Dialogue vol 29 3 spring2016digital

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VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

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A word from the publisher and editor…

Dear Reader, Welcome to the Spring edition of our 29th year.

Thank you to Susanne Hare for her ‘Tree’ painting on the cover, which is so beautifully suggestive of our “K” themes (as we work our way through the alphabet). Some cover themes are kinship, kindness, and knowledge / know thyself… You will find these ideas touched on through the issue; a few examples – Maurice, Janet and Penny Marie Gaudet discusses “Sacred Knowledge” (p.5); and Susan McCaslin writes (p.8), “Dogs are our kin, kindred spirits, and often embodiments of kindness.” And many other stories and articles reflecting these themes! And much more!! (David Foster has fun with some other K words on p.59) The stories may move you to laugh, cry – or take action!

You may notice, in this issue, that few things seem to be where you expect to find them! Janet explains: A strange thing happened as I was putting the Spring issue together… It was very nearly full, but I wasn’t happy with the order of the pages… and every time I sat down at the computer, in front of the 60-page file, I found myself compelled to change the order of one or two of the pages. And, well… over a couple of days, I found the entire issue had been rearranged – and we have ended up with something of a “politico sandwich” – with dense, nutrient-rich (and sometimes controversial!) political/economic/social commentary, lovingly enfolded between thick and delicious layers of nourishing, nutty (occasionally hilarious and sometimes sorrowful) wholesome slices of life!

Perhaps we can write it off to ‘Spring Fever!’ – or perhaps Janet’s Muse was in a transformational mood! Whatever the source of inspiration, we look forward to receiving your feedback and comments on this issue… and any suggestions you may wish to share.

If you enjoy reading Dialogue, why not order a Gift Subscription or two for friends or family members? And thank you if you are able to help with a donation, so we can keep our subscription rate affordable for everyone.

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

Maurice

volunteer publisher

Janet

volunteer editor

…& Penny & Lucky!

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you wish to continue receiving the magazine, please

ensure your subscription is paid up! PLEASE LOOK AT YOUR ADDRESS LABEL ON THE BACK COVER of this issue to find your RENEWAL DATE. If your subscription is due, you should find a renewal slip enclosed in this copy of Dialogue (inside the back cover). Thank you for subscribing and renewing! (See p.58).

A digital copy of dialogue (with clickable links!) is now available with your subscription.

Dialogue subscribers are now receiving, by email, a PDF file of each issue. If you did not receive the file of this edition (emailed on Mar. 21, 2016) – and would like to, please email Janet: dialogue@dialogue.ca www.dialogue.ca

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

Now in its 29th year, dialogue provides a forum for the exchange of ideas and an antidote to political correctness.

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

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

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

dialogue magazine consider this your personal invitation to participate!

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

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

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was founded in 1987 and is now published quarterly.

Maurice J. King, Volunteer Publisher Janet K. Hicks, Volunteer Editor Date of Issue: Mar. 20, 2016

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

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

Reprints of published articles are included for their educational value.

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VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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The Story of My Year – 2015… What A Year!

Eileen Little, Nanaimo BC Greetings, It has been a very eventful year for me in Nanaimo. Early in 2015 I read that a delegation of 60 World War Two veterans were to be selected to go with the official delegation to the Netherlands to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of their Liberation.

accommodation flight, all the veterans could inspect the cockpit of the plane. I was told I would be the last one, a bit deflated I waited.

Then!!!... When my turn came they announced that Eileen would now LAND THE PLANE as Once again as in the past I she served in the RAF wondered if a single woman seventy years ago; too veteran would be chosen. I late to tell them I was a planned to help the Departnurse and didn't fly a ment of Veterans affairs to plane. think of this possibility. I was Eileen in the Apeldoorn Holland Parade May 9, 2015, What an honor that was photo from Gerry Brosso, Gananoque, Ontario told that one had to have a regand a complete thrill. I iment to be nominated to go. I didn't have a regiment; I was belted in between the pilot and co-pilot and read inserved in the Royal Air Force as a WAAF in England. structions on what my duties would be and also what How was I to convince the powers that be that a Canawould be my role if the plane crashed, etc. A whole voldian woman should be included? I became a Canadian ume of instructions, one of which was to remain silent; I on my wedding day, June 27th, 1945, while still serving couldn't have spoken, I was frozen in the cockpit – I am in the British R.A.F. afraid of any heights!

I knew it was a slim chance. I then asked the Wounded Then I completely relaxed and enjoyed every second as Warriors of Canada, Afghanistan veterans suffering the plane came out of the clouds and we could see land from PDSD, who know me and my support for their and start the maneuvering to land this huge military jet cause, if they would sponsor me. They replied that they with returning soldiers and veterans on board. The pilot would be very happy to do this. was a thirty-year-old female and the co-pilot looked In February 2015, I sent the necessary forms of applicaaround late twenties and I am sitting in between them, tion – and waited. I had a nasty fall in early April, landgoing on ninety, seeing thousands of controls in front ing on my face on the tile entrance way. My face was and behind me and over my head: an experience I will black and blue all over, a real mess. Then just before never forget. A perfect smooth landing.

Easter, I had a phone call from Veterans Affairs. A parReturning to the cabin afterwards, the 59 men gave me cel was being sent by courier to me, to be picked up a round of applause for a safe landing. I could write Tuesday, after Easter, containing all the details of the chapters about all the brave men I was with and all their delegation which was leaving Canada in two weeks’ stories of the war and liberation of Europe. time. Yes! I had been selected! I was going to the NethThe summer came and was hot for months, no rain; erlands by Military jet from Ottawa: with 59 men, and Marie Terese had her Annual Garden Party in her beaume! Total 60 Veterans from WW2. My friend Miriam tiful garden. My right knee was giving me trouble as the took me to the Hudson Bay cosmetic counter – and two fall in the spring damaged the already broken 23 year hundred dollars, later my face looked like an ancient old prosthesis. I have the very best surgeon on Vancoumovie star: with instructions on how to apply the stuff. ver Island who put me on the urgent list for surgery. I I spent ten wonderful days in Holland. I was on the CBC had this done on November the 3rd .I am now home numerous times, one time drinking Schnapps that I had resting walking well, icing where swollen, and recoverbeen handed by a grateful Dutch woman. I was full of ing well. tears and emotion, remembering Ernie, my Dutch liberaWith Love, Eileen. tor. Plus all the men I nursed who were wounded during MORE STORIES FROM EILEEN IN COMING ISSUES. ♣ the horrible war. A true pilgrim. On the return first class 4 dialogue

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“Stirring the Soup” SACRED KNOWLEDGE Marie Gaudet, Edmonton AB

I can’t remember the last time I took off my shoes and curled my toes into some soft green grass or better yet, into some rich black earth. Or said a touchy-feely hello to a tree and its leaves. Or lay in a field of wildflowers, smelling their sweet, natural scent while admiring the colors of nature all around me or observing the path of the soft clouds in the sky. Or strolled down a forest path, following a meandering stream, listening to it gurgle and walking barefoot on its submerged pebbles. Feeling the light breeze lift my hair then quickly turn to frolic with the leaves, making them sing and dance to nature’s song. Hearing the buzzing of various insects, seeing butterflies flitting here and there, frogs jumping about, birds squawking above. Snacking on all kinds of berries growing freely and naturally all around.

I’m a child of nature, can you tell? I grew up on a farm so whenever I wanted to “get away from it all” when I was young, I would simply go for a walkabout, the distance determined solely by my level of stress at the time.

Needless to say, my years of teenage angst were well served and frequently tended by the power of nature. I didn’t even realize how incredibly fortunate I was to have this massive physical and spiritual healing process available to me right out my back door.

In later years, I moved to a city where I remain to this day. Cities are wonderful, exciting, energetic places where you can meet and greet a multitude of people; get whatever you want within minutes 24/7, especially food from all over the world; have copious opportunities for work and all kinds of play; have access to the best medical care almost immediately; and yes, there are even various green areas by the river where one can relax, sunworship, read, picnic, play with your dog, etc. So what if there are just a few little hurdles to jump to get there?

For instance, you can’t walk there. Driving or taking the bus costs a few dollars and when you get there, you might have to pay again to enter the park. You then have to walk some more while carrying all your day’s equipment and food. There are tons of people around too, so if that’s what you like, you’ll be in heaven. The river, while pretty, stinks to the high nines though, especially www.dialogue.ca

in the spring. But if you can handle that, the trees and their fruit growing by the water are just as good as out in the wilderness… assuming they haven’t recently been sprayed with pesticides. There are miles upon miles of paths for walking, running, biking and some people actually prefer having nice, smooth concrete underneath their feet instead of the narrow little dirt paths I used to walk. I’ve gone to all of these parks many a time, with my children and without.

But I, not being much for crowds, decided long since that if I had to drive anyway, I’d rather go in the opposite direction and head for the hills going OUT of town.

There are plenty of lush, natural park areas – OK, you may have to drive half an hour or more to get to – but when you get there, you can hike for miles on real wooded paths through grounds that are home to all manner of wildlife that, if you’re smart and go with a friend, will stay away from you because of all the yakking you’re doing. If you start your walk before dawn, your chances of seeing wildlife in action are high and as an added bonus, you’re far enough out of town to be able to smell the sweet smells of nature while actually viewing the night time spectacle of a sky full of stars without it being diluted by street lights – and there’s nothing more beautiful! These parks are also open yearround so if your interests run into cross-country skiing or my favorite, snowshoeing, you’re in for not just an active day but fresh air, sights and scents that will heal whatever ails you! So the expense there could include gas and a park pass, but this outing could be only a halfday excursion, as opposed to the city trek which would take most of your day.

Of course, there are gyms on every street corner too – almost as many as there are Tim Horton’s coffeeshops. So if time is your enemy, it’s easy enough to go to the nearest gym. These are costly though, especially if you take advantage of their personal trainers who will promptly disappear once you’ve paid for the pleasure of their time (unless you’re young, cute & blonde). But you can get in a good workout on all kinds of machines plus you can also play tennis, soccer, racquetball or hockey, run on the track or go for a swim – and all accessible in one building. Can’t get any better than that, right?

So… why does it feel like something’s still missing?

Well, many people who were born and raised in a big city may never know what that something is. I do, …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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Marie Gaudet, Sacred Knowledge, contd.

but only because I was raised in nature. Today, I can look back and see the gifts nature bestowed on me while I was still unaware of them. And my life in the city has taught me that while there’s so much here to be thankful for, some things require nature’s tender loving care and nothing else will do. When my sister passed away from cancer years ago, I was so deeply grief-stricken that I just wanted to curl up and die. But my brother was also dying and I needed to be there for him too and he hung on for a further five months. So, like a good city girl, I went to the gym to work out my distress. And yes, it did help. It kept me from completely losing it until after my brother passed. So I can definitely give a shout-out for workouts!

But when I finally crashed? I had to go home to nature.

I kicked off my shoes and walked on forest paths and curled my toes into the earth and I listened to the crickets and I felt the breeze on my face and I watched the frogs jumping and the fireflies flashing and I ate gooseberries and I smelled the dampness of the earth around the creek and I sat by a huge fire in a stand of trees and cried and drank beer and I laid down on the ground and listened to the silence all around me and watched the stars pop out in the pitch-black web of night… and I felt the simplicity of it all, and the immensity of it all, and the sameness of it all… and stability returned and my soul convalesced and hope began anew.

This isn’t by any means a condemnation of city living,

otherwise I’d be convicting myself as I still live in one!

It’s just that we city people no longer think about how important actually touching the earth, feeling it, listening to it, inhaling it and letting it heal us really is. There’s always a layer of concrete between us and this planet which still has so much to offer. We inhale smog and call it fresh air. Our kids have been raised with barely any of this sacred knowledge of the living, breathing planet underneath and around us that can be accessed whenever the body or spirit needs it. If our teenagers could spend half an hour a week walking in nature (without headphones or other toys), seeing and breathing it, connecting with it physically and stargazing at night, they would no longer be our little indoor zombies, our trouble-makers, our angry and depressed adolescents catching every bug that goes around. They would be alert, energized, healthy and reconnected with the natural world.

I’m the first to be guilty of all this, which is what brought me to write on the topic. Having been ill with a “bug” for the entire month of January, I’ve had to sit and think about what I’ve been doing – or rather, NOT doing – to my body. And I’ve come to realize that I’ve been suffering from a nature deficiency and that it’s high time I did something about it. So I will. Join me. Bring your kids. And your friends. Mother Earth will be delighted with the company and we will all benefit. And best of all – it’s Free!

Marie Gaudet, Edmonton ♣ SEE MARIE’S BEAUTIFUL ‘ALBERTA SUNSET’ PHOTO, P.2

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Life – Your Perfect Teacher

by Madisyn Taylor, February 12, 2016 All the situations in our lives, from the insignificant to the major, teach us exactly what we need to be learning.

Many of us long to find a spiritual teacher or guru. We may feel unsure of how to practice our spirituality without one, or we may long for someone who has attained a higher level of insight to lead the way for us. Some of us have been looking for years to no avail and feel frustrated and even lost. The good news is that the greatest teacher you could ever want is always with you – that is your life.

The people and situations we encounter every day have much to teach us when we are open to receiving their wisdom. Often we don’t recognize our teachers because they may not look or act like our idea of a guru, yet they may embody great wisdom. In addition, some people teach us by showing us what we don’t want to do. All the situations in our lives, from the insignificant to the major, conspire to teach us exactly what we need to be learning at any given time. Patience, compassion, perseverance, 6 dialogue

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honesty, letting go – all these are covered in the classroom of the teacher that is your life.

We can help ourselves to remember this perfect teacher each day with a few simple words. Each morning we might find a moment to say, “I acknowledge and honor the teacher that is my life. May I be wise enough to recognize the teachers and lessons that I encounter today, and may I be open to receiving their wisdom.” We might also take some time each day to consider what our lives are trying to teach us at this time. A difficult phase in your relationship with your child may be teaching you to let go.

The homeless person you see every day may be showing you the boundaries of your compassion and generosity. A spate of lost items may be asking you to be more present to physical reality. Trust your intuition on the nature of the lesson at hand, work at your own pace, and ask as many questions as you want. Your life has all the answers.

LINK: www.dailyom.com/articles/2014/41567.html ♣

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Epitaph for a Song Writer The world’s Joy Quotient declined a little on Sunday March 6, 2016, when Ian Macdonald died.

By Jim Taylor, Okanagan Centre BC Ian was one of those rare people who never let his inner child get buried under the overburden of grown-up concerns. He took an almost wicked delight in wit. The prospect of trying something new and different -- whether a children’s tale for adults, or Bible study through improv drama --brought out a crooked grin, a glint in his eye.

I’m told that I described him once as “insane -- in the best possible way.”

Around 1980, Ian and his colleague Jim Urich were the ministry team at Augustine United Church in Winnipeg. To relax, they strummed their guitars together. A neighbouring Anglican priest, Gordon Light, dropped in. Gordon also played guitar -- and had a guitar case full of songs that he had written but had never had the nerve to share with anyone.

Out of that meeting -- with the later addition of a third United Church minister, Bob Wallace -- came the vocal group known as the Common Cup Company.

For 35 years, the Common Cup produced albums and CDs of contemporary church music. It wasn’t traditional hymns, though at least a dozen of their songs have been included in denominational hymnaries.

It wasn’t folk music, although it was certainly influenced by the passion for justice of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. It wasn’t the “praise choruses” popular among evangelical churches, but it was clearly religious.

A Child at Heart But it was rare for Ian to stay serious for long. After the Mulroney conservatives were almost eliminated in 1993, Ian penned a short-lived song suggesting that the only thing rarer than a Rocky Mountain Lobster (think about it!) was a Conservative politician.

When fellow Winnipegger Fred McNally staffed the United Church’s national worship desk in Toronto, Ian and friends dropped in.

Feeling that Fred’s cramped cubicle didn’t match his responsibilities, they moved the office walls while Fred’s neighbours were at lunch.

As a child at heart, Ian loved parables. He sang of dolphins and eagles, of ponies and bones and rivers.

And of dragonflies. One song told of bugs in a pond, climbing reeds to the surface and turning into shimmering dragonflies.

But of course, they couldn’t go back to tell of their transformation.

“We sang him to sleep,” said Ian’s son Rory. The last song Ian heard would have been his Celtic Prayer, with its haunting refrain:

Ian Macdonald (back row, right) with the

“Bless Thou to me my life…”

Ian and Gordon did most of the writing. In a Common Cup group: www.commoncup.org But when I heard surprising reversal, Gordon, coming from a that Ian had died, I thought first of the song he wrote liturgical church, wrote mostly about life experifor Ralph Donnelly, a beloved mentor in Winnipeg. ences; Ian, from the liberal United Church, tended to focus on the significance of traditional sacraments … It begins, “Come away, my own dear ones, so One of my favourites is Ian’s celebration of marriage softly I’m fading…”

Ian too faded away, as progressive dementia sapped vows: his spirit and eventually his life. So for me, the song “Love is gentle, love is kind, written for someone else becomes the epitaph for the Most surprising thing to find, song writer.

Fly free, dear dragonfly.

Healing and revealing every gift of heart and mind.

And love keeps no score of wrongs, But keeps singing out new songs…” www.dialogue.ca

Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved. To comment on this column: jimt@quixotic.ca (and a copy to dialogue@dialogue.ca if you like!) ♣ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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“Resonance”

Come Into Animal Presence: Grieving the Loss of Our Animal Companions

by Susan McCaslin

“What is this Joy? That no animal falters, but knows what it must do?”

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On Dec. 27, 2015 our five-year old mini-Australian shepherd Penny was brutally and instantly killed by a truck before my husband’s and my eyes. The incident was an accident, as the driver was going the speed limit, but it was a dark, rainy night, when Penny leapt from our car, as we were unloading groceries, and the driver did not see her. Did she see a bird or squirrel out of the corner of her eye, and bolted to give chase? We had failed to leash her, as she normally trots behind us straight into the house.

Mark saw the truck coming, tried to stop the collision, heard the thud, then ran to gather Penny in his arms. A few seconds later he shouted, “She’s gone!!” I flung myself on the floor of the hallway of our home screaming and wailing.

Soon after, I told some of my friends that we were working through the trauma of the initial shock and wondered how long it would take to return to some kind of normalcy. Penny had become interwoven into every aspect of our daily lives. For us, she was us not only a dog, but a spiritual companion. We had lavished the love and care on her one would on a twoyear-old child, a love which she returned in full.

Over the past four years, when Mark was living in Victoria during the week and I home without him in Fort Langley, Penny had become my lifeline. I talked to her, ate with her, and walked with her (you could say she herded me) for at least an hour and a half or more each day. Her routines and patterns were mine and mine, hers. First thing each morning, I opened her crate (which to her was a snug cave rather than a cage) and she jumped out to do her yoga stretches— “downward dog” and “puppy.” Then, she headed to the sliding glass door to greet the day, racing to the edge of the grass and making a “great leap of being” into the forested ravine. After sniffing around and 8 dialogue

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from “Come into animal presence,” Denise Levertov (Poems: 1960-1967)

chasing a few squirrels, she raced back for breakfast, demolishing her burger. Often, she would look longingly at my yogurt container, which I’d let her lick. If I retired to the computer to stare at the screen for too long, she’d demand a walk and we’d be off to one of our many trails and off-leash walks near the Fraser River.

Penny had a stick fetish, so she’d often choose a long stick or branch of at least two or three metres, balancing it between her jaws and running determinedly, sometimes threatening to run people off the trails. It was as if she was a big dog in a small dog’s body. Her athletic leaps to make contact with a Frisbee were feats of astonishing prowess, followed by a victory prance. At night, if I happened to have a cold or stomach pain, she would sniff my breath, lick my face, or sit on my stomach, clearly offering empathy and support, along with medical analysis. Stretching out on the sofa to have her belly rubbed, she often looked deeply into my eyes with complete trust. My husband and I both admitted that we had fallen madly in love with her. We had in our separate ways pledged her eternal fealty, as one would to a marriage partner.

When I spent three months in France several years before, she had bonded with Mark in the same way she did with me.

Everywhere we go remembrances surface: fur in the sofa, paw prints in the back of the truck, scraps from our dinner we have the urge to save for her. Penny had so much joie de vivre that the house now seems deathly silent without her, and I continue to feel lost.

Some friends have advised us to take another dog into our family right away. Though we are open to the idea in due course, we are not yet ready.

Losing Penny has in some ways been harder than anything we’ve faced. Compared to many, we have …/ www.dialogue.ca

been lucky. Perhaps the depth of our grief has to do with the suddenness and violence of her death. The images of her last moments replay in our heads, as well as the guilt: “If only we had been more mindful, protected her, not taken that small risk of letting her out of the car unleashed. If only we had come home earlier, or later, perhaps she would be with us still.”

In many ways her loss has been more difficult than the deaths of my parents. My dad had lost all quality of life through ALS and wished to die; my mom suffered with dementia for many years and was in her eighties. My childhood dog Charlie died of old age, and our previous dog Chester of dementia and decrepitude at sixteen. We had time to prepare for those deaths, which were in one sense forms of release. My husband and I had both been looking forward to another ten years with Penny. The timing was wrong.

When informed of our loss, most of our friends, many of whom are animal lovers, “get it” right away. “Let the grief take its course,” they say. “Everyone grieves differently.” “We went through the same thing when we lost our beloved companion animal.” Yet, in my head I hear what might be called “the voice of reason” saying, “Don’t overdo it. She was just a dog.” It’s as if post-Enlightenment thinking has established a hierarchy of appropriate grieving.

Certainly, losing one’s own child or spouse or parent would be incomparably grievous. Yet, I resist the phrase, “just a dog,” along with the admonition that it is best to keep one’s grief for a “mere pet” within bounds. I resist the assumption one has to quickly “get over” the loss of a dog or cat or other beloved animal friend, and that it is irrational to lament and celebrate their lives too long or deeply. www.dialogue.ca

Certainly, if my husband or I were to find ourselves descending into a lengthy depression that threatened to destroy our ability to enjoy the present moment, which is Penny’s legacy to us, we might need to seek therapy in order to move on. But the notion that dogs are of less worth than humans is troubling because it is so profoundly anthropocentric. People sometimes fear being accused of “sentimentality” when they express or write about their profound relationships with other species, especially those of the domesticated kind.

Sometimes I hear a voice saying, “Get over your grief quickly. After all, it’s self-indulgent to bemoan your loss when there are much larger tragedies in the world that make yours seem small in comparison: dying refugees, tortured prisoners, people stricken with cancer, children caught in war zones.” Yet, empathizing with the sorrows of the world, doesn’t necessarily require cutting short one’s own particular griefs. To hold back from expressing our love of the animals in our lives for fear of ignoring other forms of suffering comes out of a false dichotomy. Why not grieve both?

Lord Bryon’s poem, “Epitaph to a Dog” tends toward a certain misanthropy about humans and exaltation of animals. Yet it is a corrective to the notion that it’s silly to have a memorial service for a dog:

Near this Spot are deposited the Remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.

Byron’s poem counterbalances the faulty notion that humans are the most evolved creatures on the planet.

Maybe, we are only the more clever species. Animal intelligence, creativity, compassion are now being explored more seriously than in the past. Jane Goodall’s …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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Susan McCaslin, Come Into Animal Presence, contd.

ground-breaking work with gorillas has helped us here.

For Jane did not simply discover that apes use tools, but that they have unguessed depths of feeling, empathy, compassion, as well as the capacity for brutal warfare.

When I was studying anthropology in university, some of my professors made clear qualitative distinctions between humans and other animals by arguing that we alone have a sophisticated language, self-awareness, the ability to contemplate beauty, make art, be self-reflective, or reflect on our deaths. One by one these barricades have been challenged by those who have studied whale song, or studied animals who grieve their sorrows and enjoy their creative accomplishments. Who is to say what mysteries animal creativity and intelligence hold?

Why have we so firmly set ourselves above the other species with whom we share the planet, whether domesticated or wild? By placing ourselves at the top of a hierarchy, we have diminished ourselves, for who we are stands in relation to these other life forms on which we are dependent.

Recently, when I at last ventured to walk the dike near our home that Penny and I had walked together so many times, I was reminded of how once she spotted a pack of coyotes at the edge of a field in the distance and sped off to join them. I realized her wild relatives would likely make mince-meat of her, so called her back. Mark and I often joked about how Penny, though clearly a dog, was also, through her remote relatives, a kind of fox or coyote. Whether on or off leash, she was for us a bridge between the domestic and the wild, providing a wilding of our domesticity; in essence, a connection to the natural world.

Penny led me each day down trails of scent, to imagine a world where smell is a universe in itself arising from the creative powers of the earth. Her sense of smell opened to her worlds beyond my reach. She seemed as intent on following a trail of scent it to its end, as a Van Gogh on the track of a new shade of yellow or blue. Whenever I sat hunched over my computer screen for too long, she would nudge my elbow, look plaintively, and force me outdoors, rain or shine, to be in and of the earth.

Dogs are our kin, kindred spirits, and often embodiments of kindness. Ecologist and poet Wendell Berry

writes of the relation of the words “kind” and “kin”: But the wealth of the idea of kindness is not exhausted by kindnesses to humans. It is far more encompassing.

From some Christians as far back as the twelfth century, certainly from farther back in so-called primitive cultures, and from some ecologists of our own time, we have the idea of a great kindness including and binding together all beings: the living and the nonliving, the plants and animals, the water, the air, the stones. All, ultimately, are of a kind, belonging together, interdependently, in this world From the point of view of Genesis 1 or of the 104th Psalm, we could say that all are of one kind, one kinship, one nature, because all are creatures. (Wendell Berry, from “Caught in the Middle,” in Our Only World: Ten Essays. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015, 96.

