Gaia and the Mother Principal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tobCjOoafEk

Yes, we are. We’re all in the belly of the beast of a crumbling economic system along with its tattered institutions collapsing around it. Meanwhile, some of us try not to notice the gasping breaths of Gaia (Mother Earth) who is choking and gagging on what humans are discharging into her environs. Gaia seems to be turning to her own medicine chest in attempts to cure her fever and she may shake off much of what she has built up over the eons. So we are experiencing the ice melts, earthquakes, tsunamis’, floods, hurricanes, famines and threatened volcano eruptions that in turn threaten all life forms. Unfortunately, the same people in charge of our economic systems are also under the illusion they can manage Gaia’s systems. Because they are control freaks, they can’t believe Gaia has the power to enforce her own laws.

These people are the 1%. And they are tearing up the house we live in. They have become so used to manipulating nature they think a fish that has the genes of other animals sliced into it is a perfectly fine thing, as is a deforested world. Ditto the mortgage they are leaving us. This 1% is leaving us a mortgage for a torn up house that none of us in the 99%, or our children, or grandchildren will ever be able to pay.

For my part I say let the capitalist system fall, it was a rigged game to start with. Capitalism could never, and has never, produced equality. Capitalism thrives on inequality. It thrives on most people in the world losing, so some can gain. This imbalance is an insult to Gaia, to the mother principal, the principal that strives for balance. What human mother of several children would favor one above the others, and praise and reward the favored one for being selfish and greedy while the others go hungry? Especially when the favored one is destroying not only the family house but the yard and fields and streams and threatening all living things with his consummate grasping for more, more, all the time more? A mother who would do such a thing would be completely deranged.

And Gaia is not deranged. However, on the whole, she is very slow. She has a tendency to give species lots of chances, sometimes millions of year’s worth, before she wipes them out if they are not doing well. If a species is okay with the way they are, like earthworms, and are beneficial to the earth house, she lets them be. With other species who like to experiment with gradual change Gaia may even help them along with a mutation or two. But Gaia’s basic rules do not change. Ever. She controls this earth and its systems and either we work with her within this system or we die.
Corporate greed of the 1 % (there are no other words for this) has forced Gaia’s hand. The banking-corporate world with its attendant need to strip Gaia of the careful natural balance she has built up over millions of years has given her a dangerous fever.

But Gaia knows how to cure herself. She will cough up the irritants, the bacterium and viruses of the uncontrolled logging, mining, and stripping and oiling of the oceans, along with all the toxic chemicals, including the genetically modified foods and the FrankenFish being so carefully guarded in West Vancouver. Gaia will spit it all out, clear her throat and start over. She’s had to do it before.
Occupy Wall Street (all the Occupies) is an expression of how human consciousness is trying to change in the face of Gaia’s impending implosion. Yes, there have been problems with the Occupy camps, and there will be more problems with the Occupy camps. But there will be other camps because Occupy is more than a camp, it’s an idea. It’s an intuition. It’s a dream. Occupy represents respect for the earth and the mother principal (men also have this). We can consciously choose to be part of Gaia’s recovery by mitigating our own actions, or she will make us a big part of her own self remedy. It is our choice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tobCjOoafEk

OCCUPY VANCOUVER

The End Times are actually here. Not the end times in the Book of Revelations that Stephen Harper is working toward and hoping for, but the end times for capitalism as we know it. I came to this conclusion last Friday when Madame Justice Mackenzie brought down her verdict (City of Vancouver vs. Sean O’Flynn-Mage, Jane Doe, John Doe). This suit concerned Occupy Vancouver’s attempt to stop an injunction being issued that would cause the people camping to be evicted and if protested, charged with Contempt of Court.

I attended court and this was an absolutely miserable and futile affair. But then I knew it would be from past experiences. Still, there was always this faint hope that I’ve clung to for almost twenty years; that the BC Supreme Court was not as corrupt as it seemed to be. How could the Supreme Court of British Columbia be corrupt? Isn’t the BC Supreme Court supposed to be fair and just?

But when Associate Chief Justice Anne Mackenzie gave her oral reasons for allowing an injunction on Occupy Vancouver I decided on the spot that I couldn’t kid myself any longer. I could no longer even hope a judge might appear who would understand and disapprove of the power of court ordered injunctions to allow corporations to destroy the environment and social justice.

I was forced to recognize the very moment Madame Justice Mackenzie brought in her verdict that there simply aren’t any judges, especially Chief justices and associate Chief Justices sitting on BC Supreme Court, who had ever met an injunction application he or she didn’t like. I painfully recognized that for twenty years I had been fighting injunctions and going to prison because of them, that I had been like a child longing for Santa Claus to come, and in all that was right and good, would bring a judge who would refuse the corporation’s application for an injunction (in this case, the city of Vancouver). No more. I have turned my face from hoping for justice from the Supreme Court of BC because in this case, the court’s bias was so palpable and the BC Supreme Court has become, in my mind, an enemy of the people.

In both Occupy Ottawa and Occupy Halifax where the police have moved in, there were no injunctions. Instead, the Chief of Police acted on its own in these cities, or was asked to act by their mayors; neither went to the courts of their jurisdictions, begging for an injunction instead of just doing their jobs. Injunctions are a coward’s way. And speaking of cowards, now Christy Clark had entered the fray.

