Betty's Early Edition

PIPE LINE LOVING INJUNCTIONS

2012-01-30T15:25:00.000-08:00

Enbridge XL pipe line CEO’s (and big investors) thoroughly understand the power of BC Court Ordered Injunctions. If the Coastal First Nations reported plans (The Tyee, Feb. 30) fail to halt the pipe line and a blockade materializes on First Nations land, then Enbridge knows exactly where to go. With their fraudulent environmental clearance in hand, Enbridge will simply head for the BC Supreme Court. There Enbridge (through their expensive, tony lawyers) will ask a Judge for an injunction. As there aren’t any judges in BC Supreme Court that I know of who will refuse to give an injunction on request from a large corporation, an injunction would be issued to Enbridge. Following the usual scenario, the injunction would then be presented to the RCMP along with the demand that the protesters get out of the way or be arrested. And many protesters might not comply and would be arrested and taken to the police station.

At the police station the arrestees would be booked and offered a piece of paper called an “undertaking”. The undertaking informs the protesters that they will be allowed to leave the police station without going to jail if they promise to appear at a certain time to talk to a judge, and if they promise not to return to the scene of the conflict, or go anywhere around the scene of protest. The protesters will probably sign, however reluctantly, and leave. They have homes, jobs, children, schools that demand their attention. They cannot easily refuse to sign the undertaking. And Enbridge knows this. If everybody signs the undertaking the protest is effectively over. Enbridge will proceed with their work.

But if some of the protesters are so angry and disgusted with the Harper and Christy Clark governments, if they are so broken hearted over the destruction of nature’s bounty, and are so worried for their families’ futures, and their own, that they might say “To hell with this biased court system that only protects the 1% , I will sign nothing”, then the protest will take a different turn. The people who refuse to sign the undertaking will be kept in jail until they are taken before a judge and if they still refuse to sign the undertaking they will be taken back to jail. At this point, by any definition, they have officially become “political prisoners”.

Canada isn’t supposed to have political prisoners. Especially if some of the political prisoners are First Nations. Why, if this should occur, Harper and Christy Clark would have to listen to other countries asking about Canada’s “political prisoners”. Of course the major Western media networks, including the CBC, probably would probably downplay the entire thing if they reported it at all. But the word would spread, questions would be asked, alternate news outlets would pick up the story. And even China would have to think of some kind of spin.

China has money and interest in Enbridge and of course Kevin Falcon loves the way China carries out its public works programs. A couple of years ago when Kevin Falcon was asked about the blockade at Eagleridge Bluffs he said he really liked the way China did things. When they wanted to build a dam, they didn’t have to consult with the people, just their engineers. No problem. And that’s exactly how he and Christy Clark plan their “jobs creation” program, not just with the Enbridge pipe line, but also with gas fracking. They will just do it. And all our protest over the Enbridge pipe line will just be blowing in the wind unless some people start thinking about becoming “political prisoners”.

Is this concept too hard of a sell? Too much to ask? And no chance of succeeding this way? I would argue there is no chance of succeeding in stopping the pipe line any other way if the First Nations legal challenge fails. I have personally been battling the depletion of BC public forests for over twenty years, as have numerous large full time environmental organizations (NGO’s), and the old growth is all but gone and the second growth is being shipped out as logs. One person refusing to sign an undertaking is not enough. I was not taken seriously by the BC government, no matter how long I stayed I prison because I could be portrayed as a lone, weird little old lady who was probably senile.

Becoming a political prisoner is not easy. But at this juncture in our country’s history nothing is going to be easy, especially for the young. And it isn’t just that the future of our country that is at stake…our world is at stake. The earth itself is at stake. We must love this earth and the life it fosters more than ourselves, more than anything, or we will lose it all. And I believe that when the bulldozers come and significant numbers of people join the protest against the pipe line and when protesters are arrested and taken to jail some might refuse to sign the undertaking and in the process will willingly become “political prisoners”. Then the world will rejoice. If this should happen, I believe that Canada would rally around political prisoners in a way it has never done before. If this happens I believe that Canada would come alive.

WEEP, GAIA, WEEP!

2012-01-19T18:29:00.000-08:00

Truly it’s enough to make Gaia herself weep. Mainstream (open net fish farms) has brought Don Staniford to court in order to punish him for alerting the public to their rotten fish farm practices that threaten the health of wild salmon. And while Don Staniford is brave and stalwart in his struggle against fish farm fish, from my own experience with BC courts on environmental issues, he’s up against the most conservative judiciary in Canada. However, BC judges do get annoyed, of course, when massive cuts in legal aid and overcrowded court room schedules impact their own judicial lives. But we can understand their annoyance since all these cuts come from the same BC Liberals that some of the same judges fought so hard to protect when under siege (Gordon Campbell, Christy Clark, in the BC Rail scandal). But we can hope for the best and support Don in anyway we can. We recognize that Gaia works in mysterious ways her wonders to perform.

Wild salmon are Gaia’s gift of love. To us. Many anthropologists believe that it was fish that first nourished the brains of pre-humans to the point of focused behavior, behavior that eventually became specifically human (tool making). And it isn’t just open net farm fish that are threatening this priceless gift.

It is also the genetically modified salmon biding their time in West Vancouver, awaiting their cue from the Harper government for release for human consumption, who in turn is awaiting his cue from the US environmental protection agencies. If the US answer is yes, that GMO fish is good for humans, then the Harper government will also move to release these artificial, hormonally treated, genetically scrambled fish for human consumption; fish that have no way of warning us humans what their tortured flesh will do to Canadian children and pregnant women who eat them, even if they knew. Some natural species do know, and send warnings in the form of certain colors, smells, etc., that they are dangerous to other species. The GMO salmon are not natural and can send no warnings. And neither are the sex changed, chemically infused, open net farmed fish.

We have depended on our government to warn us of dangerous foods, not promote then. I had sooner ask my daughter’s cat about the matter. I bet my boots that neither my daughter’s cat, nor her feline neighbourhood friends, would eat a GMO salmon. Or an open net farmed one. And would starve rather than consume an open net fish farmed, sex changed, flesh dyed, gene spliced, fish monstrosity that our government is gearing up to present to us. Yes, Gaia, weep for us! And a pox on those who mangle and murder your Great Gifts!