Humans would be diminished without the wildness of domestic animals and other species. We evolved together and are co-dependent. As our relationship with Penny developed, she seemed to become more human, and in turn, we become more doggish. One might say we co-evolved in each other’s animal presence. I’d like to close this reflection with a poem I wrote shortly before Penny was taken from us:

Fox Power (for Penny) A luminous fox— brown, white, and amber, huddles in my Aussie’s fur A night wind hurls her eyes into the moon where howls erupt as music wilding our domesticity Susan McCaslin, Fort Langley BC ♣

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Susan McCaslin is a Canadian poet who has published thirteen volumes of poetry, including The Disarmed Heart (The St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2014), and Demeter Goes Skydiving (University of Alberta Press, 2011), which was short-listed for the BC Book Prize and the first-place winner of the Alberta Book Publishing Award (Robert Kroetsch Poetry Award). She has recently published a memoir, Into the Mystic: My Years with Olga (Inanna Publications, 2014). Susan lives in Fort Langley, British Columbia where she initiated the Han Shan Poetry Project as part of a successful campaign to save a local rainforest. ♣

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SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

www.dialogue.ca

Identity

Intimate Details

By J. S. Porter, Hamilton, Ontario www.spiritbookword.net James Joyce’s fictional In Africa, you are who you’re connected to, who you’re character Stephen Dedalus rooted from. The tree is the foundational metaphor. forges his identity in A We’re leaves that grow from particular branches which J. S. Porter are connected to particular trunks and roots. I think that Portrait of the Artist as a I prefer the African way to the Joycean way, although Young Man by writing it. He is a person with a name my relational litany sounds dangerously close to an obiwho goes to a particular class in a particular school tuary. When we die, we too, even in the West, revert to which is in a specific town, county and country, and is the tree of connectedness. part of Europe, the world and the universe. He makes a vertical list: Another aspect of identity is to define ourselves by what

Stephen Dedalus Class of Elements Clongowes Wood College Sallins County Kildare Ireland Europe The World The Universe

Each of us is a set of overlapping circles from the smallest unit – our name – to the largest, the universe, although my limited imagination can’t seem to go comfortably beyond my continent. We’re formed from dust, as the Bible poetically puts it, then return, when our day is done, to dust. (“Life is a rental,” a poet-friend once told me.) Between the rising from the primal mother and the falling back into her, we live within ever-widening geographic gyres.

There are, of course, other ways of constructing one’s identity. You can go African and see yourself within overlapping loops of relationship:

John (My mother tells me as a child I liked to say, “Call me John. Just John.”)

4 Emming Court (Isn’t residence as important as workplace?) son of Anna and John brother of Caroline husband to Cheryl father of Daniel and Rachel grandfather of Kaizen, Marshall and Blake guardian to Dylan (a dog) and a space-sharer with Cosmo (a cat) www.dialogue.ca

we do. She’s a bus driver. He’s a carpenter. I’m retired.

Most of the time I read, take notes, think, dream, write, take my dog for a walk, take my mother for coffee, drink wine with my wife, watch movies with my daughter, see friends.

“I’m nobody. Who are you?” You can’t beat the words of the American poet Emily Dickinson to put into perspective all our flimsy constructions of identity.

If you can only identity yourself by one word, what would it be? For me: reader. I read, therefore, I am. I read what my father read (biography, philosophy, theology) and what my friend Mark Garber read (Shakespeare and the poets). I read what my friends write: Susan McCaslin’s poems on Cézanne, Eva Tihanyi’s short fiction in Truth and Other Fictions, B.W. Powe’s stories, essays and notes.

Reading is an intimate act. You take someone else’s words into your body and mind. You’re penetrated by another being, another consciousness, another’s music.

A few summers ago I lived for a time within John Terpstra’s Skin Boat: Acts of Faith & Other Navigations, entering its consciousness, hearing its music—penetrated by its intimacy.

John lives in my city; we frequent some of the same coffee houses (Hamilton is a city of coffee houses as well as waterfalls). He’s a carpenter and a poet. The book takes its title from the early Irish monks, like Brendan (484 – 577 AD), who launched curraghs, “a skeleton of wood covered by a skin of ox-hide,” sometimes with a sail, into the dark and the deep “at the mercy of the wind, waves and current.” The skin boat is John’s undergirding metaphor: we’re all skin boats on a journey, the Church is a skin boat, the earth is a skin boat; we’re all at the mercy of the wind and the waves.

John wrestles with belief in the book and explores religion “in the sense of religio, a word that has the …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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J. S. Porter, Identity, contd. words ligature, and ligaments, built into it: the living stuff that ties the body’s bones together, allows the bones to move in concert, stops them from rattling.”

Skin Boat is a brave book: brave in its conception (can you think of anything more intellectually daring in our time than making the case for a cosmic Giver?) and brave in its execution (the book is written in a single breath—one meditation, one prayer— without chapters, although there are periodic marks to indicate textual pauses).

Without necessarily intending to, John points to a larger form of identity than geography, family or occupation –

the existential reality confronting us all. A refrain murmurs throughout Skin Boat : “The world looks green to us, but at any moment could tear us to shreds.” We’re all bound for death on this skin of earth. We’re all tethered together as brothers and sisters on the same spacecraft.

When I go, I’d like to be re-reading Skin Boat, open to page 147, where John streams the wisdom of scripture: Go out into the world in peace. Have courage. Hold on to what is good. Return no one evil for evil. Strengthen the faint-hearted. Support the weak and help the suffering. Honour all people. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. ♣

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Book Review by J.S. Porter Thoughts on In the Beginning Was Love: Contemplative Words of Robert Lax, Edited with an Introduction by S.T. Georgiou, (Springfield, Illinois: Templegate Publishers, 2015).

Robert Lax lived alone in the company of cats on an island. He was a kind of secular monk, a natural hermit, a minimalist poet. He knew the difference between doing and being: the point is not

what are you doing, but what are you being I’m being X can anyone in the world be X as well as you can?

This poem was found by archivist Paul Spaeth at Bonaventure University in one of Lax’s notebooks and was recently reprinted in Poetry Magazine, December 2015, in an article by Michael N. McGregor, “Robert Lax: master minimalist.” it encapsulates a lifetime of making word-objects (poems) that have the power of being.

You can set Robert Lax’s life down this way: 12 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

~ www.spiritbookword.net

born 1915 in Olean, N.Y. (USA): studied at Columbia University, editorial collaborator at The New Yorker (1941), Time magazine (l945), Jubilee magazine (1953-1976); lived since 1963 on the Greek Islands Kalymnos and Patmos, died in his sleep on September 26, 2000, in Olean, N.Y. You’d have the bare bones, but not the flesh, not the spirit that S.T. Georgiou handles so beautifully in his In The Beginning Was Love.

Lax might have been one more successful New York City intellectual, but he makes decisive turns in his life where he aligns himself with the poor and the marginalized. He volunteers at a Catholic Friendship House in Harlem, he follows the Christiani Family Circus throughout Western Canada, founds the peace publication PAX, lives with the poor in Marseilles, France and befriends fishermen and sponge divers in the Greek Islands of Kalymnos and Patmos. He cares for words and cats, and remembers his friends “like a sacred duty.”

Silence, stillness and solitude reside in his heart. He becomes a poet of the first order and Thomas Merton’s best friend. …/ www.dialogue.ca

J. S. Porter, Book Review, contd.

Thoreau’s dictum of “Simplify, simplify” filters through every aspect of Lax’s life and work. If left alone on a desert island, all he needs is: a

Bible a dic tion ary & a note book Lax slows the world down. He slows it down by slowing down the means by which we process the world: language. Sometimes he divides the word into syllables – or single words in vertical columns—so we can hear the word and see it as if for the first time. He writes simply, purely, patiently.

He engages in PURE ACT by watching and listening in “goal-less acts, acts that proceed without calculation or conscious effort.” Pure acts,” like respiration and digestion,” pass without notice “and yet they advance the life of the whole.”

What Lax does most of in his island life is wait:

the face of one waiting & waiting waiting & waiting

the waiting real to the reader.

Waiting is also the central part of Lax’s masterpiece 21 Pages, a work that belongs on the same shelf as Merton’s Hagia Sophia. Lax’s holy wisdom is to know that waiting and paying attention are forms of prayer.

S.T. Georgiou selects judiciously from 21 Pages in the book so the reader can taste the extended prayer, the prose poem, this deep meditation. The narrator, like Jesus at the door, like the Buddha under the Bodhi tree, waits for you, the unnamed, with this conviction: “Searching for you, but if there’s no one, what am I searching for? Still you…”

In one of his most Catholic poems, Lax, the man with profound Jewish spirituality as his foundation, links the microcosm of the acrobat with the cosmos at large: Here

at the thin rim of the world we turn to Our Lady, who holds us lightly: we leave the wire, leave the line, vanish into light.

Many years ago a young student visited Lax at Patmos and came away transformed. S.T. Georgiou received the gift of Lax’s life and has devoted his scholarly and spiritual life to keeping the gift alive. He has now given it to the world in a small book that fits in your pocket, that rests comfortably in your hand. Open any page and you have calm, nourishment and light.

----------------------------------------

For a copy of In the Beginning Was Love phone or email the publisher at: 800-367-4844 tmg@templegate.com.

The book is also on Amazon.

To contact Steve Georgiou directly, http://www.spiritcurrents.com/.

waiting for a good he knows he cannot make He waits in “holy receptivity.”

In this short poem, the repetition, the empty space, make

You may also want to read his The Way of the Dreamcatcher: Spirit Lessons with Robert Lax and The Isle of Monte Cristo: Finding the Inner Treasure. ♣

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“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

— René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy ♣ www.dialogue.ca

VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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Remembering Hugh Ector Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC Hugh lived up the road from my wife and me and was part of the small local Fruitvale group who met once a week at each other’s houses to lament the political shenanigans of the current time.

We knew Hugh for only a few years but were always enriched by his company and conversation, particularly the extent of his knowledge on many subjects and we were subsequently educated through his insights.

Hugh, as a poet (and contributor to Dialogue), has left us a legacy of challenging verse, some requiring a second or third pass before comprehension and always stretching our vocabulary with unknown words, even some beginning with X, like xylem, for God’s sake. [I had to look it up in my old Funk and Wagnall dictionary. In case you are curious, it means: “The portion of a vascular bundle in higher plants that is made up of woody tissue.”] This is the verse (about ‘birds’) in which he used it:

“Still others can dig and inhabit the ground Or, they can dangle their nests, Hanging in air, or drowse inside trees With xylem veins surrounding their young.

Hugh’s last book of poems entitled, ‘I Want To Sing With You From Machu Picchu,’ is a dedication to his past wife Betty. In that particular poem are two Condors flying high.

I see them – Hugh and Betty (in my imagination) – in the afterlife together, free and soaring. It is poignant that their demise was so close together and also with Skipper their dog, in between.

Now, Hugh has left his nest, or what was more his eyrielike home on Mountain Street, too soon for us who treasured his presence.

I personally have always felt that to die was just to change rooms in the nest of Earth for a potentially greater consciousness, to live on another level, (dimension) and maybe to take on another ...appropriately finer etheric body, a metamorphosis.

Hugh always sat on the fence with that belief, never committing but leaving it open to possibility. Although he did send me an email link, not too long before he died which relayed the story of a brain surgeon, formerly an afterlife skeptic, Dr. Eben Alexander, who suffered a bout of bacterial meningitis, subsequently entering a seven day coma and returning to consciousness with a vivid other-worldly experience of love and life enduring and welcoming. He had written a book of this, entitled ‘Proof of Heaven.’

This reminded me of another book, ‘Dying To Be Me,’

by Anita Moorjani who had a similar experience when in a clinically dead state she later returned to consciousness with vivid memories of a multi-level awareness while out of her body.

Since MacLean’s magazine has published stories of this nature – of near death patient experiences and otherwise impossible memories of details recalled of events in the hospital during this unconsciousness – it would seem to be old knowledge.

But for the rational mind, it is still just bunkum. It’s too bad really; it is so much more interesting than the ‘one shot deal’ of a life that would otherwise show no great purpose for being born than to be subject to the illusions of our materialistic age that bids us to work and consume and not ask questions beyond our evolution from the supposed mud.

I have always thought that Mountain Street was an appropriate metaphor for Hugh’s achievements as a college professor, athlete, sailor, flyer, poet, husband and father to four children.

We are not all as accomplished as Hugh; and to be accepted as a friend in the later years of his retired life was a joy which many of us shared. We must all pass on, but if we can leave behind that joy, from having known such a person, then our own life will have been all the more worth living.

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale, B.C. [ scribepoet@hotmail.com ] ♣

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A FRUITVALE RESPONSE TO A LIBRARY SURVEY Paul Bowles (August 2015) A town without a library is like a person without a head.

The library is a matrix, drawing us into its welcoming peaceful space to find stories, visual experiences, flights of the imagination and intellectual fodder for our development and entertainment.

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The new colour copier is a delightful community tool that nicely captures the vivid colours of a crop circle in the green or golden intensity of the wheat and barley fields of the English countryside.

The library is a nest for the world’s diverse nature, …/ www.dialogue.ca

interpreted and coded into words or images, crammed into books and silenced of their effects until a young or old enquiring human opens the page to have understanding unlocked within their brain, or to have a new comprehension of some unbelievable looking creature from the depths of somewhere. In the case of my four-yearold grandson Malachi, who regards the library as a natural port of call along his wagon ride – where he may

look to converse with the ‘Singing lady’ about the digger outside or some other current affair, possibly the shape of the moon up there; Malachi will eventually gravitate towards the kids section and pluck out a Franklin the Turtle D.V.D. A library is a common good and the staff are all good common people who have uncommon patience and searching skills.

– Paul Bowles ♣

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“The Continuing Tales of Granddad“

Early Spring in the Kootenays…

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale BC Hope all is well in the Dialogue camp. It is mid-February and the sun is blazing down on the Kootenay village of Fruitvale, after having rained for about two days. It seems that Spring is here again even a month earlier than last year. The snow in the yard is just a few white patches now. I was out in the yard pruning the pear tree yesterday, and my wife is outside today getting her bearings on the garden work. The higher mountains in this valley are still tinged with white but the evergreen trees coating the lower range are contrasting winter with the colour of changing seasons.

By the way, I was in the library the other day and they had a copy of 'Proof of Heaven', which is the book I referenced in my eulogy for Hugh Ector (p.14); this is a must-read for anyone who needs an inside view of Dr. Eban Alexander's experience. It eclipses anything attempting to glimpse beneath the veil of Greater Reality.

Life in the our world desperately needs this kind of reenforcement and one can be confident in the reliability of a brain surgeon who had heard it all before, but until he lived it within his coma he had nothing to say to anyone on the subject except to be sympathetic.

Storylines

We all have our story and each of us a history. Just the other day, on Family Day, I heard my wife – on CBC radio’s Almanac – sharing tales of her ancestry with the province of B.C. The Earth has its story, shrouded in time, blossoming, changing, birthing and providing.

The oceans have their story, silent beneath the waves until explorers Jacques Cousteau and David Attenborough brought the life of the sea to our mesmerized gaze through their cameras.

The Great Barrier Reef has its story, a living coral palace of creatures weird and wonderful, with giant manta rays, breathtaking in their beauty, queuing up to be preened by www.dialogue.ca

tiny servant fish.

The moon has its story, with man’s footprints in the dust.

The Sun, has its story, but for whose light and heat the Earth could not flourish. How mysterious that blinding sphere of energy, like the nucleus of an atom, which we all circle around.

The galaxy has its story, our very own Milky Way, our ancestral star cluster in our corner of the universe. But astronomers are not content dabbling around to uncover its history when they have seen billions of other galaxies outside of our own backyard. I even have a photo of one on my bedroom wall.

The universe has a story. I have a book called The Universe Story, so someone knows, apparently we are expanding and accelerating. But the telescopes are sensitive these days, we now seek out The Big Bang itself.

However, not content with that, there are those who want to know what caused it. The Primal Cause has no history that we can be sure of but the Buddhists have said that the Primal Cause is ‘Pure Mind’, super consciousness, which impregnates the atom. A luminous idea come to life.

A cell has a story, we are composed of them, one hundred trillion, they live, grow, work and multiply. The microscope tells the tale; they are a thriving part of our heritage and we are not even aware of them, until we cut our finger and it heals itself miraculously, with the power of the atom.

The nucleus of the atom is pure energy, is it any wonder that somehow the story gets told.

Update on the Grandchildren…

In January, I was Kelowna once again to attend the 5th birthday and party of grandson Malachi. His cousins Corbin and Easton came along, cementing relationships and learning how to share toys and coping with the crowd of kids and parents, moving from pinning the …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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tail on the donkey to fishing in the big box to painting masks and pitching basket balls, opening a diversity of gifts and eating pizza. It has been enlightening to discover that our birthday card to Malachi has been the source of so much entertainment that it has easily eclipsed anything else in the gift category. It was a musical rendition of the jazzed up Happy Birthday song,

that, when opened, not only played but was a pop up, cut out, band of cool cats on their musical instruments. No description could do it justice, it was an extreme card, which worked beyond belief to light up that kid’s face and which became an ongoing fascination.

Paul Bowles, Fruitvale, B.C. [ scribepoet@hotmail.com ] ♣

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Waves

“The Fifth Columnist”

Michael Neilly, Dunrobin ON I like to think that generations of people are just waves breaking on a beach: That’s what we are. Each generation rises from the ocean, Deepak Chopra’s cosmic soup, and in a fulminating majesty of foam and thunder, breaks on the shore.

Then the thunder subsides and we slowly slide back into the sea to be reclaimed by Mother Ocean. In front of us and behind us, waves, the generations, full of fury and self-importance demanding this, conquering that, or just bobbing along like a cork but, in the end, reduced to rivulets of water inexorably drawn back from the beach and into to the pool of creation.

You’d almost think that we were an aberration in this drama, played out on thin strips of sand, granular, gritty stages all over the world. After all, there’s plenty of water that never breaks on shore, much less sees the land, but this tiny percentage plays out our great drama on shores all over the world.

bought and discarded over the years: three motorcycles (that I absolutely had to have), seven personal computers, three VCRs, eight cell phones, 13 cars, tons of construction materials, a veritable mountain of green and white trash bags, all bobbing in my wake. Do we really need all this stuff? In the end, like my brothers and sisters, I ride that wave with nothing on but what God gave me. I’m the one complaining about the weather; you can hear me if you listen hard. For some crazy reason I’m worried about the oddest things, like getting a haircut, earning a decent living and the latest drama of the day.

I’m just a swell on the ocean with no end in sight.

Riding in my wave I can see you, Dialogue reader, my dentist, doctor, lawyer, the guy I got into an argument with at the gas station, my teachers, family et al. Six dentists have peered into this mouth, five optometrists put those awful yellow drops into my eyes.

I can clearly see myself working in eight dreary office cubicles in various shades of grey, pushing a mouse around, manipulating photons on my computer screen.

Are we being re-constituted with each wave? I wonder. Is it like an ensemble cast, the same players wearing different costumes? I was a king of Ireland in one production (and what Irishman wasn’t), then a homeless person pushing along a grocery cart in another. Do the faces begin to resemble one another?

I’m auditioning for the role of writer right now. But tomorrow I’ll be a slave trader or a rum runner, I’m sure. The script I’m reading now really sucks, the pacing is terrible and there’s a rotten, flat spot in my drama. Oh Mr. Director, what’s my motivation? My wave is still crashing on the beach, and look I’m passing some water going the other way. See you in a minute, I call out, wait for me, will you? That was my sister and my mom.

My wave is cresting now and I can see forever. Hey, we’re running out of ocean! Kaboom and we’re on the beach!

Along the way I look back to see all the junk I’ve

(Quoted in Field Notes on the Compassionate Life: A search for the soul of kindness, by Marc Ian Barasch, 2005) ♣

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Maybe it’s safer to say that life is, rather than a wave, truly a beach. It’s like Baywatch, an improbable drama concentrated on a strip of sand miles long and just a few yards wide, bounded by an irresistible force, the sea, and an immovable object, the land. All I can say to this is to enjoy the ride! Be seeing you.

– Mike ♣ **************************************************************

“If one competes the journey to one’s own heart, one will find oneself in the heart of everyone else.”

– Father Thomas Keating

www.dialogue.ca

BRING THE PIANO

Ramblings

Randy Vancourt, Toronto ON – www.randyvancourt.com to that windy day in 1969 London.

On January 30th 1969, The Beatles

shocked the city of London and the world when they climbed up on the roof of Apple headquarters at Number 3 Savile Row, and performed an impromptu concert. Ever since that day, musicians everywhere have aspired to repeat this act. Nobody really knows why, but the urge to drag instruments up several stories to the top of a building seems to be irresistible to musicians.

Not that playing on roofs was unknown before The Beatles. There is a long history of rooftop dance halls all over the world, and most famous dance bands and jazz musicians performed there during their careers.

The main difference however, is that those venues were indoors.

I’m not completely clear on the attraction of hauling musical equipment up to the top of a building, then standing precariously hundreds of metres above the ground, wind whistling in your face, and attempting to perform a concert. Still, The Beatles iconic moment remains a touchstone for musicians everywhere.

Ironically, they weren’t even the first band to do this.

That honour goes to Jefferson Airplane, who on December 7th, 1968 climbed up to the roof of New York’s Schuyler Hotel, shouted obscenities at the crowd below, and performed a couple of their hits.

And get this – their 7-minute concert was caught on film by none other than Jean-Luc Godard, the famous French film director.

Surely their performance, which inevitably ended in their arrest by the NYPD, would have been the one to go down in history, if not for the fact that about one month later the most famous band in the world at the time copied their stunt. I guarantee that if the second concert had been by a lesser band, say The Monkees, Jefferson Airplane’s 2-song set would be the one we would all recall.

Still The Beatles remain the rooftop concert to emulate. Whether it’s U2’s 1987 show on the roof of an L.A liquor store, Homer Simpson and the B Sharps atop Moe’s Tavern, or even Paul McCartney himself performing on top of the Ed Sullivan Theatre, it’s fair to say every one of these performances was compared www.dialogue.ca

What do all these rooftop concerts have in common, besides exposing valuable instruments and sound equipment to the elements? None of these musicians played the piano. Sure some of them used electric keyboards but nobody was dragging a baby grand up to the roof to serenade the city.

There was a time when every theatre, concert hall or restaurant had its own piano, and the professional musician’s job was to show up and play. Somehow over the past 30 years or so, this has morphed into the expectation that pianists somehow bring along their own fully-tuned Steinway.

You may think the very concept sounds ridiculous, but I guarantee it doesn’t matter where I’m playing or how much I am getting paid, at some point I will hear the question, “Are you going to bring the piano?”

And before you assume they mean a nice lightweight electric version, I can assure you that I have shown up with just such an instrument on many occasions only to be greeted with, “Oh – I thought you were bringing a real piano.”

I have always envied the guitarist, sax player or violinist, who shows up, perhaps via public transit, instrument case in one hand and a coffee in the other, warms up for a few minutes and is ready to play. Meanwhile the keyboardist loads hundreds of pounds of equipment into a vehicle, drives to the gig, spends an hour unloading and setting up, only to repeat the process in reverse a few hours later.

Don’t get me wrong – I know I am very fortunate to be able to make my living as a performer. I’m not so much complaining as pointing out the absurdity of the situation. Whether in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, or up in the wilds of the Yukon or on the roof of a small town motel, I count the seconds until I hear the words, “Did you bring the piano?”

There was one memorable time I recall not being asked this; I was offered a contract playing aboard an adventure cruise ship that took tourists to the South Pole. Sadly it sank on its second trip – hopefully not due to the excessive weight of their real piano.

My father taught me to try and find the humour in all things, so I have spent the last few years collecting …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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the best and craziest of these anecdotes and creating my new one-person musical entitled, fittingly enough, “Bring The Piano!”

It premieres this July in Winnipeg, so if you happen

to be in town, please drop by and see the show. And maybe you can do me a favour…could you bring the piano? (See P.59) LINK: www.bringthepiano.com ♣

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“Your Health Matters”

Can malnutrition lead to violence?

Derrick Lonsdale, M.D., Strongsville OH

In a letter to his publisher Katkov, written in September 1865, Dostoyevsky proposed the work that became known as the novel “Crime and Punishment”.

He explained to Katkov that it was to be about a young man who yields to “certain strange, unfinished ideas yet floating in the air”. He was therefore about to embark on his plan to explore the moral and psychological dangers of the ideology of “radicalism”.

Dostoyevsky’s character, Raskolnikov, robbed and murdered an old woman, justifying the action on the basis that he could “do good” with the money that he obtained from the crime. This by itself is an incredible distortion of the general concept of morality, a philosophy taught by all world religions.

Apparently crime in some of the poorer areas of British cities has been recently classified by criminologists as an illness. It has led to the remarkable phenomenon of a criminal visiting a physician and blaming the physician for his crime. “You did not cure me of my illness so you are responsible for my crime”.

This paradox seems to fit with the otherwise inexplicable incidence of murder and mayhem in our world today. The only difference is that, at least for some criminals, it is no longer considered to be “crime and punishment” but “crime and reward in the afterlife”. If this is truly an illness of the mind, can such incredible distortions of concept be possibly explained in terms of pathophysiology? What follows is a hypothesis.

For many years I have written about health and disease in the pages of this excellent magazine and I have repeatedly pointed to contemporary nutritional mayhem.

