Betty's New Publishing Company

What? You're starting your own publishing company? What are you thinking, Betty? When many publishing companies are biting dust? It's true. Many of the small presses and even medium sized ones are quitting or being sucked into fewer and bigger corporations that push popular culture to the detriment of radical thinking and beliefs that can spur action. And this at a time when the world needs radicalism more than ever before. So,I have decided to start my own publishing company. On a shoe string of course. However, I am familiar with shoe strings, child of the 30's depression that I am. My new publishing site highlights past and current accounts of my struggles as well as showcasing upcoming work. Check it out at Schiver Rhodes Publishing.

ATTORNEY GENERAL de JONG SWEET TALKING THE MASSES

This afternoon. Over CBC radio. BC Attorney General Michael de Jong was like butter rolling off hot biscuits as he answered questions from a radio audience worried about why they can’t get a judge’s court order serviced. Citizens called in complaining that in situations where people are suing other individual people and have a court order from a judge ordering that this person pay up, or show up, or do something, or refrain from doing something important to the person complaining, these orders can be ignored with impunity and are, more often than not. The complainants’ are left holding what is essentially a worthless piece of paper even though it is a judge’s order. Judge’s order or no, if the person the order is against doesn’t want to comply, the order itself means nothing. People who called in questioning Mr. de Jong wanted to know why nothing happens in these increasing number of cases; shouldn’t a judge’s order be worth something?
From my own experience, I know that a judge’s order will be worth a lot if there is a lot of money and/or power involved. This usually means corporations suing other corporations or sometimes citizens. But ordinary people are just not that important to the court. It’s the way the laws are interpreted by the judges and the unwillingness of courts to order an arrest for non-compliance of a court order by an individual person…unless that person is interfering in some way with the fortunes of a large corporation and then, of course, the full force of the law is brought to bear. Citizens who say no to environmental destruction or to privatization of public assets by refusing to move when ordered by a judge’s order, will find themselves branded as criminals, handcuffed, leg ironed, and unceremoniously shuffled off to a increasingly privatized prison.
You need lots of money to even get into the court room. The Campbell government has cut back or cut down what little leverage there was for ordinary people. Enter Minister de Jong with his slick, forked tongue. He’s telling us that everything is just fine, not to worry. He’s going to fix the few little things that need fixing. In a pig’s eye.

ACKNOWLEDGE AND CORRECT

Okay, so I made two mistakes on my last posting and received a slew of mail decrying my lack of knowledge of drugs as I wrote cocaine instead of heroin coming out of Afghanistan. Bad mistake. It infers that I know nothing of where drugs originate and how they are distributed. I do know a little bit. I know that heroin is made from poppies grown in Afghanistan and that cocaine comes mainly from Columbia and Mexico gets both and more (other drugs)for distribution which is killing their country. So much money is in the drug trade that the cartels are reportedly primarily running large sections of Mexico. The War on Drugs as policy seems to be more of a war on governments besides being a war on citizens who have to worry about their children becoming addicts and getting shot by mistake, or by design. But the War on Drugs drugs as policy corrupts everything, citizens, governments and even economies by the enormous amount of money it generates.

When so much money disappears into the black market, the so called legitimate economy (so-called because Wall Street and to a certain extent Bay Street are profiting from huge sums of money they launder for the cartels besides simply gambling on their own with depositors money) suffers. Which is one of the reasons bank CEO's are rewarded handsomely. Banks in the US are closing while their CEO's are paid millions. And Prime Minister Harper said just today that he did not consider the obscene money paid to CEO's of banks and failing corporations a problem. But there are a few cracks appearing in the War on Drugs as policy (Bush policy). Mexico has recently decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin. It's a start.