The Women’s Party has sent a further letter to Peter Kent, Minister of the Environment in reply to his letter to us. Copy below:

Jan.19, 2012
Minister of the Environment
The Honourable Peter Kent, P.C., M.P.
Ottawa, Canada K1A 0H3

Mr. Kent,
Thank you for your letter of Dec 12. We have been considering the information you provided in your letter along with the information provided in the letter from Mr. Gerry Ritz. We take issue with your letter, Mr. Kent on several grounds. First, the advances you claim for other genetically modified foods are wildly exaggerated. If this were not so, why wouldn’t your government allow the labeling of products that contain genetically modified foods? Certainly the Europeans demand this of their governments as well as other countries. The main over riding objection The Women’s Party has to GMO foods is that contrary to your claims, there is no science based, regulatory process that considers every “possible precaution” before letting these foods loose on the unsuspecting public simply because nobody knows at this point in time what the long term results will be, particularly in children, from ingesting GMO foods.

Yes, while it may be true that the struggle over GMO Salmon is still being fought in the US, your government is obviously getting geared up for an approval by the US. We feel that it is disingenuous to claim that because Canadian law (Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999) forbids new living organisms from being imported into Canada without a science-based assessment then your government can’t be guilty of such a thing. To the contrary, we argue that just allowing the cultivation of Genetically Modified Salmon eggs (on PEI) from and by a foreign company (Bay Fortune, part of AquaBounty, US) on Canadian soil is an infringement of the Act. Your government is willing to bypass Canadian law and run the risks of lost or escaped or even stolen eggs and fry of Bay Fortune, as well as that of matured GMO salmon who can interbreed with wild stock when matured in West Vancouver. We, Sir, are not.

We ask that a risk assessment on this practice be conducted forthwith as well as an explanation of why and how Stephen Harper’s government has been able to override the laws of Canada while exposing Canadian waters to a new and horrific threat of biological pollution.

Writing for the Women’s Party:
Betty Krawczyk betty.krawczyk@gmail.com

c.c.
The Honourable Leona Aglukkasq, PC, MP Minister_Ministre@hc-sc.gc.ca
The Honourable Keith Ashfield, PC, MP Min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca
The Honourable Christian Paradis, PC, MP ministre.industrie@ic.gc.ca
The Honourable John Weston, MP john.weston@parl.gc.ca

China and Norway, Robbers and Thieves? Of BC Waters and Salmon and Trees?

2012-01-17T17:16:00.000-08:00

You bet. China now protects all of her old growth forests and has made it a crime to clear cut anything that looks like a tree in China. Not that China in principal disapproves of cutting old growth forests or clear cutting anything, just not in China. China most definitely approves of cutting old growth forests and clear cutting in other countries. In fact, much if not most of the old growth and raw logs leaving BC province is heading for China. China’s position is clear…after the massive flooding of her own denuded mountains and valleys from clear cutting, she is now more than willing to let Canada suffer the results of massive floods, soil depletion, unstable hills and mountainsides, watershed ruination and mud and rock slides. Just send China the raw logs and lumber, please. Which our BC government is only too happy to allow in order to maintain the support of domestic logging companies and developers.

And Norway? Norway is taking the same tact on open net fish arming along her shores that China does about her forests. Norway tells her fish farming companies to go ruin somebody else’s waters with the penned up, overcrowded, chemical laden, hapless fish with heir mushy, artificially dyed bodies, just keep them out of Norway as much as possible. And of course, BC has welcomed the Norwegian fish farm companies with open arms. But a lot of BC citizens have issues with this warm acceptance of the despoliation of our own waters from open net fish farming. For instance, Don Staniford, environmental activist, is on trial right now in BC Supreme Court for calling the Norwegian ( Cermaq) farm fish poisonous, like cigarettes. But I think the Norwegians may regret suing Mr. Staniford. Because of the media attention around the law suit more people will, before the four week trial is over, equate eating fish farm fish with cigarette smoking, along with its attendant ills, than ever before.

So, who are the robbers and thieves? Countries who don’t want to spoil their own land and waters and the eventual worth of their own countries, or our own Canadian governments, both federal and provincial, who obviously don’t give a dam? I think it’s the latter.

2012-01-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

China should “Make Extended Preparations for War?”
How to make sense of this announcement by the Chinese President Hu Jintao? War with whom? Surely China isn’t going to invade Iran. China is the number one oil and gas importer from Iran. The Chinese buy their gas and oil, they don’t go around bombing other countries for it as the US does, as the US is threatening (and preparing) to do at this moment. The war drums have been beating down south for some months now. The message from the US is that they want to invade Iran (Patrick Pexton, Washington Post 1/6/12). However, perhaps the drums may pause to reflect on news of China’s recent announcements. Chinese Major General Zhang Zhaozhong says that “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War in order to safeguard their domestic policy needs”, and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced that the Chinese navy should “make extended preparations for warfare”.(Commodity Online, 1/7/12).

Okay, this seems to be about the Chinese warning the US that if they invade Iran there will be hell to pay. Like a third world war. I get it. Will Obama get it? I think he will. And so will the international banks, lending institutions, and all the makers of drones and exotic military mechanisms eating up the US budget. Why do I believe the One Percent will also get it? Wouldn’t the US OnePercent just love to invade Iran because of the billions, (maybe even trillions) to be made from waging such a war itself, plus all that oil? Oh, my God, all that oil!

But while the deep socketed eyes of the OnePercent may roll and glisten at the very idea of Iranian oil, I don’t think a US Iranian invasion will happen. Why not? Is it because I think Wall Street and the Military Industrial Complex might be stricken with a conscience? One that might suggest to them there is something immoral with ordering US personal sitting safely behind their desks in the US to direct the deadly unmanned drones to take out foreign soldiers and civilians alike if need be? No, nothing that improbable.

The real reason I don’t think there will be a US invasion of Iran is because China has “dibbies” (a word we used as children to denote prior possession) on Iran’s oil. And China has now let it be known they will protect their oil interests there. The American OnePercent can chew their fingers, snort a little coke, cry and wet their pants at the thought of the billions being so tantalizingly close and yet so far away and speaking Chinese. But they know they have to back off Iran. If they don’t, China might slap a claim on what is owed them by the US Treasury, start dumping US dollars and refuse to buy any more US bonds which would bring the US to their knees without firing a shot. The Chinese navy, the one that President Hu Jintao is talking up, is only for show. It is a symbol for the money war that is entirely in China’s power to wage and win. It’s an ironic twist. The only entity that can actually hurt the OnePercent is China. (photo: Chinese President Hu Jintao)

Injunctions Be Dammed!