In the last issue I tried to deal with the phenomenon of dysautonomia, explaining the functions of what I call the higher and lower parts of the brain and how they have to work together in order to produce normal function. I modernized the writings of Freud by calling the lower brain the “id” and the upper brain the “ego”. An important part of the “id” is known as the limbic system and it is this part of the brain that generates our emotional reflexes. An emotion is not a thought process.

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Each of our emotional reactions is really a genetically determined program that is appropriately fired by a given input stimulus. If somebody insults us, the normal reaction is anger, not happiness or gratitude. Reading a telegram, providing news of a death or accident, results in immediate grief, not laughter. The “ego” cannot change the effects of the emotional reflex but it can modify it so that the primitive reaction from the anger producing stimulus is suppressed. It demands an extremely close cooperation between the ego and id, achieved by the hardwiring of the brain that, in turn, demands sound chemistry.

There is plenty of evidence in the medical literature that a mild form of pseudo-hypoxia can cause the “id” to become irritable. It is called “pseudo” (false) when the calorie intake is without the necessary vitamins needed for normal oxidation and energy synthesis to proceed. It results in chemical changes in the brain that are identical to those produced by mild to moderate lack of oxygen (hypoxia). Thus the reflex action of anger can be exaggerated and perhaps explode in violence. I propose that an emotion can be “nursed” and become magnified in the mind of an individual, causing a false impression that he or she is being specifically “picked on” by a hostile world. With an irritable “id” caused by pseudo-hypoxia and failure of its modification or repression by the “ego”, it may allow the emotion to explode in violence; a full blown fight-or-flight reflex. I have repeatedly shown evidence that the easiest way to do this is by the ingestion of empty calories producing the phenomenon of pseudo-hypoxia. The “id” works 24 hours a day and is peculiarly sensitive to oxygen or appropriate vitamin deficiency.

The point that I am trying to make here is that our modern era has been pockmarked by repeated episodes of inexplicable and totally irrational violence in children, adolescents and young adults. My explanation cannot be tested by experiment today but soon after thiamine (vitamin B1) was synthesized, an experiment was tried on human subjects. They were given a diet with mild thiamine deficiency and soon developed typical “psychosomatic” symptoms, including emotional irritability, that were quickly abolished by restoring the vitamin. I have …/ www.dialogue.ca

never seen any reference in the news media where the diet of a violence perpetrator has ever been questioned and the crime is certainly never treated as an illness.

Webster defines rational as “1. Of, based on, or derived from reasoning. 2. Able to reason; reasoning; as, an infant is not yet rational (the id is activated in the infant but the ego is not yet hard wired). 3. Showing reason, not foolish or silly, sensible as a rational argument.” To rationalize is to explain or interpret on rational grounds.

Irrational is defined as lacking reasonable understanding; as, brutes are “irrational animals.” As we move further and further away from our biological origins the risk of unintended consequences may arise from our descent towards being “irrational animals”. Recent medical information that fructose syrup appears to play a large part in the causation of widespread cancer must surely make

us think about our hedonism. My book “A Nutritional Approach to a Revised Model for Medicine”* compares the hedonism of the Roman empire to that of our own era. A few of us are sitting in a “carriage in an express train” that is rushing towards its own destruction. Can we alert the “driver”? The old aphorism that those who ignore history are destined to repeat it should be well known by all.

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

Derrick Lonsdale is a retired Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a Certified Nutrition Specialist.

Website: www.prevmed.com/ Blog: http://o2thesparkoflife.blogspot.com/

* More about Dr. Lonsdale’s book in the next issue; ISBN: 978-1-61897-092-3 (available from amazon.ca) See also: http://sbpra.com/DerrickLonsdale ♣

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“Ideas”

Intriguing Ideas from David Foster…

david.foster2@powergate.ca

‘Mistaking the evidence’ David Foster, Port Perry ON

The Phantom Fly

I was a man of the city streets, and he was a man of the soil.

He farmed, raised sheep and cows and pigs, and worked his honest toil.

I came by with a child or two, with our wide and curious eyes To catch a glimpse of the world he knew… the barn, the fields, the styes.

Remote at first as we came his way, he relaxed as the children glowed, For we asked in all sincerity what the faming life bestowed.

He was pitching straw with a five pronged fork in a darkened cattle stall And he deftly threw the cow-soiled muck beyond a nearby wall.

But a fleck of dung flicked from the fork and lodged on the rim of his lip.

And there it stuck on his two-day beard. Would it stay or would it slip?

Our eyes were wired to the loathsome thing, and we wondered what to do While he held forth on the farming life, and what a man went through.

We didn’t wish to be impolite, so we stood in silent thrall While he warmed to us his audience on the cost of feed and all.

He felt the weight of the piece of dung, and waved as though at a fly And carried on with his solo speech on the yield of oats and rye. www.dialogue.ca

He smiled with the power that speakers know when they hold their audience And he waved again at the phantom fly, mistaking the evidence.

His speech began to make him dry, so he licked his lips with his tongue, And the moistened tip passed just below, the clinging piece of dung.

Our breath drew in at the narrow miss, but he thought we wanted more, So he launched right in to the processed price of milk at the city store.

And again the twitch of the loathsome lump he mistook for the phantom fly And again his hand waved past his cheek and his tongue once more slid by.

His talk was now on the risk of hail and the risk of an early frost, And the depth of snow last year in Spring, and what good firewood cost.

His tongue and hands made a joint assault near the hair where the morsel clung, But time and time again fell short of the clinging piece of dung.

We stayed so long the sun went down and the farmer’s voice grew hoarse And as we left, he allowed as how we were darned nice folks, of course!

And the phantom Fly? It grew too dark for a proper guess to be made, But I bet the Lord looks after his own in the hazardous farming trade. …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

dialogue 19

‘Mistaking the evidence’... Zoltan Rona was a really good tennis player. Terrific serve. All with the one arm.

He wasn’t ambidextrous. But he was observant. The one arm was growing longer than the other, (and he was still a young man). So he quit tennis and became a medical doctor in Toronto in 1977. Located in among the celebrities in the fashionable Bloor Yorkville area. Heart of the Artsy world. He would cater to celebrities, local and transient.

But he knew an MD credential wasn’t enough. So he added a Physio therapist, a chemist, an acupuncturist, in fact a half dozen specialty ‘ists’ in his co-op clinic.

He was not going to ‘mistake any evidence’. If he gave you a medication, he wanted to track what the pill was doing, for weeks or months. He found an analysis service in New York State that used Spectographic technology where a tiny sample of anything was placed on an electrode and then electrocuted into vapour. The vapour produced an energy spectrum that told the knowledgeable attendant what the proportion and elements were in the sample. Give him a bit of finger nail or hair by mail and he could tell not only what it was made of, but the proportions and a comparison with what was normal. Do that once a week for a month and you can track the changes the pills were causing... the evidence there in the new hair and/or finger nail. So cut back the pills, increase the potency or change the medication to something more effective. Track it all again until it cured the patient. Don’t mistake the evidence.

D. C. Jarvis MD was a 5th generation Vermonter who began looking at the ‘evidence’ in the 1930s. He wondered if the cows knew why they selected certain grasses to eat. It was because of the need for pH acid balance in their diet.

So Jarvis watched both people and animals for 30 years and wrote only one book ‘Folk Medicine’. He showed how to be your own simple chemist, assessing evidence yourself and applying remedies that do no harm. Simple inexpensive things like cider, apples and honey. His only

book came out in 1958. Sold over 2 million copies.

Again... don’t mistake the evidence.

Nowadays we can’t do any of that ourselves. Where has all the folk knowledge gone? Into very expensive specialties using equipment we have never seen or even heard of (and often in the hands of people we can’t fully trust. Covanta the In-sin-erator people comes to mind). So some of us go mystical... add non-reason because there is no way to apply real reason.

One of the longest lasting concentrations of biochemical analyses capacity in Ontario is with a government lab on Hamilton’s grossly polluted harbour. I want to go ask the Boss there how we can get similar lab capacity into the hands of every township on the Great Lakes Watershed.

‘Ignorance No More’. Evidence to consider and act upon, township by township. Before it is really too late to make any difference.

David Foster, Port Perry Feb 5, 2016

P.S. The Culture of Unnecessary Secrets When was the last time you looked through a microscope? Did a test with litmus paper? Looked for evidence of any sort yourself? Had the discipline to learn reliably what the ‘readings’ really mean? Had a discussion about that with someone you like and trust? What goes on in your mind? Who has the missing pieces to the enquiry your curiosity tells you to explore today?

All that is a very good reason to set up in your own neighbourhood ‘debating society’ or a ‘significant social,’ or a ‘dowsers’ society’ where the outer reaches of your knowledge can be reached... right where you live, face to face, person to person, even with strangers. That way we all get a lot more to work with even while we doze. The underlying trick is to make it ‘fun’. Playfulness... The emphasis on ‘play’. (Nooo, someone will probably threaten to sue). The threat alone isolates us.

David F. ♣

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Climate Change Bob Harrington, Nakusp BC I often ponder that these last days of my own life are perhaps being lived during the last daze of the human species.

We blindly exploit the stability and intricate ecology of our marvelous planet. Abundant literature informs us that much of our activity produces excess heat cumulatively raises environmental temperatures to threatening levels.

In fact global warming was anticipated as long ago as 1896 by Nobel-winning Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius. He recognized that people were burning fuels such as oil, coal and wood at an increasing rate each year. In April, 1896, an article written by him was published in 20 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Journal. In it he explained that, “We are evaporating our coal mines into the air,” and that the addition of so much carbon dioxide must be altering the transparency of the air and causing the less transparent air to act as a blanket, which in time might cause the earth to become heated to an extent that people have never before known. His article was extremely thorough and predicted that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the air would cause mean earth temperature to rise between five and six degrees Celsius. The accuracy of his predictions was verified by computer modeling in the 1960s. In spite of a …/ www.dialogue2.ca

tremendous mass of data that verifies the steady accumulation of greenhouse gases, the media representing corporation interests have for years denied that we need change our ways to accommodate reality.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (The IPCC) in its 2013 report cited in The Guardian Weekly in April, 2013, included the following major points: • Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are now at levels “unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years.”

• Global temperatures are likely to rise by 0.3C to 4.8C by the end of the century depending on how much governments control carbon emissions.

• Sea levels are expected to rise a further 26-82 cm by 2100.

• The oceans have acidified, having absorbed about a third of the carbon dioxide emitted.

The solution is the absolute necessity of the human race

awakening to the fact that the land, water and atmosphere are all parts of our environment that demand our attention and care. The Earth is not a playground, it is our life support system! I am reminded of something my father told me when I was a boy: “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”

But let’s take a look at a simple thing we could do to help the situation. Land is logged for many reasons ranging from development to highway construction, but mainly to produce logs for the timber market.

Meanwhile the bared land left behind bakes in the sun from loss of protective vegetation, water from soil is evaporated and heat is reflected back into the atmosphere.

If every high school in the country required a course in forestry which included the planting of 1,000 trees per class in needed areas, imagine what a difference it would make. A school course with a real purpose!

Bob Harrington, Nakusp BC ♣

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Itching for Soil

Sustaining Well Being

Mike Nickerson, Lanark ON Some eyebrows have risen around here as I've proceeded with the task of removing all the top soil from the floor area of the summer kitchen we are building, before leveling it with gravel. The implication is that I'm paying excessive attention to a laborious, seemingly unimportant activity. Thanks for the inspiration. It got me thinking.

Soil For decades I referred to my compost pile as the body of my grandchildren. Now that I have grandchildren, who only occasionally eat from the soil I care for, I would have to say it is the body of my great grandchildren. Unfortunately that starts to be a remote concept, so I don't use it.

The principle, however, remains – human bodies, including those of the people you love, are built from soil.

Soil is the foundation of life on land. Along with carbon and water, it is the substance of my being, of your being, the substance of those you love and practically every other living thing with which we interact and upon which we depend. Soil seems to me a substance of utmost importance.

Here at the Lanark Eco-Village project, we speak about the cycling of nutrient elements. Indeed, we practice that value by composting everything that we can of organic origin. The composting effort is to build soil. The rich black earth from the area of the summer kitchen is already soil, likely the product of thousands of years of www.dialogue2.ca

lichens and trees, bugs and beasts converting the rock and air born elements into compounds that service life.

How could we just burry it under a truck load of gravel?

Digging bits of black gold out of the nooks and crannies between the rocks and carting it away is vigorous work.

Sitting near the site, catching my breath and contemplating the task, it occurred to me that there is much potential in the midst of the piles of black sand, leaf litter, fungus, bacteria and all.

Within the next shovel full of dirt there may well be a compound that, when introduced to our garden will enable the soil organisms to build organic molecules that plants can use and which, in turn, will help us grow, digest, heal, feel and more. Perhaps one such micro-nutrient will produce the enzyme that will trigger receptors, stimulating a chain of cells to generate an "Ah ha !" revelation. Such revelations can illuminate the way for us all on the path toward long-term well-being. I hope not to miss that shovel full.

Soil is at the core of sustainability. It seems to me well worth the effort to preserve.

LINK: http://www.superaje.com/~sustain5/soil.html Tel:(613)259-5022 or to leave a message:(613)482-1208 Email: sustain5 [at] web.ca WEBSITE: http://www.sustainwellbeing.net/ ♣ * * *

“Our greatest responsibility is to be good ancestors.” – Jonas Salk VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

dialogue 21

Justice and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada SO WHAT WAS IT THEY DID TO US? “The stereotype that has been laid upon the Indigenous people of Canada is completely upside down.”

Norm Zigarlick (normzig56@gmail.com) [Series began in the Winter issue, Vol. 29, No. 2, p.27]

I have previously mentioned that the stereotypical image we have saddled our indigenous people with is upside down to what I have experienced. The case could be made that because of arrogance and racism we felt justified in marginalizing them. I am not so sure of that.

Norm Zigarlick I think racism is just an extended version of tribal behavior that goes back tens of thousands of years. It’s an “if you ain’t one of us you might be a threat” kind of thinking and it flows in all directions. To steal a line from songster Kris Kristofferson, “most of us hate anything we don't understand;” understanding takes work and most of us don't like that very much either.

Indigenous cultures worldwide have put a lot more effort into understanding our cultural process than we have into understanding theirs. Our methods involve training a few anthropologists to do some research and have them write a report on it. That gives us the luxury of pretending that we as a society understand the big picture while the reality is that only a miniscule portion of the population has any meaningful understanding at all.

Of course, we decided Aboriginal folks needed to learn even more about us, so we took them down a very rocky path. We loaded them into places called residential schools, where the only thing they did was learn about us. They didn't find a lot to like.

Thirty five years ago, I sat by a campfire with a good friend who happened to be from deep Aboriginal roots.

He also happened to be a journeyman electrician, a onetime Canadian Firefighters Curling Champion and a two time participant in Canada's national curling championship, The Brier. He also went on to become the Chief of a regional First Nations Band. In his spare time he raised a family, ran a business and taught his kids the ways of the wilderness. He never got thrown out of office and he was never accused of stealing money. He was almost 22 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

always smiling. You probably never heard of him, his name is Jimmy Schafer.

As we sat by the fire having a cup of bush tea after quartering a moose (which he shared with his community) we joked about many things, we touched on politics briefly.

One comment he made stuck with me: he laughed and said “your system can’t work, your tribe got too big.”

His idea was that working cooperatively, without having to give up who you are, could be a workable solution. I believe he was and is still right. Our tribe is so big and diluted it now thinks there is no longer a need to understand the individuals or the fringes. Misunderstandings can lead to a lot of problems that could otherwise be avoided.

I need to mention three other guys I got to know quite well. Like Jimmy, all were very good at what they did; and some of what was done was, to say the least, spectacular. Their names were Allan, Archie (Allan’s uncle) and Sean (Alan’s son).

Way back when there was still a misconception that I was employable, I got a job at a mine on Great Bear Lake. I was on the Arctic Circle, cold and 275 miles from where I thought I had a girlfriend. It was one of those situations that made me think, Uh huh, maybe I should have gone to school. The job description was “surface laborer” it meant being at the ‘bottom of the ladder’ and not working underground.

The company had a D-6 Caterpillar bulldozer. They had no operator. Luckily Archie was nearby. He was a highly experienced Cat operator that had worked on the old Cat trains that hauled sleighs across frozen lakes and through the boreal forests, they were the predecessors to modern-day ice roads. He had worked on highway construction, mining developments and exploration efforts.

He was also an untrained but excellent heavy duty mechanic. He was a friendly guy in his late 40s and, though not very big, was a strong as an ox. Archie didn’t work for the same company as I did and he was on site for completely different reasons but he took me under his wing anyway and showed me how to become a Cat operator, or “cat skinner” – which was the popular term at the time. He was patient, funny and incredibly competent in solving problems that kept popping up in this insanely remote place. He must have been a pretty good …/ www.dialogue.ca

Norm Zigarlick, So What Was It…, contd.

teacher; for the next eight years I went on to make a very good living in the heavy equipment business.

Archie got nothing extra for sharing his knowledge and time with me; he did it because he felt it was the right thing to do given the circumstances. Archie was Metis; in 1964, that was pronounced “halfbreed.” He was loaded with talent in his chosen field but was kept down by a ceiling that wasn't even glass in those days. I can supply numerous examples just like his.

Allan is probably the most talented person I have ever come across in the field of aviation, specifically in the part we call bush flying. He was a qualified Aircraft Maintenance Engineer, a Commercial Pilot, a business owner/operator and absolutely lived by his principals – and they were principals to be envied. He was honest to a fault and, in spite of having a reputation for being short tempered, he was polite, gracious and considerate. He was trusted by his friends and by his competitors alike.

Even those who didn't like him at a personal level would never ever suggest he was in anyway dishonest.

When it came to flying those squirrely little airplanes around in conditions that ranged from +35 to -45 degrees Celsius, he was a natural part of what ever machine it was that he was flying. He knew and understood exceptionally well the wilderness he worked in; ice thickness, big winds, smoke from forest fires, river currents and ridiculously long distances for airplanes no bigger than a pickup truck were all part of his daily routines.

Early on in my flying career I was a competitor of Allan's. I was located 90 miles to the north of him and we often competed for the same customers. He was far better at it than I was and our little airline was on life support an uncomfortable amount of the time.

Our first decent break came in the form of a contract to do a wildlife survey over near the west coast of Hudson's Bay. It was 300 hours of flying for each of two airplanes during a 120 day period. The guy that landed the work for us was Allan. He saw an opportunity for both of our little companies and made it work.

Much like I had learned “cat skinning” from Archie, I learned bush flying from Allan. Allan was also Metis; he was beyond competent, he was a creative problem-solver and, after many thousands of hours in the air and landings that only involved airports about a third of the time, he never once so much scratched a passenger. I simply cannot say enough good things about this true gentleman.

Sean is someone you might have heard of. I've known www.dialogue2.ca

him for about 40 years. He was a little kid when I met him. A nice little kid, well mannered; he had a natural smile and a genuine, surprisingly sophisticated sense of humor. When he was in his early teens, I coached him in a junior curling program. He was the ideal student, one who grasped concepts in a hurry and developed his skills very quickly. His temperament had not changed from what I had known earlier.

Sean became a pilot and a very good one. So good in fact that it is the reason you may remember him – or, if not him specifically, you should remember what he and his remarkable team pulled off in 2001.

It had to do with a doctor at the South Pole research station that had developed a life threatening illness. Airplanes come and go from the South Pole regularly during the Antarctic summer but never during the winter. At least they didn't until Sean and his crew did it in 2001.

The United States Military had tried a couple of times to get into the site using large Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft that normally conducted flights in summer (when temps are still very low) however they abandoned the efforts because of the extreme cold and the inability of the aircraft to function properly.

By 2001 Sean had accumulated a considerable amount of flying experience, much of it involved Antarctic research. Along with a great team, he led the effort to get the doctor out of conditions that, at the time, were described by the media this way: ‘The South Pole is a place where no life can survive in winter unless under the dome of a research bunker.’

With destination temperatures at minus 62 Celsius (-80 F), the crew set off in a DeHavilland Twin Otter – a 35-year-old design made for the Canadian bush. It had a certified maximum takeoff weight off 12,500 pounds (less than 1/10th that of a C-130). Seriously overloaded with spare fuel they headed out through the Antarctic winter darkness and did something that had never been done at these temperatures before.

They were successful and, in typical Sean fashion, quite humble about it all. These men had knowingly taken off into conditions that had thwarted the efforts of what is supposed to the most technically sophisticated nation on the planet. They did so knowing that even a simple thing like a broken window (Plexiglas doesn't really like super cold) could mean the end of the line. Any sort of mechanical issues en route that resulted in a forced landing would also mean no one was going to be able to …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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Norm Zigarlick, So What Was It… contd.

help. Sean's dad Allan was obviously extremely proud, we all were; his dad’s good friend Jimmy Schafer was definitely proud. If Allan’s uncle Archie was still around, I am certain he too would have been just as proud. The men all share the same last name Louttit.

Over the years I have crossed paths with the Louttit family many times; from where I see it, they have been a remarkable bunch. When Sean became world famous for a short period of time did anyone mention his roots?

I never heard it.

In our mainstream society, we hold up winners and flaunt them as if they have accomplished something large and meaningful such as putting a frozen chunk of rubber into a bag of string after the goalie dozed off.

In my experience, our Aboriginal cultures have not been big fans of the hero concept. True traditional cultures are sharing cultures and, historically, heroes don't share a lot of the credit. On the other hand, in our mainstream we idolize heroes as if they have arrived from somewhere that might be populated by angels.

I may have seen social democracy at its best (or worst if you were on the receiving end). A Chief being grilled by the membership at a band meeting is an interesting affair. It is usually a ‘no holds barred’ deal, where everybody gets a chance to ask a question and hardly anybody will accept a politically-couched answer. It’s a tough gig for anybody with a hero complex. If Donald Trump were a Navajo elder, doing what he is doing right now, the other elders would have him off in a retreat in the desert, trying to help him through his crisis. The sad reality is Trump could become the President of the United States. That is a bit of a culture gap.

I had my own personal experience regarding how fleeting and pointless media heroes really are. In 1979, I became involved in attempting to set a record suitable for the Guinness Book of World Records. This one was for the world’s longest curling game. Two regular curling teams faced off and for 64 hours and 28 minutes, flinging 40-pound chunks of boulder up and down the ice.

We set a new record! And, just for the record, I skipped the losing team. It was championship season, curling was in the news and the media loved it. We were featured in almost a hundred newspapers worldwide and on countless sports newscasts.

A month or two later I was taking part in an event that involved a banquet. It was the one time in my life I was asked for my celebrity autograph. I signed a paper plate 24 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

for a lady, I added some nice little note about best wishes or something. Less than an hour later she left and didn’t take the paper plate.

Not long after that, Guinness sold the rights to the World Book of Records and the new owners simply erased the old records for curling and started over. So now my glorious past had been erased, and on several occasions I was accused of lying about it ever having happened.

It’s the perfect example of just how important that sort of accomplishment is.

Do you suppose the low key approach to acknowledging what we consider accomplishments has in some way helped further the stereotype image of Aboriginals being unable to fit into the mainstream? Have we been given the impression that First Nations people are not able to compete simply because culturally they don't make a big deal out of “winning.” Do we really believe that money is the way to settle past injustices?

Do we believe that our new soft shoe approach to assimilation is any different than John A MacDonald’s? Are we not just following in his footsteps but instead of isolating kids from their culture we are now using cash settlements to help them be just like us?

Perhaps we can look in that direction later.

As a footnote: Sean's Twin Otter flight crew included Mark Carey, who was/is a highly qualified Captain that shared the duties; he volunteered to take the risk. And Norm Wong was the mechanic who was to keep the thing in working order. Mr. Wong proved to be the right guy to be there at take-off from the South Pole. There is only one hydraulic system on the control systems of the Twin Otter. It controls the wing flap settings. Due to extreme cold, the system seized. Wong disconnected the hydraulics and did a temporary rigging of the flaps by doing some creative repairs with the control cables downstream of the hydraulics. All this while outside temps were at nearly minus 80C. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest Mr. Wong may have a bit of Chinese in his roots. As an outsider looking in, this seems to be a nice example of what happens when different tribes do get to work together outside the bias of politics, religion, media and finance and where trust is the cornerstone.

Note: Sean and his crew were recognized by the Governor General for bravery.

- Norm THE SERIES BY NORM ZIGARLICK – on

Justice and the Indigenous Peoples of Canada – WILL CONTINUE IN THE NEXT ISSUE ♣ www.dialogue.ca

The Topic of “Smart” Meters Smart People Opposing Stupid Technology

by Jim Ervin, North Burnaby BC It's now sort of a Mexican Standoff. BC Hydro won't make any changes to the Smartmeter program so long as they feel they have the law on their side. And the Smartmeter opponents (or those who have the power to oppose) won't let Hydro take our Analog Meters away.

But after three years so far, those of us who can do so are still here, resisting Hydro. The people who can't afford to pay the extra $32.40 a month to keep their Analog Meters have either been cut off or live under the constant threat of disconnection from electricity. And as of this writing, the fight has reached an important landmark.

We are presently awaiting the decision of a BC Supreme Court judge as to whether our anti-smartmeter case can proceed to a trial under the Freedom of Choice Provision of the Charter Of Rights And Freedoms. The judge has up to 12 months to render a decision, so we're informed.

I'd sure hate to be left in limbo that long But there's nothing we can do now except to be patient.

