencer and Robin Mathews
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Laughter & ‘Lightenment
Timely Funnies from Herb Spencer and/or Susanne Lawson
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The Path Forward
Richard’s Poetic Vision of the End of Grandiose Nation-building ~ And the Humble Path to Small-scale Local Community-building from Richard Moore, Wexford Ireland, rkm@cyberjournal.org https://cyberjournal.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-republican-dream /
There once was a time when kings were supreme, and this was natural it certainly did seem. Then came Thomas Paine with his little book, and the republican dream the myth overtook.
Bush the Junior, from a family of Nazis, blew up the Trade Center and blamed it on proxies. Constitution and economy he put to the axe, preparing for treason's final contracts.
The new nation struggled, the folks ‘gainst the bosses, and our JFK came to end all our losses. The vampires said no and the shots they rang out, since then all our Presidents have had no clout.
Obama the silver-tongued devil did say, big changes for us he would bring in his day. To the clutching vampires he wrote out blank checks, now in debt forever, we're up to our necks.
Puppets they were, and puppets they be, surrounded always by grand pageantry. Great words they told us, and sometimes were witty, as they danced to the tune of this little ditty.
Trump the clown tweets all the day long, the Dems in response sing a victim’s sob song. Working together they kill faith in the vote, sinking the republic's fragile small boat.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, bless his poor soul, drove the economy into a deep hole. While Vietnam made the treasury bereft, a weapons economy is what we were left.
The republican vision has thus had its day, the American dream has just passed away. The vampires now have the world in their fangs, delivered by our leaders in traitorous gangs.
Nixon went on with the dogs of war, racking up body-counts to his score. He tossed out gold to vampires' delight, but he had to go as his ratings were slight.
A New World Order they're bringing to thee, austerity and slavery there is to be. Perhaps it is time, my good friends to think, of what brave people do, when they stand on the brink.
In Vietnam's wake dreaded peaceniks abounded, so Carter stepped in, and the hawks rebounded. He plays the bungler while hostages cower, and thus the humbled right was swept back to power.
We played junior partner in the republican dream, the dream turned to nightmare, but no use to scream. It's all up to us now, the whole world to save, from the vampires' clutches, lest we all be slave.
Reagan the salesman plied well his trade, of economic destruction he was not afraid. He talked loud of freedom and lies to us fed, while looting ran rampant and capital fled.
Only together do we stand a chance, so neither with party nor creed take a stance. On theory and religion, we'll never agree, just try it, and sooner or later you'll see.
Bush the Elder the deserts did storm, new weapons were tested and showed deadly form. For full-spectrum dominance no cost was spared, and a New World Order was proudly declared.
What binds us together is our brotherhood, you'd think that by now it was well understood. Take the hands of your neighbors and all who surround you, and help build the world that you want around you.
Clinton brought liberals back to the fold, while setting the stage for treason most bold. He split up the Balkans to get at their wealth, but his main job was NAFTA, subversion by stealth. 28 dialogue
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The path of big scale has shown us its ways, with resources squandered, while poverty stays. The small scale local is where we can start, and mutual-sufficiency must be our art. …/ DIGITAL EDITION
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Sounds boring and humble I can only agree, but who said that life was to be just a spree? Yet when we together find community, I think our rewards will be ample to see. The big system's broken, it never was sound, we need to start over, right from the ground. It won't be easy and problems abound, But others have scouted and answers were found. As for the vampires, in their penthouse lairs, their power lies not in their notes and their shares.
It's only because all of us do their bidding, that they still upon their grand thrones are sitting. When we get our community voices together, they'll be brought down like a falling feather. The global strike is our peaceful weapon, their minions don't show, when their buttons they press on. Richard K. Moore, Wexford, Ireland rkm@cyberjournal.org
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‘COVID-19 AND COVID-19 PSYOPS' by Brett Wilcox, Rielpolitik (Source: greenmedinfo.com)
“Knowledge is Power/ Ignorance is Bliss – You decide” Psychological operations or PSYOPS are defined as operations designed to influence emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. PSYOPS are a routine function of governments, but only because they are a routine function of being human. Other names for PSYOPS include marketing, advertising, PR, manipulation, fabrication, lying, or simple story telling. PSYOPS are foundational elements of war and other military operations, mythology, religion, tribe, clan, team, organization, corporation, industry, education, race, politics, identity, and family. Even on an individual basis, the various voices in our heads conduct PSYOPS against the other voices for a variety of conscious and/or subconscious reasons. The purpose of this blog is to attempt to distinguish between COVID-19 (assuming there is such a thing)
and COVID-19 PSYOPS. The purpose of this blog is not to declare or establish TRUTH, other than the truth that COVID-19 PSYOPS are a reality and we have a greater chance of approaching truth when we question everything we hear regarding this matter. First: Is COVID-19 real? If so, is it a single thing or does it have two or three or several strains? Is it natural or wild or is it a laboratory creation? Is it new or is it ancient? Was it released by nature or by man? How contagious is it? How lethal is it? How many co-factors influence its ability to spread and kill? In short, I don't know the answers to any of those questions and I question anyone who professes to know the answers. […] CONTINUE READING ONLINE:
LINK: https://rielpolitik.com/2020/03/18/mind-games-covid19-covid-19-psyops-by-brett-wilcox/ ♣
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Before you dismantle your society you should see this: Fact not Fear This factual analysis is being ignored by media & government. From Herb Spencer, Surrey BC
Pity that few understand math, including Media, Government and Doctors. Far easier to panic and repeat the rumours being deliberately spread. We are NOT told how many people are dying from all OTHER causes, as you will discover here; numbers vastly bigger than Coronavirus Deaths. [Data as of 23 Mar 2020]
A 30-min VIDEO, using current official data:
LINK: https://tinyurl.com/fact-not-fear VIDEO
As this ends with the destruction of the economy, then you can expect many more deaths from Starvation, Suicide, Rioting & Military Shooting. www.dialogue.ca
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SIx Solid, Scientific Reasons to Assuage Your Coronavirus Panic
Poetry for our times… From Eva Lyman, West Vancouver
Here is a Haiku I constructed this morning:
LINK: https://thefreedomarticles.com/6-solid-scientificreasons-to-assuage-your-coronavirus-panic/
Coronavirus panic has been intense, extreme and outof-control worldwide in the last 2-3 months. As I have covered in other articles, this hysteria has been promoted by scientists, the MSM (Mainstream Media) and governments who are controlled by a deeper force and who are motivated to generate and exploit the fear – in order to roll out the various NWO (New World Order) agendas while people are distracted and afraid. Of course, it is wise to be prepared and aware; it is wise to have essential supplies on hand, to practice thoughtful hygiene and to have a range of natural supplements to boost your immunity. I am not saying there is nothing to worry about; I am saying the response must be proportional to the threat. Fear and stress themselves lower the immune system. Here are 6 solid, scientific reasons with which you can adjust your response, so as to be more in accordance with the actual threat you face. It is worth remembering that there are far grander agendas at play here – including attacks on essential long-established rights and freedoms – that you need to be aware of, which pose a much bigger threat to you than a virus that will come and go. 1. UK Expert Health Panel Quietly Downgrades COVID-19, Classified as No Longer Infectious 2. COVID-19 Worldwide Death Count is FAR BELOW Annual Death Count in US for Ordinary Flu 3. Italy’s Death Count and Death Rate is Highly Skewed Due to Counting Method 4. The Flawed PCR Test: Even CDC Admits Virus May Not Cause Symptoms or Disease 5. Study Finds 80% False Positive Test Results for COVID-19 Cases 6. Unjustified Coronavirus Panic: Viruses are Not What You Think READ ARTICLE IN FULL, ONLINE LINK: https://thefreedomarticles.com/6-solid-scientificreasons-to-assuage-your-coronavirus-panic/ ♣ Rec’d from Leanne Salter, Errington BC
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The old lions The old lions die their brave voices fall silent -Will their young be slaves? ~~~~~~~
And since Easter is coming, here is an older one titled Good Friday:
GOOD FRIDAY 10th April 1998
Awful Friday – not Good, for the Man from Galilee, and many others since, in rainbow hues from tribes of Black, Yellow, Red and White. They spoke their Truth quietly and clearly and died by fire, metal water and shame. This day is a day of repentance for killing Goodness. But Good Hearts never die --they bide their time for resurrection in spirit. The nucleus of love will rise again, and spread the message in the day’s vernacular. But will we listen or –once again– kill the messenger and die in shame? Sorry about the rather dark tone. It seems to be the flavour of the day… Keep well! ~ Eva Lyman ♣
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The Word…
The God-Word and Thomas Merton ~ by Susan McCaslin (with a poem by J.S. Porter) My friend J.S. Porter and I recently published a multigenre volume of reflections titled Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine (Wood Lake, 2018).* We feel that Thomas Merton and other contemplatives of mystical perception have vastly expanded the definition (and, more importantly, the experience) of what Christian and other monotheistic religions have variously called “God.” Many, on hearing the word “God,” envision a patriarchal, old man in the sky who allowed his son Jesus to be tortured and killed as an atonement for human sin, then required everyone who wanted to be “saved” to believe in Jesus and believe that all other religions have things wrong. I have two friends (one formerly Catholic, the other formerly Protestant), who were so badly wounded by their Christian upbringings that they were resistant for decades to even entering the precincts of a Christian church. Yet if this narrow understanding of God as an anthropomorphized being who created the world, yet stands outside it ready to explode in anger when people misbehave or misbelieve were the case, who wouldn’t become an “a-theist” (someone against theism) in opposition to the more dogmatic theists? In order to transcend the gridlock of militant fundamentalism versus militant atheism, both stuck in “othering,” dialogue is required. When deep listening and mutual respect enter the field, it becomes possible for people to open to the diverse ways people from various spiritual traditions aspire to live out universal principles of humility, mutuality, and care for the larger whole. One problem is that Christianity, since the 4th-century when it became allied with empire at the Nicaean Council (AD 325), has too often emphasized beliefs, doctrines, and creeds used as means of controlling people rather than encouraging them to embody universal principles leading to inclusion, healing, non-violence, unselfishness, and love. If the word “God” is to resonate in deeper ways, as it does for many, the definition (and experiential basis) www.dialogue.ca
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of the word needs to be transformed rather than simply rejected. My friend, the Canadian poet E.D. Blodgett, who died in October of 2018, was at the end of his life working on a sequence of poems he titled “Walking Into God” where he greatly expands the usual meaning of the word God, reclaiming it in a more holistic context. I often favour the term “Holy One,” rather than “Father” or “Lord” when speaking of the divine. However, in the end names and images are metaphors, poetic ways of hinting at a reality too vast and mysterious to be captured by a single name. Many Christians are now comfortable with terms like “the Goddess,” “the divine feminine,” Sophia (Holy Wisdom),” “Mother,” or ones suggesting an ontological reality that encompasses and transcends gender, fixed concepts, and images. For me, God is “the Is of what is,” “Holy Silence,” “the music of silence or the silence within music, the pure point of love both hidden and revealed in the universe, present in all creatures and things. Those who are comfortable with the “God-word,” many of whom are not using it in a restrictive sense, may wish, while in dialogue with someone who is not comfortable, to clarify that what they call God is a mystery spilled out in a diversity of names. The human approach to this mystery can be both cataphatic (expressed in words, images) and apophatic (connected to dimensions and realities beyond words and images). What many from the monotheistic traditions call “God” can have both a personal face and a cosmological presence. God can be experienced as both immanent and transcendent. In his last years, while on his final Asian journey in 1968, Thomas Merton opened his heart, mind, and soul to practitioners of eastern and other religions, as both the current Dalai Lama and the Vietnamese Buddhist contemplative Thich Nhat Hanh have attested. Merton, because he was much more interested in learning from others than holding forth on his …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Christian beliefs and practices, was one of the pioneers who expanded “ecumenicism” beyond simply urging Romans Catholics and Protestants to talk to each other. In our collaborative book, John and I explored how this twentieth-century western contemplative-poetmonk-artist-prophet-writer of journals, letters, jazzlover, calligrapher, student of comparative religions, early environmentalist etc. helped inter-spiritual dialogue go global. We also examined why Merton’s body of work is relevant to issues we are facing in the twenty-first century, such as environmental devastation, continual warfare, and totalitarian forces within so-called democracies. In the end, our book is not simply about Merton, as much as about how Merton’s work points to how each of us has the capacity to become “superabundantly alive.”