2011-12-10T22:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnBk6ovAv1w&feature=channel_video_title

INJUNCTIONS BE DAMMED!

Why do I get so heated up by injunctions! Because we are being ruled by them. How so? Because a single judge in the provice can allow enormous swaths of forests to fall, creeks to be ruined, wild animlas to die, and allow athemurderous fracking of gas wells. If a citican becomes so outraged he or she stands in front of this activity,or pitches a tent in general disgust with the society, immediately the injunctions seekers heads for the court to seek an injunction.

The Canadian Criminal Code is a living, breathing document that has evolved over the years with thousands of people being involved with the coding. In contrast,because a court ordered injunction(one judge’s order) is not encoded, it amounts to being only one person’s opinion. And if one is accused of not obeying the opinion of the judge, then one is charged with Contempt of Court. And there is no defense for Contempt of Court. Why not? Because Contempt of Court is not encoded. It isn’t in the Criminal Code. And this is exactly why the Province of BC loves them. It’t the one sure way to rob a citizen of all legal rights because it robs citizens of the right to a legal defense.

As there is no defense for Contempt of Court , if you are accused, all that is relevant is whether you disobeyed a jude’s order. If you did, you are guilty de facto of Contempt of Court. So is anyone else who is in a area of contention. It doesn’t matter whether you were trying to protest againt environmental destruction or connected to a protest like Occupy Vancouver. By adding Jane and John Does to the order, the sweeping nature of this of these additions could hypthocically include everybody in Canada, or for that matter, the entire world. See why logging and minining companies along with mayors and police chiefs just absolutely love injunctions? Injunctions relieves all responsibliey from private and public officials.
Why even bother with a police chief if hehad to go to court to beg the judge to do his job forhim. As police chief he’s supposed to arrest people breaking the law. But w hen instead of doing his job and ordering the protesters to move their tents when he decided that was what needed to be done, instead goes to the BC Supreme Court and asked Madam Justice Mackenzie to do it for him. She happily obliged. And was promptly elevated to the Appeals Court for her pains almost immediately after she issued the injunction order.

This is the same judge Patrick Dohm appointed to replace Madam Justice Bennet in the Basi-Verk case. This was done because Madam Justice Bennet was in the process of allowing the defense to call Premier Gordon Campbel and Deputy Premier Christy Clark to the stand to be examined for their knowledge of the scandle. No telling what they might have revealed under cross examination about their own actions. Patrick Dohm as protecter of the 1%’s dirty laundry couldn’t have that. So he appointed Madam Justice Mackenzie to set things right. She promptly accepted a two millin by out for guilt pleas from Basi and Verk and shut the trial down before it could do any realo criminal dmange to Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark.

You know what? I am off ened by this. I am offended by having this province’s fourtunes being ruled by crooks who have hijacked the Supreme Court of BC and uses facisit methods to shut down all opposition to their sellig off of the natural resourcws of BC along with the shut down of any hope of legal justice. It’s too much. It’s just too much. We demand a decent government, a decent BC Supreme Court, a decent rule of law. We’re citizens. And injunctions be dammed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnBk6ovAv1w&feature=channel_video_title

2011-12-06T19:40:00.000-08:00

ARAB SPRING? IN EGYPT? FOR WOMEN?

Hardly. Things will be worse for Egyptian women if the projected results of the current elections (by CBC, BBC, and Aljazeera) hold true. The Muslim Brotherhood will have the most votes (60 per cent first round vote) with the Salafists (ultra hard liners) and the Gamaa Islamiya, (more hard liners) taking most of the rest of the votes. Under these circumstances what can Egyptian women expect? Oh, the usual suspects…black robes for women, deschooling of girls and women, forced marriages of young women to old men as second, third, or fourth wives, death by stoning if women provoke jealously in their households, more honour killings. It means constant fear of men’s accusations of wrong doing, in other words, the complete captivity of women.

But wait a minute. Didn’t many young, seemingly well educated Egyptian women help start the Egyptians revolution, didn’t they work for it, risk their lives for it? Yes, and that was perfectly fine with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafists, and the Gamaa Islamiyas. But that was then, they seem to say, and this is now. Now that the battle is primarily won, it’s “Get back into your cages, women. And this time we will lock the gates good and tight”.

And many Islamists don’t necessarily cease to be hard line lslamists when they come to Canada. Islamic women continue to be treated as inferiors by their men in Canada in many instances. Remember the little girls in the Ontario school that holds Friday prayers for Muslims? And the young girls having their periods have to sit in the very back row away from the others? Boys in front, girls kneeling behind, then the menstruating girls, who are not fit to even kneel behind the boys in their supposed unclean condition and are delegated to the rear of the room.

What is wrong with Canada, with Ontario, to allow such a practice in public schools? Public displays of little girls being humiliated becaue of their life giving functions are akin, in a very real way, to pornography. And certainly it’s also akin to barbarism, that period of time when women were banished to special huts, away from any possible damage to men when the women were bleeding. I think Canada has gone bananas with trying to demonstrate how wonderfully political correct we are.

Enough is enough. Immigrants should adjust to Canadian society, not try to transform Canadian laws and social mores into what they left behind. The misogyny of Islam is notorious throughout the world. Why do we try to pretend that this isn’t so?
And how did Mohammad Shafia ,( Muslim from Afghanistan, making news right now for killing three of his daughters and his first wife) even get into Canada with two wives? I understand the first wife was listed as a cousin on the family’s immigration papers. How could a cousin be allowed entry into Canada when so many parents and adult children of immigrants are not allowed to be brought in with their families? Was it because Shafia is rich? Did immigration know or suspect the listed cousin was really the first wife and didn’t care because he was rich?

And how many other additional wives of rich Muslims families are allowed entry into Canada simply by being listed as cousins and aunts? This case is surely not the only one. And this case only came to light because the man killed his first wife along with his three daughters. Doesn’t Canadian immigration investigate the additional cousins and aunts that are brought in with these rich Muslim families? Especially since rich Muslim men are usually the only ones who can afford the two, three, or four wives that Islam allows. Curious minds want to know.