I was there in court on the first and last days of the pretrial hearing and so am able to form my own opinions on this case. The rubber really hit the road on Friday , Dec. 11/'15 with the two Hydro lawyers throwing everything they could think of against us. I'm not satisfied that our lawyer stood up for us as best he could have in our defense. And I mean that literally. When an opposition lawyer can stand there and spout garbage, I want my lawyer to be on his feet raising objections to the judge.

Not once did he do so and I was quite frustrated. At first I assumed, possibly along with other members of the class action, that such objections aren't permitted in BC Supreme Court. But later when I watched one of the Hydro lawyers jump to his feet to raise his own objection to an item of evidence which our lawyer wished to present, I was disgusted almost beyond my ability to sit there in silence. And the judge, so far as I could understand, (although the sound quality was poor) allowed the objection, even though the item of evidence which our lawyer wished to enter was a far more legitimate one than anything offered by the Hydro lawyers. Our lawyer could only state that he was just doing the same thing as the Hydro lawyer had done as he tried to enter a letter from one of our members, someone who had actually been there in court on Monday. This person now lives with a cancerous brain tumour which he believes started after the installation of his Smartmeter. I'm not sure how much evidence he was able to offer but it must have been conclusive for the Hydro lawyer to object so www.dialogue.ca

strongly. And yet their lawyer was able to stand there and read a couple of letters to the editor in support of Smartmeters. Those letters could have come from any shill hired to write letters for BC Hydro. In fact, a whole industry has grown up around writing such letters in support of or opposition to a person or cause. I hear that it pays quite well. To add insult to injury, the Hydro mouthpiece didn't even add names to his letters, as phony as those names may have been. You don't sit there sleeping if you're a good lawyer, so far as I'm concerned, while that is going on.

Then there were a couple of other cases which were entered as precedents by the Hydro lawyers to show that the charter didn't apply to our case. Of course I don't know the details of those cases. I only know that our lawyer didn't either object to them or call for a recess to consider this new evidence. I may not be a lawyer but I do know that you don't just sit there and allow the garbage to be piled upon you by the opposition. We had waited far too long for this hearing for that to happen. People had traveled from all over the province to attend it. Most of them could only afford to be there for the first day.

I can't forget, also, that the Hydro lawyer (the one who did all the talking) tried to say that we were just a bunch of mind changers who might later decide that we wanted a Smartmeter. That would be like saying that we all wanted our houses to burn down or we all wanted to contract a deadly disease like cancer or we all love having a radiation emitting, electronic information relaying device stuck on our homes. And that's information about which appliances we use and when we use them which Hydro can then sell to many companies. And of course we just love paying that extra $32.40 a month to keep our Analog Meters, don't we? We were then told by their lawyer that there was just as much radiation in the courthouse as we would face from a Smartmeter. Once again, he was making statements which he couldn't prove. I felt that our lawyer could have objected on the grounds of unsubstantiated evidence. Their lawyer also seemed to overlook the fact that when the meter is on your home, it's working and emitting microwave radiation, 24 hours a day. You have no choice to turn it off and Hydro's “Meter Off” option is no real option since they would have the final choice and the ability to turn it on again at a later date.

Their lawyer summed up his arguments by trying to say we were making a “lifestyle choice” by refusing a Smartmeter and so the Charter Of Rights and Freedoms …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

dialogue 25

Jim Ervin, Smart People Opposing Stupid Tech., contd.

wouldn't apply in our case. Hopefully Her Ladyship (the judge) can easily see through those lies just on the evidence which our lawyer did present. Who would choose to pay an extra $32.40 a month, extortion fee, to keep their Analog Meter? How many people actually had a choice in the matter in the first place as to whether or not they would be willing to accept the thing? In 96% of the cases of BC Hydro customers, there was no choice since the customer is either a renter, didn't post a No Trespassing sign to Hydro or was bullied into submission by threats of a power cutoff if they didn't take the damned thing.

There are many groups of people fighting the imposition of Smartmeters, all over North America and the world in fact. News coverage of this opposition has been minimal at best. For instance, on the first day of the pre-trial hearing, the organizer of the anti-smartmeter coalition, Sharon Noble was at the courthouse and was interviewed by a reporter from radio station CKNW in Vancouver. I was standing right beside her during the interview and know that I didn't hear a word of the interview on their later news broadcasts. Of course they could say that they do many interviews which aren't used. Or could it be that they wouldn't want to offend major advertisers like BC Hydro and Fortis? And where were our elected representatives on that day, Dec. 7th, not one of them showed up to support us. I'd invited my NDP MLA, Jane Shin and was informed by her that she couldn't make it but would “monitor” our progress, I believe was the term. In other words, if we can get this thing into court, she may raise an eyelid. If we can actually win the case in BC Supreme Court, she along with all other politicians and the media, would beat a path to the door of Sharon Noble. Meanwhile, the Green Party, another no show, has regularly solicited donations from me by email as well as a phone call, as of this writing.

They might have had a $100 donation from me if they'd sent Andrew Weaver to join us on that morning.

The longer I can wait before sending this article, the more the information is coming forward on the dangers

of Smartmeters. Just the other day a news item was heard on the radio of the danger of explosion from lithium batteries in something called hoverboards (battery powered wheeled boards). But Smartmeters were also mentioned as containing lithium batteries. Captain John Gorrick of the Vancouver Fire & Rescue Services says that “the products need to go through rigorous safety certification.” But does he know that this is exactly what is not happening? These batteries and the meters they power aren't being tested by the Canadian Standards Association or anyone else I've heard of.

In other places like Saskatchewan we hear that the government has changed its mind and removed Smart-meters. In Medicine Hat, Alta., they have either been pulled or re-evaluated. Closer to home, they never were allowed in New Westminster, B.C. Resistance is happening in many other cities and states in the U.S. In Texas a fired hydro employee proved in Supreme Court that Smartmeters can cause fires. And what about European countries like Germany which decided that they weren't worth it on a cost-benefit analysis? So far as I'm concerned, smart people are the ones who research this kind of information and much more which is out there. Even the World Health Organization has recognized these meters as a possible cause of Cancer. But you could say that I'm one of the lucky ones. I have some say in the matter as a home owner. If you didn't say no, that's implied consent. There were no mass protests.. Instead, general compliance was assured by Hydro's tactics. ‘Mass victimization’ is more like it, if you're sensitive to radiation or ever have a Smartmeter-related fire. In cases of such fires, the meter is removed by BC Hydro before the fire inspector ever has a chance to look at it. But give the people a chance to speak, as would happen if our present class action law suit against Hydro should be successful. Then you will have a far better idea of how many people want Smartmeters and the fierce opposition to them. Stay tuned for much more on this issue.

Jim Ervin, North Burnaby BC Email: jejaervin@telus.net

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‘Smart’ Meters Not Necessary to Modernize the Electric Grid, says a major U.S. utility [From S. McDowall] K. T. Weaver: On July 30, 2015, the

New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission issued an ‘order of notice’ commencing an investigation into grid modernization in New Hampshire. In response to that order, Eversource Energy (formerly known as Northeast Utilities) provided comments on September 17, 2015.

As stated by intelligentutility.com: “While smart meters 26 dialogue

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or AMI meters are often equated with grid modernization, Eversource does not see them as necessary.

In fact, the company says that it has found customers are not very interested in moderating energy use based on time-varying or dynamic rates.” The position put forward by Eversource Energy is reminiscent of the original intent of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which …/ www.dialogue.ca

contained language that required utility commissions and utilities to consider whether it is appropriate for util-

ities to offer customers smart metering for those who request it. […] LINK: http://tinyurl.com/TBYPsmnn ♣

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Robin Mathews Uncut

Canada. The Colonial Curse. Part Five.

The Global Reach

Robin Mathews, Vancouver BC (March 2016) Symptoms of the diseased world disintegrating (by design) proliferate confusingly. (The present, apparently endless War in the Middle East and its gigantic refugee crisis is just one, huge symptom. Other symptoms reach from the centre of “international” organizations down to the smallest municipalities.)

All the more reason to see the fundamental core where the symptoms originate. Then non-governmental populations can organize and act.

Where It All Centres The major force at work on the planet is the carefully planned and insanely programmed campaign to erase all organized alternatives to capitalist domination. The activity goes deeper than the mere erosion and subversion of democratic forms. In brief, it’s called, amorphously, ‘globalization’ to disguise its reality, which is the process of placing capital as the unchallenged governing power (a kind of super government) across the planet: the globalization of capital-as-government.

That core disease and its accompanying ‘symptoms’ are all there – and all dressed up. They have to be identified and challenged. That means disrupting – re-examining and openly rejecting - the cultural myths that presently disguise the reality of the status quo.

This Isn’t The First Time Since “States” (as imperialist entities) have always partnered with capitalist forces, there is no surprise that the U.S.A. is the core State (though not alone) in the move toward capitalist domination of the planet. Historically, we remember that in the few years after Columbus “discovered” America in 1492, the Pope of the time, Alexander Vl, gave South America to the crowns of Spain and Portugal. (That the Pope didn’t have the legitimacy to “give” that continent is relevant. Illegitimate, criminal assumptions and acts ALWAYS accompany the unilateral assertions of power by wealth and imperial government).

After the Restoration of the Monarchy in England in 1660, Charles II and James II created free-standing Capitalist Corporate Powers – the East Indian Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Company of Adventurers www.dialogue.ca

Original painting by Robin Mathews

Trading in Africa (largely a slave-trading operation), etc.

Such chartered companies were commonly given powers of government: criminal and civil jurisdiction, law-making, and even war-making powers in the foreign countries they entered. On what and whose legitimacy…?

Kings – like present imperialist governments – worked very closely with friends, favourites, and wealthy allies until the aims of government and those of private, profitseeking people and corporations became almost indistinguishable.

“War In Our Time” Largely buried in the sweet-smelling cultural myth of our day, the truth of the lunge into despotism by the U.S.A. following the Second World War has been carefully disguised as being the result of consultations, negotiations, agreements ... treaties. The intention, with the creation of the United Nations, that trusting countries would remove the scourge of war from the globe was genuine. The intention was simply pushed aside by the greater power of U.S. imperial ambition, its ‘ownership’ of the NATO military force, and the support it gained for military expansion from its matchlessly wealthy Capitalist Class.

The Bretton Woods Conference (1944) in New Hampshire to create a global financial system and to regulate trade was … in fact, a sham. The key division was based, essentially, on U.S. greed. English negotiator John Maynard Keynes – one of the great economists – was seeking a just international order in trade and monetary relations. He proposed methods of creating foreign trade equilibrium (which would have been a gigantic, liberating global initiative). …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

dialogue 27

Robin Mathews, The Global Reach, contd.

The New Criminal Order The U.S.A., intending to be top dog, economic master, major expansionist imperial power, and “policeman” of the world wanted something totally different. And got it – for a few very simple reasons. (1) Britain and much of Europe were bankrupt and, literally, battered to their knees. (2) Russia had been cratered and had suffered the loss of an estimated 22 million people. (3) John Maynard Keynes was dying. (4) No country had the significant power to challenge the U.S.A. (The Soviets presciently remarked that what was set up at Bretton Woods were “branches of Wall Street”.)

The fox was let loose among the chickens and has been ravaging the global farmyard ever since. What the world will have to see is that Bretton Woods set the basis for construction of illegitimate (if not criminal) international organizations, courts, commissions and banks … all of which, ultimately, contribute to the greater power of the U.S.A. and the greater wealth of its capitalists and its globally cooperating partners... at the bitter expense of most of the rest of the world.

Slick, and apparently ‘global’, the World Trade Organization is, for instance, in fact, an arm of U.S. policy.

Most recently WTO has backed a U.S. complaint that India dared to have local content requirements and to offer subsidies to encourage local manufacturers of solar energy equipment. The WTO’s strong-arm tactics, many claim, will seriously disrupt the absolutely essential moves to restorative climate action.

Devious manipulations of the Press, conventional Media, electoral systems, climate repair proposals, public infrastructure initiatives, tax policies, and enterprises in foreign places go on continuously. Rapacious looting of small countries like Honduras and Haiti, and the obvious sheltering of gigantic Tax Havens for the super-rich … are relayed as normal. The list goes on and on and on.

The pattern is set … almost without exception … by the U.S. Imperial giant pretending to be working collegially and cooperatively with other countries.

And Back Home Here In Canada…

Canada’s deep involvement is set out by Denis Rancourt in Dissident Voice: “The truth is: there is no Canada...”(1) Plainly, in the way he sets out Canada’s total colonization, Denis Rancourt is right, faultless. But … at the point where he stops action has to begin, new constructions have to be built – a whole new political vision has to be born in Canada ... to join with the shaping political movements and parties in Europe and elsewhere 28 dialogue

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beginning the renewal … that must and will come.

The world’s population (to save the planet and its populations) is beginning to move against the Public Relations Fraud brilliantly imposed by the Global Capitalist Class partnered with the gigantic U.S. Imperial Military Machine. And the world’s population will succeed. The overthrow of the insane, destructive partnership will be much easier to do than is supposed by some, for the old saying is still true: “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”.

Robin Mathews, Vancouver ♣ Note (1) Dissident Voice – a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice: http://dissidentvoice.org *****

EXTRACT FROM THE COLONIAL CURSE, PART FOUR…THE USA:

One of the most important histories written in the last twenty-five years by a Canadian (or anyone else) is surely The American Empire and the Fourth World (McGillQueen’s, 2003) by Anthony Hall. Reading it a second time, I marvelled that it has been allowed to pass almost unnoticed in Canada, as has its sequel Earth Into Property (McGill-Queen’s, 2010). The Independent of London described Earth Into Property as one of the most important books of the year (but not, apparently, in Canada).

Canadians might puzzle at the oversight, though they need not. For Hall’s work, by accident, brings into evidence (a) Canada’s frightened colonialism (b) our soldout media and fiercely colonial-minded CBC (c) and the almost total abdication by Canada’s professional historians of what should be a rich and natural focus for them: the North America that Canada inhabits.

When a Canadian writer brilliantly and critically engages the deepest and most disturbing aspects of that subject, a large number of historians in Canada fall into surly, condemning silence – not from a lack of intelligence but as a result of their bottomless colonial indoctrination.

The refusal to recognize Anthony Hall’s work especially describes the refusal of Canada’s public thinkers and commentators to face what is the overwhelming censorship faced by any truly critical expression revealing Canada’s profound colonial-mindedness, its slavish adoration of U.S. behaviour, and its refusal to weigh (as Anthony Hall insistently does weigh) the Canadian and global significance of a powerful country (the USA) founded on lies, built on lies, and conducting maniac foreign policy based on lies and the “exceptionalist” theory that whatever the USA does in the world is good – even while it pillages the world’s wealth, erases the records of great civilizations, and leaves millions of …/ www.dialogue.ca

innocent people dead or diseased and desperate – lost in a wasteland of (almost] meaningless carnage.

To begin … the very origin of the USA is lied about in a

massive falsification of history. – Robin Mathews ♣ See all parts of this series online at: www.dialogue2.ca/columnist-robin-mathews-uncut.html

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Comment from Patricia White Party politics don’t work. There are other ways. Party politics depends on dividing people, always. Always two sides instead of 75% consensus which is entirely possible in resolving any conflict when all of the people are included, which will never happen in party politics.

Read Exemplar of Liberty - Native America and the Evolution of Democracy, by Donald A Grinds, Jr. and Bruce E. Johansen. Read ‘Sisters in Spirit’ by Sally

Roesch Wagner. These are a good start to comprehending the Nations which existed for thousands of years in balance and harmony, without destroying the Air, Land and Water, before the forced false ‘democracy’ of political parties. There are solutions, but we have to think outside of the box. We are all very good at saying what is wrong. ♣

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“One Man’s Opinion”

It’s about time Canadians step forward en masse Ken Clark, Fergus ON Anybody at all familiar with my past writings, must understand that I believe Democracy, as originally intended, is the best form of government for the people. I also believe totally in the practice of freedom of thought, opinion and speech. However, as with all cherished things in life, these benefits did not come to us automatically; they had to be won in the beginning and protected over time. Indeed, millions of people have died over the centuries doing the latter. We must not allow their sacrifices to become meaningless. In addition we must never forget that DEMOCRACY like FREEDOM is not FREE. It must be continuously nourished and the people must constantly fulfil their role with the government in the partnership.

Democracy, as a form of government, is intended to be a working partnership between the politicians and the people of a country. Under this partnership arrangement all politicians elected by the people become servants to the people. The leader of the party receiving the majority of votes becomes the Prime Minister whose first duty is to select a Cabinet to form the government in power. The remaining elected politicians form the opposition parties to the party in power and together they are expected to provide good governance of the country. To me this appears to be an excellent recipe for Peace, Order and Good Government in Canada.

So what has gone wrong over the decades? Originally the Cabinet was intended to represent the elected MPs. The elected MPs were intended to represent the people.

This is no longer the case and has been so for many www.dialogue.ca

years. For the most part elected MPs vote the Party Line due to Party-Ministerial Solidarity. This is not democracy at work in my book. Is there an Act of Parliament to support this change? I very much doubt it! Did the government request the people’s permission to do so?

You’ve got to be kidding! Did the people vociferously show their outrage? No way, you could hear a pin drop in or out of the House of Commons! So who is to blame for this injustice? The Government, 51% responsible and the people, 49% responsible would be a fair assessment in my mind!

I was born, and have since lived, in Canada for almost 88 years. I love Canada and would not choose to live in any other country. Why then, am I so critical of the way the governing of this country has deteriorated over the past several decades? The reasons are many; the changes in Parliamentary procedure were not done in a democratic fashion, the people were not consulted or involved in any way, the deception was contagious involving both major parties Liberal and Conservatives alike and worst of all, politicians gradually became masters, as opposed to servants, of the people. The result, a 180 degree change from a democratic to an elected dictatorship style of government, with no accountability or responsibility whatsoever, to the people they were sworn to represent.

The following is a 2014 newspaper article by William Christian a retired University of Guelph political science professor, promoting a book entitled “Tragedy in The Commons” by Alison Loaf and Michael MacMillan, which I retained for reference. In all fairness this article does not apply equally to all MPs or MPPs, but it certainly describes to a ‘T’ the vast majority of them in my opinion. …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016 dialogue 29

Quote: from William Christian re Tragedy in The Commons - Former Members of Parliament speak out about Canada’s failing Democracy: “Do you know why your Member of Parliament (or MPP) decided to take the brave step of entering public life? Are you familiar with the orientation process when they first arrived at the House of Commons after their election? Are you aware of the mentoring process they received from veteran MPs? “The answers, according to the former MPs who speak out in Tragedy in the Commons, are that most were never quite certain why they took the fateful step. Once elected, there was almost no orientation or mentoring. They arrived in Parliament largely ignorant of how it functioned. Fortunately, their lack of training didn’t matter much.

“They dealt with constituents’ problems, but in the House of Commons itself, their job was to vote as the leadership told them, heckle those across the floor during question period, and serve on committees that rarely had much, if any, effect on legislation. They behaved themselves so the leader would sign their nomination papers in the next election and, in the hope of every MP, that they might someday be a cabinet minister. Independence was punished, not respected.

The idea that they were legislators who improved

legislation, and kept a keen eye on the nation’s finances, was not part of their understanding of their job. They accepted the fact, occasionally with regret or protest, that the prime minister had a stranglehold over everything important or unimportant. Tragedy in the Commons is disturbing and, in places, shocking.

“Anyone interested in Canadian politics should read it.” (William Christian, 2014) [End of Quote] The last sentence in the above quote is critical because far too many Canadians are not at all sufficiently interested in Canadian politics. Pity! In addition, too many Canadians, due to their lack of political knowledge, tend to vote against politicians rather than for politicians. This is not the road to forming an intelligent, strong, and fair democratic government.

Sadly, time is marching on. If Canadians soon do not reverse their disinterest towards Canadian politics, it will be too late. The country will wake up one morning with a dictatorial style of government so firmly entrenched, nothing less than a full-scale revolution would be able to restore government to its previous democratic style. Is this your hope for Canada; it sure as hell is not mine. Remember, he who is silent, consents. Do you really want to help destroy Canada?

Ken Clark, Fergus ON ♣

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“Have Computer Will Write”~ Jeremy Arney

Time to support home-grown and local initiatives It is up to us to support local communities, bartering, co-ops, credit unions…

by Jeremy Arney, Victoria BC There are communities all over that already have their own barter system or money, Fernwood for instance in the Greater Victoria area. Trouble is that it is not being expanded and that is our fault. If we do not want to be tied by banks and their monstrous profits, then we need to find another medium of exchange.

Perhaps the next best thing other than simple barter and trade within our communities would be to avoid the big banks altogether and use the co-ops and credit unions.

It is up to us because the governments will not follow through on this, I even saw a Government of Canada vehicle today which was a Nissan Altima, and I wonder if it was even made in Canada.

Home-grown support, home-grown industries, home30 dialogue

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grown foods, all are in short supply because we do not insist that our suppliers provide us with these homegrown products. Delta is now inundated with huge – and I mean huge – greenhouses, capable of supplying all the foods BC needs, and yet we buy tomatoes from Mexico, potatoes from Idaho and wine from California (actually in my case Portugal as I have yet to find a good local rosé).

We have given away our manufacturing, design and managerial capabilities (see Robin Mathews latest composition) and then we wonder why we are in debt.

When will we decide to support only local suppliers and help them to grow and employ local people?

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

www.dialogue.ca

“Observations from Lithuania”

Ken Slade, Vilnius

Need New Net News Now ?

by KR Slade

Oral Tradition of News Since the beginning of the human era, people have obtained their news from word-of-mouth. In fact, until about only Ken Slade 600 years ago, the ‘oral tradition’ was the only source of news -- except for listening to the reading of some proclamation: in church, in the public square by the monarch’s representative, or in the streets by the local Town Crier.

By the post mid-20th century, there was the advent of the radio ‘talk-show’. My Mother was an avid, and constant, listener; I found the sound of that ‘tripe’ to be absolutely intolerable -- I could not bear being in the same room when a radio was tuned to any ‘talk show’. Sometimes, she would ‘call-in’; my reaction was absolute horror. I came to understand the radio-station’s marketing concept of attracting listeners … then, there were no names for the followers; in retrospect, the name would be: ‘talk-show troll’ -similar to the modern ‘Internet troll’. The effect of radio talk-shows is still: to confuse the news!!

In the summer of 2015, there were reports that Pope Francis did not watch TV, use the Internet, or read any newspapers / magazines. However, he was interested in some football news, and obtained all such news from one of his Swiss Guards. I was inspired, upon hearing this Papal news: to stop having the TV on all-day -- always tuned to CNN or BBC news -- while I read Internet news, and researched and wrote using my computer. And, I had the stupid habit, after work, and being in bed, of falling-asleep to inane TV programs; with TV blue-light disturbing my sleep. Moreover, for three prior years in my same flat, I had constantly re-occurring problems with my cable-TV provider; service technicians had visited ~30 times; they still were unable to provide a constant and reliable connection.

Because my cable service is included in the cost of the lease of my flat, I had tentatively decided that I ought to move to another flat, so as to be able to get a working cable-TV service. The Papal news-fact changed my mind about needing TV; I disconnected my TV; the following month I signed a two-year renewal of my lease. Thank-you Francis, for your news!

Later that summer, I was sitting with a university-student friend at a sidewalk café, and he answered his mobile telephone. I passed the time people-watching. When my friend finally finished his long telephone-conversation, I said, “Is it my imagination, or are there more transgender people now in Vilnius?” He replied, “They’ve always been here; where have you been?” Thereafter, I noticed that there www.dialogue2.ca

were many Internet news stories about transgender. I hadn’t noticed, because it was a topic that had no interest for me. Given that the subject was now a topic ‘au courant’, I began to read such stories; I’ll probably continue reading such news, especially since I still do not understand the concept. Knowing of this news changed my adversity to null.

That 2015 summer passed. At a post-Xmas meeting with a friend, for a pizza, I learned more about the last summer. It was news that was from barely 50 feet from where I live.

My friend told me of a woman who had been murdered, in the summer of 2015; the woman had bought a flat in the block next to where I live; she had hired two workers to do renovations; the workers were drug-addicts; the workers killed her, in her flat. [orally-transmitted news!] ***

Written Tradition of News The first writings were originals, and thereafter copies made by scribes. This period gave-rise to the still-current belief: “If it is written, then it is true”.

When the European printing press was invented, the first book was The Bible, followed by catechisms, prayer books, song-books, and other religious books; all originally in Latin, later (i.e., the Reformation) in the vernacular of local language(s). The first written news was in the form of ‘tracts’, leaflets, pamphlets … politics was the favourite subject, especially with cartoons -- often vicarious, frequently vulgar, sometimes obscene. In this early time of printing, the success of print obviously was limited to people who were able to read. The educated / wealthy classes collected books; a personal library was an element of high status.

By the mid-1700’s, newspapers (originally one page) began. My favourite newspaper publisher of this era is Benjamin Franklin. He established his fortune, and political power, by founding one of the world’s first ‘conglomerates’ (albeit by jointly-owned individual enterprises), in the important cities of the American colonies, with his printing of commercial and political advertising, newspapers, and his famous almanacs.

By the end of the 1700’s and the beginning of the 1800’s, English was ‘standardised’ with the printing of dictionaries [i.e., by the educated American professor Noah Webster and by the promoters of the uneducated British ‘Dr.’ Samuel Johnson], and there developed a distinctive ‘American English’ and ‘British English’ … both maintaining a number of local dialects.