John Porter and I share the sense that our varied words and expressions for God can “name without naming,” as John so aptly puts it. When we disarm ourselves from using language to maintain barricades, its power to make us unified and whole can be restored. Unlike much prose, especially the language of advertising, poetry, through metaphor, simile, imagery, oxymoron, and paradox suggests and leads us into the open. It invites participation from the reader or listener and turns attention away from ourselves to our relationship with the planet, with others, with the mysteries of being-inthe-world. I’d like to close with a poem by John that probes some of Merton’s and his own words for the divine mystery of The Word:
Meditation on a Word by J. S. Porter Every writer has his word. Thomas Merton had mercy, a word to catch him when he fell. Heidegger had being; never got over the astonishment of things being alive, or just being. I have spiritbookword, seeking and finding spirit in words found in books. Words of power: God, mother, child. The child asleep in her mother’s arms,
the mother asleep in God’s arms, and God asleep in the child’s arms. Each nourishing the other. God: the Anglo-Saxon word for the “Ancient of Days.” Sometimes I favour the words of our First Nations – Creator, Great Spirit, or the word of the poet Kabir, the Guest, or words from the poet Rumi: the Host, the Beloved, the Holy One. These words name without naming. ♣
This piece first appeared on the blog site of Wood Lake Publications: LINK: https://seasonsfusion.com/2020/02/06/the-god-word-and-thomasmerton-by-susan-mccaslin/ Best regards, Susan www.susanmccaslin.ca
* Footnote: Superabundantly Alive: Thomas Merton’s Dance with the Feminine (Wood Lake, 2018) LINK: https://www.woodlakebooks.com/books/inventory/Books/AllBooks/Superabundantly-Alive
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Penn Kemp
Notes from The Lunar Plexus
The Lunar Plexus There is a band of words just above the ineffable fabric of love that allows for poetry; a slim arc over the abyss of pure being that roils below, that royal knowing we aspire to by drowning self consciousness in a whole blue that is sea, that is sky, one and the same. The term ‘lunar plexus’ is one I invented as a description of poetry that appears from left field, in the middle of the night. These poems arrive to counter the prose of daily life spent under the habitual light of reason. A distillation of such experience for me is best expressed in poetry: different takes, facets or shifts in the midst of our harried lives from a dimension as yet inarticulate. My body and its changes are often a source:
Flux, Flash, Flood The subject of hot flushes never arises in our conversation. Are we ashamed to admit the extraordinary, the poet as heating system gone berserk in the everyday climacteric, proclamation of sweat the race is conditioned to? The poems are sometimes humorous and occasionally grim responses to the stresses of contemporary life on a body that would rather follow the rhythm of its own phases. The poems burst out of the frustration and the complexities of living in a setting that overwhelms the natural world with artificial stimuli. Poetry is my defense against such forces, an energy outlet. I hang ambiguous between description and analysis, attempting to hold both ends taut in a poem. When the crack between dimensions widens, the word remains, a small stone thrown into immensity.
The Net of Elementals Two things I know: the desolation of impermanence and its consolation inter dependence. www.dialogue.ca
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Soul is the constant sound between desolation and consolation, an equanimity that solves nothing but holds to, holds on to its own constellation. In cahoots with my body, the poem understands the press of mortality. It offers momentary meaning: a design in the blank face of these crazed times. I seek the container of poetry to express the multitude of perceptions and experience. Like a patchwork quilt, words fill the blanket loss of the past with tufted pockets of meaning. A poem waiting to be formed gives me the courage to articulate what hasn't been expressed. I stalk language for its power to match the kinetic awareness of the body. When words solidify events into a poem, the gift of form is given in return. Lines light the page, lift its white emptiness into pattern. In poetry, the present is acknowledged and received, breaking the barriers of the personal. The brave little singularity of a poem flings itself against pain, aging, death. In celebration, it confronts and confounds the void.
We May Be Mad But We’re Not crazy. Crazy is the poet who cries, “The times demand we return all the earth’s metal” and throws her true sapphire ring into the garbage. A single, startling blue flame tucked between white layers of wiped tears till the bored orderly empties the pail on his evening round. That confrontation with the void is the essence of poetry for me. A defiant, exuberant gesture, a shriek announcing and defining one's existence, is especially pronounced now. Given the perceived and widely-shared sense of closure, it is now that the connection with others counts: the experience of companionship in the community. Often, a poem is inspired by the imagery of other's creativity: VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Penn Kemp
Notes from The Lunar Plexus
Bass On The Grass after a painting by Paraskeva Clark
We have been fluid mercury in a mess of water weed swimming cross-current. We know to elude the net, a web’s small intricacy. The line we avoid until a play of sun on water constellates as damsel fly… This kind of writing is a living line emitted from a spider's guts. What I want to do is pour it all, the multitude of voices and events, and synchronicities alive on the page. But what happens when the connections, all these variegated threads, this web, spread out to infinity? I return to the body, the dexterity of fingers to keep typing, to keep the threads spiraling, inspiring. Keep breathing. And listening:
For Mary di Michele, Reading I hear voices, she says and the old room quivers. I hear voices, and the ceiling falls into its walls. Some words are no longer allowed. Some phrases have been relegated to a therapist’s cloak-room. As writers in this society, our subjectivity is influenced and its context to some extent determined by the electronic age. More and more, we are bombarded by stimuli beyond our making. How do we incorporate the technology that we do choose? The effects of electronic media upon perception, consciousness and dream life intrigue me. My poems desire the light of day on the computer screen— that simulacrum of corporeal reality— as if creative energy could realize itself there. The poems continue the dream signals, with window and screen as metaphor on the fly. The dreams bear witness. 34 dialogue
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Disarming Le Revenant Soon as I’m persuaded to sleep the poem returns, trailing a slip of sultry across thought. Dream wise I convince the lines to burn ridges in my brain just by lying perfectly still until committed to memory. And then my arm moves to the computer, a power book that sleeps like a lapdog at my feet, its one green eye winking across the dark in sleep mode dozing and alert to the touch of one finger on any key but return. 2020: the number promises a balance that is not politically evident, a vision of the present that is not 20/20. However arbitrary the span of time, the collective is experiencing an erosion of meaning. So we turn the corner when a new cycle begins, with a concomitant rush of new energy. Thus runs the common trope. It makes for interesting metaphors that I can subvert to my own agenda. But enough of theory: in practice, we face the terrifying realities of ideology.
ARMS AND THE BOY “The image that struck me most was a fourteen-year-old boy, just skin and bones. The men were burying him when [crossed, his last gesture, an ache up arms’ inner two tears ran down his cheeks.” [That boy survived but cannot speak. Language is lost in war, though lies thrive. Where political exigencies collide, I am exhorted to register anger, to mobilize resistance. Worn out, I am not too weary to jot the poem down, as in this fragment: “Twin assaults on the boundary of the possible/ exhaust and me(n)tal fatigue invade.” Truly tired, and the poem would drop off into oblivion. DIGITAL EDITION
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Penn Kemp
Notes from The Lunar Plexus
Not WAVING But DROWNING
The pity is not that the century wound to a close but that it’s whining on and on…
For Gwendolyn MacEwen
But where do we place ourselves, at this juncture?
Toss the Bouquet And Run Whose train do we catch, foot in the net of mouth, cleft in the nick of time, taking it on the chin again: what plane are we on? This period of time has been expensive and I explore the cost, the theme of loss, both of words and of fellow poets, over the years.
So many ways of calling out for help. Help. How can your friends? Floating in bed you don’t respond. Easy answers swerve off your rounded back. Penn Kemp (Variations of these poems are published in Barbaric Cultural Practice, Quattro Books. Several poems can be heard on From the Lunar Plexus: www.soundcloud/pennkemp. A version of the essay appeared in CV2.) The artwork for the cover of the book (right) is shared on the cover of this issue of Dialogue, thanks to Penn Kemp and artist Anne Anglin.
Penn Kemp is a poet and playwright from London, Ontario. Her latest book is P.S., a collaboration with BC poet Sharon Thesen, forthcoming from Kalamalka Press in Spring, 2020. See updates at: www.pennkemp.weebly.com ♣ ******************************************
You Were Made For This By Clarissa Pinkola Estes
My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people. You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement. I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters www.dialogue.ca
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than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind. Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and t o advance, regardless. In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn't you say …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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you were a believer? Didn't you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn't you ask for grace? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater? Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in
shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others: both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do. There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: In my uttermost bones< I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Author of the best seller Women Who Run with the Wolves ONLINE: www.wanttoknow.info/youweremadeforthis ♣
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Messages and Healing from Flowers…
Extract from the “Lotuswei” website of Katie Hess, author of FlowerEvolution (2016) https://www.lotuswei.com/blogs/blog/
Red Clover - Trifolium pretense “Were you one of those kids who played in Red Clover flowers as a child, eating them or weaving them into chains or crowns? Red Clover blossom is commonly known by many people around the world, and as an herbal remedy, it has tremendous healing value in teas and tinctures. In its flower elixir form, it dissolves collective fear and panic. “During extreme events, it keeps people calm and immune to the collective emotional instability that arises during calamities. On a smaller, more everyday scale, it prevents you from taking on emotions from colleagues or family members. When someone walks into a room angry or upset, if you're the type of person (who isn't?) to then feel the emotion that got dumped in the room, Red Clover strengthens your energetic system so that you don't make those emotions your own. It helps protect you from taking on other people's stress and 36 dialogue
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strengthens your energetic system, so that you are not so vulnerable to people's mental states. “Additionally, it magnifies our ability to feel empathy and compassion. We can put ourselves in others' shoes and feel their emotions, yet not be overcome or affected by them. During times of stress we are able to remain steady and fearless. Others’ fears, doubts, worries, insecurities or confusion do not accumulate in the body as they typically would, and we become less influenced by external imbalances or chaos.” FlowerEvolution: Hardcover, 416 pages; published by Hay House, Nov. 2016, ISBN-10: 1401948251
The philosophy of lotuswei: “World peace begins with inner peace.” Read more at: www.lotuswei.com/pages/media DIGITAL EDITION
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Ideas from David Foster, Port Perry ON
False teeth after the battles David Muir Foster, Port Perry, Ontario
The Federal NDP Health Critic MP Don Davies for the Kingsway Riding in Vancouver, recently asked the Trudeau Government to finally add Dentistry to the Canadian Health Care package (as was originally intended). At the time, decades ago, there were too few competent dentists so that dentistry as part of Health Care got left out. The Trudeau-ites predictably gave a duplicitous stall in response to Davies’ request. It has no intention of adding that costly service amidst all its other self inflicted and other crises. The current cheapskate, Ontario’s Rob Ford Conservative Government, in trying to curry favour among seniors and the poor with dental problems, has this month (March 2020) advertised a new service that will take a few months to get up and going. They proposed a part remedy only for the very poor. Health Care funding in Ontario has been a source of former Liberal government fraud, the previous Liberal government simply stealing 3 billion from the Health Care budget to prop up its own failed initiatives, and disguising it through accounting tricks. Small wonder Rob Ford got in, even if on only 26% of the ‘first past the post’ invalid electoral system (invented for when there were only two political options). Canada’s governments, politicos, and Health Care sub-systems are in deep disarray. I, a poor elder, need some expensive dental care at the moment. In the early days of government expressing concern for Health Care, the horse was the main war vehicle; my daddy, long ago, was a Cavalryman for a while on a horse out near Calgary, Alberta, where I was born. (There is another Calgary in Scotland). Soldiers learn the stories of the past, and develop skills and character while they wait for the next war. But who will listen in a world of impersonal two-dimensional electronic ‘social’ media? Sounds and images... but no touch, odours or taste. Soldiers are a waste of money in times of peace, yet you can’t pay them enough in time of war. www.dialogue.ca
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So this is a tale of how the lucky among the poor got false teeth prior to the 1800s... After major battles. The winners saw to their own dead and wounded, while the local peasant poor came out of hiding and foraged among the losers’ corpses, shooed away the feasting eyeball-plucking blackbirds, and filched valuables from uniforms and pockets. Last (and not to be ignored) was to cut the best jaws with the best teeth out of corpses to become chompers for others whose own teeth had rotted. They could sell the extras to ‘dentists of the time’ far away. It was a sort of early dental plate industry. Later, a Constable might spot a man carrying a blood stained bag and cry ‘Halt there you! What have you got in that bloody bag?’ ‘Only teeth-in-trade sir’. ‘Oh,’ says the Constable (with his grim-faced lack-ofsmile from his own poor dental hygiene (so that the girls did not want to kiss him), ‘That’s alright then. Might need a set myself soon. Carry on!’ He attempts a smile that comes across as a grimace hiding his own unattractive teeth and foul mouth odours. No wonder so few in the world smile. We have much to hide. No wonder smoking cigarettes over 140 years became the way to smother the foul smell from lack of adequate oral hygiene. The poem “After Blenheim” by English Poet Laureate Robert Southey tells of those times.