Borsa Italiana and Cocaine

2011-12-02T23:21:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGxN4C0PQ80

Borsa Italiana
Doesn’t that phrase just roll off your tongue? Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s the name of the Italian Stock Exchange in Milan, Italy. I was surprised to read about this stock exchange. It seems the Italian politicians are linking cocaine used by traders to wild fluctuations on the Italian stock market (Financial Post, Oct.15, 2011). Italians are in the process of “requiring stock traders to take mandatory drug tests…Italian savings may be invested by people not capable of making decisions due to drug use,” said Undersecretary Carlo Giovanardi.

Diane Francis, author of the article, goes on to tell us that “substance abuse has been cited as pandemic in London’s financial district with media reports of bars that allegedly routinely offer cocaine to clients by credit card, but describe the purchases as wine. Cocaine has been the drug of choice for well heeled financial types around the world for decades…”

Well, isn’t that interesting? Cocaine. So that’s one of the reasons the stock markets seem so wired and weird lately. When one thinks about this kind of hard drug being readily and regularly purchased by hay wire, hi wired stock traders along with the amount of uppers, downers, and pain killer prescription drugs doctors shove into people’s lives for physical and emotional pain, medical prescriptions that addicts patients as surely and soundly as crack does, and then there are the poor and homeless heroin and crack users, add this drug use to all the Ritalin and other like medications urged onto children too young to defend themselves, along with habitual pot smokers and alcoholics then what we have is a drugged nation, a drugged international community, and except for China perhaps a drugged word (I understand that treatment for drug addiction is mandatory in China and that identifiable drug pushers who prey for profit other than enough to buy their own drugs, get executed).

Occupy Vancouver had a number of addicts in the camp, three overdosed and one died. That’s about par for the course in the general population. However, because these incidents were so visible, and were suffered by people who were either homeless, or aimless, they provoked disdain and even disgust from some members of the public. But don’t look away, my friends, or you will see yourself, or a member of your family, or one of your dearest friends, or someone you admire, or work with, or are falling in love with, someone who is either beginning, coming out of, or presently enduring a similar nightmare of some kind of drug addiction.

But I, too, felt extreme disappointment when so much of Occupy Vancouver came to be about drugs in the public’s minds. On Oct. 15 there were four thousand people there in front of the Art Gallery. The issues that brought that many people out are still there and we can’t be frightened away by a problem that is pervasive and deep seated in all aspects of our society. We can’t allow ourselves to be frightened away from something that is only beginning, and has the potential power to bring a new, more equitable order to the earth. An order that Gaia will accept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGxN4C0PQ80

Gaia and the Mother Principal

2011-11-26T20:07:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-11-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

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.

Occupy BC Supreme Court

2011-10-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

Occupy the BC Supreme Court

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jakSAzZAX1s

Why turn Occupiers attention to BC Supreme Court? Because this is where citizens are routinely divested of their rights to public property and given over to corporations who through their lawyers maintain that the corporations, too, are persons. I saw a sign in Zuccotti Park on the internet that read: “I’ll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one”. And so will I.
I have had long experience with the personhood of logging corporations. By past court decisions (case law) that held corporations to actually be persons , our BC Supreme Court equates a dispute between real persons seeking to protect their public forests versus voracious logging companies bent on clear cutting the said forest, as a dispute between two persons. That’s it. And in these cases the BC Supreme Court has already given the logging corporation a piece of paper (injunction) that declares (in legal language) that the corporation’s personhood tops that of real persons, and an environmental protester, if he or she protests this crazy making kind of justice, will wind up in prison.
And it isn’t just in cases of the triumph of corporate personhood that our courts are the courts of the 1%. Remember how Madam Justice Bennet, an honest judge, who was in the process of giving consent for Verk and Basi to testify and call high political officers into account over the corrupt BC Railway sale (Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark come to mind) when Madam Justice Bennet was given, an abrupt elevation to BC Court of Appeal? And replaced with a judge who allowed an award of two million dollars to be given Verk and Basi If they would plead guilty and go away? Who could have confidence in such a court? When the BC Supreme Court is so obviously in the service of the 1%? Not I.

DFO Reply To FrankenFish

2011-10-29T22:19:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago the Women's Party sent a letter to the Prime
Minister's Office expressing indignation that Genetically Modified
Salmon (transgenic) were being reared in a West Vancouver facility
without notice to the public, or in public consultation with municipal
or provincial authorities. We questioned that these fish, as they do
... not occur in nature for they have the genes of other animals sliced
into them when in the egg stage, are in fact salmon. We were
particularly alarmed that these fish are patented. Genetically
Modified salmon are the very first animal in all of history to be
patented.

We have just received a reply from the DFO. In his letter Mr.Keith
Ashfield does not dispute that the FrankenFish (so called by the US
press) are indeed being raised and studied in West Vancouver, but
argues that the fish themselves are not patented by the Government of
Canada, and that the Government of Canada only holds the patent to the
foreign (to the fish) genetic material that is being inserted into the
FrankenFish and therefor stay inside the law of Canada which says life
forms cannot be patented in Canada.

We find this reasoning totally disingenuous. And unacceptable. We
know that the process of splicing foreign genes into salmon was first
researched and brought to fruition in Canada through Canadian
universities even if AquaBounty now holds another patent. If Canada
did the original research into the process of Genetically Modifying
FrankenFish and has patented the genetic material itself, how could
Canada (DFO) evade responsibility for breaking federal laws concerning
the prohibition of patenting life forms?

We would like a comprehensive answer to this question, please.

Sincerely,
Betty Krawczyk
Writing for The Women's Party

NANO...WHAT?

2011-10-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

Yes, Nanotechnology is our third bad thing we have to consider after economic and environmental melt downs. With the trillion Euros flooding into the international banking system by European governments we’ll have a bit of a pause here, even though we can hardly hear ourselves think above the sucking noises this morning as that trillion is swilled up by other banks, investors, and lending institutions. And the 1% couldn’t care less that this trillion they’re swilling in the trough is actually the blood and tears and sweat of their people. Perhaps we should, in all decency, look away. Unsocialized people who are high on greed are a shameful spectacle. Let us look to the Occupy Vancouver people for inspiration.

I believe that the Occupy movement is the first wave of an upwelling of public discontent. This is such a strange time. We have increasing poverty and job loss but at the same time, great breakthroughs in scientific discoveries.
Like how to add extra genes to a Pacific salmon’s genome. And patent it for future commercial use. Kudos to our DFO for their help in creating artificial salmon. But the horrors of mangling fish genomes and patenting the process pales in significance compared to what nanotechnology has in store for us.