In the last two decades, the style / standards / presentations of written news have changed dramatically. …/ VOL. 28 NO. 3, SPRING 2015

dialogue 31

[See ‘Conclusions’, at the end of this text – in the next issue.] ***

Radio, Cinema Newsreels, and Television In the 1950’s, in Rhode Island (USA), when I was only several years old, I remember visiting my Mother’s parents.

Talking was not allowed when the adults were listening to the radio news.

In those times, my Father’s Mother liked to have my Father present when she was listening to the weekly one-hour broadcast from Boston of the ‘News from Lithuania’ (in Lithuanian language). She had left Lithuania in 1914, age 17; she had never attended one day of school in her life; she could not read or write. My Father, born in the US, had attended primary school in Lithuanian language, and until grade 10 attended English-language Catholic school. Father quit school the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked; he joined the US Marines. Grandmother needed my Father to help her listen to the news in Lithuanian, because she could not fully understand what was being said in Lithuanian.

Lithuanian became ‘standardised’ only in the 1920’s; even the names of the days of the week had completely changed from the various regional words.

When WWII ended, my Father returned to Providence, RI. Still in his uniform, he had a couple of hours to spend before he would be able to find where his Mother had moved.

My Mother (whom he had not yet met) had decided to take the day-off from work in the little jewellery factory that had transformed to make military insignia. Later, she would tell that she had been bored for four years: “all the nice boys had gone off to war”.

On this day, they each went to a downtown cinema, for a double-feature movie, but especially for the latest newsreels about the end of the war. It was a cinema with 3,000 seats; my Mother was the only one there, and sitting in the exact centre. Father arrived, and said to her, “Excuse me, may I sit here?” She said, “Sit anywhere you like; welcome home.” Then, before he could sit beside her, she placed her coat in that seat. During the newsreel, he tried to ask her if she would like to go for a coffee. She said, “Please be quiet; I’m watching the news.” It was Valentine’s Day. However, coffee would have to wait until after the news. If both of my parents had not wanted to see the newsreels on that day, at that time, in that place: I would not be writing this, because I would not be here.

By the time I was about 11 years old, we had television, with three channels, although only two were clear. And, we were one of the few who had a TV, which was a huge 24inch screen, quite unlike anyone else’s; and the only house in the neighbourhood with an antenna on the roof. My parents bought this set-up, which was the price of a new car, to watch me the first time that I performed on TV. If I had finished my school-homework, and had practiced 32 dialogue

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my music for two hours, and done my household chores, I could watch any program that I wanted . . . except, when my Father was home, not my favourite cartoon-show: ‘The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show’ (with the supporting-characters of the Russian-like spies: Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale); Father said, “That moose-and-squirrel show is definitely commy-nist [sic]” . . . and, except when it was that time for 30 minutes of national news / sports / weather; then, there was no talking allowed. There were three networks (i.e., ABC, CBS, NBC) that provided news; only a couple of years later, there was also a 30-minute presentation of local news / sports / weather, by local TV broadcasters. This meant that there was an entire hour when we watched ‘the boring news’; and “no talking during the news!” Therefore, “you can watch any program you want” actually meant: about 1 to 2 hours weekdays; Saturdays, 3 hours mornings and 2 hours in the evening; Sundays, maybe 3 hours (after family visits). Such time limitations for TV-watching is probably exactly correct for children . . . and, being forcedto-watch TV news does not (yet) qualify as ‘child abuse.’

In 1980, there was ‘CNN’ (i.e., Cable News Network), a new concept: 24-hour news. At first, everyone laughed at the idea: “how could there be enough news for 24 hours of only news?”

It does not seem so long ago, when I was in Quebec (city), in 2001, that on TV, the live-news showed the World Trade Towers falling.

In the last few years, the TV ‘news program’ has become the ‘news show’; yes, this is the new way that TV refers to its news. TV news now has the nattily-attired, dancing weather-announcers -- prancing about, waiving their arms; I want only to see about the weather, not an audition for wanna-be-models. ***

Most-Popular Internet News Providers Internet service in homes became generally-available only by the mid-to-late 1990’s. Today, the most-popular providers include: ● www.yahoo.com ‘Yahoo’ produces more news articles than any other website / publication. A Yahoo account is not necessary to view their news. The news stories are: what is the most-popular, and moreover what is ‘trending’ (including key words). There is no distinction as to any quality in journalism / writing, or the source. Yahoo news is ‘populist’ / ‘populism’ -- what Yahoo computer-algorithms determine as to what might get your attention . . . the more clicks you make, the more money Yahoo makes . . . ● www.g-mail.com If you have a ‘g-mail’ account, you are able to access g-mail news, with some further, albeit limited, ability to choose / select some types of news (and some sources) that you prefer. ***

…/

www.dialogue.ca

Some of the most-popular direct-access news-sites: ● www.cnn.com ‘CNN’ (Cable New Network) news is the best, in terms of volume of articles, regarding coverage of news of the USA. CNN may be one of the few newssites with many stories that are written by journalists who are actually ‘in the field’ -- not sitting at an office desk, or at their home-office -- and, who are not required to produce 3 to 4 articles per hour, without any actual interviewing. ● www.foxnews.com ‘Fox News’ has one of the greatest readerships of Internet News; generally considered as ‘the most-powerful conservative media company in the USA’; possibly ‘ultra-conservative’. I avoid any/all news from Fox; I don’t discriminate against ‘conservative’ . . . some of my most-cherished ideals are conservative . . . however, I consider Fox to be beyond-the-pale of normal journalism, approaching ‘reactionary’, and in the category of ‘propaganda’. Murdoch can kiss my mouse!! ● www.msn.com , www.abc.com , www.nbc.com , www.cbs.com are sites that still do have a ‘following’; I never go to any of these sites -- I think that they are all long-past their ‘expiration date’! ● Social-media sites offer news; there is a high following to such sources, especially by teenagers and others who are ‘lonely’; the news provided is to interest their clientele, to click on the news, so that the social-media site can make more money from the site’s advertising. I do not use socialmedia. If I ever get lonely, I go to a café for a coffee-and, and chat with the locals, and learn some news. ● www.bbc.com (UK) BBC is a not-for-profit organization; funded by an annual tax (called a ‘license’; ~US$208, 186 euro; discounted for people who are blind) on every UK household with a TV set, and controlled by the UK government. The BBC’s own recent internal report uses the terms: “deeply differential to certain interests / viewpoints”; “Keep your mouth shut, he is a VIP”. Furthermore, at the BBC, there is apparently some ‘social purpose/function’: in hiring uneducated, unqualified, disadvantaged, semi-literate individuals, off-the-street (?), to function as ‘journalists’, in the expectation that eventually such individuals may become a real journalist (with BBC ‘College of Journalism’) … the best site for ‘anything royal’ (apparently including sexual attacks upon Emperor Penguins by seals!!) … ‘British English’ (in all of its varieties -- including all 50+ regional dialects from Britain, plus any/all English-language dialects from anywhere in the Commonwealth; however, USA English is not allowed) … promotes anything/everything ‘British’, notwithstanding no existing agreement of what is actually British … Interestingly, the BBC constantly refers to London as the largest (i.e., population) city in Europe; Moscow is in Europe, and is 50% larger than London … NOTE: the BBC may be www.dialogue2.ca

habit-forming … I’ve been addicted for 25+ years (with no foreseeable available cure; which time period may be related to the fact that my medical doctors during such time have all been British; Oh!) … I think that BBC news is: total propaganda -- but, ‘in such a good and pleasant way’; which is what all addicted people would say about their ‘habit’ … ● www.newyorktimes.com The ‘NYT’, in recent decades, has always been considered to be ‘liberal’; I don’t know why, other than the fact that they have usually supported US Democratic Party candidates. Formerly, one of the great newspapers of the world: their motto was: “All the news that’s fit to print” (although I always wondered about the other news -- the news that’s not fit to print!).

Today, the NYT is much diminished from what it used to be; the newspaper is infamous in the last decade for reducing their overall-costs by reducing the costs of their news (fire the reporters!!); they think that Internet readers should pay to read the NYT, including to read the advertisements that the newspaper has been paid to advertise because the newspaper has (had) many readers. If you register, you can read 10 free articles per month, but you will receive their incessant spam requests to subscribe; you will receive their daily listing of their articles (which list is good to know, to determine what is important news -- to find elsewhere!), and you will receive their ‘news alerts’ about developing stories. Interesting articles, with great photos, of decadent NYC uber-wealthy residences designs showing some of the best-available documentation of poor taste … ● www.washingtonpost.com (from Washington, DC) ‘The Washington Post’ is one of the world’s great newspapers; excellent journalism; highest-quality English-language … most-known for it’s coverage of ‘the Nixon Watergate Affaire’. Recently (2015), under new ownership ...

Special focus on Washington, D.C. ... with great photos of for-sale residences for lobbyists, international powerbrokers, ambassadors / embassies, socialites, etc.; see how the world’s top-one-percent live! If you register, you can read 10 free articles per month. ● www.theguardian.com ‘The Guardian’ (from U.K.) is currently one of the world’s great newspapers . . . excellent coverage of UK and Europe; some great coverage of world events, including some investigative reporting. Excellent journalism; excellent English-language -- complete absence of ‘Briticisms’ -- these writers would never get a job with the BBC! No registration / no subscription required.

Probably the most under-rated newspaper in the world …

TO BE CONCLUDED IN THE SUMMER ISSUE: Local News

Services, Business News Services, ‘Micro’ – Specialized – News Services, Russia News Services, and Smart Phones… All Rights Reserved: 2015 KR Slade.

Email: kenmunications@gmail.com ♣ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SRING 2016

dialogue 33

Corporate Canada and Their Media Demand Referendum on Voting Reform But how can we have a fair Referendum when The Corporations own The Media – and will lie about everything to get what they want?

Jack Etkin, Victoria BC The Bridge News Service (Jan. 1, 2016) Breaking News: Canada's Corporate Media suddenly care about democracy. And because they love democracy, our corporate TV stations, Radio stations and Newspapers are demanding we have a referendum on any change to our voting system.

This is the same media that never mentioned the word democracy as Stephen Harper attacked us and our nation for years. That's because Stephen Harper was doing what Big Business wanted and they didn't want any 'democracy' getting in the way.

But now we have something the corporations DON'T want ... a chance for a better and more democratic Voting System. So NOW it's time for democracy and a referendum. Right! Please don't believe their lies. Corporations hate Democracy; they care only about power and profit. If we are stupid enough to believe them, then nothing will get better.

Proportional voting systems give people the governments they actually voted for, which is important. And a better voting system can lead to positive changes. PR Europe will not sign the 'free trade' deals the corporations want, and they have less poverty and homelessness. Many PR democracies don't allow Genetically Contaminated foods into their countries. PR voting systems create better health care systems than Canada now has. This is because PR systems are more democratic, so

PR countries are more what people want, and less what corporations want.

Personally, I like Referendums. I think Canadians should vote on a lot of important issues. But how can a nation have a fair referendum when virtually every TV Station, Radio Station, and Newspaper in the country and a lot of the biggest websites – are owned by Corporations that don't want more democracy.

Is the Corporate Media demanding a Referendum on the TPP? How about a referendum on raising corporate taxes, or getting rid of genetically contaminated foods?

Is there anything in the media about democracy on those issues? No. And why do you think that is...

One way to beat the corporations is to get a more democratic voting system in Canada, and right now we may have a chance. So don't believe what the media tells you. Inform yourself about Voting Reform and different voting systems. We owe it to ourselves, and our country, and the future.

Questions about voting systems? Please email me, I'll try to find answers.

Jack Etkin: jetkin@hotmail.com (or be added to my list)

From The Bridge News Service ... Independent Media from Canada. LINK: www.thebridgenewsservice.com www.thebridgenewsservice.com/links Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebridgenewsservicecanada ♣

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Ed Goertzen, Oshawa ON

"Grist for the Mill"

The Case for a Basic Income While politicians are beating their gums over the current stagflation and 7-12 percent unemployment numbers, humanities’ successes and the accompanying problems they brought are going unnoticed.

The First Industrial Revolution (1840– Ed Goertzen 1870) was about water and steam power, machine tools factories and textile manufacturing and the urbanization of workers, separating them from the land.

The Second Revolution was the technological and took 34 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

place at the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th. It brought in electricity, the production line, railroads and gas, water and sewer lines to serve the urbanized workers.

The Third Revolution, now drawing to a close, brought humanity computers, cybernetics, robotics, 3D print manufacturing and a massive shift from production of needs to the production of wants and at the same time a move of manufacturing workers to the service industries.

We now seem to be on the cusp of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the rewards and challenges it will bring.

With the problems of extraction of natural resources …/ www.dialogue.ca

Ed Goertzen, The Case for a Basic Income, contd.

and the manufacturing of needs solved and on the decline, I expect, with others, that there will be an ‘unemployment’ rate of near 30 percent and a need for a 'distribution of needs' strategy.

At the same time a massive increase in the ‘social worker’ sector to ‘police’ the massive numbers of recipients will be needed.

One of the basic objectives of any ruler is to 'settle the people.’ That settlement cannot take place if the people are not fed, housed, and clothed.

However, there is a solution on the horizon.

Much attention has been paid to the problem of poverty, which has and will remain unsolved. The reason it has remained unsolved is that poverty is relative and cannot be solved. If the word is changed to privation, the insufficiency of food, shelter and clothing, it becomes definable and therefore solvable.

It is well known that the welfare systems in place are to address the problems introduced when capitalism emancipated slaves from slavery to wage slavery and manipulated workers by managing wages.

The solution being studied and on the verge of implementation in many countries is the provision of a Basic Income.

That idea is as old as the writings of the revolutionary Tom Paine (1737–1809). Canada was a leader when it experimented by testing the idea in Dauphin Manitoba in 1974 - 1979. More youth finished high school, teen pregnancies were reduced, hospital admissions were lowered, especially for mental health. It became a ‘town without poverty.”

Leaders in all political parties support the idea and it is part of the Green party Platform Massive material on the subject is available with the Google Search Engine. Studies have proven that more than $40 billions in annual budgetary savings could be realised.

On December 28, 2015, the Toronto Star published an item by Robin V. Sears, a principal at Earnscliffe and a Broadbent Institute leadership fellow. The heading was “Three big tests for the new Prime Minister.” The three items were — “real carbon rollback, genuine democratic reform, and transformation in the lives of Canada's aboriginal citizens.”

A fourth needs to be added and substantiation made for it to be included. That fourth, to address the problems of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is the implementation of a Basic Income.

– Ed Goertzen ♣ Sent as a Letter to the Editor of the Toronto Star, 2016-02-08

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A realistic plan to narrow the income gap Larry Kazdan, Vancouver BC An estimated 2/3 of poverty could be eliminated simply by offering jobs,(1) even at a minimum livable wage, to those willing to work. Yet the creation of jobs is conspicuously missing from the seven elements of the plan proposed by the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

If a major war began tomorrow, contracts for armaments would be tendered immediately and all the unemployed would be offered jobs in the military. The money to do so would be found, just as it was when WWII followed the Great Depression. More recently, the government had no difficulty offering $200 billion(2) under the Extraordinary Financing Framework to support big financial institutions after the 2008 crash.

Direct job creation could include provisions for care of the elderly and disabled, education and activity for young people, arts and cultural performances and projects, and initiatives for environmental clean-up and protection. Reversing income inequality in Canada by creating jobs is simply a matter of political will, and the belief that we must wait 35 years to do so is obstructionist. www.dialogue.ca

From lkazdan@gmail.com

Footnotes: (1) Offering Jobs L. Randall Wray, Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Research Director with the Center for Full Employment and Price Stability and Senior Research Scholar at The Levy Economics Institute: LINK: www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/04/mmt-policy.html Well it’s very easy to reduce the inequality that results from low income, from poverty, from low wages; all you have to do is offer jobs. Minsky did a calculation [in] 1974 and Professor Kelton and I did one around 2000. We showed that if you just give a job to anyone who wants to work you will eliminate two thirds of all poverty, even if you pay only the minimum wage. We would like to see the job pay more than that, but even at a minimum wage you eliminate twothirds of all poverty. So most poverty is due to joblessness.

People who cannot get jobs or maybe they get jobs that last a few months and then they are unemployed again.

We need permanent jobs that pay a decent wage and you’ll eliminate most poverty. You’ll still need some kinds of antipoverty programs but the jobs are the best anti-poverty programs there are, then you need something else to fill the gaps. …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

dialogue 35

More on Job Guarantee: http://mmtincanada.jimdo.com/policy-issues/job-guarantee/ (2) $200 billion Extraordinary Financing LINK: www.fin.gc.ca/pub/report-rapport/2011-7/ceap-paec2f-eng.asp [Dept. of Finance, Canada]

“Improving Access to Financing and Strengthening Canada’s Financial System”: To soften the impact of the crisis, the first phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan included measures to provide up to $200 billion to support lending to Canadian households and businesses through the Extraordinary Financing Framework. ♣

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“That’s My Take On It”

From John Shadbolt, Acton ON

Dig deeper The older I get, the more I tend to dig into things that affect my life. It’s a habit I do not regret, because I learn so much. I learn how pretty well everything the government says is ‘good’ is pretty well bound to be bad. It’s a learning thing, and everyone needs to do it.

I have been told for years that ‘you must vote in elections to be represented in parliament.’ Dig deeper, you find that the people you pay and elect are not required, by law not to represent you. They do, in fact represent the Leader of their party to you. Big difference.

Fluoride is great for you, so I have been told for years.

Dig deeper, it is a waste product that is highly dangerous, toxic and makes people sick even in small doses.

I was told ‘we bombed Libya for the good of its people.’

Dig deeper, it has had devastating results, and we should be ashamed.

I was told that the only way to get money was to borrow it, or work for it. Dig deeper, money is created out of thin air, and we are not allowed to even use the Bank of Canada to create money, because it would cause inflation. NOT using the Bank of Canada costs Canadians

about $60 billion yearly, and we still get inflation. And we all pay for something that keeps us all in debt to the bankers, for which there is no logical or honest explanation.

‘There is no money to fund xxx gov’t program.’ How often do you hear that? Dig Deeper, Have you ever heard of not having the money to fight, bomb and get into a war? Or purchase armaments? If you have, let me know.

‘We have the best healthcare in the world.’ Dig Deeper, you will find that we have no homoeopathic hospitals, we downplay natural cures because we are told the prescribed drugs are the only ones that work. We are not told that natural cures do work; but they do! And I can prove it.

We are told that guns are bad for your health. Dig Deeper, and look at Switzerland where everyone owns guns, but almost no crimes are committed with them.

Guns used properly are a joy for their owners The list goes on and on. I could pretty well make a full time job doing this, digging deeper. But am not certain that I always like the results.

John Shadbolt is Vice-President of CAP, http://actionparty.ca/canadian-action-party/ The only party standing politics on its head. Email: jshadbolt@primus.ca ♣

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Site C dam in the Peace River Valley, BC Gunther Ostermann, Kelowna BC, gco@shaw.ca

Letter to Grand Chief Stewart Phillip,

With my simple letter in the Woodstock Sentinel Review(1) the site C dam could have been stopped a long time ago.

It would not even have been contemplated, if David Suzuki would have been receptive to new ideas in 1989.(2) You can draw your own conclusion about Suzuki. So sad for all of us.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is equally not receptive to new ideas. Correction, it’s not new, it originated with his dad. I’ve mailed the following to Justin Trudeau several times, and to all MPs last November. And, to all MPs and MLAs in 2013.

36 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

Like him or not, but the late Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau expressed some very good ideas in his book, Lifting the Shadow of War. Quote: “The human community is a complex organism linked again and again within itself and as well with the biosphere upon which it is totally dependent for life. This interdependence demands of us two functions: first, the maintenance of an equilibrium among all our activities, whatever their nature; second, an equitable distribution, worldwide, of resources and opportunities. The proper discharge of those functions calls for more than TINKERING with the present system. The process required must be global in scope and universal in application. …/ www.dialogue2.ca

In their magnitude, if not in their concept, they must be new. Of their need, none can doubt.(3) We know in our hearts what has to be done if we have not yet found in our minds the way it will be done. Let us begin to search, and let us do so with boldness and with excitement, not with hesitancy and uncertainty. Co-operation is no longer simply advantageous; in order to survive it is an absolute necessity.” End Quote.

I’ve said this many times: Only with honesty, truth and justice can there be a future for our species, and I don’t see any of it, anywhere I go. Our world is like a sand

clock – but it cannot be turned around.

- Gunther Ostermann References (Links to published letters

by Gunther Ostermann: (1) Energy that is not needed-does not have to be produced . LINK: http://tinyurl.com/GO3279 (2) Suzuki’s confession ... http://tinyurl.com/GO-dsbd (3) Ted Turner --If we don’t make intelligent choices-we don’t deserve to live. http://tinyurl.com/GO-dec2010

Letter to Christy Clark : http://tinyurl.com/GO-25241 Man’s impact on Pale Blue Dot is Undeniable: LINK: http://tinyurl.com/GO-151201

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“Prévoyance”

Erik Andersen

Observations from Erik Andersen, Gabriola Island BC <twolabradors@shaw.ca> Of course having a sovereign currency, where the govWhy TPP would be ernment is the only source of new issue (much as some disastrous for Canfolks are seeking for Switzerland right now) is not what those who lust after maximum control over people on ada’s innovators the planet want. Time will tell. Cheers. Erik Jim Balsillie, former head of Re-

search in Motion (RIM), gave a fantastic interview (Feb. 4th) on CBC’s “The Current" and on the topic of the TPP. It is an interview everyone should hear to know another of the many reasons why we are opposed to the TPP or if not why we should be.

From one of the TPP’s most vocal critics Jim Balsillie on why the agreement would be disastrous for Canada's innovators. Jim Balsillie warns that future and present innovation in Canada will wither under the weight of the just-signed Trans Pacific Partnership. The former coCEO of Research in Motion speaks out against a deal he says will see Canadians generating prosperity for others.

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti, Guest: Jim Balsillie Listen: (18:38): http://tinyurl.com/CBC-current-feb4 ; The Current, Feb. 4, 2016, full episode transcript www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-february-42016-1.3433226/feb-4-2016-episode-transcript1.3434248

Reinventing Banking: from Russia to Iceland to Ecuador Re article by Ellen Brown

Ellen Brown article at Counterpunch, LINK: http://tinyurl.com/EB-rbfrie

ERIK: What Ellen writes is about an evolving global rebellion to the banking establishment’s preferred system of money creation. Where the interesting development for Canadians will occur is if the government, the new one, continues to fight COMER in court.

I have yet to ask our friends in Sweden if rumours are true that they are being forced into being a cashless society. www.dialogue.ca

Many important articles: http://EllenBrown.com ; http://PublicBankingInstitute.org

Update re COMER – Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform

ERIK: There seems no shame in legal circles. Does anyone now not appreciate how desperately we need to escape the coils of the banking cartel in Canada. Banks are like tape worms, they will feed on the host until they kill it, even when it means certain death to the parasite.

Canada had and may still have a government of the banking industry, not of and for the population. The only demonstration for me of who the government is accountable to, is when and if the government stops its opposition to the use of the Bank of Canada as a direct funder of infrastructure projects, done as before, with the BoC issuing non-transferable long-term bonds.

SEE COMER REPORT AT LINK: www.comer.org/content/FederalCourt_8Feb2016.htm

[QUOTE] "In the latest decision of February 8, 2016,

Justice Russell, in law, inexplicably reversed himself from the earlier decision. In his earlier decision he had refused to strike large portions of the claim, most notably the facts going to the declaratory relief sought as to the Bank of Canada and the constitutional issues.

He further blatantly erred in deciding that Declaratory relief cannot be sought as stand-alone relief, in the absence of a cause of action, which is contrary to Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence which was cited and read to the Court." ♣ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

dialogue 37

Debt as an instrument of Control, Coercion and War. Derek Skinner, Victoria BC I am still interested in the manipulation of money as a means of control:

The origin of debt lies probably in the first innocent gesture of goodwill, help and giving. The recipient may have felt some impulse to return the gesture with Thanks or a reciprocal gift and a custom arose in which giving required giving something back.

The advent of money sharpened the awareness of the importance of contracts and by 1700BC the Code of Hammurabi provided definitions and a legal basis for contracts and money lending.

The difference between interest charged as a hedge against risk and usury as interest charged without risk was understood and usurers were reviled.

By the time of Jesus, moneylenders had worked out the concept of the “fractional reserve” by which they could make multiple loans as Notes based on a single deposited “reserve” of valuables and thus collect multiple values of interest. This unscrupulous scam by moneylenders, otherwise known as “creating money out of thin air,” continues to this day.

An alternative way to use money for gain was worked out in the 14th century AD in Italy, whereby an authority such as a city or State would offer Bonds for sale at various values and pay an annual interest charge. Interest rates would vary depending on the credit worthiness of the issuer of the Bond. Normally you would think that the issuer would control the amount of debt and charges payable, but some States had to borrow money for wars or other reasons and some got carried away with this easy way to obtain money while taxes could be levied to pay the interest charges and the Principal need never be paid off.

Unfortunately, at some point the Bond holders realised that they could dictate policy to the State that was bound to them by debt – to ensure that extra taxes would be levied or services cut or privatised in order to guarantee payment of interest charges on these “sovereign debts” or to enable vulture funds to buy resources at give-away prices.

In parallel with the above, the concept of corporations and share-holdings was developed in the Netherlands in order to provide the vastly enlarged sums of capital needed to explore and take advantage of the colonisation of the world outside Europe.