After Blenheim
~ by Robert Southey*
It was a summer evening, Old Kaspar's work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun; And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine. She saw her brother Peterkin Roll something large and round, Which he beside the rivulet In playing there had found: He came to ask what he had found That was so large and smooth and round. Old Kaspar took it from the boy, VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Who stood expectant by; And then the old man shook his head, And with a natural sigh— “Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory.
And our good Prince Eugene"— "Why 'twas a very wicked thing!" Said little Welhelmine; "Nay—nay, my little girl," quoth he, "It was a famous victory.
"I find them in the garden, For there's many here about; And often when I go to plough The ploughshare turns them out. For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory."
"And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win"— "But what good came of it at last?" Asked little Peterkin. "Why that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory."
"Now tell us what 'twas all about," Young Peterkin he cries; And little Wilhelmine looks up With wonder-waiting eyes; "Now tell us all about the war, And what they fought each other for."
The Duke was ‘Marlborough’, ancestor of Sir Winston Churchill. The date of the poem 1796, the date of the Battle of Blenheim: 1704. And so the British in WW2 named one of their twin-engined fighter aircraft the ‘Bristol Blenheim’. Think of that the next time you see your Dentist. Carved hardwood settings for salvaged beautiful teeth from long dead soldier’s smiles, so that the next generation could chew hard apples and meat again, as if second-hand perfect teeth were their own to show the warmth of a smile. Now all replaced by modern facsimiles (If you can afford it). Dentists are expensive, masked, bent over as they are, working by mirrors upside down inside smelly living mouths. Smile.
"It was the English," Kaspar cried, "Who put the French to rout; But what they fought each other for I could not well make out. But everybody said," quoth he, "That 'twas a famous victory. "My father lived at Blenheim then, Yon little stream hard by; They burnt his dwelling to the ground, And he was forced to fly: So with his wife and child he fled, Nor had he where to rest his head. "With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide, And many a childing mother then And newborn baby died: But things like that, you know, must be At every famous victory. "They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won, For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun; But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory. "Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won, 38 dialogue
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DMF Dec 14, 2019 David Muir Foster, Port Perry – on a small lake north of Oshawa. Nearby we have a small band of 60 uncertain Mississaugas who have lost their way. david.foster2@powergate.ca ♣
* Robert Southey, 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843)
was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the Lake Poets along with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and England's Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 until his death in 1843. Works written include an 1837 version of the traditional story of The Three Bears (later to become Goldilocks & the Three Bears). His version featured an old woman as an intruder/thief and the little bear as the hero. In earlier versions, a fox was the intruder and was dispatched by the bears. Southey’s poem, After Blenheim, also called Battle of Blenheim, was written – as an anti-war ballad – in the 1790’s. […] By 1820 Southey had changed his mind about the battle, describing it as the "greatest victory which had ever done honour to British arms". He calculated that had the battle not been won, the dominance of France may have overset the Protestant Succession in Britain. [Wikipedia] ♣ DIGITAL EDITION
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“The Fifth Columnist”
The Seven Year Itch Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON
Today’s headlines are full of the news of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which appears to have originated from Wuhan, China at the end of December. With each passing day, it seems that this epidemic is becoming a pandemic, meaning it’s spreading throughout the world. Some politicians seem bent on trivializing the disease – it’s just the flu, they say! I’ve also heard comments that travel bans won’t stop it. But surely a travel ban will mitigate the spread! Like a fire (analogy alert!), the flu needs fuel to burn. To stop a fire, you need to remove the fuel. In the case of the flu, it needs hosts to spread. When the disease runs out of hosts (fuel), the flu (the fire) burns out. That ‘commerce must trump safety and survival’ – well, that’s really disturbing. Another good analogy is that the flu is like an insect. I recall good and bad years for mosquitoes, dragonflies, shad flies and so on. A seven year cycle keeps cropping up, but perhaps this is unscientific. In any case I’m wondering if viruses are not that different from insects. In William H. McNeill’s book Plagues and Peoples, Appendix A lists epidemics in China from the beginning of the Common Era to 1911. In the list, I counted 277 epidemics. Dividing 1,911 years by 277 epidemics, I calculated 6.89 years, or roughly 7 years, between epidemics. Maybe I’m just seeing patterns where they don’t exist? In McNeill’s book, the author likens the parasites and diseases that plague humankind to weeds. “Weed species live by exploiting the gaps disasters create in normal ecological systems. Weeds remain rare and inconspicuous amid natural vegetation, but are able rapidly to occupy any niche created by destruction of local climax cover. Since few species are equipped to exploit such opportunities efficiently, the result is hyper-infestation of the denuded landscape by a limited number of different kinds of weeds. Yet weeds do not prevail long in nature. Complex compensatory adjustments soon manifest themselves, and in the absence of fresh “external” disturbances of a far-reaching sort, a more or less stable and variegated flora will re-establish itself, usually looking www.dialogue.ca
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much like what had been destroyed at the start. “But as long as human beings continued to expend effort to alter natural landscapes and fit them for agriculture, they prevent re-establishment of natural climax ecosystems, and thereby kept the door open for hyper-infestation.” The natural climax ecosystem McNeill refers to is the stable balance between plants and animals, the final stage of succession from bare land, destroyed by fire or human activities, to forests—here in Southern Ontario, the climax community would be deciduous trees like maple and oak. McNeill suggests that since the origin of our species, we’ve existed in a kind of ecological balance with the parasites that inhabit us, but since our civilization developed agriculture, we have essentially “denuded” the landscape, and with it the ecological balance, thereby inviting the parasite, the flu, to invade. One alarming conclusion that McNeill makes is that mankind itself is a hyper infestation. I hope not. Our culture, our civilization certainly practises “taking” from the earth, locusts devouring the landscape, as opposed to “leaving” it as we found it, or putting it another way, living as part of the world as opposed to just on it. Continuing along this vein, perhaps humanity too, our rapacious modern civilization, will burn out like the flu, having exhausted all available fuel. Like the flu, we’ve both been given the gift of life! However, unlike the flu, maybe we should know better? McNeill suggested that some ancient communities evolved their cultural practices, such as avoiding sick animals and moving away, to mitigate the plague. In the modern context, this means sneezing into your sleeve, doing fist bumps and bowing instead of handshakes, designing a replacement for the round door knob and banning air travel. On a much broader scale, it means abandoning our “right” to grow and pollute without limit. Until then, I fear that détente – the ecological, preagriculture balance – will elude us and we’ll see another flu pandemic in seven years. We might finally get to Mars, but our “friends” will be right behind us! …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Looking at Appendix A of McNeill’s Plagues and People, the list of epidemics that plagued China for
2,000 years, doesn’t this suggest that another way of living is required? Mike Neilly ♣
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Magical Moon Lake – How it all started…
Over the years, Dialogue has featured several of Karl Backhaus’ stories about his home, Moon Lake (Holland Centre, ON) – as featured in his book, Magical Moon Lake… This is a reminder about how it all began. Karl Backhaus, February 2006
Meet the animals, insects, trees and stones of Moon Lake, my home –and make unusual and unexpected discoveries along the way. With complementary insights. Written for my nieces and nephews and their children and anyone interested in the magic of life. How It All Began … This collection of short stories was triggered by a vivid dream I had on the night before New Year’s Eve, 1993. In my dream, a clearing in a forest was covered with many wild flowers. I was part of a group of 13 people, men, women and children of various backgrounds. As we settled down to sit near the quietly bubbling main spring of Moon Lake, we formed a circle. Everyone in our group had to tell a story. I thought I would have plenty of time to think about one, but to my surprise it was my turn first to begin our story-telling. All this happened so quickly. At this point, I was totally unprepared to tell a story whereas some of the other participants even had a manuscript to read from. I had to come up with a story in a hurry without any clues or time to think of one. While desperately looking for hints of what I could talk about I noticed a hare looking at me from some distance. Nobody seemed to notice this friendly wild hare, for everyone was focused on me for my story to begin. The hare kept intensely looking at me. Somehow there was a mental connection between us. Suddenly a clear image of a potato came into my mind. Was this a telepathic message? How would a potato help me in my situation? As often happens in dreams, when things become difficult, one wakes up, and this was also the case with me. Even though I tried, I could 40 dialogue
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not go back to my dream that night, and I never had a second chance to listen to the stories of the other storytellers. For quite a while I could not sleep again for I was thinking about all the stories I had missed, as well as my own story, wondering about the meaning of the potato image given to me by a hare. Still pondering my dream I realized that there were many stories I could have told, but I had never thought of them as being stories. These were not made-up ones but my own true real adventures and exciting experiences which were much more thrilling to tell than anything I could invent. My brain began racing as all these untold amazing experiences came to my mind. I was anxious to get up but I waited until dawn to jot down the titles of my stories, title-after-title, twenty-two in all. Boy, I had a real collection of stories now, and in case I ever returned to the circle of storytellers, I decided to record these real-life stories so I would be prepared. Everything you will read truly happened, written without compromise or any alteration to make them sound more dramatic. For me they are exciting enough and even if some of my experiences may sound unreal what you will get is the ‘real McCoy'. …/
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As I began writing my stories, many details came alive as if they had only occurred yesterday. Over a period of a decade I have added amazing new experiences at Moon Lake, giving now a more complete picture and better understanding of this magical place. Although English is my second language, the writing seemed effortless when page after page materialized from my old-fashioned Smith-Corona typewriter. Later, as I re-read the stories, I became aware that they were connected by a continuous thread that joins the interrelations of humans, animals, plants and even stones, and explores my understanding of what each of these seemingly different worlds can offer and teach us. In many instances God and Guardian Angels do not seem to be strangers. For this last thought I will let the stories speak for themselves. Our present world is often geared to sensational stories that may or may not be true. We really do not know what or whom to believe anymore. Many of us are on mental overload and our senses are often numbed through over-stimulation. My stories are geared to a very different style or pace, and often are subtle and directed towards a world that does not seem to exist for many, yet for me is the real world the way I experience it. Written in a simple way some of my stories may trigger curiosity or perhaps awaken those whose mystical or spiritual explorer is on hold. This sleeping explorer may have forgotten that things can be looked at in more than one way, revealing again the small miracles that happen every day. My stories are written for all ages, children and adults alike, for the young at heart, for those who search for the magic in life and for all who want to be part of the story-telling circle. ~~~ 1 ~~~ Arriving in Canada – The Cabin – The Lake Originally I had not planned to include my very first story because it was not part of the titles I had written down after my unfinished dream. This story is quite different from the other stories, but without this one, none of the others could have been written. This is a personal story about my background and the history of the land of the real Moon Lake, the setting of most of my stories, and how I struggled to make my wish of creating a lake and living in the forest, a reality. Without this first story, also, the stories that follow would not be appreciated as much and a vital www.dialogue.ca
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opportunity would be missed to give hope to those who feel despair about the present destruction and exploitation of our beautiful Planet Earth. Perhaps I may inspire someone who has encountered similar obstacles and conditions to regenerate exploited land so that it may once again flourish and become a haven for people, animals, trees, plants, fairies and other subtle unknown species. I go back to the 1960’s for the real beginning of my story. Till the early 1960’s my wife, Elke, and I lived in the large port city of Hamburg, Germany where we both had grown up. Before we settled down we wanted to see a little more of the world so we decided to immigrate to Canada for one year. We studied maps, including climate charts. Toronto seemed to be the best place to go. After the immigration formalities were completed we booked a passage on a freighter from Hamburg to Montreal. It was a small 3000-ton ship, the Cap Delgado, that had just come from a repair dock in Hamburg and was now to cross the Atlantic and then do service in the Great Lakes. The Atlantic crossing was a test-run for Captain Dosse. The ship was without cargo and we were the only passengers. This was not a cruise ship and the test of endurance came for the ship and for us when, during a three-day storm, we hardly made any headway and the ship often tilted 43 degrees to either side. This was a tough time when we had to watch out not to be catapulted from our beds. The kitchen service was discontinued for three days - no wonder when the curtains were swaying almost 45 degrees. The only thing edible that agreed with me was an occasional raw potato. Sometimes we saw icebergs floating by. It was here that the Titanic had sunk fifty years earlier. When we finally entered the St. Lawrence it was a great relief for us. The wonderful scent of the awakening forest coming from the faraway shore was our first welcome to Canada. A few more days of cruising and we arrived in Montreal. After eleven days of swaying on the ship our first steps on land felt very strange as if the ground was still on the move. Our adventure continued when we took the night train to Toronto. … Karl Backhaus, Ont. TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT ISSUE. ♣
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A Potpourri
Tales from Fruitvale…
Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC
From a clear blue winter sky, the sun streams through my window. My personal world seems just fine right now with a cup of hot tea and the freedom to reflect, but in the world at large, the news is a tale of suffering. Perhaps the world has never been free of suffering and, indeed, that was encapsulated in a statement from The Buddha that ‘life is suffering.’ Currently there is an epidemic spreading from China across the world, cruise ships have been quarantined at sea, refugees flee in war-torn Syria, a plague of locusts sweep through Africa, and in Australia, fires have been so extensive that the summer could be, in future, a time to be feared. I am sympathetically restless in the awareness of such struggle and loss; one cannot be indifferent or unconcerned. Yet, could one not be sufficiently detached, despair would prevail. I am reminded of a senior citizen’s version of the Sound of Music song, These are a few of My Favorite Things. Reminding us that, ‘When the bones ache and the hip breaks, have confused brains and short shrunken frames, then we Simply Remember our Favourite Things, then it won’t seem so bad.’ The above seems more like hiding one’s head in the sand in a sea of troubles, particularly when I have a wife, kids, grandkids, pension and a home with running water and enough food for the table. Yet amid the beauty of plentiful flora and fauna, with lakes, rivers and cycles of growth for sowing and reaping – and with the urge to preserve the thought of taking time to celebrate life and the planet – it is worthy of giving thanks. Not to forget that Canada did do some celebrating of our natural heritage back at the turn of the millennium, particularly on our coinage: depicted were sun, mountains, people in ‘Harmony’, kids, freedom and ‘Community’. Circular serpents symbolise ‘Family,’ ‘Natural Legacy’ – our sense of place. There is a human chain around a maple leaf and fireworks in celebration; Native art – a thunderbird; ‘Ingenuity’ – a satellite; ‘Creativity’ is aboard a canoe; and 42 dialogue
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‘Achievement’ is a rocket in the sky. We celebrate technical advances and can’t deny the utility of the World Wide Web and high-tech phones, Artificial Intelligence – and getting to the moon and back before all that. But yet, looking at the world through either living it or watching it on a screen via media, the world is messed up right now: 2020 has not started as a joyous journey into a future of promise. There is harmony in the world and there is conflict and the predictable cycles of growth and death. Planetary life is an immense synthesis of ordered activity. You just have to look at an ant hill to see that, but sure some ants make war, just as we do – and disorder follows. Through the struggle, there are the oppressed and the oppressors, the revolts for freedom and human rights, the hope for justice, the calls to resist and the marshalling of forces in power to defend their position. Currently Canada has been challenged on its human relations with the indigenous people, with the economy weighing in the balance. As a result, regular life has been compromised and everyday people are reminded of their reliance on the continuous supply of goods and services. Will we listen to the First Nations’ requests or will we send in the R.C.M.P. to get things moving again by force through law. The indigenous people have their law as well and are unified in their respect for the land but unfortunately separated as to the positions of elected and hereditary chiefs. However the Supreme Court did make a ruling that granted hereditary decision-making authority over their territories. There is harmony in the world and there is conflict. From the environmental perspective, pollution should be feared not factored into business. I would sooner view the world with optimism and a sense of humanity evolving toward better human relations. Meanwhile hospitals are being bombed, people’s homes and culture have been destroyed. England is now set adrift in a sea of tensions, Iran is on a hair trigger, Venezuela is undergoing economic turmoil and Germany is seeing the resurgence of white supremacy. The president of the U.S.A. has been on trial for impeachment, in which ’The organs of the oldest democracy in the world began to devour themselves in a mockery of justice.’ …/
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Life on this blue planet home is a balancing act of harmony and conflict, between big money and Mother Earth. The stakes are: fires and floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, loss of diversity, global warming, melting ice caps, sea lice-infested farmed salmon threatening wild salmon runs, decline of coral reefs, dead zones in the ocean, islands of plastic in the sea and piled in the jungles of Indonesia, a legacy of toxic ponds that are never mentioned in the justification of oil extraction, and there are thousands of barrels of never-deteriorating uranium, somewhere, that was at one time, in the U.S.A., dumped on an earthquake fault line. (Yucca Mountain, Nevada.) The human condition is not necessarily a biological selfish gene gone amok; but the human person has an ethical and moral sense to guide him/her: if greed has not taken hold. Similarly, the environmental condition
of the planet is not necessarily just elemental forces in flux and ‘nature as usual’ (as the P.M. of Australia prefers to put it, in defense of coal,); but the Earth is a Nature which reacts from the manipulation by humans acting in ignorance of the consequences. There also appears to be self-interested manipulation in spite of predictable consequences. Hopefully we can have progress but balanced with common sense, such as not suppressing health information. Maybe we need a serious climate plan because the future of fossil fuels looks increasingly like the Titanic, with us on board. Perhaps we might take the time to appreciate what we have when we have it, to re-learn how to play, laugh and to be friendly, to work think and to love and be loved. Paul Bowles, February 2020, scribepoet@hotmail.com ♣ SEE ALSO FROM PAUL: “Take Time” calligraphy, P.59
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Bob Hansen discusses his book, Bound by Precious Hostages: Memoirs of a Third Generation Canadian Bloodline Criminal Harassment Refugee in His Native Land ~ the first of a three-part autobiography Bob Hansen, Ladysmith, BC
This is the first book in a series presently of three volumes. This volume covers the first 27 years of my life and the other two volumes cover 20 years each. You will read about the origin of this harassment of me, and the families who are conducting it, and the other damaging projects they have in our societies. Also, I will explain my role in the labour strike at the Vancouver General Hospital in 1978 where I worked as a Biomedical Engineering Technologist and inadvertently triggered the largest strike in an acute care hospital in the British Commonwealth simply by telling the truth. After a life of damaging events that had previously been considered to be coincidences, I was compelled to address my personal and family history. I rediscovered that I am the great-grandson of Scott Winfred Nearing. Scott was a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business, during World War I. He opposed the war and he argued to end child labour in the coal mines there. For these reasons his teaching contract was not renewed by the Board of Directors for the university. The uproar on campus and nationally in the United States resulted in all professors in universities in the United States being given tenure. However, Scott’s teaching career was ruined. www.dialogue.ca
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He wrote many books and essays and, in the early 1950s, wrote, with his wife Helen, the book The Good Life, which became a reference for the back-to-theland movement during the late 1960s. As I constructed my memoirs, I realized that I'd been harassed all of my life long, as had my father and his father before him. I am the third generation to be harassed by a process put in place by corporations at the end of World War I. This harassment is based upon the old system of primogeniture, but it is reversed so that the oldest sons of all of the descendants of Scott Nearing will have everything taken from them. This is the work of psychopaths. I am a third generation victim of bloodline harassment that has been going on for 100 years. As I began to unravel my history, I had enormous interference from organized crime, in this case the Hells Angels and their associates, and I had to plan and act to stop that harassment in order to continue to write these memoirs. As the books unfolded I realized that my original harasser 60 years ago had predicted: the 9/11 attack; that we would 'think' the planet is warming'; hedge funds, and more. Also, I tie him to the British parliament, and therefore to their foreknowledge of the 9/11 attack, dating back to 1964. As well, I define the two men who brought the Hells Angels …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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motorcycle gang to Canada in 1974, and who their ancestors are. One of the men is the Canadian diaspora of a continental French family who were given a Letter of Marque by Queen Elizabeth I in 1580, to steal precious metal coming out of South and Central
America in Spanish ships, initiating the world’s first false flag event and the start of the period of piracy in the Caribbean. – Bob Hansen Paperback: 287 pages, $14.22 – by Robert Leslie Hansen Published: Feb. 3 2020; ISBN-10: 0993932401 ♣
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We've spent the decade letting our tech define us. It's out of control. Douglas Rushkoff warns that Technology “has spun out of anyone’s control.” QUOTES from his Essay in The Guardian, 29 Dec 2019. [LINK BELOW]
“We may come to remember this (past) decade as the one when human beings finally realized we are up against something. We’re just not quite sure what it is. “More of us have come to understand that our digital technologies are not always bringing out our best natures. People woke up to the fact that our digital platforms are being coded by people who don’t have our best interests at heart. This is the decade when, finally, the “tech backlash” began. But it’s a little late. “Shoshana Zuboff recently published her comprehensive Surveillance Capitalism to deserved acclaim, but the book is really about some decisions that Google was making twenty years ago to harvest our data and sell it to advertisers. The Center for Humane Technology has called attention to the way that the manipulative techniques of behavioral finance have been embedded in our apps – bringing us all up to speed on the science of captology and addiction, circa 1999. “These are necessary critiques, but they’re too focused on the good old days, when the business plans of a few bad actors and the designs of some manipulative technologies could be identified as the “cause” of our collective woes. That’s really only half, or less than half, of the story. … The quest for exponential returns may have fueled the development of extractive and addictive technologies, but the cultural phenomena they gave birth to now have a life of their own. “What this decade’s critiques miss is that over the past 10 years, our tech has grown from some devices and platforms we use to an entire environment in which we function… we live online 24/7, creating data as we move through our lives, accessible to everyone and everything. … What happened to us in the 2010s wasn’t just that we were being surveilled, but that all that data was being used to customize everything we saw and did online. We were being shaped into who the data said we were. The net you see and the one I see are different. Your Google search results are 44 dialogue
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different than mine, your news feeds are different and your picture of the world is different. … It’s an environment that remembers and records everything we have done online, every data point we leave in our wake, in order to adapt itself to our individual predilections – all in order to generate whatever responses or behaviors the platforms want from us. The digital media environment uses what it knows about each of our pasts to direct each one of our futures. “We can no longer come to agreement on what we’re seeing, because we’re looking at different pictures of the world. It’s not just that we have different perspectives on the same events and stories; we’re being shown fundamentally different realities, by algorithms looking to trigger our engagement by any means necessary. The more conflicting the ideas and imagery to which we are exposed, the more likely we are to fight over whose is real and whose is fake. We are living in increasingly different and irreconcilable worlds. We have no chance of making sense together. The only thing we have in common is our mutual disorientation and alienation. “We’ve spent the last 10 years as participants in a feedback loop between surveillance technology, predictive algorithms, behavioral manipulation and human activity. And it has spun out of anyone’s control. We may be benefiting from the internet’s ability to help us find others with whom we share rare diseases, hobbies, or beliefs, but this sorting and grouping is abstract and over great distances. We are not connecting with people in the real world, but gathered by our eyeballs in disembodied virtual spaces, without the benefit of any of our painstakingly evolved social mechanisms for moderation, rapport, or empathy.” […] READ IN FULL: https://tinyurl.com/TG-DR-backlash Rushkoff’s message, as the year began: “Take care, and please take time to engage with other people. Eye contact, skin contact, or just the occasional hug are both nourishment and gateways to the meaning of life. (The word) ‘Conspiracy’ means breathing together.” Editor’s note: And then along comes Social Distancing and even-more ‘online.’ Strange coincidence that... ♣ DIGITAL EDITION
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“Your Health Matters”
THE APPALLING STATE OF NORTH AMERICAN HEALTH Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, Strongsville OH
The February 3 2020 issue of Time magazine had an entry entitled “When Every Day is a Mental Health Day”. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association reportedly found that in people between the ages of 24 and 39 in 2020, depression is the fastest-growing health condition. Fainting attacks, known as syncope, reportedly occur in 15-39% of the general population when they suddenly stand up from a chair. It was also reported from Kaiser Permanente that “depression is a leading cause of illness among young people and anxiety is on the rise. Suicide ranks third as a cause of death for 15 to 19 year olds”. It is interesting that a picture of a young woman is shown whose anxiety level is described as medium-high. Her favorite pick-me-ups are described as “hugs, candy, conversation.” This is the cryptic message that invokes the methods which she uses to calm herself in the face of stress. Yes indeed, it is true that candy is often used as a kind of solace for the misfortune of stress. I will show that far from helping an individual to adapt to stress, candy is often the underlying cause of the depression and anxiety that represents maladaptation to the stresses of daily life. Stress (anything that demands a physical or mental response) I turn to the work of Hans Selye who proposed that human diseases were the “diseases of adaptation” (1). Hans Selye was a Hungarian medical student. He was in a class where the professor was bringing patients into the classroom to describe the disease that was diagnosed in each of these individuals. Selye was not listening to the professor. He was engaged in looking at the facial expressions of each of the patients as they were brought in. He came to the conclusion that the facial expression was similar from patient to patient, irrespective of the disease that was being described, that they were all suffering from the stress of the disease, irrespective of its diagnostic category. He emigrated to Canada and set up an institution in Montréal to study the effects of stress. Of www.dialogue.ca