Just as our leaders in government and finance didn’t prepare us for the financial meltdown two years ago, they haven’t, and won’t prepare us for what lies ahead in the job sector. Mechanization and computerization has decimated jobs. The primary jobs for many young men in the future will be digging into the bowels of the earth for oil, gas, and minerals, or clear cutting forests for raw log export or building and staffing prisons. Or being a prisoner. When I was growing up young men who couldn’t find jobs could always join the army. Not so much now. Harper is cutting military personnel. It’s not just salmon who are getting rewired. So is the military.

Ordinary technology has already automated, mechanized or computerized everything a lot of private companies and public services can bear. But nanotechnology? That’s a whole new deal. You can see a computer. You can’t see a nanotech machine. They’re too tiny. They’re built from the bottom up by scientists who are learning to manipulate these tiniest of atomic particles to make all kinds of stuff. And some of the stuff you really don’t want made. Aside from probably killing off the rest of the jobs, even the resource extraction ones (but the prison industry will probably surge) this has the most direct, destructive, hellish applications imaginable. What is that? Or course, the military.

Specifically, the US military. They will have the military patents. Nanotechnology presents the perfect weapon for killing vast numbers of people. Undetected. The nano machines are much too tiny to be detected. Some foreign people raise a fuss about unmanned drones because they can see them. At least until the bombs are actually dropped. But by possessing nanotech military weapons that can’t be seen, even a very small group of people can possess the world. Maybe the same small group that posses the banks and lending institutions. The 1%. If anybody complained they would simply be vaporized. No mess, no bother. I think we all need to learn all we can about nanotechnology.

LET'S TALK FISH

2011-10-23T20:52:00.001-07:00

Let’s talk fish. Specifically, salmon fish. There has been a lot of confusion surrounding our conversations concerning who, where, when and what has been done, and is being done, to our salmon. And I say, our salmon, because, at least for the moment, wild salmon still more or less belongs to the people of the earth who catch and eat the salmon ( with certain permission from government and First Nations) whether individually or commercially. The salmon also belong to the bear, to birds of prey, even to the occasional cougar, they also belong to the old growth forests where bear scatter salmon bones; an individual salmon belongs to whomever or whatever can catch one in the wild. But that may not always be the case, even if wild salmon survive the fish farms.

Fish farms are disgusting. There’s no other word for it. The salmon swim around in stressed, overcrowded, unhealthy conditions. They are in fish prisons. And they have endured horrors spared human prisoners. Our Charter forbids prisoners being forcibly sterilized and sex changed while incarcerated. But some of BC fish farms are using fish that have been sex changed and triploided (sterilized). Why the sex change?
In fish farm pens, 10 to 20 percent of male salmon “jack” early, that is they mature before the females do and die before the others are ready for market. Big loss to the fish farm owners. So in fish pens, at least, females are not just desired, they are demanded. So DFO biologists came to the rescue. They developed a process by which some female fry were exposed to enough testosterone that the process actually turned them into males. When mature these treated fish acted as males and made sperm to fertilize the eggs of the normal females. However, because these sex changed males were still genetically female, their sperm was composed primarily of the chromosome xx instead of a relative equal number of xx and xy’s. So fish farms could get eggs that were primarily from a sex changed parent.

But that isn’t all. According to Dr. Edward Donaldson, DFO, they now know how to apply estrogen directly to the fish. But what if these fish escape their captivity and mate with wild salmon? Could that not produce some bizarre fish genetic mutations? To counteract this every present possibility some of the fish farms are using a method called “Triploidy” to induce sterilization. But the process is not one hundred per cent successful.

Triploid fish can have an extra chromosome but this occurs in less than one percent of fish in the wild. These fish are always naturally sterile. But because they don’t put energy into reproducing or go through the maturing process they grow really big and fat. So of course our DFO people, always on the lookout for aiding fish farms, are really into this. They devised methods of shocking the fish eggs with heat or pressure that makes them into triploids. And had the DFO stopped there, things may not have gone over the top. But they haven’t stopped there. Not content to just sterilize huge numbers of fish they have also changed their sex and have then released them into the lakes and rivers and coastal waters of British Columbia. This from:

The Reproductive Containment of Genetically Altered Salmonids (page 113-114) (Biotechnology, Genetics and Nutrition Section, West Vancouver Laboratory, Biological Sciences Branch, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, 4160 Marine Drive, West Vancouver, BC V7V 1N6)

So we now have a whole lot of sex changed and triploid fish swimming around not only in some fish farms, but also in our lakes and rivers (fifty per cent of B.C. small lakes and rivers) and other coastal waters. Have they mated with normal fish? As the sterilization process is not 100 per cent? Nobody knows this for sure. These fish are referred to as genetically modified fish but they are different from transgenic fish, the ones that have been dubbed FrankenFish by the US press and are currently abiding in North Vancouver. These transgenic fish are also referred to as genetically modified fish, but they are far, far more genetically modified than the fish that have only been sex changed and sterilized. Transgenic salmon are an absolutely new thing on the face of the earth. And they have been patented.

• Transgenic salmon are no longer, strictly speaking, salmon. While they begin their lives as Pacific salmon that doesn’t last long. As eyes, other genes are sliced into them…Atlantic salmon genes, and the genes of an eel called the pout fish and rapid growth hormones. On top of this, the eggs are made triploid and somewhat later, treated with estrogen. So we now have a monster fish, mostly female, not completely sterilized, who is loaded with hormones. And this monstrosity is patented by a private corporation called AquaBounty that used Canadian universities and Canadian government resources to carry through the research to getting the patent.
Because these fish are patented they are being carefully guarded. They are being held in land tanks in West Vancouver and cared for by Dr. Bob Devlin.DFO (North Shore News, March 15, 2011, Sarah Schmidt, Postmedia News, Oct 16, 2011). At the moment, AquaBounty is seeking permission from the States to develop the Frankenfish for public consumption. Three of the advisers to the US health authorities have previously worked for Monsanto.

There are two huge problems with both the sex changed, sterilized fish that are not transgenic, and the monster Frankenfish who are. A major problem in both categories of fish is that both carry a load of extra hormones, mostly estrogen. Zenoestrogens, or estrogens than come into the body from the outside, are enormously dangerous. There is currently much scientific agreement that pregnant women who consume only small amounts of zenoestorgens at certain stages of their pregnancies can put their fetus’ at risk and that larger amounts consumed by eating fish loaded with residue zenoestrogens can cause learning disabilities in children.