The question then arose as to where would this money come from? Originally money was created by the 38 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

Crown or religious entities and backed by their Treasuries. This was supplemented in a small scale by moneylenders personal coin and Notes, but the sums now required were so large that the bankers had to form corporations themselves and issue Notes backed by their larger reserves. The ‘fraction’ – in fractional reserve – is 10 for recognised ‘good practise’ but it has been known to increase to 20 and even 50 or more with consequent multiple profits to the bankers. Under this practise, money is only created in response to a demand by the borrower with consequent payment of interest on whatever unit of currency is issued by the bankers.

The controversy over who should have the privilege of issuing the National money supply has raged for centuries. Governments think they should be in control of money because this enables the enactment or restriction of policies which are their domain. Bankers argue that governments cannot be trusted and bankers are better informed in the practise of money management.

Between 1700 and 1900 many thousands of Savings and Loans Banks were created and bankrupted in the United States through improper management.

Currently in Canada, the total money supply in circulation is between $1.5 and $2 trillion dollars. Of that total, the Federal Government issues about 3% virtually interest free and private Banks issue 97% and charge compound interest on every $,£,€ or peso of Principal and unpaid compounded interest.

The bankers have formed a cartel, the Bank for International Settlements, (BIS), which is owned by every National Bank in the world with the exception of China, Canada, Myanmar, The Channel Islands and possibly one or two others. Even the Bank of Canada, while ostensibly owned by the Canadian Government on behalf of the people of Canada complies with the edicts of the BIS. Many National governments have extended their sovereign debt beyond manageable limits and are subject to direct pressure from the BIS and its henchmen. Corporations are directly controlled by the Banks which may or may not extend their viability as a credit risk.

Consequently it can be seen that banks can control corporations and governments and ultimately the people through Debt.

Questions: Do you think the Bankers have an agenda?

If so, What is it? Who controls the Bankers?

Derek Skinner, 16th December 2015 ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Money System – developments in the UK-EU Herb Wiseman, COMER, Peterborough ON Thought that this update from England – of monetary policy initiatives in the UK and Europe – might be of interest. Not a peep from our media nor our politicians during the recent election (Dave Nickle excepted) about this British initiative on Sovereign Money Creation (link below), nor the COMER lawsuit, nor the Swiss referendum on the topic. Take note of the item about Bailins mentioned in the comments section of recent posts.

(Quantitative easing), a lot of column inch has been dedicated to innovative monetary policy this year.

Roundtable on Sovereign Money in the Eurozone: In July (2015) we hosted a roundtable with 18 economists. Our star researcher, Frank Van Lerven, presented his paper ‘Sovereign Money for the Eurozone,’ which was followed by a lively debate. Attendees included Richard Murphy, Ann Pettifor, Michael Kumhof and Frances Coppola.

Positive Money Report on 2015 Activities: (UK) Back in 2013 Ben Dyson and Andrew Jackson published our proposal for Sovereign Money Creation – two years later, it seems to have caught on! Following the new Labour leader’s championing of People’s QE

From: Positive Money, info@positivemoney.org More about Sovereign Money: http://positivemoney.org/our-proposals/sovereign-moneycreation/ [From Herb Wiseman] ♣

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Links from Stephanie McDowall Nanaimo, BC <smcdow@telus.net>

Elementary economics for the layperson – Counterpunch Easily understood economic slavery for the 99%. (forwarded from Hugh Jenney) Financial Oligarchy vs.

Feudal Aristocracy, by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, Anthony A. Gabb, in Counterpunch, February 12, 2016 LINK: www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/12/financial-oligarchy-vs-feudal-aristocracy/ ♣

Subject: How the West Creates Terrorism – Information Clearing House Sobering article but one I am glad I read. Dismaying to realize how duped we all are. We need to know. S …

“And let us never forget: colonialism and imperialism are two most deadly forms of terrorism. And these are still the two main weapons of that horseman who is choking the world!” Andre Vltchek LINK: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44013.htm ♣

Subject: The real threat from Trump

(for Canada) Star Editorial "No matter who wins the White House, the U.S. is being swept by a wave of protectionist feeling unprecedented in modern times. For a trade-dependent nation like Canada, that spells trouble on the horizon. … It has happened before in living memory (it was called the Great Depression), and it wasn’t pretty."

LINK: www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2016/03/16/the-real-threat-from-trump-editorial.html

Comment from Jack Etkin: I think this story in The Star is wrong. It's free trade that is killing Canada, not protectionism. Free trade allows corporations to www.dialogue.ca

manufacture in low-wage places and then sell to us at high profits. That's WHY Trump and Bernie are so popular, because the American people have got this figured out. And that is very dangerous because Our Rulers will do ANYTHING to retain their power. Including war and mass murder. – Jack ♣

Government wants your input on TPP

By Stuart Trew, Behind the Numbers blog Canada’s parliamentary standing committee on trade will be travelling Canada to get regional perspectives on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), “to assess the extent to which the agreement, once implemented, would be in the best interests of Canadians,” according to a press release.

The committee, which normally only leaves Ottawa for international travel related to Canada’s trade negotiations, “expects to hold hearings across Canada over the coming months.” Information about dates and locations will be provided later. Furthermore, the public is invited to submit written comments on the TPP (max. 1,500 words) to EMAIL: ciit-tpp-ptp@parl.gc.ca , with a deadline of April 30, 2016. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/ST-TPPmar16 ♣

Exposing the Libyan Agenda: A Closer Look at Hillary's Emails Ellen Brown: “Hillary Clinton's recently published emails show Libya was less about protecting people from a dictator than about money, banking and preventing African economic sovereignty.” Read at LINK: http://tinyurl.com/EB-ETLA

Stephanie’s comment: I am horrified by what was done to Libya and Canada's part in its destruction. If anything, this shows either how uninformed Canada's …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

dialogue 39

Stephanie re Libyan Agenda, contd.

political leaders and our media were – or that they are corrupt. Read this article to learn what was done to Libya's water supply and the manufacturing of the pipes to carry it. Surely this is a crime against humanity? Their wealth has all been stolen. (gold and silver) Who are the Western leaders who got some of it? Stephanie ♣

“The West overthrew democratic, peaceful governments…”

Andre Vltchek, Kourosh Ziabari, Global Research

The increased involvement of different state and non-state actors in Syria with conflicting interests has rendered the horror-stricken country’s future bleak and more capricious than before. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/CRG5515314 ♣

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Stop creation of refugees Gerry Masuda, Duncan BC I am now numb by the news and pictures about the overwhelming number of refugees in Europe. What is creating these refugees? These refugees were forced to leave their homes which took years of hard work to establish and to face a life of uncertainty, hunger and suffering, fleeing to save their lives. I was a surprise to me when I realized that these refugees were fleeing from civil wars started by foreign interests which encouraged and supplied opposition parties in these countries with money, iphones and weapons. I find it astonishing to realize that the modern weapons used by these freedom-fighters were provided by foreign interests which wanted to create another failed state as in Iraq, Libya and now Syria.

countries? We the Peoples of the world, We the 99%ers, must oppose, not passively support these Wars of the US Empire in its vain hope for world dominance in the current uni-polar world. We the People need to exercise the power of our numbers to become a political force. We need to look after our interests rather than apathetically accepting private profit driven corporate influence/control over our governments.

We need to organize to influence politics at the municipal, regional, provincial and federal levels of government. How do we start? ♣ Also from Gerry <gerry.masuda@gmail.com>:

I find it interesting that that Iraq, Libya, and now Syria were governed by dictators. However, unlike dictators in many other countries, these dictators were improving the lives of their peoples – a dangerous example for others.

I believe that these refugees would prefer to live under their dictators rather than forced to give up all their possessions and flee their home as refugees facing dangers, hunger, cold, death, and a sense of hopelessness and loss.

What can We, the 99%ers, do to prevent creating more civil wars to force ‘Democracy’ on these targeted victim

I came across this priceless quote which I feel needs to be publicized. [Article: The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance, by Professor Tim Anderson.] “Through careful analysis, Professor Anderson reveals the ‘unspoken truth’ (that) the ‘war on terrorism’ is fake, the United States is a ‘State sponsor of terrorism’ involved in a criminal undertaking.”

– Michel Chossudovsky,

The ‘war on terrorism’ is fake

Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Professor of Economics (Emeritus), University of Ottawa. LINK: http://tinyurl.com/CRG5504372 ♣

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1 Trillion Dollar Lawsuit Filed Against MSM for Staging 'Sandy Hook' From Forbidden Knowledge TV [ http://fktv.is ] Filmmaker and author, William Brandon Shanley has launched several lawsuits totaling over $1 Trillion against Big Media, over their "coverage" of the Sandy Hook "Massacre" [Dec. 14, 2012]. In his statement, Shanley says: "After exhaustive research, the good news is that overwhelming evidence reveals that no children or teachers died at Sandy Hook two years ago. For relief, I have filed lawsuits against the media in US District Court in New Haven (CT) for Fraud and Terrorism. …

Shanley's Complaint [extract]: "Defendants entered in a multi-year conspiracy, meeting in groups separately and together, to commit fraud and terrorism, i.e., to 40 dialogue

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brainwash the public into thinking a lone gunman drill, known as the "Sandy Hook Massacre" was real, when in fact it was a staged FEMA National Level Exercise Event that redirected government resources to terrorize the public. These crimes were undertaken with the intent of subverting the US Constitution and to affect national, state and local laws.

"This fraud involved lying to the public, faking news, publishing one-sided news reports, censoring reality, suppressing facts, and deliberately skewing the news to shift public perceptions. The true costs of this breach of integrity and trust to society are unfathomable. […]

Continue reading at LINK: http://tinyurl.com/fktv-shlaw ♣ www.dialogue.ca

A Series Exploring Alternatives to the Monopoly of Corporate Power and Networks DEGROWING CAPITALISM “Now that we're stuck between a played-out rock and a hot place, it's time to think with special clarity about the future.”(1) especially restrictions of financial free-booting, protecPART II: THE FRAME John Olsen, Parksville BC Having addressed the matter of what the issue is (Dialogue Vol. 29 No.2), what that leaves us with is the unavoidable problem of how we go about trying to degrow capitalism.

Logic suggests we can look to three possibilities: A) a wave of broad public revulsion will pull it down, i.e., an economic and/or social revolution will end it; B) external or intrinsic forces will cause its collapse; C) a persistent push towards alternatives will erode it.

Not being especially skilled or at all experienced in fomenting revolutions, I will let the first option pass except to observe that we already did that, at least to some degree. After decades of free-booting exploitation of mostly publicly-owned resources and a profitable WWI, the robber barons rode the grand escalator right up to 1929 when the financial systems they had constructed – more likely, manipulated – failed.

It might reasonably be argued that the event was essentially violent. For at least the early years of the depression, uncounted hardship struck the U.S. fount of capitalism; the conflict spawned Fascism in Italy; spun out a special variety in Germany, fed militarism in Japan and facilitated civil war in Russia. From my perspective, it had almost all of the ingredients of a revolution. But it didn't overthrow capitalism; it not only didn't cause collapse of capitalism, it even fed it. I am extremely skeptical about the prospect of any such (capitalism-destroying) revolution occurring. The skepticism comes from my sense that Orwellian thought control was a crude mechanism compared to today's public management technology. (See for, example, Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent.)

For several reasons, the events of 1929 threatened collapse of capitalism and certainly caused the corporations to pull in their horns. It made room for many progressive changes in labour relations, and related economic systems underwent changes that led to what we can now look back on as a blessed period of slow but persistent advances in progressive legislation to control business, www.dialogue.ca

tive labour legislation, expanding protection of the aged and otherwise disadvantaged sectors of the public, unemployment rights, retirement, education, even civil rights: we called it a mixed economy.

From today's historical perspective, for just over a quarter of a century, the corporations were brought more effectively into civil control; workers in particular had learned – mostly from the European experience – to demand economic justice and organized to take rights that earlier would have been suppressed with rent-a-cop truncheons and dynamite. Collectivization of workers established in many jurisdiction such matters as hours of work and even some work safety policies and laws. Except for those jurisdictions where Fascism prevailed, heads of government were thrown out in favour of more liberal leaders, e.g., Roosevelt. Those who survived moderated their policies to address the pressures pushing up from below, e.g., Mackenzie King. It almost felt like the capitalists were chastened: at least it gave the people a sort of promise that progress was possible.

As for option B), many commentators, even supporters of capitalism, have predicted its demise, particularly in 1929, and continuing at least until the last several decades. With the growth of global capitalism, the prospect seems daunting at least. What might take its place? As Maggie Thatcher notoriously asserted, “there is no alternative.” Yet, given its persistent practice of open-ended exploitation of physical resources within a finite world, the only thing that could rescue the capitalist system from terminal collapse would be the outsourcing of resource extraction to other planetary bodies. (We see even that weird idea on the horizon with the emergence of proposals to mine asteroids and even nearby bodies such as the moon and Mars.)(2) In the tragic-comic antics of major governments' responses to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage bubble in 2007/8, we saw the necessity of dealing with the corporations responsible as Too-Big-to-Fail assets that needed full welfare support from governments. As soon as the corporations were socialized back to relative stability, they quickly reverted to their accustomed private status. And the show continues today. …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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John Olsen, Degrowing Capitalism, contd.

Option C) seems to be not only our best option but possibly the only one left. I will suggest a concrete technique that I call experimental luddism: the practice of isolating small elements of a big situation, build it up to functionality and encourage others to model on the experiment. In a subsequent essay I hope to show some concrete examples from the real world. For now, let me offer just one that I had occasion to study some years ago. The example is the Kibbutz Artzi, established in the late 1930's in Palestine. European Jews with a strong sense of socialism and communalism adopted a youthoriented strategy. With the enthusiasm of youth, the small, loosely federated settlements adopted radical social structures designed to promote sharing values and anti-sexist relationships that were distinctly sectarian.

They were just beginning to achieve some degree of solidarity and focus on objectives when WWII ended and a flood of concentration camp survivors began to show up in Palestine just before the U.N. Granted statehood to Israel. The handful of Kibbutz Artzi communities, along with other federations, were asked to open their membership to refugees and, for the Artzi federation at least, their values and lifestyles were undermined by the influx of conventional European values. The lessons from that will bear closer examination as this series develops.

In the meantime, some more background might be helpful…

A caveat is required here: as we explore this examination of the role of the business corporation in directing the affairs of our world, it is necessary to observe the paramount part played by the political reality of our neighbour to the south. A bias of this examination is that the coincidental emergence of global exploration, industrialism and individualism has rendered the people and government of the United States uniquely influential in the world for our time. I have elsewhere argued that American global hegemony is not a chance outcome, but the result of the convergence of the protestant ethic, industrial technology and the opportunity to exploit the vast cornucopia that was North America, ineffectively defended by its pre-contact denizens. While the Yanks haven’t managed to take over the whole continent (yet), they put a unique stamp on the character of the emerging capitalism culture. Accordingly, much of our examination of the rise of capitalism will draw from the American record while still paying appropriate attention to those other jurisdictions that were swept up in its wake.

The seed ground To put a highly condensed form of the complex case that 42 dialogue

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Max Weber made in his work, The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism, the protestant ethic essentially said that God put each of us in our assigned place so that His universe could unfold as He wanted it to. Thus, the King ruled, the rich man created wealth and the workers existed to be soldiers to the king and hewers and drawers in service to the rich man. Very early in its development, the protestant movement cast away the notion that usury was sin, thereby allowing the rich man to charge rent for the use of his money.

The contribution of industrial technology towards development of the corporation was that such technologies were so complex, so expensive, that even the rich man could not do it by himself. Indeed, much of the early industrial technology was put to work in Europe by governments.(3) For example, railroads, shipping enterprises, major industrial works and telecommunications systems were either fully or mostly financed and controlled by governments. The Americans, having just recently thrown out the English King, were highly suspicious of governments, even their own – a condition that continues today. It finds its most radical expression in the “Survivalist” and “Rights” groups such as the NRA, the Tea Party, the Minute Men and a plethora of right wing think tanks.

The need to draw in large numbers of private investors to build the burgeoning factories, railroads and other great industrial works required developers to find a legal vehicle to allow their projects to build, grow and endure which marked the beginnings of today’s corporations.

(That said, it is clear that many industrial initiatives required a franchise from the State to ensure that they could develop without fear of unfettered competition.

While the State governments granted such franchises, they initially did not allow them to become eternal, so they gave them fixed-term franchises, subject to timely renewal by the state.) As for the opportunity of exploiting what they considered to be an “empty continent,” the scholarly history and its Hollywood versions clearly demonstrated why they could consider it was empty.

Where it was manifestly not empty, the European colonists found means of emptying it.

The roots and branches Logically, the corporation rose with the rise of Capitalism.

But, in some sense, it can be argued that it predates the exchange system that it operates under. The modern use of the term says that a corporation is a form of doing business that is mandated under a body of laws passed by the political jurisdiction in which it operates: led in Canada by the Canada Business Corporations Act; in British Columbia, by the Company Act and other subordinate statutes. …/ www.dialogue.ca

A corporation may be owned by only one person, a family, or a small group of friends – a private corporation – or it can be owned by several or many individuals who own shares which are traded in financial markets – a public corporation. In either case, control is theoretically exercised by the majority of voting shareholders.

(Only certain designated shares carry voting rights while others, e.g., Preferred Shares, accord right of return on investment but do not permit any form of direct control.)

In practice, real control is frequently – even usually – exercised by an elected Board of Directors and officers appointed by the Board. Today, a typical corporation will include among its shareholders bodies of investors who invest, not in individual corporations, but mutual funds that do nothing but speculate. For example, Canada’s largest mutual fund is the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund which owns controlling interest in a few large corporations, including one of the largest American defense contractors. The great American economist, Paul Samuelson, taught thousands of students to think of shareholders as the democratic expression in business – without mentioning that each voting share allowed one vote. (About as democratic as the old Ward Boss dictum: vote early and vote often.)

The influence of the corporation tended to flow and ebb with the exchange system that carried it so that, as capitalism rose to power in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the Great Robber Barons rose with it. As the public resisted in the middle 20th Century, giving rise to the so-called welfare state, the apparent power of the corporation was trimmed. Now, beginning in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, the corporation is once again ascending. Late in the second quarter of the Twentieth century it began to become apparent to capitalists that public resistance was limiting their freedom to act as they wished so they began to deny their often expressed values of competition and began co-operating in a series of forums where they learned to make common cause; e.g., Bilderburg, Trilateral Commission, World Economic Forum.

(Karl Marx would have observed that they became conscious of their class, just as workers of the world began to do during the late Nineteenth Century.)

Served by an army of academic handmaidens, and quickly recognizing that they needed the authority vested in governments, they soon began to seek ways of influencing states to enact laws that served the purposes of the corporation. They did this by bringing their money, management skills, communications techniques and the arts of persuasion to bear, not only on those who exercised state power but on the public that legitimated and defined those leaders. Many examples exist but www.dialogue.ca

none clearer than the high-jacking of the newly liberated Afro-American, via the 14th Amendment of the U.S. constitution, to serve a railroad corporation's interests.

More recently, the modern Citizens United Supreme Court decision to allow corporations full personal rights, including the right to make unrestricted political contributions, gave corporations essentially unrestricted political and economic power.

Government by and for Corporations grew to seemingly full flower. Our task, according to Pope Francis, is to put fetters on the beast before it fetters us.

Since even before the time of Cromwell, merchants have tried to influence the ruling class to act on their behalf, often with bloody consequences for the rulers and the merchants, to say nothing about those subservient to both. That said, although people in all of recorded human history traded in goods and services, the process only became formative of social mores and institutional mechanisms sometime around the early 19th Century.

Capitalism also became a norm with the rise of the industrial era. That is so for the simple reason that industrialization demanded large sums of start-up capital and large agglomerations of workers, preferably subject to severe restrictions of their liberty.

The corporation, however, was an instrument of collective action long before capitalism began to open its allconsuming maw. Prior to the industrial revolution, great works were constructed by kings, churches and the military. The origin of the corporation lies in medieval times when mainly religious bodies were incorporated to pursue charitable or moral matters. They were declared to be immortal just like the God they served. The business corporation model was adopted by royal governments when competition to exploit the “new” territories that were being discovered as transportation technology developed.

These early business corporations were given fixed terms of existence, usually time-limited: if the royal decree was not renewed, the corporation ceased to exist. Typically the early investors earned their gains by sharing in the take, not by charging interest on loans. Indeed, not until a lengthy dispute in the 16th and 17th Centuries was the sin of usury cast out by the Protestant churches.

It was the protestant movement that first gave rise to the ‘modern’ corporation. Soon after William of Orange drove the hated Catholics out of the Netherlands, the government formed the “Vereenigde Oost-Indiche Compagnie” and laid claim to all trade east of Cape of Good Hope. Even before that, the British created the Muscovy Company, followed in due course by the Turkey Company, the Plymouth Company and the …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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John Olsen, Degrowing Capitalism, contd.

Hudson’s Bay Company in the 16th and 17th Centuries.

When Adam Smith coined his much-abused moral comment on ‘the invisible hand,’ most business, by far, was done by sole proprietorships or partnerships which were appropriate to Smith's notion of unfettered interaction between supply and demand, between producer and consumer. In fact, he railed vigorously against what were then termed “joint stock companies” for at least a couple of reasons: they distanced investors from the self-correcting forces of the marketplace and they tended towards monopoly and its attendant corruption and abuse of authority. Corporations only rose in the American colonies after they expelled their British governors. Indeed, the iconic Boston Tea Party was an attack on a British crown-granted corporation, the British East India Company, given letters patent by Queen Elizabeth I. A more significant driver of the growth of corporations was the scale of the new industrial technology. While governments could afford to launch major technical works and draft the necessary workers, individual entrepreneurs seldom were able to mount the financial resources to take on such major works. In Britain, much canal construction was launched under an early form of corporation while in France a few urban water works were financed by a kind of partnership that had elements of the emerging corporate form. As railroads and steampowered shipping became possible, particularly in the vast American continent, only large aggregates of investors could raise the money needed for construction. Indeed, as telecommunications and electrification later emerged in Europe, mainly governments undertook their development. (4) Even in republican America, the federal army Corps of Engineers provided most of the route engineering and other infrastructure services for such large scale projects.

Even so, in the land where the culture of individualism was most pronounced, groups of investors were needed for which the corporate model was the most flexible form of enterprise, leading to stupendous growth in the early 19th Century. (As with all things British Canadian, our early efforts to span our share of the North American continent were an interesting blend of the British red Tory and Yankee enterprise. More of that difference later.)

As corporations expanded into the economy, governments everywhere began to enact legislation that was originally intended to limit and control corporations.

Later, the state was co-opted in its pursuit of a share of the profits claimed by corporations and laws began to reflect what Adam Smith called the “different interests” 44 dialogue

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of the owners of capital over those of the common man.

As capitalism expanded during the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, corporations also expanded in their range of activities and – important for this discussion – began to hitch a ride on the governmental systems in their expansion. A classic example was the assumption by the East India Company of what were normally government's responsibility, including even the raising and supporting of a standing army. When the British East India Company faced competition from the indigenous Indian cotton fabric industry, the elite-led Company easily persuaded the Home government to adopt protective tariffs to keep the Indian product out of the UK market.

With that brief summation of the rise of corporations – to what I and others have termed as corporatocracy, the assumption of this essay is that corporations must be fettered if they are not going to destroy the world as we know and depend on it for sustenance. More particularly, we need to find the means of radically fettering the financial sector which has replaced the real economy with a casino-like trade in financial instruments which most investigators estimate to be by far the major component of world trade. The size of the task is much easier to define than it is to be trimmed.

The next essay of this series on degrowing capitalism will argue that a particular kind of corporation must first be brought under common control: the media corporation.

Footnotes: 1 - Bill McKibben, in Eaarth, Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, 2010 2 - In 1977 acquired a NASA report entitled Space Settlements: A Design Study that included a detailed description of a technique for mining bauxite from the moon and processing it into aluminum with solar power.

3 - The European culture that grew out of the middle ages took the form of a communitarian bias: German philosophers labeled it Gemeinshcaft. It expressed a deep sense of place and tradition which only gradually transformed into Gessellschaft, that is, society framed by planned and organized structures that tended to assign individuals to roles and tasks as opposed to communities. With the suppression of its First People, North America became populated largely by Europeans who, because of their European experience, suffered anomie, or alienation.

4 - It is intriguing to think of these transportation and communications technologies as extensions of the notion of the commons, still part of the European history. As the early industrial economy inventions emerged, local customs, statutes and even Adam Smith recognized there were some components of the natural and human built environment that was appropriately managed or built as common assets.

5 - See chapter 1 of The Resilience Imperative by Michael Lewis and Pat Conaty

Feedback from readers welcome!

- John Olsen, January 2016, TO BE CONTINUED ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Are the Irvings destroying New Brunswick?

In the National Observer, Mar. 8, 2016 Forwarded by S. McDowall, with her comment:

Stephanie: Despicable! Trudeau should get Revenue Canada onto the Irvings, if only to cause them massive headaches. These people hide most of their wealth off shore. Every single gas station, newspaper and all other holdings should be audited. Unfortunately it seems politicians and governments are afraid of these guys. Poor New Brunswick and her people. Most Canadians know they have too much poverty & hardship. It seems the Irvings bear much of the responsibility for a good part of this. Will the National Observer suffer any ramifications for publishing this story ? – S QUOTE: "Dalzell and I discuss why I was there – researching the Irvings, Canada’s fourth richest family, a clan Dalzell has crossed swords with for years. Which makes him rare, given the fear they inspire in this region. “You have to remember in Saint John nobody criticizes the Irvings,” he explains. “Not many people have the fortitude to do this kind of work. Because so many families, neighbors and cousins are intertwined with this

organization and they don't want to be punished. Remember, we’re dealing with an oligarchy basically – like in Russia.”