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course, he was unable to study this in humans so he inflicted physical trauma to rats by the thousand and did laboratory studies to show the effects. He found that the laboratory showed changes in the blood that were similar to those found in human beings afflicted with chronic illness. He formulated his findings under the heading of "the General Adaptation Syndrome" and labeled human disease as "the diseases of adaptation". The remarkable conclusion was that the resistance to whatever was responsible for causing the disease (stress) required huge amounts of energy in the brain for the process of adaptation. I am suggesting that the vulnerability of the American population is because so many people are unable to adapt to the everyday incidents encountered in just living. This of course makes a world of sense because infections, trauma and prolonged mental pressures such as ugly divorce or business assignments (stress) are known to initiate disease and sometimes even death. At the time of Selye little was known about the way that the body manufactures the energy derived from food so his conclusion was the mark of genius. He actually did recognize his own genius and firmly believed that he would be the central figure in 21st century medicine. I believe that he could have been right but his work has been largely ignored for at least two reasons: the cruelty to animals got him into trouble with the antivivisection league; and the pharmaceutical industry captured the field. We now know a great deal about the way this energy is produced and consumed in the body to produce function. The conclusions of Selye now make perfect sense in analyzing the cause of human disease. The only change that I would make would be to call human diseases "the diseases of maladaptation" because Selye pointed out that succumbing to stress was nothing more than the failure of energy production in adapting to whatever form of stress was being imposed. In order to understand this, you have to remember that infection, trauma and problems involving mental work all come under the dominant heading of stress and that they all demand consumption of mental energy in the solution by adaptation. …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Thus, we can begin to see that disease, irrespective of diagnosis, is nothing more than a combination of genetic risk coupled with a failure to meet the energy demands required. The initiation can be represented by the integrative action of one or more of three interlocking circles labelled Genetics/ Stress/ Nutrition. There is now evidence that most genetically determined disease, including cancer, does not usually produce disease on its own. For example, diabetes is genetically determined but does not develop until middle age and often following a “stress event” such as an infection, trauma or a prolonged and nasty divorce. We have to recognize that the body's ability to manufacture sufficient energy to meet whatever stress is imposed comes from the quality of the food. A relatively new science is called epigenetics and is the study of how our genes can be affected by nutrition and lifestyle. I know that I am repeating myself (for emphasis) when I write that the ability to adapt to any form of physical or mental stress depends on brain/body energy and that If bad news, injury, infection or a nasty divorce, has to be faced in the modern world, Selye would point to the need for brain energy in meeting and adapting to that stress. Of course, if we are healthy, the adaptation is automatic and we don't even think about it. In short, we adapt. That has given rise to the idea of “good, and bad, stress”. However, if a person becomes sick at such a time we are most unlikely to think of it as mild to moderate brain energy deficiency. Without adequate energy, the brain “complains by initiating symptoms”. In other words, individuals developing mental disease have biochemical deviations in their ability to adapt. Depression and anxiety are merely examples of the way in which the brain shows energy failure, the result of simply being alive. Note that depression and anxiety are perfectly normal as we adapt to the appropriate stimulus. They are abnormal when they exist chronically for no apparent reason or stimulus. The underlying mechanism has been exaggerated and is a reflection of abnormal brain function. The January 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine states that “stress plays a major role in many illnesses that kill us. It also drives unhealthy eating, poor sleep, alcohol and drug misuse, and other bad habits. Modern medicine really sucks (their word) at preventing chronic disease”. In the 46 dialogue
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same issue: “food allergies have become so widespread that many schools restrict what kind of lunch kids can bring from home for fear of setting off a classmate’s allergic reaction. Oddly enough, allergy is a brain sensitivity, resulting in abnormal organ action, so it is in reality brain related. For example a woman who was known to be allergic to rose pollen enters a room where there is a bowl of roses. She succumbs to an attack of asthma that requires hospitalization, only to find later that the roses were artificial. The point is that the asthma could be initiated by more than one sensory input. “In the United States 5.6 million children suffer from food allergies. This translates to two or three in every classroom.” I will illustrate the unifying concept of energy deficiency by discussing a number of diagnoses in which the medical literature supports it. Dysautonomia The classic prototype for dysautonomia is beriberi, the vitamin B1 (Thiamine) deficiency disease (TD). Although this is not by any means the only cause of energy deficiency in the brain, it acts as a model for clinical expression. To put it as simply as possible, it represents an unbalanced ratio between calories ingested and the density of the micronutrients contained in the food source that catalyze the complex mechanisms of energy production. For example and contrast, the diet in Okinawa, Japan, that boasts a high concentration of centenarians, is nutritionally dense, meaning that it contains the vitamins and essential minerals that enable the calories to be burned (oxidized). It is also calorically poor, while in the US it is the reverse (i.e. high-calorie malnutrition) and where chronic disease is common. It has been shown in animal studies that a calorie-poor diet correlates with the prolongation of youthful activity and even life itself. In this presentation, I will try to show that brain energy deficiency is the major cause of disease. Because the controls of the autonomic nervous system in the lower part of the brain are quickly affected by energy deficiency, (the commonest cause in America is TD) it is not surprising that dysautonomia is common and occurs as part of other diagnostic categories. What I mean by that is that many diseases have been described in the medical literature associated with dysautonomia. For example, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases are in a group of conditions that have a causative relationship. Both are DIGITAL EDITION
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associated with dysautonomia. (2) Mega-dose thiamine treatment has been reported to be successful in Parkinson's disease (3).This information comes from a physician in Italy and it amply supports the concept that this chronic disease is caused by brain energy deficiency. The importance of the word mega-dose means that thiamine is not simply replacing a dietary vitamin deficiency. It is being used as a drug. The multiple actions of thiamine are all known to be essential in energy synthesis. If two diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's have a common cause, you might well be asking how is it that they are different in character? I think that this is an extremely important point. The disease in the brain depends on the distribution of the deficiency and hence the function of the affected cells. There is always symptom overlap in the two diseases. Variations in the presentation of disease can be extraordinarily variable. Panic disorder Supposedly psychological in nature, it is really a sympathetically initiated fight-or-flight reflex, originating because of brain oxygen, or oxidation, deficiency. The association between panic disorder and cardiovascular disease has been extensively studied. Some of these studies have shown anxiety disorder co-existing with or increasing the risk of heart disease. (4) Heart disease almost always occurs in vitamin B1 deficiency beriberi, because the heart functions continuously throughout life and requires a continuous supply of energy. But heart disease occasionally does not occur, depending on the severity and the cellular distribution of the deficiency. Recent interest has focused on whether some modern heart disease is caused by energy deficiency. What is confusing to people is that tachycardia (accelerated heart), occurring for no specific reason, is caused by an erratic signal from the brain via the autonomic nervous system. If the heart muscle is also deficient, the autonomic signal may result (for example) in atrial fibrillation. The treatment would therefore be energy stimulus in both brain and heart. This is why beriberi, the disease that is the well accepted result of vitamin B1 deficiency, causes defective function in the controls of the autonomic nervous system and the heart as the commonest result of this disease. It also raises eyebrows when I say that beriberi is common in America, but is unfortunately not www.dialogue.ca
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recognized by physicians whose overall philosophy is that “any sort of vitamin deficiency simply never occurs in America because of vitamin enrichment of foods by the food industry.” The trouble with that philosophy is that the extraordinary ingestion of empty calories in this population overwhelms the vitamin dependent machinery that oxidizes the calories. The best analogy that I can offer is a choked car engine. The input of gasoline must match the capacity of the spark plug to initiate gasoline ignition. Overall, results suggest that rates of epilepsy are elevated among individuals with panic disorder and that panic attacks are elevated among individuals with epilepsy.(5) An article reviewing the causes of epilepsy includes recent reports on the effects of inefficient cellular use of oxygen as a causative factor.(6) Hyperventilation (over breathing) occurred in 25% of a group of patients with a relatively common form of dysautonomia (POTS) associated with fainting attacks. The authors hypothesized that the hyperventilation in this condition arises because of brain hypoxia.(7) This is supported by the fact that people prone to panic disorder are known to develop one of their attacks when situated on the top of a mountain. One of my patients was an elderly lady who indulged in square dancing once every two weeks. Invariably she would develop a feverish illness lasting several days after returning home. Without going into the complex details, I was able to conclude that her energy requirement was increased by the physical effort required for square dancing. Because her energy synthesis mechanism was depleted from thiamine deficiency, these episodes of fever were exactly similar to the condition called mountain sickness. With megadose thiamine she was able to continue her square dancing without suffering these repeated illnesses. This patient's problem could not have been addressed by the orthodox assumption that each episode of illness was due to an infection Because of a rigid concept that these recurrent episodes were only the result of an infection, we tend to forget that the “illness” is really an exhibition of the complex mechanisms of defense organized by the brain. Lacking in a full complement of energy, its organizational capacity is depleted. Many examples of manuscripts appearing in the medical literature describe the presence of …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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multiple diseases occurring in a single patient. We suggest that this stretches credibility because we cannot predict the incidence of one disease in a person, let alone the incidence of two or three at the same time. Rather we should be seeking a single causative factor to explain all the symptoms. In the reports of multiple conditions occurring in one individual, one of them is invariably described as dysautonomia, strongly suggesting that the cause in common is brain energy deficiency affecting the controlling mechanisms. Nutritional Therapy Mental illness, including depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, accounts for a significant proportion of global disability and poses a substantial social, economic and health burden. Treatment is presently dominated by pharmacotherapy that averts less than half of the disease burden and is purely treatment of symptoms.(8) In the January 2020 issue of the National Geographic under the heading of "A World of Pain," a case is described of a pregnancy in which the patient called Karen "begins bleeding profusely so is taken to the operating room, where doctors perform a hysterectomy. After the operation, she suffers multiple organ failure and has a cardiac arrest from which she does not recover. Karen dies of preeclampsia.â&#x20AC;? This is a high blood pressure disorder that is unfortunately all too common in pregnancy. I recently learned from a book written by an American Ob/Gyn specialist that this kind of tragedy could be completely prevented by the initiation of a megadose of thiamine routinely given daily during the pregnancy. It is indeed stunning to claim that pregnancy complications are all manifestations of beriberi and that this cheap and simple ingestion can prevent all pregnancy complications,(9) a fact that most people would find hard to believe. But this also makes sense. The food that the mother ingests must be able to provide the energy, not only for herself but for the rapidly growing infant that she has to support. It is no surprise to me that dietary indiscretion by the mother, such as the use of alcohol and the lunacy of smoking, provides a legacy to her yet unborn child that adds to the burden of child development both before and after birth. It is now well known that sudden death syndrome in infants can be a legacy of the pregnancy. Breast milk thiamine deficiency has long been known to be responsible 48 dialogue
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for sudden death in a breast-fed infant and breast-fed infants are associated with a higher risk of autism in our modern world. What about other nutrient deficiencies as a cause of disease? People suffering from depression, schizophrenia and dementia often have measurably lower levels of serum folate compared to people not experiencing psychiatric disorder. Even the use of methyl folate, an important part of the chemistry of folate, as a stand-alone monotherapy has been observed to exert antidepressant properties.(10) Sugar Earlier in this presentation I mentioned that sugar was the cause of anxiety, not a treatment for it. The fact is that the processing of sugar is extremely complex and can initiate energy deficiency in the brain. Obviously, energy deficiency represents a threat to the organism and so there is an automatic initiation of the sympathetic nervous system that results in the fight-or-flight reflex. In other words, under these circumstances the initiation of this reflex is because the sugar has caused thiamine deficient pseudohypoxia. The obvious safety measure, automatically governed by the brain, is to alert the organism to the perceived danger, however that interpretation or brain misinterpretation might arise. Firearm violence There is a link between mental illness and firearm violence, reported to be a significant and preventable public health crisis.(11) Hypoxia and hypercapnia (too much carbon dioxide in the blood from inadequate breathing) excite the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.(12) Excitation of this system generates the fight-or-flight reflex that is associated with aggression. Pseudohypoxia (imitates true hypoxia) is caused in the brain by thiamine deficiency.(13) Therefore, there should be a serious look at the diet history of gun violence perpetrators. Many years ago, when I was in practice as a pediatrician, I saw many children who were brought because of emotional disease such as hyperactivity, learning disability, unusual temper tantrums and sleep problems. The current and false explanation for this was poor parenting, but on discussion with the parents I found that in almost every case the parenting was perfectly healthy. The diet of these children was appalling, however, very high in empty calories, particularly as those from sweets and I DIGITAL EDITION
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began to keep records of the dietary mayhem that was so common. In many cases I measured the intake of carbonated beverages in gallons per week. When I instructed the parents concerning an appropriate diet for their children, the emotional symptoms disappeared. This was so impressive and the children's response to drugs so unpredictable, I decided to practice what has become known as Alternative Complementary Medicine. Please note that complementary is spelled with an ‘e’ not an ‘i’ and it indicates that it strives to take the best of orthodox medicine and complement it with the use of nutrients that represent the elements essential to energy metabolism. The two physician organizations that have developed are the American College of Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) and the International College of Integrative Medicine (ICIM). References 1. Selye H., The general adaptation syndrome: the diseases of adaptation. J Clin Endocrinol 1946; 6:117-230. 2. Chelban V, Vichayanrat E, Schottlaende L., Autonomic dysfunction in genetic forms of synucleinopathies. Mov Disord 2018;33(3):359-71. 3. Costantini A, Pala MI, Grossi E, et al. Long-term treatment with high-dose thiamine in Parkinson disease: an open-label pilot study. J Altern Complement Med. 2015;21(12):740-7. 4. Machado S, Sancassiani F, Paes F, et al. Panic disorder and cardiovascuilar diseases: an overview. Int. Rev. Psychiatry 2017; 29(5):436-44. 5. Johnson AL, Mc Leish AC, Shear PK, Privitera M. Panic and epilepsy in adults: a systematic review. Epilepsy Behav 2018; 85:115-19 6. Kobylarek D, Iwanowski P, Lewandowska Z.et al. Advances in the potential biomarkers of epilepsy. Front Neurol 2019; Jul 2;10:685 7. Stewart JM, Pianosi P, Shaban MA, et al. Hemodynamic characteristics of postural hyperventilation: POTS with hyperventilation versus panic versus
8. 9. 10. 11.