As for the transgenic fish, there is not only the ethics problem of genetically altering our wild life … why has our government allowed an animal life form to be patented? Without our knowledge? Without our consent? What next? Consider. There is an artificial pig in line in the US waiting for his birth certificate in the form of a patent. Chickens, cows, goats, horses? As the patent holding corporations wipe out the natural animals will we find ourselves paying not only for the animals, but for the corporations holding the patents?

The other very serious problem with both categories of fish is that the public has not been advised or consulted on admitting either one to BC waters or BC land. Neither the federal nor the provincial movement is authorized to introduce genetically altered fish into our environment and we believe they have wildly over stepped their authority in doing so. We are not through with this. Betty Krawczyk

2011-10-23T20:49:00.001-07:00

2011-10-20T17:16:00.000-07:00

THINKING LIKE HARPER

Stephen Harper is secretive about his religious beliefs and religiously motivated actions. But when I consider our Prime Minister’s political motivations for making the decisions he makes, I go on my hunches. After all, a hunch is an educated guess gleaned from careful observation. And my hunch is that the awarding of the eight billion dollar ship building contract to BC was a direct political decision by Stephen Harper.
But didn’t Harper go to great pains to remove himself entirely from the bidding process so that there could be no accusations of political tampering? Didn’t he practically shout to the world that only the bureaucrats, his underlings, were in charge of the appointments and that he personally had nothing to do with the choosing? I think Mr. Harper doeth protest too much of his innocence, and that in hoping to ward off any possible questioning concerning the selection process, he raises doubts. At least in my mind. It is well known that Mr. Harper is a control freak. That he tastes his own words as well as the words of his cabinet members and others in his government several jillion times before uttering them (only a slight exaggeration) is common knowledge, and that all important and even trivial decisions are made by him.
So why would Mr. Harper leave such an important political decision, fraught with passion and potential election fall out to his underlings? In my opinion, the decision to award BC with one of the ship building contracts came from Mr. Harper himself.
But so what, you may ask, even if it’s true Harper made the decision himself? BC got the ship building contract and that’s all that matters. I agree, in the short run. Jobs are paramount. But in the long run, as my thesis (hunch) is that our Prime Minister doth protest too much over the purity of the selecting process, the question is…why would he chose BC over Quebec?

Well, let’s see, if I was Harper, given his mind set and beliefs, I would be somewhat worried about the NDP forming the next provincial government in BC. An NDP win would jeopardize Harper’s plans for an increased Conservative presence in BC. And while the revitalization of the ship yards may help Christy Clark in the immediate future, down the road it will help the Conservatives even more.

I think Harper believes that if Christy Clark wins, by the following election the province will be in such a mess the Conservatives can remind citizens that it was a Conservative government that brought a revitalized ship building industry to BC. And the resources in BC for a Conservative win are already there. My hunch is that this goal was the main reason Stockwell Day decided not to run again for the Conservatives and came back to BC. Stockwell Day, like Stephen Harper, is a fundamentalist Christian, believer in Armageddon and the Rapture, along with BC billionaire and fellow Christian fundamentalist Jimmy Pattison. Lots of religious and political clout here. But I am happy for the ship building jobs. Very happy. Maybe things will look up for a number of people.

OCUPPY AND DANCE

2011-10-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

This could be the beginning of something very, very good...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25Ax24Fj3qY

Georgia Straight On Betty Krawczyk

2011-10-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.straight.com/article-478746/vancouver/betty-krawczyk-not-running-political-office-focusing-occupy-vancouver

Occupy Wall Street!

2011-10-02T21:21:00.000-07:00

Talk about Wall Street protesters and GMO salmon in west Vancouver and CBC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WYeX_p4d7E

the women's party and frankenfish

2011-09-29T19:22:00.000-07:00

Sept. 29, 2011
The Women’s Party
Box 1117
Cumberland, BC V0R 1S0
Office of the Prime Minister Phone: 250.400.2444
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2

Mr. Prime Minister,

It has come to the attention of The Women’s Party (a recently formed group composed of women interested in the health, legal and environmental rights of citizens) that your government has given permission for the rearing and researching of genetically modified salmon in West Vancouver, British Columbia. We are very opposed to hosting genetically modified salmon in our province for research or otherwise. The Women’s Party is very concerned with the food supply and distribution in Canada as well as the source and nature of the nation’s food supply.

The reasons for The Women’s Party opposition to Genetically Modified fish being on Canadian soil are as follows:

1. The public has not been warned or advised or instructed concerning the following:
2.
(a) In a Department of Fisheries and Oceans facility in West Vancouver, scientists are raising and studying Pacific salmon that have been genetically altered. Scientists have developed a method of splicing the genetic structure of Pacific salmon to include genes from Atlantic salmon, genes from eels and rapid growth hormones. The result are enormously altered fish that can grow up to ten times the size of a regular salmon and eats enormous amounts of food (Dr. Bob Devlin, North Shore News, March 25, 2011).

(b) These genetically modified salmon are the very first animal in all of human history to, first, have their genes altered with material from

other animals, and secondly, to have this altered fish patented. There
have been studies published that suggest that should any of these
fish escape, they could mate with wild, unaltered fish
although they are supposed to be sterilized it is not 100%) and run
the risk of escaped breeding which could contaminate large numbers
of wild salmon.

(c) Should escaped breeding occur with these patented fish the corporations who hold the patents could then claim they then own all the salmon within a certain river or coastline.

(d) The Women’s Party claims that raising GM fish in West Vancouver is not only posing unacceptable risks for the natural fish population in British Columbia, but also transgress a moral line. We see, as can most reasonable people, that giving a patent on a living, breathing animal such as a fish that has been genetically altered, is to open the door to patents on most animals of the world which could lead to one or two companies (Monsanto comes to mind) owning all of the salmon, chickens, pigs, cows, horses, etc. in the entire world.

(e) We believe that by transgressing this moral line we will be altering human consciousness to consider all animals as playthings of humans to alter as they like. We consider this to be the most profound disrespect possible to animals.

As the permission for sale of Genetically Modified Salmon to the public is now being debated in the US ( with past employees of Monsanto as advisers urging it’s passing), and we know that once passed in the US there will be much interest from fish farms in British Columbia for these fish, we demand that the Office of the Prime Minister respond to our concerns as soon as possible.