She of the “you can run, but you can’t hide” dictum, has managed to hide her own legal transgressions very well (BC Rail fiasco) with the help of Madam Justice Mackenzie. I find it odd that Madam Justice Anne Mackenzie, who agreed to the two million dollar settlement case for Basie and Verk, thus preventing any further examination of Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark of this crooked deal, protected Christy Clark from perhaps going to jail herself. Now Christy Clark is out to make sure the riff raff of Occupy learn their place. She’s going for another injunction to remove Occupiers from their new digs at the Provincial Court.

Doesn’t our dear leader know there is already an injunction in place? Hasn’t her friend Anne Mackenzie Associate Chief Justice told her? That on the 18th the injunction was extended to include any new location? If Christy Clark doesn’t know this she should and if she does, well, my goodness, getting her face in won’t hurt and the 99% are so stupid they won’t know anyway. We of the 99% are not quite that stupid, Christy. I think many, many of the 1% will recognize this as the Occupy Movement expands, BC injunctions or no. I do believe this to be inevitable.

WRONG MOVE, GREGOR! DON'T DO IT!
Yes, I agree that it is a horrible thing for a young woman to lose her life in such a way…homeless, evidentially ill, with addictions or not, she obviously had no one to take care of her and she lived in misery in an uncaring city. To be homeless is to live in miserable conditions. Given the circumstances surrounding this young women’s death, I believe that Gregor Robertson is making a big mistake in seeking an injunction to make Occupy Vancouver pack up and move out of a public space.

Because the Art Gallery is a public space, it belongs to the people of Vancouver. And as long as the people who are camping there are not posing a threat to others, then they protected under Sec. 2 of the Charter. I would like to remind the mayor that because many judges don’t think twice about giving injunctions to logging and mining companies, this situation is different. A judge might give pause before signing a court order on request from the mayor and council that compels the arrest of people who are merely exercising their constitutional right to protest.

First, Section 2b protects freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Unless the city’s lawyers can prove that the young women’s death was caused by the fact of simply being in a tent on public land there is no cause for giving an injunction. And if the young woman did come to harm by her own hand, which seems to be most likely as the police have stated foul play was not involved in her death, then Gregor may have trouble getting an injunction simply by declaring that the people camping are a danger to the public or to themselves. He has to have some proof of this, not just accusations. Are there other grounds? The tents a fire hazard?

There are buildings in Vancouver that are absolute fire traps and no arrests are made by the police. People use tarps over tents routinely everywhere. Having a tent catch fire is not like being caught in a burning building with no fire escape. This is not a good excuse for depriving people of their fundamental rights and hastening the idea that our constitutional rights are after all, what a mayor and council and a sitting judge say they are.

In my opinion, Gregor does not understand that even if he finds a judge willing to write an order there will be an enormous court challenge to this. The judges at BC Supreme Court consider corporations as persons, so when I, or any other environmental activist is arrested for blockading a logging truck it’s usually under an injunction, the claim being that one person, me, had interfered with another person’s rights (the huge, usually international corporation) to make a living. This is not the case here, Gregor. The Occupy people are simply demonstrating against injustice. They are not interfering with any other person’s livelihood. They are not a danger to others. They have a legal right to be where they are, doing what they are doing. It’s in the constitution. Unless you want long, expensive law suits to be placed once again, upon the backs of the people of Vancouver, like the Olympic Village, then don’t do it, Gregor.

Provocateurs In Occupy Vancouver

Today I heard there is a disturbing element embedded within Occupy Vancouver. And what is this disturbing element? Well, I heard there is one gentleman in particular who is camping at the Art Gallery with the other occupiers, but who has a different slant on the ways and means of occupying the space.
This particular gentleman last evening distributed a violent comic book to the other Occupiers and supporters, depicting the police as being violently brutal to people (popping out their eyeballs, etc.) and tucked within this violent comic book was a lengthy set of demands to be met by the authorities. The first demand distributed by this gentleman (and was read out by CBC radio this morning Nov.4) was free access to heroin. These demands, I understand, were not approved by the group for distribution to the public; in fact, I understand most of the group didn’t know this was happening. I believe the aim of the gentlemen who distributed the violent comic books was to promote fear; fear of the police and fear in general among the Occupiers ,and his list of demands were apparently meant to convey to the press that the main objective of the group was concerning free distributation of heroin. The guy, in my opinion, is acting like an agent, a provocateur. Is he a provocateur? I’m not saying he is, because I don’t know, but I am saying that by his actions he is acting like one.
There is usually at least one, maybe two, provocateurs in every group trying to confront the unequal distribution of wealth and resources. I’ve been in logging blockades where provocateurs were present and they frequently try to push people to violence by presenting the situation as being horrifically dangerous when it isn’t, or conversely, will simply try to demoralize people by promoting the idea that the demonstration is futile, and people should just go home. A provocateur can be hired by anybody, the RCMP, the police, logging and mining companies, CSIS, your local big bank, your politicians, even the mafia or other criminal gangs.
The gentleman who distributed the violent material and unauthorized list of demands should be confronted by the group and made to explain his attraction to violence and why he felt he had the right to distribute to the public, which included the press, this violent material and list of unapproved demands. I hope Occupy Vancouver holds fast against this gentleman whose actions seek to derail the wonderful work the Occupy Vancouver is doing for all of us. These Occupy groups are growing oasis’ of sanity in an increasingly insane world. Let’s come together to protect them.