12.
13.
voluntary hyperventilation. J Appl Physiol 1985; 125 (5): 1396-1403 Marx W, Moseley G, Berk M,et al. Nutritional psychiatry: the present state of the evidence. Proc Nutr Soc 2017; 76(4):427-36. Irwin JB.The natural way do a trouble-free pregnancy: the thiamine toxemia connection. 2008; Aslan publishing, Fairfield, CT 06825 Martone G.Enhancement of recovery from mental illness with L-methylfolate supplementation. Perspect Psychiatr Care 2018; 54 (2): 331-34. Rozel JS, Mulvey EP. The link between mental illness and firearm violence: implications for social policy and clinical practice. Annu Rev Clinl Psychol 2017 13, 445-69 Jouett NP, Watenpaugh DE, Dunlap ME, et al. Interactive effects of hypoxia hypercapnia and lun volume on sympathetic nerve activity in humans. Exp Physiol 2015;100(9):1018-29 Sweet RL,Zastre JA. HIF-alpha-mediated gene expression induced by vitamin B1 deficiency. Int J Nutr Res 2013;823(3):188-97.
– Derrick Lonsdale, M.D. “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. His 2017 book: Thiamine Deficiency Disease, Dysautonomia, and High Calorie Malnutrition, explores thiamine and how its deficiency affects the functions of the brainstem and autonomic nervous system by way of metabolic changes at the level of the mitochondria… This book represents the life work of the senior author, Dr. Derrick Lonsdale, and a recent collaboration with his co-author Dr. Chandler Marrs. ISBN: 0128103876 / ♣
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The Healing Role of Vitamin C
Published Research and Articles on Vitamin C as a Consideration for Pneumonia, Lung Infections, and the Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – March 22, 2020
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (OMNS) Published Research and Articles on Vitamin C… Article by Graham Player, PhD, Andrew W. Saul, Damien Downing, MBBS, MRSB and Gert Schuitemaker, PhD Vitamin C supports your immune system. Vitamin C helps to kill viruses and reduces the symptoms of infection. It's not a COVID-19 "cure," but nothing is. It might just save your life, though, and will definitely reduce the severity of the infection. If someone tells you it's not proven, consider www.dialogue.ca
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two things: Nothing is proven to work against COVID-19, because it is a new virus; and Vitamin C has worked against every single virus including influenzas, pneumonia, and even poliomyelitis. Read online at Orthomolecular.org for a selection of some of the 64,000 published research articles and studies on Vitamin C available at The U.S. National Library of Medicine National Center for Biotechnology Information: LINK: https://tinyurl.com/orthomolecular-6552 (All Links Accessed and Active March 19,2020) ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Human Heart, Cosmic Heart: A Doctor's Quest to Understand, Treat, and Prevent Cardiovascular Disease – Nov 3 2016 by Dr. Thomas Cowan MD (Author)
Thomas Cowan was a 20-year-old Duke grad – bright, skeptical, and already disillusioned with industrial capitalism – when he joined the Peace Corps in the mid-1970s for a two-year tour in Swaziland. There, he encountered the work of Rudolf Steiner and Weston A. Price – two men whose ideas would fascinate and challenge him for decades to come. Both drawn to the art of healing and repelled by the way medicine was – and continues to be – practiced in the United States, Cowan returned from Swaziland, went to medical school, and established a practice in New Hampshire and, later, San Francisco. For years, as he raised his three children, suffered the setback of divorce, and struggled with a heart condition, he remained intrigued by the work of Price and Steiner and, in particular, with Steiner’s provocative claim that the heart is not a pump. Determined to practice medicine in a way that promoted healing rather than compounded ailments, Cowan dedicated himself to understanding whether Steiner’s claim could possibly be true. And if Steiner was correct, what, then, is the
heart? What is its true role in the human body? In this deeply personal, rigorous, and riveting account, Dr. Cowan offers up a daring claim: Not only was Steiner correct that the heart is not a pump, but our understanding of heart disease – with its origins in the blood vessels – is completely wrong. And this gross misunderstanding, with its attendant medications and risky surgeries, is the reason heart disease remains the most common cause of death worldwide. In Human Heart, Cosmic Heart, Dr. Thomas Cowan presents a new way of understanding the body’s most central organ. He offers a new look at what it means to be human and how we can best care for ourselves – and one another. Hardcover: 176 pages; Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing (Nov. 3 2016); ISBN-10: 1603586199 Review: "There’s only a few books a year that I think really deserve to be in everyone’s library. This is one of them. . . It’s loaded with great information, and it can save your life or the life of someone you love.” -- Dr. Joseph Mercola, founder and director, mercola.com ♣
Funnies From Herb Spencer, spsi99@telus.net
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The Feudal Fiefdoms of Saskatchewan :
PART THREE
In the Regional Parks of SK, people own their homes, on land leased from management Boards that operate at a frightening level of autonomy, enabled by political interference and wilful blindness from municipal and provincial government. Five seniors are representing themselves in Court of Queen’s Bench against a Board-initiated Writ of Possession application. This is Installment Three of the story from Norm Zigarlick and friends on the idylls of park life and their search for ‘justice’.
Norm Zigarlick, SK, normzig56@gmail.com
The Recent History of a Nobody In June 2019 a lawyer acting for Suffern Lake Regional Park Authority in the big flat spot between Alberta and Manitoba, filed a Queen’s Bench court action identified as QB174 of 2019. The purpose was to exercise Writs of Possession on three properties located in the Park based on a claim of non-payment of taxes. To me this is quite important because I am neither a taxpayer nor a property owner, but I was named as a respondent in the action. QB174 was thrown out of court because of procedural errors made by an all-star lawyer who specializes in municipal law. I should point out neither myself or any of the other four people named as respondents are lawyers or have retained a lawyer for this matter. Budget constraints and necessity fuel invention so, of necessity we educated and reinvented ourselves through long hours of research. Not to be discouraged by the procedural failure, the lawyer we know as James The Good, immediately filed three new cases, dividing the five of us into three unequal parts. I remain a respondent in QB231 of 2019. At the time of this writing, it is five-and-a-half months since a judge heard the case and decided to reserve her decision. I have this lingering concern. I can’t help but wonder if the judge were to eventually rule in favour of the plaintiff, would I have to buy a cabin and give it to somebody? So, who am I and why am I subject to a Writ of Possession action? I know who I am but as for the rest of it, as an old Northern saying goes “who knows the way of the wind and the caribou” to which I will add “and Saskatchewan lawyers”. As far as Suffern Lake Regional Park Authority is concerned, they have described me as “a nobody who doesn’t deserve two seconds of thought”. Apparently, they are OK with one second. My fellow respondents have compared me to Obi Wan Kenobi the grizzled old warrior in the Star Wars franchise. I’m concerned they mean full of advice www.dialogue.ca
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from the old days, but with very little ability to actually survive a new fight, but they have threatened to get me a tee shirt with big print on the front saying, “I B O B Wan Kenobody”. The back might read “the older I get the better I used to be”. So, we’ve determined who I am, but here is a problem I wasn’t expecting to face: the plaintiff in QB231 of 2019 is stated as Suffern Lake Regional Park Authority (SLRPA). I was pretty sure I was not being sued by four consonants and a vowel so I asked the parent oversight body, the Rural Municipality of Senlac (RM411) if they would supply me with a list of the SLRPA people suing me. In theory, this would be the group of representatives who sit on the “Board” and, among other things, plan how to spend annual Park income on legal fees. My request was ignored. Being somewhat old and, with a more or less open social calendar, I decided to use some of my remaining time to further my quest for pertinent information. I filed a formal Freedom of Information request asking for the names of Board members. As of the time of this writing there has still been no response, not a single Board member has officially been identified. So, there you have it. NOBODY (them) is suing NOBODY (me), but SOMEBODY wants three houses, NONE of which are MINE. As a child I was told the Lord works in mysterious ways. As an old man I have learned Saskatchewan is worked by mysterious Lords. …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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In the Beginning For those of you not familiar with the beginnings of this adventure, the legal dispute was the result of a group of cabin owners who discovered the property tax assessment process in the Park seemed a bit wonky. Of particular concern was a 71% tax increase on the property owned by Jim Duffee, previously a respondent to QB174 and now the solo act in QB232 of 2019. Jim should have a tee shirt (along with my BC friend, retried Economist, Erik Anderson) that says, “don’t piss off old men who can count”. Jim has been in a decade-long dispute with the random alphabet Board. We suspected that somehow his property taxes had been manipulated in a behind-thescenes attempt to penalize him in a way that didn’t involve face-to-face debate. I’ve witnessed one of the face-to-face debates between Jim and the Board executive. Jim played dirty; he had the nerve to bring his common sense and vocabulary with him. Our working group refused to pay our property taxes until somebody explained why one guy, in a dispute with SLRPA, had a 71% tax increase while another in good standing had a 14% increase when neither had made any improvements to their property. SLRPA said they had nothing to do with the increase, that was in the hands of the Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA). SAMA provided some double speak about access to an appeal process but missed the point of the discussion completely. We asked the Minister for Parks Culture and Sport if he could provide an explanation. He said, “he assumed the Park had identified a need”. After only 90 days of non-payment the Park terminated leases on the cabins of those owners leading the protest. A year and a bit later, SLRPA filed QB 174 of 2019 with the goal of gaining possession of three cabins. Then It Got Weird In what we locally refer to as the bungee assessment, Jim’s property assessment, that had increased drastically, was reduced dramatically without use of the agency’s appeal process and, coincidentally (???), right around the time the court actions were initiated. $36,000 to be exact. That may be the cost of a backyard sidewalk in Vancouver but at Suffern Lake it’s a big deal. Let me explain why it’s a big deal. While we prepared arguments for court, Joanna and Lisa, both named as 52 dialogue
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respondents, were hard at work learning the tax assessment system applied to Regional Parks. Confusing doesn’t come close covering it. Saying it doesn’t work is more appropriate. What they learned was that most properties were seriously under-assessed relative to what had been paid for them. One that stood out like Las Vegas on a dark night belongs to the former Vice Chairman of SLRPA. He has an attractive little lake front cabin with a deck and nothing but 25 meters of grass between that deck and the beach. This little gem, as of the most recent revaluation of 2017, was valued at $8,300. For the record that is one sixteenth of what Jim’s uncompleted building was valued at in the same assessment period. Granted Jim’s place is larger, but it is built only to a lock up stage and it is not lakefront. Another metric would be Jim’s assessment value being reduced by $36,000, that’s four and one third times what the Vice Chairman’s entire place is valued at. Let me add to the intrigue… there are 53 tax paying cabins in the Park, had Jim’s taxes on his unfinished structure not been contested, he alone would be paying 9% of the total property tax collected by the Park. Meanwhile the Vice Chairman would be paying less than one half of one percent of total taxes paid. And like an old Ginsu knife TV ad, “But wait, there’s more!” The Vice Chairman (in his infinite wisdom) while in the midst of preparations for the already filed QB 174, chose a unique way of celebrating Canada Day and our wonderful democracy, he circulated a petition among cabin owners to have them urge the court to throw us out of the Park. The cabins would be left behind for the winners because we were not paying our fair share of taxes. By the way, his annual property taxes on that cute little lake front property? Work out to just under $75 A YEAR. Respondents Jim Duffee, John Danilak and Lisa Wildman represent a combined history of over 50 years of paying leases and taxes at Suffern Lake Park. It was never their intention to not pay their fair share. Oh yes! Speaking of Democracy… For those of you not familiar with this saga, one of our original complaints about taxation in Regional Parks is that elected representation is not guaranteed. At Suffern Lake it is actually discouraged. The Municipal Administrator openly accused us of “wanting all this power” because we were lobbying for elected DIGITAL EDITION