Cc to MP John Weston, Premier Christy Clark, MLA Ralph Sultan
Respectfully,
Betty Krawczyk email: betty.krawczyk@gmail.com
Gail Cotter email: gcotter@shaw.ca
Hard copy to follow for The Women’s Party

Prisoners Of Harper's Love

2011-09-27T22:39:00.001-07:00

NOTICE!
I am trading in word blogging for video blogging. It's easier and more fun. Please view my first offering at :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6y3-ViIxU
Please comment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B6y3-ViIxU

Betty Krawczyk

2011-09-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

AN APPLE FOR THE TEACHERS

With the teachers’work action dogging the BC Liberal government, does anybody remember Christy Clark’s vitriolic remarks about the teacher’s union when she was Minister of Education (2001-2005)? How her thinly veiled, and not so thinly veiled, remarks about how the out of control greediness of school teachers were harming our children and how parents were demanding immediate reforms to the school system?

Well, under Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark our school system certainly got reformed. Or deformed. But was it true even back then parents were demanding school closures? That parents were yearning for more students per teacher? Was it true that parents felt librarians’ were unnecessary? And that parents thought it didn’t matter how many children with learning disabilities were in classrooms without adequate teaching assistants? Was it true that parents were against school lunch programs in certain schools, and full funding for kids’ school supplies? Was it true that parents thought music and art programs for their children were absolutely frivolous even when studies of how these activities help children learn proved otherwise (Premier Clark has no university degrees in anything, much less in education.)

But we know now, as then, that parents were really longing for smaller class sizes, more teacher assistants to help increasing numbers of children with learning disabilities , school librarians, music and arts programs, and school funded school lunches where they are needed, good physical education programs, and adequate school supplies among other things. And contrary to Premier Clark’s spin, most parents want to feel that their taxes pay their teachers on par with other Canadian teachers. But Christy Clark’s government is pleading poverty.

However, if the province was and is so poor that it couldn’t, and can’t, provide adequate schooling for its children, where did all those billons, $4.33 billion of them, (Vancouver Sun) for the Olympics come from? And how is it that Christy Clark’s government can happily cough up $365 million for BC Place Stadium for adult games and entertainments while children’s education is cut to the bone and their teachers treated with contempt by the same government?

And while two million dollars doesn’t sound like much in the face of other spending priorities of the Gordon Campbell-Christy Clark government, this sum bought guilty pleas from Basi and Virk in the BC Rail scandal. Our (of course it was ours) two million went to these two confessed crooks just as blithely as the other millions and billions under BC Liberal priorities flew and fly to contractors and money changers, which drain funds from education and health care.

In the BC Rail trial, defense lawyer Michael Bolton said Christy Clark had participated in the scandal by providing government information to lobbyist Erik Bormann while she was acting as deputy minister of BC. These accusations were not proven in court because Basi and Virk were bought off before they could testify. But as these accusations are out there, in the public domain, wouldn’t Premier Clark, if she is innocent of any illegal wrong doing, want to clear up this shadow on her name?

Wouldn’t that be a wonderful lesson in democracy for school kids if Premier Clark said that she wanted to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was, and is, not guilty of criminal activity, and called for an independent investigation into the BC Rail sale? Wouldn’t that be a wonderful lesson, all over Canada, of how premiers should act when accused of criminal activity? Instead of bad mouthing school teachers, Premier Clark, how about acting as a teacher yourself, which is what leaders are supposed to be? And as you have no fall election to worry about, you have lots of time to do this. Show this province what a real leader and teacher looks like.

2011-09-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

Reading / Meet the author
"This Dangerous Place"
Chapters Downtown
7:00 pm - 8:30pm
Thursday, September 15th
788 Robson Street (@Howe)

Local legend Betty Krawczyk's new book "This Dangerous Place, My Journey Between the Passions of the Living and the Dead " is hot off the presses.
Betty, currently living in Cumberland, will appear at Chapters in downtown Vancouver for this not-to-be missed reading and meet & greet.

More About the Book: Betty Krawczyk’s characteristic sharpness of wit and evocative Southern-based turn of phrase make THIS DANGEROUS PLACE an immense pleasure to read. And like any cherished moment, the book is a delight to recall after inhaling its last pages. Krawczyk’s personal, idiosyncratic story transcends the particularities of time and space and takes you to a deeper place within yourself, a place of new possibilities.

(Producer/Director) FURY FOR THE SOUND; The Women at Clayoquot

Betty Krawczyk:
Born American 83 years ago, but reborn as a Canadian in 1966, she fell in love with the old growth forests of British Columbia at first sight.  Now a great-grandmother she lives, breathes, writes and speaks of the necessity of saving our public resources for the people of British Columbia and Canada.  She has spent over three years in the jails and prisons of British Columbia for blockading corporate logging trucks in public forests.
Krawczyk has written three other books: CLAYOQUOT: The sound of my heart,  LOCK ME UP OR LET ME GO and OPEN LIVING CONFIDENTIAL.
Betty Krawczyk lives and works in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island.  You can contact Betty at bettykrawczyk.ca or betty.krawczyk@gmail.com
Books: www.schiverrhodespublishing.com Blog: http://bettysearlyedition.blogspot.com

Posted by Monika Marcovici acting agent for Betty Krawczyk at: monika@greenworx.com

2011-09-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Women’s Party Meeting Reminder

Sept. 14^th,7pm

We are asking women interested in attending the next Women’s Party Meeting on Sept. 14 at 7pm to register with Gail at: gcotter@shaw.ca by Sept. 7^th if possible. We need your replies in order to decide where to have the meeting but whatever is decided will definitely be easy to get to by bus or car. So email Gail by Sept. 7to register and we will see you on September 14^th at 7pm. With your ideas, hopes and dreams for a more equal and happy society. Betty K

2011-08-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

To Females of all Ages, Sizes, Races and Sexual Orientation Everywhere! Women’s Party Meeting Notice! Sept. 14^th at 7pm in Vancouver! Please email Gail at: gcotter@shaw.ca for address of meeting place and to advise of your plans to attend.

Men, it isn’t that we don’t love you, but we want a women’s only space to organize and solidify our thoughts around what we envision for a women’s party. We believe the old male dominated thinking of organizing around hierarchies and “winner take all” is killing our planet. And us along with it, including our children. We believe that women are capable of halting this mad race to the cliff, but in order to do this, we must first come together and agree on how to push many of the male imposed structures of society off the cliff first.