"To outsiders, that might sound alarmist. But New Brunswick is unlike anywhere else in Canada. Despite being viewed as a charming Maritime province tucked away on the east coast, renowned for its forests, lakes and the Bay of Fundy’s stunning coastline, in reality it’s a “company province” dominated by one very rich and powerful family. “You have a corporation that has completely captured the province… which is absolutely Third Worldish,” says Don Bowser, an internationallyrenowned anti-corruption consultant who lives in Nova Scotia but has worked in the former Soviet Union, hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan and is currently advising the Ukrainian parliament. “This whole province-livingin-fear stuff is just absolutely crazy. Nobody can imagine in Canada that this sort of stuff goes on.” … www.nationalobserver.com/2016/03/08/news/are-irvingsdestroying-new-brunswick ♣

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Government language policies dividing New Brunswickers Carol-Ann Noble, New Brunswick I see that the (N.B.) Commissioner of Official Languages* is on the rampage again, this time demanding that all Commissionaires be bilingual. This woman is an absolute menace. Instead of making reasonable suggestions that will unite people and encourage them to work together, she bulldozes ahead with her arrogant demands that incite and divide our linguistic communities. There is absolutely no need for all Commissionaires to be bilingual. If a government office has a sign in their reception area clearly stating that services are available in both official languages; that is all that is necessary. Whoever is on duty will quickly and courteously provide someone who can converse in the language of choice, whether it be French in an Anglophone area of the province or English in a Francophone area.

The majority of Commissionaires are senior citizens who were brought up, educated, and employed in a unilingual society with no opportunity to learn French.

Why, at this stage in their lives, should they be forced to learn a second language in order to hold a job? The Corps of Commissionaires was originally formed to provide employment for former members of the armed forces, and many Commissionaire positions are still held by ex-military. What kind of message is our government sending to these people, and to the general populace www.dialogue.ca

that these men and women are good enough to serve in our military, good enough to be prepared to fight and die for our country if necessary, but not good enough to work for our government in even a low-level job because they do not speak a second language? Every member of every Legion throughout the province should be outraged at this disrespect to our veterans.

The politicians who instituted bilingualism in our country and in our province were no doubt well intentioned, although incredibly naïve. I know they would be appalled to see hardworking senior citizens being stripped of their livelihood by fanatical government officials who are abusing their powers and instead of promoting equality between both official languages, as is their mandate under the Official Languages Act, they are attempting to create Francophone domination from the lowest to the highest levels of government.

If the Commissioner’s recommendation is approved and put into force by the government, it will be one more resounding blow to the wedge that is separating and threatening to split apart our two linguistic communities.

Carol-Ann Noble, N.B. [March 2016, forwarded by Kim McConnell] * Katherine d'Entremont was appointed Commissioner of Official Languages for New Brunswick in June 2013 for a seven-year mandate ♣ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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The Sceptical Scholar

Whose Side Are We On? Exploring the irresolvable explosive perplexity of the conflicts raging in the Middle East Wilf Cude, Cape Breton NS Rona Ambrose says: “I think it’s shameful.” She is apparently disturbed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to end the CF-18 bombing mission against Daesh (formerly ISIL, formerly before that ISIS). “The Conservative party will continue to stand for a Canada that fights against barbaric terrorist groups like ISIS,” she asserts sanctimoniously, sneering at what she perceives as either the Prime Minister’s intellectual inadequacy or his disgraceful timidity. “If he doesn’t think that we should use our military against this group, I don’t know when he thinks we would ever use our military.” For her, as for all other armchair warriors keen to continue our bombing mission, it’s really so very simple. We Canadians are against Daesh (or ISIL, or ISIS), that barbaric bunch guilty of beheading or burning alive helpless victims; hence, we are obligated to bomb the hell out of those barbarians.

But that simplistic conclusion ignores a very important further question: given the impossibly entangled complexity of all the truly barbaric military forces grappling with each other in the brutally mangled Syrian/Iraqi theatre of war, as we concentrate on Daesh (or ISIL, or ISIS), what is the impact on all those other forces? In short, if we are to continue scattering 500 pound packets of high explosives across the Syrian/Iraqi landscape, never mind that we’re against Daesh: of all that ugly crowd of other combatants there, whose side are we on?

Ambrose doesn’t pause to consider that question, nor do any of the others thinking like her: and yet, it is the most central question of all. On the ground in that tortured theatre of war, Daesh is simultaneously a serious threat to the hitherto crumbling regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the corrupt and unstable Shiite central government of Iraq, and the surreptitiously semi-independent Kurdish section of northern Iraq. To the extent that the western democracies hammer away at Daesh, with or without Canadian participation, they will also necessarily to some extent relieve military, political and economic pressure on each of those other forces. Aside from how the other western democracies feel about that, surely it is legitimate for us to look at the full implications of what we have to date been doing, before we decide that the Prime Minister’s decision is open to challenge.

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For gathering behind each of those other forces are powerful and clearly malign outside influences, none of which can do anything but increase the horrors currently convulsing the entire region. Unlike Ambrose, let’s take the time to consider what is already happening over there, and to further think ahead from that to how we might positively mitigate an unspeakably tragic situation.

Let’s begin by reflecting on the downside of doing anything that might help Assad. Back when Ambrose was a cabinet minister with the oh-so-militant Harper government, Assad was the flavour-of-the-month focus of official Canadian condemnation. And not without reason.

His response to the political unrest of the memorably misnamed Arab spring was a visceral yet calculated intense escalation of violence against all opponents: indiscriminate imprisonments, public beatings, covert torture, mass shootings, and finally outright civil war between Syria’s military and a rag-tag assemblage of armed rebels. Within the better part of a year, as the various rebel units gathered momentum in the field, Assad’s gang of thugs edged progressively towards tools and tactics yielding an ever-expanding range of war crimes: the use of poison gas (sarin, mustard gas, chlorine) against civilians, the deployment of helicopters to drop crude barrel bombs indiscriminately into large civilian areas, the misdirection of artillery fire and short-range missiles into civilian target areas... the list goes on, and on, and on. The deaths of somewhere between 250,000 and 400,000 Syrians, the exile of 4.5 million Syrian refugees, the internal displacement of another 6.5 million Syrians into hardship and starvation: all that, principally the fault of the Assad regime. By any measure, it has thus proved to be infinitely more vicious than Daesh – as appalling vile as that lot has indisputably demonstrated themselves to be.

Worse still, Assad’s ghastly grip has been sustained, enhanced and extended by several malignant outsiders, chief among them the current arch-disrupter of international peace, Vladimir Putin. The Russian involvement is nominally directed against Daesh, yet in practice it has been anything but. The full fury of Russian fighter-bombers and missiles has been reinforcing Assad’s troops clamping down upon Aleppo, Syria’s second major city that now remains only precariously in rebel hands, an intervention that has emboldened Assad to declare he will …/ www.dialogue.ca

accept nothing less than absolute restoration of his power over the entire country. Daesh is of no real concern to Putin, since he really wants above all else to retain his jurisdiction over the port of Tartous, where in 2008 Assad allowed the Russians to establish a permanent naval base: the only one they have in the entire Mediterranean. This stark marriage of convenience has the blessings of still other malignant outsiders, the Ayatollahs of Iran and the Islamic jihadists of Hezbollah, both motivated by Shiite religious solidarity with Assad’s own Alawite minority sect, a small variant off-shoot of the larger Shia faith. Iran provides Assad with cash, oil and troops on the ground, while Hezbollah has detached large numbers of its militia fighters from their base in Lebanon into border areas with Syria. All of these outsiders, we should not forget – as Rona Ambrose apparently has done – were stridently denounced by the Harper government as intimately involved with international terrorism. Do we seriously want to do anything furthering the machinations of people like these, especially machinations that enable Assad to tighten his bloody hold over his people?

We in the western democracies so fixated on Daesh must bring ourselves to recognize that the Syrian rebellion that commenced among a coalition of secularists and moderate Islamists is no longer functional, in either a military or even political sense. Today, on the ground, the effective rebel military presence is either Daesh or the al-Nusra Front: an Al Qaeda organization, only marginally less jihadist than Daesh, and a little less inclined to promote itself through repellent internet videos. Every bomb that the western democracies can drop on Daesh, whatever it may do to force those vicious cutthroats into retreat, is also a bomb reducing Daesh’s threat to Assad and consequently giving Putin’s fighter-bombers and Assad’s helicopters more freedom to dump claymore mines and barrel bombs on hapless Syrian civilians. And so the death toll climbs, and climbs. Not a very pretty picture, is it? And it irrevocably gets much worse, just from a purely military point of view. Throughout the entire region, western military intelligence – despite the admitted advantage of sophisticated surveillance from aircraft and satellites – is lamentably restricted with respect to human resources on the ground. Bluntly put, we don’t have one sweet clue about how many completely innocent civilians of whatever gender or age that we might inadvertently be killing with each bomb dropped on Daesh. But about one thing we can be most certain: some such victims must be dying, if not every time, then at least occasionally; and every instance of such “collateral damage” (lovely western humanistic terminology, that) keeps drawing in those jihadist recruits to Daesh. www.dialogue.ca

The whole wretched scenario is a classic instance of lose/lose for us.

Nor does the picture improve as we contemplate the downside of lessening the military pressure on the clownish, ineffectual and irredeemably corrupt Shiite central government of Iraq. Once that sorry gang forced the Americans to leave the country, they systematically dismantled the semi-professional army that the Americans had fashioned for them, driving out many of the minority Sunni officers and soldiers and substituting Shia placemen as part of a larger patronage network.

Predictably, many of the Sunni military thus displaced found a warm welcome among the jihadists, principally Daesh: and they figured significantly in the striking initial successes of Daesh within Iraq, as the official army patronage placemen fled in panicked disarray from the northern city of Mosul, abandoning heavy equipment, money and even uniforms in the debacle.

The only modestly competent government response was to draft the various armed Iraqi Shiite militias into the fight, and to reinforce those with entire units of Iranian regular forces. Again, predictably, those ill-sorted troops imposed a reign of vengeful terror upon the Sunni civilian population as the counter-attack against Daesh commenced: the result is a fragment of central Iraq losing control over wide swathes of territory and sliding more and more rapidly into the Iranian sphere of political and military influence. The beleaguered Sunni civilians in central and northern Iraq now face an impossible choice: accept Daesh with Sharia law, punitive taxation and bouts of ethnic cleansing, or accept much the same from Shiite militias and Iranian soldiers. At least with Daesh, those luckless people are under the command of supposed co-religionists: and so, as the western bombs raining down on the jihadists also add to the collateral carnage, Sunni survivors feel impelled to align themselves with Daesh. Chunks of Iraq under the Iranians, other chunks under Daesh. Still more western lose/lose.

Relative to all that, the idea of committing far more military gear and expertise to the Kurds of northern Iraq is becoming quite attractive to western leaders. The Kurds are comparatively well-disciplined, having evolved an army of committed and capable field soldiers tested in combat even against Daesh. They are a fairly homogeneous society, united in their desire to at last attain something of their own national state. Their political differences, once dangerously divisive, have subsided into a consensus about the utility of converging aims. But we in the west should be mindful of an awkward underlying fact: unqualified military support for the Kurds …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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Wilf Cude, Whose Side Are We On? Contd.

means nothing more than lining up behind the least worst option for our continued involvement in the area. According to the recent UN Commission of Inquiry, all parties to the regional savagery have committed war crimes: rape, torture, murder, ethnic cleansing. All parties, including the Kurds. When Daesh stormed into northern Iraq, the Kurds took advantage of the collapse of the Iraqi army to seize and hold the rich oil fields of Kirkuk governorate. The Kurds have also indulged themselves in brushes with ethnic cleansing, driving out Arab and Turkomen communities from districts under their control. And the Kurdish structuring of what is rapidly becoming a semi-independent Iraqi Kurdistan has created serious apprehensions among an array of adjacent nations: Turkey, Iran, Syria and central Iraq itself, all acutely aware that their own Kurdish populations might nurture ambitions of coalescing around Iraqi Kurdistan to form the long-deferred national dream of Greater Kurdistan.

And that is a development all four of those nations are determined to prevent, and prevent with whatever escalation of violence might be deemed necessary, directed at whomever on any side that might be standing in the way. Turkey, in concert with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is threatening massive military intervention in Syria: ground troops, striking with tanks, artillery, close tactical air support, the works. Ostensibly, the purpose is to protect civilians, primarily the Sunni Turkomen population, from assailants like Daesh: but Sunni Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are far more determined to counter the influence of Shia Iran in the area, and Turkey is further intent upon pushing back against any growing expansion of Kurdish sovereignty. Tragically, however, that escalation can only bring them into direct conflict with the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers. And that in turn leaves everybody inching towards the unthinkable: in the words of Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, endless war raging throughout Syria and Iraq from now on, with the added bleak prospect of direct confrontation between the world’s major nuclear superpowers. Remember Mr. Putin’s off-hand remark of not so long ago? “We’ve got nukes – don’t mess with us!”

Back home here in soft, comfortable Canada, it is well past time we approach our peripheral involvement in this horrendous mess with the serious reflection the situation requires. The first step is to brush past, as speedily as possible, Rona Ambrose’s mindless parroting of her Harperite cliches: “Daesh bad, Canada good, Canada should bomb Daesh.” And the second step is to lose our panicked impulse to just do something, anything at all, 48 dialogue

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and instead look carefully and hard at where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau intends to take us. For clearly, he has grasped the basic principle: if you find yourself in a desperately deep hole, the essential opening move is simply to stop digging. Face it: we don’t have the vaguest inkling about what forces on the ground our bombs are really helping. Assad’s criminals? The Iranian-dominated gang running Shiite Iraq? The Daesh recruitment propagandists spewing out video vileness?

Which is precisely why Mr. Trudeau is finally recalling the CF-18 bombing mission: despite whatever limited successes it may have had against Daesh in the eastern reaches of the battle theatre, all that is more than offset by the associated and far more daunting reinforcement of Assad’s blood-stained resurgence to the west. Our new Prime Minister is gently but firmly signalling, not only to the nation but also to our NATO allies, that we are resolved to challenge the region’s manifest evils in a different but potentially more productive way.

That still-evolving strategy is confessedly somewhat hesitant, as befits a difficult and demanding work in progress. While withdrawing the CF-18 fighter-bombers, Mr. Trudeau is maintaining our commitment to refuel other western aircraft, both combat and surveillance missions, a stance exposing him to accusations of hypocrisy.

But we should remark that those accusations come mainly from Canadian critics rather than our NATO friends, who collectively understand that our retention of the refueling component is a limited gesture of solidarity that still much exceeds what other NATO nations like Germany have done. And similarly, our decision to beef up our contribution of ground troops to the training of Kurdish militia, another and more long-standing commitment to the conflict with Daesh, is a recognition that this is our least-worse option for deploying our armed forces in the multi-faceted conflict raging there. But never mind the accusation emanating from Ambrose and other Canadian critics that the strategy is nothing more than dithering weakness. As the military analyst Scott Taylor sagely argued, following his own extensive scrutiny of the irresolvable explosive perplexity the Prime Minister is addressing, “it becomes evident that dithering could be our best option.”

Granted, there are implicit risks in this strategy, not least because – as Mr. Taylor goes on to underscore in no uncertain language – reinforcing the separatist Kurds in this fashion means dramatically undercutting stated Canadian policy favouring a united Iraq. Moreover, and perhaps even more awkward, reinforcing the separatist Kurds brings Canada into at least jarring diplomatic …/ www.dialogue.ca

controversy with Turkey, another NATO ally. But what else are we to do, under these near-impossible circumstances? We are easing away from a mindlessly counterproductive militaristic foreign policy, groping towards something at least a little better. And we shouldn’t disregard the thoroughly non-controversial positive impact of contributing serious funding to the relief of Syrian refugees stranded in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. As John Lennon so succinctly put it, and as Mr. Trudeau so clearly agrees, let’s give peace a chance. Because the bombing business sure as hell isn’t working.

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

Wilfred Cude is the author of A Due Sense of Differences (1981), The Ph.D. Trap (1987), The Ph.D. Trap Revisited (2001). His latest book is Weapons of Mass Disruption, An Academic Whistleblower’s Tale. (2014). He has lectured at seven different colleges and universities across the country.

His next literary venture will be an account of the 1933-34 NHL Season, in which his goaltending father Wilf Cude Sr. helped bring the Detroit Red Wings to the Stanley Cup final.

Wilf Jr. lives with his wife, the novelist Mary Pat Cude, in a small house they built in rural Cape Breton on the shore of the Loch Bras D'Or. ♣

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The debate on BDS* has now begun – thanks to Tony Clement *Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Peter Lawson, Canada Talks Israel-Palestine.ca Former Tory minister Tony Clement probably calculated that a unanimous condemnation by Canadian Parliament would deliver a knock-out blow to the BDS movement in Canada (or at least scare it into submission.) But he didn’t get an unanimous vote. And the debate seems to have provoked more discussion about BDS than ever before. Read more

In March 2015, Independent Jewish Voices Canada issued a public challenge to Shimon Fogel, the CEO of CIJA, the main Israel lobby group in Canada to a public debate over BDS. Fogel ignored the request. He didn’t even bother to answer.

But over the last year, the BDS movement has continued to make steady progress in Canada, particularly among student and church groups. Thanks to it, an increasing number of Canadians are today aware of Israel’s flouting of Palestinian human rights and international law.

This growth has disconcerted Israel’s defenders in Canada and prompted former Tory minister (and current Tory foreign affairs critic) Tony Clement to introduce a motion in parliament on February 18th calling on the government to “reject” the BDS movement and “condemn” any person or organization which promotes it.

“That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the State of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.

Clement knew he had a political winner because Prime Minister Trudeau had already made his own opposition www.dialogue.ca

to BDS very clear in a much publicised tweet just prior to the election campaign.

In the end, the motion easily passed in the house – 229 – 51. Almost all Tories and most Liberals voted in favour.

Seven Tories and 44 Liberals, some of whom may not have supported the motion but were unwilling to openly oppose it, did not show up for the vote. Three Liberals voted against the motion. Most of those who voted against Clement’s motion, including many NDP members, went out of their way to make it clear that they also opposed BDS, but refused to support the vote on the grounds of “freedom of speech”.

In the debate, only representatives from the Bloc Quebecois dared defend the objectives or the legal non violent methods of the BDS movement So – round one of the great BDS debate is over. CIJA proudly celebrated Clement’s victory. But a knock out?

Not exactly. Is the fight over? Not yet.

Unfortunately for Mr. Clement, BDS does not seemed knocked out at all. The vote in parliament revealed that there is a lot of resistance to the threat by former Harper Minister Stephen Blaney to “criminalize” BDS activity.

Furthermore, it has succeeded in provoking a much wider debate in Canadian society, bringing the very words “BDS” into the lexicon of a lot of Canadians who had never heard of it before.

Some of the commentary has been predictably pro-Israel and anti-BDS. Ottawa Citizen columnist Terry Glavin wrote a scathing denunciation using a relatively unknown Palestinian source to prove BDS is “anti Semitic.” Columnist Robert Sibley chimed in claiming that BDS is a “bigoted, deceitful and slanderous campaign”. But in developing their arguments, both Glavin and Sibley made blatantly untrue statements which provoked a flow …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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of letters to the editor, and yet more discussion.

It turns out that the more criticism is made of BDS, the greater the opportunities for supporters to weigh into a debate on the topic. CJPME President Tom Woodley was first off the mark with a brilliant “make my day” campaign, proudly announcing his support of BDS and challenging Trudeau to condemn him. To date over 300 others have signed a petition asking that they, too, be “condemned”.

Nearly 500 others have responded to an appeal by Canadian Friends of Sabeel to write to members of Parliament on the importance of BDS and urging them to defeat the motion.

Some Palestinian Canadian organizations, including the Palestinian Canadian Congress, have also written an open letter to Minister of Global Affairs Stephane Dion, urging Canada to support BDS, pointing out that its three demands are consistent with current Canadian policy.

Furthermore the aggressive language (“hateful”, “demonization”, etc.) used by Clement and others have

prompted some pushback from mainstream Canadians.

Patrick Martin of the Globe and Mail wrote a very thoughtful piece reviewing the simple BDS demands. He brushed off the argument that the BDS movement is inherently anti-Semitic. CBC’s Neil Macdonald noted sensibly that BDS is a peaceful and non violent alternative to armed struggle.

The charge that the BDS movement is anti-Semitic also prompted a letter from Right Reverend Jordan Cantwell, Moderator of the United Church of Canada to Mr. Trudeau. “The United Church of Canada stands in solidarity with groups and individuals exercising this right in nonviolent, peaceful ways. We urge you to stand firmly for democracy and defeat this motion,” he wrote.

Ironically, the public debate that Shimon Fogel refused to engage in a year ago has broken out anyway, thanks to Tony Clement. Now that it has started, it is likely to grow more intense.

LINK, at Canada Talks Israel Palestine: http://tinyurl.com/CTIP-3163 ♣

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Remembering Berta Cáceres, assassinated in Honduras From June Ross (Strong Communities/Coalitions)

By Phil Little: Many know that for 3 years I have been traveling to Honduras to "accompany" my dear friend Melo - a Jesuit priest whose name is Ismael Moreno.

Melo has in the past received credible death threats and it is felt that international accompaniment provides some degree of protection. Honduras is a very violent country, and the assassination rate of environmental activists, journalists and human rights defenders is the highest in the Americas. In September 2013 this article was printed in ENVIO, a Jesuit journal from Nicaragua. In this writing Melo speaks about the struggle of the Lenca indigenous peoples in their struggle to defend their lands and the leadership of COPINH, a grass-roots organization that educates and mobilizes the people in their struggle. One of the persons Melo mentions is Berta Caceres. This evening on the CBC program "As it happens" there was a discussion about the assassination of Berta Caceres yesterday morning in her hometown in western Honduras. This article provides some valuable context about the struggle of the indigenous Lenca people to defend their land and the main river. Today I read that Berta Caceres had once signaled a Canadian company called Blue Water as one source of the threats she received. Mar. 4th, 2016 would have been her 45th birthday. - Phil LINKS: www.envio.org.ni/articulo/4750 From DemocracyNow: http://tinyurl.com/DN84325 ♣

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Why was Berta Cáceres assassinated?

Beverly Bell, Mar 16, 2016:Other Worlds

A few numbers begin to reveal why Honduran indigenous leader and global movement luminary, Berta Cáceres, was assassinated. According to the Council of Popular & Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), more than 300 hydroelectric dams are planned for Honduras, of which 49 are on COPINH lands. Eight hundred seventy-two contracts have been handed out to corporations for mining alone, with many others created for mega-tourism, wind energy, and logging projects. The majority of these are planned for indigenous lands. Of those, all are in violation of International Labor Organization Convention 169, to which Honduras is a signatory, allowing free, prior, and informed consent by indigenous peoples before development may take place in their territories.

The many planned extraction projects – in a country slightly larger than the state of Virginia - add up to the need of the Honduran and US governments to subjugate the population. Quiescence and compliance are essential for the national elite and multinational corporations to make their profits. So here are a few more relevant numbers. Honduras has 12,000 soldiers – one for every 717 people, for a county not expected to go to war. Its 2013 “defense” budget was $230 million. Since 2009, the US has invested as much as $45 million in construction …/ www.dialogue.ca

funds for just one of those bases, Soto Cano, commonly known as Palmerola. Last year, US taxpayers footed $5.25 million in direct military aid, and much more in training for 164 soldiers at the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Operation. Three hundred seventy-two US military personnel are in the country.

Given that state control is often attained through violence, a few more figures become relevant. One hundred one environmental activists were

killed in Honduras between 2010 and 2014, making it the most dangerous country anywhere in which to try to defend the Earth.

Nine land defenders were attacked just yesterday, March 15, between the time we began writing this article and when we completed it. COPINH member Nelson Garcia, who had been helping recover lands on Rio Lindo, was assassinated in his home on March 15 while the Rio Lindo community was forcibly evicted. […] – B. Bell LINK: http://tinyurl.com/owar-bb ♣

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Recommended by Connie Fogal, Hugh Jenney and S. McDowall:

The Evil Empire Has The World In A Death Grip Paul Craig Roberts (Feb. 22, 2016) In my archives there is a column or two that introduces the reader to John Perkins’ important book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. An EHM is an operative who sells the leadership of a developing country on an economic plan or massive development project. The Hit Man convinces a country’s government that borrowing large sums of money from US financial institutions in order to finance the project will raise the country’s living standards. The borrower is assured that the project will increase Gross Domestic Product and tax revenues and that these increases will allow the loan to be repaid.

However, the plan is designed to over-estimate the benefits so that the indebted country cannot pay the principal and interest. As Perkins’ puts it, the plans are based on “distorted financial analyses, inflated projections, and rigged accounting,” and if the deception doesn’t work, “threats and bribes” are used to close the deal.

The next step in the deception is the appearance of the International Monetary Fund. The IMF tells the indebted country that the IMF will save its credit rating by lending the money with which to repay the country’s creditors. The IMF loan is not a form of aid. It merely replaces the country’s indebtedness to banks with indebtedness to the IMF. To repay the IMF, the country has to accept an austerity plan and agree to sell national assets to private investors.

Austerity means cuts in social pensions, social services, employment and wages, and the budget savings are used to repay the IMF. Privatization means selling oil, mineral and public infrastructure in order to repay the IMF.