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representation on the Park Board. The Government of Saskatchewan’s response to our stated concern? “SLRPA is within the legislation”. Lisa, who worked as a legislative assistant with the Government of Alberta, and Joanna, a professional educator with the odd hobby of interpreting regulations and legislation, found the Saskatchewan Government reply unacceptable even though it was technically correct. Legislation that condones disenfranchisement is seriously flawed, a fact that our experiences under the existing system powerfully demonstrate. The Official Opposition After lease terminations but pre-court proceedings, we were excited and encouraged that the Official Opposition (NDP) raised our concerns in the legislature. Sadly, after one bit of political theatre, the NDP apparently lost interest in our cause. They never raised the elected representation issue, nor did they raise another important issue that we feel underlies the efforts to remove us from Suffern Lake, that being that a crown corporation flat out lied to us. Several times. In writing. In what can only be described as an effort to conceal violation of raffle/lottery licensing conditions on the part of SLRPA during fund raising activities. The Official Opposition has remained silent since a Legislature Committee Meeting in mid May 2018 even though they’ve been kept apprised of the evolution of our concerns. We were disappointed and confused by the NDP totally turning their backs on us. Although, from comments made in the course of a meeting, we suspect they consider park properties elitist regardless of the fact that both Jim Duffee and Lisa Wildman resided fulltime at Suffern Lake and their cabins were intended as affordable retirement homes. Sadly, the Official Opposition appears more concerned with perception than reality. Their attitude leaves fulltime regional park residents without voting rights and with no champion to protect their interests. History lessons This is where research done by Lisa and Joanna dug up some troubling history which shows why politicians in general are not trusted – its because they don’t deserve it. For POLITICIANS it is the PARTY, the POWER and the PAY that matters, not the PEOPLE. If that sounds like a very old and very tired argument, it is. Let me breathe some new life into it. In 1997 the NDP was the Party in power in Saskatchewan and www.dialogue.ca
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a lady by the name of Carol Teichrob was the Minister responsible for introducing property taxes to Regional Parks. In promoting her taxation plan, Teichrob said taxes would replace the lease fees (on Crown land) that had been in place for many years. Hansard records show she clearly recognized her plan did not include cottage/cabin owners having the right to vote on the use of these proposed taxes. She acknowledged that some people would be disenfranchised by the action, but… ho hum, too bad. In addition, the stated substitution of lease fees for taxes did not materialize. Suffern Lake cabin owners pay property tax, annual lease fees and levies for services. The NDP has not changed its position since Teichrob’s acceptance that cabin owners be deprived of voting rights. Political Birth Pains In 1997 the Sask Party – now in power since 2007 – did not yet exist. The Sask Party was formed by a merger of Conservative and Liberals who defected from their parties to form a new party. One of the Conservatives of the day (1997) was Don Toth. Hansard shows he spoke strongly against Teichrob’s plan, specifically to the no-voting rights concern. Toth was one of the Conservatives that went to the new Party along with Bill Boyd who later became a key player in Brad Wall’s rise to stardom as Premier. The NDP eventually lost power to the Sask Party. Boyd and Toth both became powerful political figures. Teichrob became disenchanted with the NDP, did a hard-right turn and supported a candidate for Stephen Harper’s federal Conservative party that was formed by Harper in essence defecting from the Reform Party and sinking its founder Preston Manning in the process. Long ago my brother’s very old school, fatherin-law said, “never trust a politician, they’ll whisper in your ear and piss in your pocket every time”. Poor old Preston had a severe case of wet pockets. Bill Boyd found himself embroiled in the Saskatchewan Global Transportation Hub scandal and dragged his newfound political friends in with him. Yes folks, this group of economic geniuses believed (or more correctly wanted voters to believe) Regina, Saskatchewan, 500 km from the geographic center of North …/ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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N. Zigarlick: Feudal Fiefdoms of SK, Part 3, contd.
America, was going to take advantage of that prime location and become a world class transportation center. Based on that premise Baker Lake, Nunavut is very well positioned to become a major economic location; it is the geographic center of Canada. After digging a few more holes and paying some fines Boyd, for now, has disappeared from politics. Don Toth remained in the Sask Party until 2016, the same year we first confronted Government with the taxation/representation issue. None of us have found any sign of Toth ever revisiting the Regional Parks voting issue in the nine years he sat with the Sask Party after they took power. Perhaps we just haven’t looked in the right place – Yeah - that must be it. This whole crowd from top to bottom have proven to be defective, defectors or both. Nevertheless, in court on the same but broader issue that is now 23 years old, five old people without lawyers are the bad guys and the Charter of Rights makes for a nice wall hanging. Is that the light at the end of the tunnel or another train? For the better part of five years our cabin association people have been jumping hurdles, dodging projectiles, absorbing accusations and deflecting insults while we kept clawing for daylight. We tried to raise issues with the political and administrative organizations we naively believed might help. Instead they piled on stuff that makes mushrooms grow faster. Should we have believed the NDP would help us in getting basic democratic rights? Of course not, because if they did the Sask Party would immediately accuse them of being hypocritical and so democratic rights be damned. No Party will put itself at risk for the sake of a few old timers that can’t vote anyway. Should the NDP have been honest with us about their position? According to all we were/are taught as children? Yes, they should have. According to all we have learned as adults, of course they wouldn’t. Why would the Sask Party and its multitude of agents and organizations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and who knows how many bureaucratic man hours just to avoid answering a question like why did the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority lie (aka in the politically correct world as supplying misinformation) to us multiple times when they were well aware that their actions were causing a great deal of distress for those who asked the question. 54 dialogue
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Instead they supported an organization they knew full well was deceitful, incompetent and ill intended. FOIP information shows that as early as April 2018 the Saskatchewan Government had constructed a media strategy intended to deflect blame away from all involved on the other side of the dispute. This was well after it had been shown through FOIP that SLGA and SLRPA had both lied about raffle/lottery issues and that SLRPA had made false claims first about me costing the Park $6000 in lottery revenue later modifying that to include the whole cabin association in their participant list. Political Science: the shaping of snakes When I was a lot younger and cared only about cars and girls, a young Metis friend much wiser than me asked “what’s the difference between a snake and a politician?”. The answer was, “a snake doesn’t pretend to have a backbone”. It takes a long time to learn that politics have little to do with democracy. Political parties are businesses disguised as something else. I’ve made myself very unpopular in some circles by saying that in my opinion theology, political science and marketing are all the same course with the same goal, crowd control to benefit those at the top rungs of the organizational ladder. Each uses a variation of fear of the future for them to gain an advantage in the present. OK, about that light in the tunnel For a number of years, we were treading water trying to work with government and its politically affiliated organizations. Some of what we found was flat out crazy. For example, we have a letter where a Cabinet Minister thanks a SLRPA character for his good work and helpful attitude in response to a letter showing SLRPA to be in long term violation of substantial regulations directly related to the taxation concerns at issue (and the future court cases). It didn’t even phase the Government, they just kept pecking away at us. We didn’t find any warmth at any level of Suffern Lake Regional Park administration. Where we first saw a small point of light came with us involving what I call the integrity agencies. I do not include the court system in this group of organizations. It is still my hope the courts have not been contaminated by political considerations and will function as courts should, fully independent providing fair judgement. The integrity agencies I’ve been exposed to in this drama include Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority (SLGA), the Provincial Auditor, the Office of DIGITAL EDITION
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the Information and Privacy Commissioner and Saskatchewan Assessment Management Agency (SAMA). SLGA has been a terrible example of an organization that pretends to be an unbiased regulatory body. Adding insult to disappointment was receiving written information from the Director for Integrity that has, through FOI searches, proven to be false. SLGA has refused to acknowledge anything untoward has happened let alone apologize for it. The lone exception in my experience with SLGA was Jim Engle, a long time V.P. with the Authority. Mr. Engle responded to our information requests with professionalism, honesty and timely communications. Unfortunately, Mr. Engle left SLGA in the past year. It is my genuine wish that he prospers in his new career. Mr. Engle didn’t have to pretend he had a backbone, he demonstrated that he did. The Provincial Auditor was a pleasant surprise. Given the scope of this office, it was hard to not be impressed with the quick and direct response we received when putting a plethora of concerns forward. The response was not extensive, but it was effective. This is a fairly new connection in our continuing efforts; to date we’ve been given no reason to be frustrated or disappointed. The Privacy Commissioner’s office has been very helpful with a number of considerations. They have appropriately enforced their authority when agencies have not delivered information in a timely manner. In at least one case they went the extra mile to make sure appropriate information was in our hands for a critical presentation. The office is also conducting a jurisdictional review on our behalf which is taking considerably longer than we were first lead to believe, but we do know the office is heavily loaded and short staffed. We have no reason to believe that the delay is intentional. SAMA is at the heart of our tax dispute. At the moment we are still trying to understand how a disconnect between information gathering locally and information receipt at the SAMA offices occurred. We do not believe that SAMA, as an organization, in any way set out to distort tax values at Suffern Lake Regional Park. SAMA is an assessment agency only, they have nothing to do with mil rates, budgets or tax enforcement. Their basic job is to identify the value of properties across the Province. You would have to multiply the annual property taxes collected at Suffern Lake Regional Park by www.dialogue.ca
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about one hundred and twelve thousand times to equal what is raised province-wide based on SAMA assessments. Its not likely Suffern Lake loomed large on their list of important things to watch. Surprise, surprise Recently senior management at SAMA opened a line of communications with us and together we are working toward identifying a hole in the system and plugging it. A year ago had you suggested me or any of my long-Suffern friends would be working hand in hand with a taxation authority in the Province of Saskatchewan, I would have pointed out that luckily the substance responsible for your hallucination had recently been legalized. We have no idea how much longer it will take judges to come to decisions on the QB court cases now being held in reserve. By the time DIALOGUE greets its readers it will be six months since the last bewildered seniors stood in front of judges and tried to make sense of the drama. Heartfelt thanks It has crossed my mind more than once that without people like Maurice and Janet, tools like DIALOGUE wouldn’t exist. I cannot overstate the importance this magazine has had in telling our Saskatchewan story. While Saskatchewan media in total and in company with organizations like the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, chose to ignore us completely, DIALOGUE provided a platform for our story outside of any venue in which Saskatchewan political influence might play a role. It has given us a voice and much like Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy – I’m getting letters from people I don’t even know. Should you ever find yourself in circumstances similar to ours, I sincerely hope you have DIALOGUE to turn to. Thanks Maurice, for what you’ve done, and Janet, for what you are doing. Norm Zigarlick, SK END OF INSTALLMENT THREE of THE FEUDAL FIEFDOMS OF SASKATCHEWAN. The Saga continues… PS: During the period Feb 2017 until now we have primarily dealt with SLGA, PCS, RM 411 & SLRPA insofar as disputes are concerned. As of this week (Mar. 30) we now have written proof that all four have lied to us in substantial ways, including sworn statements and FOIP responses. What's most worrying is the level of management involved: Deputy Ministers, Directors, Municipal Administrators, and a Park Authority. Watch for the Summer Issue! ♣ VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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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.