The deal usually imposes an agreement to vote with the US in the UN and to accept US military bases.

Occasionally a country’s leader refuses the plan or the austerity and privatization. If bribes don’t work, the US sends in the jackals – assassins who remove the obstacle to the looting process.

Perkins’ book caused a sensation. It showed that the United States’ attitude of helpfulness toward poorer countries was only a pretext for schemes to loot the countries. Perkins’ book sold more than a million copies and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 73 weeks. Now the book has been reissued with the addition of 14 new chapters and a 30-page listing of Hit Man activity during the years 2004-2015. [Amazon.ca: http://tinyurl.com/Am-ca-NCEHM ]

Perkins shows that despite his revelations, the situation is worse than ever and has spread into the West itself.

The populations of Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and the United States itself are now being looted by Hit Man activity. […] Today the only difference between capitalism and gangsterism is that capitalism has succeeded in legalizing its gangsterism and, thus, can strike a harder bargain than can the Mafia.

Perkins shows that the evil empire has the world in the grip of a “death economy.” He concludes that “we need a revolution” in order “to bury the death economy and birth the life economy.” Don’t look to politicians, neoliberal economists, and presstitutes for any help.

LINK: www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/02/22/the-evil-empire-has-the-world-in-a-death-grip-paul-craig-roberts/ ♣

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A must-watch German documentary on ISDS in the EU 'trade' deal From Liz Fox <jfoxj@shaw.ca>

This is all of 43 minutes long but it’s a great explanation of why corporations (and for some reason governments) www.dialogue.ca

keep signing so called “trade treaties”; the treaties are enabling a new way to make profits by suing countries and being compensated by the public, in short a new …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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way to make money.. This is not about trade but the usurpation of democracy and law. It doesn’t really …/ matter if the particular deal is the TTIP, the TPP, CETA or any other, so long as it has an ISDS component (Investor State Dispute Settlement) It’s worthwhile watching and getting mad!! LINK (with English subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV2NZ9MQh0w ♣

TPP Is Not A Trade Agreement PaulCraigRoberts.org/ Every government that signs on to TPP flushes its sovereignty down the toilet. Corporations are transformed into Global Emperors against whom mere citizens and mere governments have no recourse. LINK: www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/03/15/tpp-is-not-a-tradeagreement/ ♣

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Tales from My Travels ~ Don Parker

JAKARTA JOLLIES

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

By Don Parker, Georgetown ON

The Adventure continues!

In November 2005, at the young age of 77, I embarked on the trip of a lifetime, lasting in all about six months ~ as a passenger on the working freighter, MV Rickmers Jakarta, under Captain Henryk Nowicki, with a crew of 23 and four fellow travellers. What follows is my account of my trip, chapter by chapter (as I continue to compile my notes and photos from the travels). I hope you enjoy the trip! [First chapter in Vol.28 No.1-Autumn 2014, p.43] [CONTINUED FROM THE LAST ISSUE]

Sat., Dec. 10th, 09:50: We are in a foggy North Sea

again heading for Antwerp. Cast-off was at 01:45 but I was fast asleep held in the arms of Morpheus as a result of yesterday’s walking.

To-day is laundry day, so while the washer is doing its thing down on Deck “C”, I will do mine up here.

Same old, same old again to-day. A few white caps but in the main the seas have been calm.

We have a new passenger by the name of Tian Jin. Tian is Chinese from Xing Xang (pronounced chin gang, I think) one of our ports of call. Tian is employed by Rickmers and, for the last 9 months, he has been living and working in Hamburg. He is on board the Jakarta as a means getting a little first-hand experience at sea. Unfortunately, he leaves the ship in Antwerp. He has proven to be a very interesting person to talk with.

Ferdinand, the 3rd Officer, shared with me a chip with a collection of beautiful scenes from all over the world, even a portion of the Great Wall of China which I hope to see when we get there.

Stephen will be leaving the ship in Antwerp to-morrow.

He has volunteered to guide Cam and I around for a while in the morning before he heads for home; after that, it will be Cam and I on our own. I haven’t heard of any other passengers coming aboard.

We do have two other faces on board, one is the 52 dialogue

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Captain’s wife - I saw her at dinner time but the C. did not introduce her to the rest of us - and the other is a chap called Greg who works for Rickmers as the Superintendent of Cargo. He is Polish. He may be with us until Genoa, Italy, or he may go home to Poland for a while and then drive to Genoa later.

It is 20:15 and we will soon be picking up the Pilot for the Shelde River. I am going to let them look after all that themselves. I saw it when I was on the “ISA” Dobronitz.

Sunday, Dec. 11th: Another red letter day fraught with beautiful sunshine, a cool breeze, and a definite chill in the air. Our day started at breakfast, which was late for me because I purposely let myself sleep in. Stephen and Cam were all hot to trot to get off the ship and then into Amsterdam. I was tail-end Charlie and had to rush a bit to meet them at the appointed time of 09:00 to 09:15 at the top of the gangway. So I rushed, got down to the gangway, and our security lad wouldn’t let Cam and I off the ship because the ship had not been cleared by customs and we didn’t have our pass ports. Stephan went off - he could go because he is a Belgian citizen but Cam and I had to cool our heels some more. We were tempted to just go, and we kidded the security lad one of our crewmen - who is a darned smaller that either of us, but there was the possibility that we could get the Captain, the Jakarta, and the security lad into trouble if we did so. …/ www.dialogue.ca

Eventually, Greg, the Superintendent of Cargo (SoC) came to our rescue, he phoned the Rickmers agent and this chap gave us the green light; we needed neither pass ports or clearance by customs in Belgium. The C. had our passports and he was still sleeping after being up until 06:00 on the Bridge as the J. made its way up through the Shelde Canal System to its berth. That is a long time to go without sleep for any man let alone one of more than middle-age carrying the responsibilities that he does as Master of this vessel.

So off we went, along the dock to the main gate where there was no security, out the gate, up the street to a bus stop to wait for Bus #31 which came along and took us to the centre of Antwerp. We stayed together, in a lose sortof way all day, but we also went our separate ways.

Stephan was our guide, and how a man could be so patient as he was with a couple of shutter-buggers, especially Cam who carries two high powered cameras and shoots at everything, I’ll never know. My quest was mainly for DVDs which once again proved to be nonexistent as far as Antwerp and Belgium are concerned. I was able to get one in the huge cathedral along with others of strictly live musical performances.

Much of the ground we covered I had already seen when I was here in 2003 with the :\”ISA”, so I kept up my quest for DVDs with a few moments out for photos. At one point along the river, there was a flight of stairs that kids on bikes were using as their personal challenge by riding their bikes down them, then turning around, without getting off, and trying to ride back up again. I set my camera to movie mode and tried a few minutes of that on them, and what do you know, it worked!

Since the day was chilly, and Stephan was doing a lot of standing around waiting mainly for Cam, he was getting cold and wanted to get a hot drink.

As for me, I wanted a washroom, so we went into a café. Cam and Stephan sat down at a table while I went to the washroom. When I came out, the place was too heavy with cigarette smoke for me so I said I would see them outside when they came out. I thought Camden and Hamburg were bad for smokers but Antwerp takes the nicotine cake butts down! I saw more people smoking cigars than I have for a long, long time.

During the day, Stephan kept mentioning that we could stay in town for dinner to-night to have a mussels www.dialogue.ca

dinner, if we liked. We liked, but I was concerned about finding a relatively smoke-free restaurant. I went into one where no one was smoking and there were some tables with non-smoking signs on them. I asked a waiter if there was such a thing as a completely non-smoking restaurant in Antwerp. “If there is.” he replied, “I have never heard of it.” Stephan mentioned several times that there weren’t any restaurants that didn’t allow smoking.

My guardian angel was still with me. We started looking for a suitable restaurant and I went into one to check it out and to put two vital questions to a waiter: 1) Are you smoke free? and 2) Do you serve mussels? The answers were No and Yes. I took that news back to S and C, who were looking at the menu of a seedier-looking restaurant, and said, “The answers are Yes and Yes. Yes, they serve mussels, and Yes, they allow smoking but there is no one smoking in there at the moment.” So in we went and had a delicious dinner! I don’t ever recall having had mussels before.

After dinner, we wended our way back to the bus stop to take #31 back to the ship. We got there just as one issue of it was pulling away. Cam had been taking photos along the way so I couldn’t resist teasing him by saying, “We’re one photograph too late!” He grinned in appreciation. In about 25 minutes, another Bus #31 came along and when it stopped and its front doors opened, we heard a familiar voice say, “Welcome aboard my bus, gentlemen!”

It was Freddy, our steward, who had come into town to get a new card for his cell phone. What a wonderful way to end a great day!

Since coming back on board, I have hand-laundered some clothes, had a shower, charged my camera’s battery, tippy-tapped this, now it’s time for bed. Guten nacht!

Monday, Dec. 12: This is written in blue to-day because that is the way too much of the day has been. First of all, I rebelled! No more trying to keep up with S & C, especially with C wandering off to take shots of dear knows what. In fairness, he is getting an excellent collection of very good shots, but try to convince my back and legs of that!

We set off for Brugge as a jolly three-some, but once we got out of the station at Brugge, I informed them of my inflexible plans which also included avoiding smoke filled restaurants. That little item also contributed to …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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Don Parker, Jakarta Jollies, contd. the business of the day. Another factor might be I’m up to my eyeballs in history, old buildings, narrow, crowded streets with cyclists trying to run me down, and no DVDs (except for one 28-minute one) to be found anywhere. So off I went on my own.

In the city centre, a small, by Canadian standards, public skating rink was in full operation with people of all ages and abilities attempting to strut their stuff and remain upright at the same time. Some were wobblingly successful while others made a complete flop of it. One lady went down on her bum very hard; she must have been very well padded because she had a good laugh about it.

I hopped on board a city tour bus and was able to see and learn a great deal more than what I would have by walking. Later, I took a regular city bus to go where ever …/ it went. It traveled along streets that took past other docks and past some very impressive homes. At one point, I passed Cam and Stephan. C was over on one side of the street gawking around with camera in hand, looking for something to shoot. S, on the other hand, was on the other side of the street patiently waiting for C. Later, after we had gotten together again, and were walking along, C ducked into a washroom. S didn’t see him do this and he asked me where C was. I said C had gone into a washroom and added, “He’s probably taking photos in there, too!” S had a good laugh over that. He

was beginning to show his impatience with Cam as well.

Next came our dinner in a somewhat smoky restaurant, then it was back to the ship via busses and train and for me to shampoo and shower to get the stink of tobacco smoke off me. So far, the ship hasn’t been too bad where smoking is concerned, but there is room for improvement.

To be continued, JJ Chapter 8.

Don Parker, Georgetown ON ♣

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“Hannah’s Hobbies”

About Sneezing Safely!

Dorothy Hannah, Lacolle QC The other day my friend Barend sneezed, and I automatically said, “Bless you.” As soon as I said it, I thought about why I had, really just a habit, but why? I had read somewhere that some people thought your heart stopped for just a second when you sneezed, and if someone didn’t bless you, the devil could get you in that period of time. Scary thought. Well, Barend had never heard about people’s hearts stopping and didn’t believe it, but I thought it might be true. To get our facts right, Barend did what he always does; he went to his friend Mr. Google.

His research showed many reasons for saying ‘bless you’ and that most of them had originated from ancient superstitions. Mine seemed to be a mixture of two different beliefs. Some people believed that a sneeze causes the soul to escape the body through the nose. Saying 54 dialogue

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‘bless you’ would stop the devil from claiming the person’s freed soul. Others believed the opposite: that evil spirits use the sneeze as an opportunity to enter a person’s body. There was also the misconception that the heart momentarily stops during a sneeze and that saying ‘bless you’ was a way of welcoming the person back to life.

Now I had lots to think about and a decision to make. If I sneezed and no one was around to bless me, was my soul at risk and what should I do about it? After much thought I came to the conclusion that the devil really worried me. No way did I want him to get my soul, or me, or make me do whatever evil things he might think up. So I decided that in the future if I sneezed and no one was around to ‘bless me’, I was going to start running like the very dickens. I would keep running until I felt my soul was safely tucked back inside me, and then I would sit down and say “Thank you” in a loud voice to whoever was listening. That’s my plan, what’s yours?! ♣ www.dialogue.ca

THE GOOD WEEDS

“The Vagabond Writer”

By Wayne Allen Russell, Clearwater BC

I hope the readers enjoy these stories; they will bring laughter and a few tears to you.

Taken from truth, but the “Family Weed” is fictitious.

Please enjoy my stories.

(Continued from the last issue)

The family: Archibald (‘Pop’) & Mary Elizabeth/Loretta (‘Mom’) George (‘Donkey’), Aug. 17, 1930 Ben (‘Shooter’), Apr 2, 1932 Bob (‘Stretch’), Oct 10, 1934 Adam (‘Flyer’), Jul 30, 1936 Tom (‘Weasel’), June 4, 1941 Marian (cousin), Aug 21,’ 25 Sam (cousin), December 26, 1931 Bobby (cousin), May 3, ‘35 Ray (my buddy) Joe (Ray’s brother)

Now the laughter begins. LOL DONKEY (born 1930) George, the oldest of us boys, was huge. His pants were always too short, never reaching down to his ankles. His temperament was like Mom’s, calm and collected almost all of the time. This was a good thing; with his size you wouldn’t want him angry with you.

It was 1942, and Pop was still trying to convince Mom that he should go off to war. He knew if he did, Mom would get money from the government. At this time of our lives, things were not the best or the easiest for us.

Our old house was not much better than a barn. In fact, I’ve seen nicer, warmer barns. We lived the best we could, as there were not many other choices. Someone who had owned the farm before us had apparently decided to put in a basement and dug the dirt out from under one side of the house. This basement filled with water. To give you a good idea of how bad it looked, I’ll tell you my young cousin came to visit for a week but wouldn’t stay. He told his mom the house might fall into the pond.

We would play pirates when the water was deep enough, rowing around the basement in Mom’s big wash tubs. We would try to tip the other guy’s tub, dumping them into the water. When we finished this game, we were a dirty, muddy mess for Mom to clean. Okay! Now that you know the kind of trouble we’d get ourselves into, I’ll tell you how George got his nickname, ‘Donkey.’

Pop’s sister and her family were visiting one weekend and, as you might imagine with so many kids in the family, at suppertime the table could not hold us all. Since www.dialogue.ca

they were our guests, we boys had to wait until the adults had eaten. That would have been okay had they eaten and then got up to talk and smoke; but no, they had to do this, along with some beers, at the table.

We were hungry. After all, we were boys.

In the midst of all the talking, Pop suddenly jumped up from the table, grabbed the broom and started beating the ceiling. Everybody else scrambled away, thinking maybe spiders or bees. So what had happened? While we had been impatiently waiting for our turn for supper, George got peed off, went upstairs and stuck his dinky through a knothole directly above the table. Pop spotted that thing, and you know what happened next.

It took us a good hour to get George’s dinky out of that hole because it was so swollen up. Imagine boys and girls of every size, from diapers to teens, sitting crosslegged in a circle, like scouts at camp. And adults, sitting on the edges of the beds, or leaning against the walls and the banister drinking beer and smoking, everyone laughing and joking – while poor George and the older boys worked on getting his dinky out of the knothole.

I remember Pop saying, “George! Lift your butt up and pull that dang thing out of the floor.” So George tried this, pulling so hard you could see the board lift higher than the others. Then he collapsed back onto the floor with tears of pain and shame pouring from his eyes, no sound, just silent tears flowing.

Mom said, “Ben, you’re the tallest, go down, get on top of the table and coat his dinky with lots of butter so it will come through.” Ben said, “No way Mom! I’m not touching his thing, no way!” Mom asked the next and then the next, getting, the same answer from all. “No way!” Then Aunt Joan said with a wink. “I’ll go coat it with butter for you, Georgieee boy”, and off she went down the stairs.

We could tell when she applied the coating because George moaned, and his eyes went really big. His mouth flew open and he yelped, “Ooooooh, ooooooh.” Again George tried to pull it out, but the butter didn’t work.

So Ben went downstairs and was back in five minutes with an axe, a handsaw, a wood auger, and a keyhole saw. He and Bob started talking about how to perform this tricky job. Uncle John said with a chuckle, “Just cut the darn thing off. Archie always wanted more girls anyway, and Mary could sure use some help in the house, especially when we’re all here on the weekends, so make him a girl.” This brought a round of laughter from everybody, except George. He didn’t think it was so funny. …/ VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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Finally Ben said, “Okay, he’s stuck to the floorboards on his belly and we can’t get under him to saw a hole around it. But Pop, he’s lying opposite to the way of the floor boards, so can we cut the one board on each side of him to get him loose?” Pop said, “No dang way you’re goanna cut my floors!” Mom looked at Pop and told him, “Father you shut your mouth! Boys saw your brother out of there!”

Ben drilled a hole with the wood auger on one side of George. As he was drilling a hole on the other side, Bob was keyhole-sawing the board in half on the first side.

With one side of the board sawed in half, he moved to the other side with his saw. Ben had the hole drilled, so Bob sawed away at the board. When it was cut free from the floor, Ben said, Okay George, get up and lay on your back.” George got up complete with two feet of board attached. You could hear gasps of astonishment from the crowd. George’s dinky was all swollen, big and ugly, blue all over. His face was bright red from embarrassment; you could see the pain in his eyes.

Ben had taken control and said, “Lay on your side, we’ll put the one end of the board on the floor and split the board at the other end with the axe.” George yelled, “Holy cow! You’ll cut my dink off!” Bob, already on the move, said over his shoulder, “I’ll get the big hammer, we’ll use it to hit the axe head to split the board, and then we won’t cut your dink off.”

The boys got George into position. Every time he

Fran’s Kitchen

moved or they touched the board, he moaned from pain.

They put one end of the board on the floor and on the other end, hit the axe with the hammer. A few whacks with the big hammer and the axe split the board in half.

They split it again and again, until only the knot remained on his pecker.

Knots will not split in half, so the problem remained how to get George free from that knot. Ben went and got a hacksaw blade and then very carefully sawed away on the knot so as not to damage things any further. The adults were still laughing and joking while Mom stood by with her iodine cure ready to apply to his wounds. George was looking at this with more fear in his eyes, as much concerned with her cure as with the wound. George passed out a few times during all this. His eyes would get all white and his head would hit the floor with a bang.

Finally the job was complete. The crowd dispersed, and Mom went to work applying her cure-all, causing George to pass out again. His damn thing never got small after all this, so we called him ‘Donkey.’

We nailed some flattened soup cans over the hole in the floor and went for a cold, cold supper; that is, all but Donkey. Other than Mom and Aunt Joan, none of the adults had helped in any way.

You might ask why this boy would do such a thing.

Who knows? Just being a boy is reason enough, I guess.

-- Wayne Russell, The Vagabond Writer TO BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT ISSUE ♣

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- Fran Masseau Tyler, franskitchen74@gmail.com

Meatball Vegetable Soup with Dumplings MEATBALLS 1 ½ lbs ground beef 1 egg, slightly beaten ½ cup dry bread crumbs 1 Tbsp parsley, chopped Seasoning to taste (salt, pepper, herbs) Mix lightly, shape into 24 balls.

Cook in oven at 350F until browned (on lightlyoiled cookie sheet) SOUP Put the following in a large kettle with lid: 3 quarts (litres) water (or stock) 2 medium onions, chopped 3 stalks celery, chopped ½ bag frozen mixed vegetables 56 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

1 ½ cups canned whole tomatoes 4 Tbsps beef soup base Simmer until vegetables are almost tender, then add the cooked meatballs and chopped parsley.

DUMPLINGS 1 cup all-purpose flour 2 tsps baking powder pinch salt 1/2 cup milk Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add milk and stir only until dry ingredients are moistened (never overbeat).

Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add milk and stir only until dry ingredients are moistened (never overbeat).

Drop by teaspoonful into the soup. Cover and cook 10-15 minutes (NEVER REMOVE COVER while cooking!). Yield 5 quarts of soup. .../ www.dialogue.ca

To accompany the soup, try this recipe for Irish Soda Bread. My Irish friend Ann Lord loves this bread. By the way, Ann is originally from Belfast, Ireland. And as March 17th was St. Paddy’s Day, let’s all still celebrate together.

IRISH SODA BREAD 1. MEASURE TOGETHER: 4 cups flour 2 tsp. baking powder 1 Tbsp each, salt and baking soda 2. CUT IN; (IN FINE PARTICLES): 3 tablespoons shortening 3. STIR IN (to make a stiff dough):

dry parsley, onion flakes, and caraway seeds 1-3/4 to 2 cups buttermilk, 1 Tbsp. sugar Knead slightly and form into a round loaf. Set on a well-greased cookie sheet and cut a cross in the top with a wet knife. Bake at 400F for 15 minutes; reduce heat and bake at 350F for 40 minutes.

Serve warm with butter and assorted cheeses and soup. DELICIOUS. FOOD FOR THOUGHT: If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things you lack; if you don’t have it, no matter what else there is, it’s not enough.

From: Frances Masseau St. Jean Sur Richelieu, QC ♣

**************************************************************

Laughter & ‘Lightenment From John McCullough:

From Stephanie McDowall:

PUNS - READY TO GROAN…?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

From Stephanie McDowall:

Did you know…

HOT OFF THE PRESS - As the paper goes through the rotary printing press friction causes it to heat up. Therefore, if you grab the paper right off the press it’s hot. The expression means to get immediate information.

The KING OF HEARTS is the only king in the pack of cards without a moustache (Does anyone know why?!)

VENUS - is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

(Since Venus is normally associated with women, what does this tell you? That women are going in the 'right' direction…or they always tend to be different..?)

APPLES, NOT CAFFEINE - are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.

MOST DUST PARTICLES in your house are made from dead skin! ♣ Walk with Me While I Age I hope this poem has the same effect on you as it did on me…A BEAUTIFUL POEM ABOUT GROWING OLDER: …….

SHIT!...... I forgot the words. ♣ www.dialogue.ca

Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

Shotgun wedding - A case of wife or death.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

9. Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

10. When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I. 11. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

12. She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.

13. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

14. If you don't pay your exorcist, do you get repossessed?

15. Every calendar's days are numbered.

16. A lot of money is tainted – ‘taint yours and ‘taint mine.

17. Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

18. What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead give away.)

19. Once you've seen one shopping center – you've seen a mall.

20. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

21. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.

You don’t stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old when you stop laughing!!!

VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

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Contributors in Andersen, Erik, BC …….........37 Arney, Jeremy, BC …………..30 Bell, Beverly, US (link)……….50 Bowles, Paul, BC …...…....14,15 Brosso, Gerry, ON (photo)…..04 Brown, Ellen (quotes,links)37,40 Canadian Action Party…...30,36 Clark, Ken, ON……………….29 COMER, BC (about)……..37,39 CommonCup.org (BC)………07 Cude, Wilfred, NS.……….46-49 Ervin, Jim, BC …………….....25 Etkin, Jack, BC…………..34, 39 Forbidden Knowledge-fktv.is 40 Foster, David, ON ……….19, 59 Fox, Liz, BC…………………..51 Gaudet, Marie, AB ………….2,5

dialogue, Vol. 29 No. 3

Goertzen, Ed, ON...…………34 Hannah, Dorothy, QC…….....54 Hare, Susanne, BC………cover Harrington, Bob, BC….……...20 Kazdan, Larry, BC…………...35 Lawson, Peter, CTIP.………..49 Lax, Robert (quotes)…………12 Little, Eileen, BC……………..04 Little, Phil, BC………………..50 Lonsdale, Derrick, US……….18 Macdonald, Ian (quote)……...07 Masseau Tyler, Fran, QC…...56 Masuda, Gerry, BC……....40,59 Mathews, Robin, BC…..…….27 McCaslin, Susan, BC…...........08 McCullough, John, ON….57,59 McDowall, Steph,BC...26,39,45

National Observer(quote,link)45 Neilly, Michael, ON…….……16 Nickerson, Mike, ON……….21 Noble, Carol-Ann, NB……...45 Olsen, John, BC……...…41-44 Ostermann, Gunther, BC….36 Parker, Don, ON………..52-54 Perkins, John (book)……….59 Porter, J. S., ON………....11,12 Powe, B. W. (new book)……59 Roberts, Paul Craig (link) 51,52 Ross, June (from)…………...50 Russell, Wayne, BC…...........55 Shadbolt, John, ON……..36,59 Skinner, Derek, BC…………38 Slade, Ken, Lithuania…...31-33 Taylor, Jim, BC……………...07

We Wish You A Kind Spring!

Please Subscribe to dialogue!

Read, write, have your say… in Canada’s unique, national volunteerproduced magazine, written by its readers.

Canadian Subscription: $20 per year (4 issues) 6-MONTHS: $10 (2 ISSUES) / SINGLE ISSUE: $6

Taylor, Madisyn (US,link)…..06 Trew, Stuart, BC…………….40 Vancourt, Randy, ON…….....17 White, Patricia, BC………….29 Wiseman, Herb, ON………..39 Zigarlick, Norm, BC……..22-24

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58 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

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INSIDE BACK COVER

BW POWE: Coming this spring from Neo Poiesis Press (available on line): A new book of poems from Bruce Powe, York University RKM link??

From John C. McCullough:

Article P.51, by Michel Chossudovsky Global Research

P.17

www.dialogue.ca

VOL. 29 NO. 3, SPRING 2016

dialogue 59

Sandwich image from: www.shelikesfood.com/

60 dialogue

SPRING 2016, VOL. 29 NO. 3

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