SHORTCUTS In September of 1943, I started school. Coming home with my brothers was the best part of school. We would cut through the woods, which was always an adventure. We knew the flowers, trees, birds, their eggs, crows, hawks, owls, and eagles included. In spring we would climb trees looking into the nests for the eggs. A few times we stole them for school projects and collections. When collecting, we put a small hole in one end, a hole slightly bigger in the other, then blew out the insides of the egg. This kept the eggs from spoiling over time. We pressed leaves and flowers in books and lots of neat things. We took flowers and pussy willows home to Mom. One of the farmer’s ancestors had planted a small stand of hard maple trees many years before. In the spring we would steal drinks of maple sap from the tins hanging from spouts drilled into the trees about two feet above the ground. They tapped the trees, usually in February when there was still snow. At this time the bugs wasn’t out yet to get at the sweet sap. There was a small sugar shack where the farmer rendered the sap into syrup. If boiled long enough, it became maple sugar. We were farm boys and the farmer would give us some syrup. We didn’t take this without his permission. Another thing we did was to snap small twigs at the end of the maple tree limbs. The sap would run out the broken limb and freeze into an icicle of sap. This gave us sweet sap-cycles to lick on the way home from school. We would play in the neighbour’s barns, climb their apple trees and eat their apples. One of our favourite spots was an apple tree that had a grapevine growing up the tree trunk, spreading throughout the many limbs of the tree. When ripe, we had both apples and grapes from the same tree. Our neighbours never said anything about these things. We were just boys and this was a farm community. 56 dialogue
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`The family: Archibald Tyrus Weed (Pop), January 10, 1901 Mary Elizabeth/Loretta (Cook) Weed (Mom), Dec. 19, 1905; Married: August 17, 1923 Children: Juniper Shirley / June (Grouch), May 19, 1925 Patty, Patricia Ann (‘Sweet Pea’) Dec, 21st.,1927 George (‘Donkey’), August 17, 1930 Ben (‘Shooter’), April 2, 1932 `Bob (‘Bucky’ then ‘Stretch’), October 10, 1934 Adam (‘Flyer’), July 30, 1936 Tom (‘Weasel’), June 4, 1939 Cousins: Marian (cousin), August 21, 1925 Sam (‘Punch’ - cousin), December 26, 1931 Bobby (cousin), May 3, 1935 Ray (my buddy) Joe (Ray’s brother)
BULL I remember one afternoon coming home from school; some of us were taking the shortcut through the bush and the fields. It was a beautiful, June day; we were laughing and carrying on as kids do. We were in the dairy farmer’s field. His Holstein cattle were lying in the centre chewing their cud as we walked by. We had just passed when all of a sudden the bull stood up. Shooter saw him and yelled, “Bull!” We all froze to our spots. Milk cattle bulls are mean. They usually have a brass ring in their nose, so the farmers can control them when necessary. Onto these rings, the farmer snaps a clip that’s attached to a three or four-foot rope. With this rope on the nose ring, the bull is usually very passive as he knows what will happen if he misbehaves. We were scared speechless. So when he took one step towards us we split, man! Gone, adios amigos! It was every man for himself. Sizes or age didn’t count this time. The guys bringing up the rear, I being one of them could hear his hooves beating on the ground behind us. We could feel his hot breath on our necks, could picture fire coming out of his nostrils, smoke out his ears. Not one of us made it over that fence without torn clothes and a few cuts and bruises. We were breathing hard with our hearts pumping as we hit the ground on the other side. As we turned around to check how many of us didn’t make it and were dead, what we saw was old Shep, the farmers dog, standing on the other side of the fence, tongue hanging out, panting like crazy. This dog, given the chance, would lick you to DIGITAL EDITION
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death. He was the friendliest dog in the neighbourhood. The bull was standing where he had been when first we saw him, looking in the other direction. Did we look for trouble? Not always, sometimes it just found us. You see, we gave this bull lots of respect as about a year earlier Bob and Ben were cutting through the barnyard when he came charging out of the barn, head down and snorting. The boys didn’t have time to make the fence; lucky for them, an old car was laying on its roof in the middle of the yard. They both dove through the missing windows almost the same instant that the bull’s head hit the car spinning it completely around. The bull hit it again and
again. The boys were totally shaken up and very dizzy. The bull would back up, snort, and scrape the ground with his hooves, then charge, sometimes lifting the car up and dropping it. Every time he seemed calm and disappeared into the barn the boys would get up the nerve to crawl out the far window, but before they could escape, he’d be back with a vengeance, forcing them to dive back in. It was well after dark when they got home. Pop was home, no excuses, to the woodshed, no supper, to bed. Just another day growing up like good Weeds. Wayne Russell (slyolfart@gmail.com) ♣
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Scientism took the wrong road at the fork in the road The Earthshaking Discoveries of Gaston Naessens. From: Inge Hanle, Vancouver hanle@telus.net
Taking the wrong road in a fork in the road - and its consequences (That is how we have ended up with COVID19 and the nonsense that surrounds it.) Approximately 200 years ago, the scientific/medical community faced a “fork-in-the-road” in medical/ health theories. These were not totally new, but never before were they in direct confrontation, and “battled out” in the “Ring of Consensus and Financial Vested Interests.” As technical skills and instrumentation literally exploded onto research platforms, people were often afflicted with the “a LITTLE knowledge is a dangerous thing” syndrome - jumping to conclusions far too quickly. One’s ability to PR -“to convince” - “promote one’s ideas” with fast talking, took precedence over solid, in-depth, qualitative evidence, investigated from a non-linear perspective, in open debate. “Money” and “vested interests’ spoke loud and definitively. This debate crystalized over two opposing, contradictory hypotheses of the “cause and remediation of disease”. (Dis-Ease) Note: this was also the time period in which the charlatan Dr.(?) Jenner was able to convince politicians that “vaccines” would save the world from “infectious diseases” by “bolstering the immune system” with antibodies and make us all “healthier.” (We are still suffering the consequences of that fallacious hypothesis and PR campaign”) Welcome to the “wrestling match” between Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), and Antoine Béchamp (1816 – 1908). Béchamp’s “cellular theory” is almost completely opposite to that of Pasteur’s “germ theory.” www.dialogue.ca
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The medical hierarchy bought into Pasteur’s GERM theory of disease, hook, line and sinker: wherein the germ invades the body from without - quasi attacks it - and causes a specific “disease”. The solution, of course, would be to “destroy the GERM with medical drug INTERVENTION - the Big Pharma approach that promised lucrative financial rewards! (but doesn’t work.) And making sure that one didn’t CATCH the germ from someone else - Hence LOCKDOWN. The battle has raged ever since, with the GERM THEORY gaining the “Political and Policing upper-hand”. Béchamp noted that these germs - that Pasteur was so terrified of - were opportunistic in nature. They were everywhere and even existed inside of us in a symbiotic relationship. Béchamp noticed in his research that it was only when the tissue of the host became damaged or compromised that these germs began to manifest as a prevailing symptom (not cause) of disease. http://maronewellness.com/pasteur-vs-bechamp-an-alternative-view-of-infectious-disease/
The greatest research geniuses of the last 100 years have proven Béchamp to be right - especially since 1900, when microscopic magnification enabled them to see even the smallest of particles within the cell. Three researchers that I have been following rather intensively in the last 40 years are Dr. William Koch, Royal Rife, and very recently, Gaston Naessens. All three developed methods that “re-established cellular integrity” and reversed “allopathicallyincurable illnesses.” – Inge Hanle LINK: https://tinyurl.com/Gaston-Naessens VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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♣
Contributors in Andersen, Erik, BC…..............14 Anglin, Anne, ON…………1, 35 Arney, Jeremy, BC………..4, 11 Backhaus, Karl,ON……….…40 Bowles, Paul, BC………..42, 59 Buyniski, Helen, CRG……….06 Chossudovsky, Michel, CRG 06 Cowan, Thomas, MD (book) 50 Escobar, Pepe, CRG……..…25 Firstenberg, Arthur, Santa Fe 07 Flynn, Jerry, BC (about)........4, 9 Foster, David Muir, ON……...37 Guardian, The, UK (link)…….44 Global Research…....6,20,25,57
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Greyford, Martin (poem)…….59 Hanle, Inge, BC……………...57 Hansen, Bob, BC…………….43 Hellyer, Paul (re book)………09 Hess, Katie, lotuswei.com…...36 Kemp, Penn, ON…………….33 Lawson, S., BC.…13, 21, 59, 60 Lonsdale, Derrick, M.D.,US…45 Lyman, Eva, BC……………..30 Mathews, Robin, BC……..22-25 McCaslin, Susan, BC………..31 Moore, Richard K., Ireland…..28 Neilly, Michael, ON…………..39 Nickerson, Mike, ON………...16
Noble, Sharon (from)…..…5, 59 Ostermann, Gunther………...13 Pinkola Estes, Clarissa (link) 35 Polizzi, Nick (link)…………….04 Porter, J.S., ON……………...32 Rose, Julian, UK......................20 Ross, June, BC (from)…5, 9, 59 Rushkoff, Douglas (quotes)…44 Russell, Wayne, BC…………56 SacredScience.com (link)…...04 Salter, Leanne, BC (from)…...30 Shadbolt, John, ON (from)…..21 Southey, Robert (poem)…….37 Spencer, Herb, BC 2, 21, 29, 59
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Stafford, Christina, BC…..17, 59 Taylor, Jim, BC………………10 WHO (Quotes)……………….06 Wilcox, Brett, Rielpolitik……..29 Zigarlick, Norm, SK…........51-55 Zuboff, Shoshana (book)…....18
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IF (a poem by Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936) If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master, If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) Poem suggested by Drew Joffre
The Deep Network – “The City” and the world’s Tax Havens From: Herb Spencer, Surrey BC spsi99@telus.net
This link will blow away anyone who ever suspected that a Cabal runs the world. The rest can continue SleepWalking. LINK TO TRANSCRIPT (3000 words) https://www.taxjustice.net/2019/09/29/tax-havens-britains-second-empire/ [Posted Sept. 19, 2019]
This interview transcript indicates that The City of London (which defeated William the Conqueror) runs the largest financial system across the globe and makes the US Deep State appear as rank beginners, as The City manages the world’s Tax Havens.
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VOL. 33, NO. 3, SPRING 2020
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Why, in the era of Wall Street hegemony, do close to half of global financial transactions still flow through territories linked to Britain? New Left Project’s Jamie Stern-Weiner spoke to Ronen Palan, Professor of International Political Economy at City University, London, and co-author of Tax Havens: How Globalisation Really Works, to find out. Originally published in August 2012, New Left Project.
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A plaque found at a local thrift shop From: Herb Spencer, Surrey spsi99@telus.net Re Link rec’d from Eva Lyman (Mild “flu” to LETHAL virus? What to do) I have been a fan of Vitamin C for the last 30 years; and have benefited enormously. However, there is a simpler solution. STOP watching TV News - it’s all lies; big numbers pretending to be science. Where are all the corpses? These professional distracters have persuaded a huge chunk of the world to commit SOCIAL SUICIDE. Isolating oneself is the worst behaviour for a social species, like humanity. It only helps the THUGS. We need mass protest movements demanding an end to police dictatorship in every country. LINK: https://alternative-doctor.com/ “The point is that the overwhelming majority of people experience either NOTHING or a mild head cold when they are tested positive for COVID-19. Yet I saw one idiot “expert” doctor this morning refer to the “lethal virus”. The man’s a clown. This is one of the mildest viruses ever. It’s nowhere near as vicious as the SARS virus, to which it is supposedly related, and not a fraction as dangerous as influenza A types. Hardly anybody dies of this virus, compared to influenza A, which so far this year has killed between 20,000 and 40,000 people (official figures). But that wasn’t called a pandemic! Influenza didn’t get a lockdown reaction! We just live with it, alongside it. What stupid doctors, scientists and other “experts” (not to mention meddling politicians stepping in and muddying the waters) are all ignoring is the crux of the whole problem: some people have a severe and fatal reaction. Most do not. THEREFORE THE PROBLEM IS WITH THOSE SUSCEPTIBLE INDIVIDUALS. They should be asking what’s wrong with those who die? How do we fix that? Not how do we stop this this “lethal” virus. From: Eva Lyman <evalyman@gmail.com>
P.60 From Susanne Lawson re back cover: The Thuderbird holds the lightning snakes in its talons, keeping the balance and dance of opposites under control, the killer whale is the king of the seas and the waters of its breath join Earth and Sky where Thunderbird reigns. It is an age-old symbol of ancient knowledge.
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WINTER 2019-20, VOL. 33, NO. 2
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