We must confront a banking system that is privately held, corrupt, and leading us all to the poor house. We need to confront Prime Minister Harper who believes that military acquisitions are a priority instead of the health and education of children, (or for that matter, even the repair of bridges and tunnels in Quebec.) We must devise means to confront a Prime Minister who believes that corporate enrichment is the god to be worshiped (while he is personally waiting for the Rapture) and the environment be dammed (oil sands and Asbestos.) We must also confront religious structures, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as all patriarchal religions that deem women to be inferior because their gods say so. And they all do. More prisons? Prisons only work for corporations. And corrupt governments. We believe that if we take care of our people there will be no, or few, prisons.

As a Women’s Party we will want to look closely at how our court systems work. We want to study and refute how the Supreme Court of Canada supports environmental degradation by upholding the bogus claims of logging and mining industries over the rights of citizens, including First Nations, to lead healthy lives. And we most certainly will be looking at and considering action against the right of private corporations to hold patents on the essence of life itself; the private patents on plants, fish, and other animals, described as Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s.) We believe that as long as women are absent in the most important decision making bodies in the world we will have war, disease, both physical and mental, along with premature death accompanied by environmental destruction.

Sisters, if any of the above interests you, and you would like to be involved, please notify Gail through the email (gcotter@shaw.ca) to indicate that you wish to join us on Sept. 14^th in Vancouver and receive the street address. One caveat…f you are a news reporter, please don’t attend as a reporter. Come as a woman who understands the perils we are all facing and the need to confront old ways, old means, old beliefs, and to help devise new ways and means of living lives of equality, of health, nourishment, and peace for all. Mark your calendars. Action is the mother of hope. See you there. Betty Krawczyk

2011-08-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

TIME TO RETHINK PRIVATE PROPERTY

With our economy tanking in tandem with the US, and the Canadian environment turning to slush, I suggest, without shame or reservation, that we take a good look at where reverence for private property has led us, and is leading us.

I’m not talking about private homes, family farms, cars, trailers, boats, vacation places, small businesses or private money in the bank. I’m talking about the right of large multinational corporations to own and destroy large swaths of our physical environment at will, even if this destruction affects hundreds, thousands, even millions of other people and other species. Logging companies do this by clear cutting large tracts of forests, both public and private.

These forests can include watersheds that feed into lakes and rivers and reservoirs, waterways that can flood valleys below during the rainy season following the clear cutting of forests above. A classic example of this is a final report that was delivered (August 16) to the Comox Valley Regional District by Northwest Hydraulic Consultants. This report concerned the serious flooding in Courtenay the past few years involving the Tsolum River.

The Comox Valley Record reported on the Courtney council receiving the report (August 19) but didn’t mention that TimberWest Forest Corporation paid for the investigation, in part, into how their logging practices may have contributed to the flooding in the valley for the past two years. Isn’t that interesting? We have a situation where a logging company under suspicion funds, in part, the investigation of Courtenay flooding and the main local paper neglects to mention this. At least the Comox Valley Echo mentioned that TimberWest owns two thirds of the Tsolum River’s watershed and that the assessment itself was based on information particularly given by TimberWest.

Heavens to Betsy! Do they think we are all as dumb as sticks? They must. But what is wrong with us that we stand for such nonsense? TimberWest has one of the worst environment logging records on the books. They clear cut to the bone. And they are heavily into raw logs. And I don’t think I have to tell you where our raw logs are going. You’re right. To China. Why China? Well, it isn’t just because the US housing market has slowed to a tear drop. It’s because China forbids clear cutting in its own country.

That’s right. Since the massive floods in 1998 that killed 3,000 people and destroyed 22 million acres of farmland China has rethought the practice of clear cutting. And banned it everywhere in China. And, would you believe…there is no longer any cutting of any kind in China’s old growth forests.

China has stopped clear cutting her own forests, because she can effectively clear cut ours. And in the process also provide her people with employment by milling our raw logs over there. China learned her lesson from the massive flooding of 1998 and the lesson was this…go clear cut somebody else’s forests. Pick out a corporate ridden country like Canada that obviously doesn’t care about their forests, their wild animals, about flooding, about their people. And China would be right. Our governments don’t care. And because they don’t care, they shouldn’t be in charge of our forests. And large private logging corporations shouldn’t be in charge of anything. They shouldn’t exist. Not even on private land.

Oh, yes. The report filed by Northwest Hydraulic Consultants that was paid, in part, by TimberWest and based on information particularly from TimberWest, said that heavier rain was the cause of the Courtenay flooding, not TimberWest clear cutting. Surprised?

(photo:Comox Valley Echo)

GENETICALLY MODIFIED PEOPLE ?

2011-08-15T12:46:00.000-07:00

Genetically Modified People?

Impossible? Improbable? Last year I would have said so. Now I’m not sure. Consider: we already have genetically modified salmon ready to make their debut in BC fish farms. Actually, the fish (dubbed FrankenFish by US media) are already here. FrankenFish were born in Canada at Memorial and Queens Universities in 1996 and according to Biologist Bob Devlin, many are living in West Vancouver under big, white tents across from Marine Drive. Bob Devlin studies and cares for the FrankenFish. In an article featuring Mr. Devlin in the North Shore News (March, 2011.) Mr. Devlin neglected to mention that the FrankenFish is patented.

Exactly what is a FrankenFish? In this case an Atlantic salmon that has been grown from eggs that were injected with additional genes from an eel and Growth Factor IGF-1. They can grow to ten times the size of an ordinary salmon, still containing unknown quantities of IGF-1, a hormone that has been linked to early sexual maturation of human children. A company called AquaBounty (US based) has a patent on this genetically modified salmon which is the very first animal to be genetically altered and then patented like corn and canola.

The Harper government won’t even tell us what GMO foods are in our groceries and even if we knew, a patented salmon is a very big jump from a patented ear of corn. But a patented genetically modified pig is not such a terribly big jump from a patented salmon as both are animals. The FrankenPig already has his papers (Revivcor) and is waiting his turn to be officially tested for market.’

As horrible as this seems the worse may be yet to come. In my opinion, given the power of the super rich and the super right wing, it is not inconceivable that the genetic modification of humans is also in the not too distant future. Not for food, of course. And not even, like robots, to perform repetitive or onerous tasks that most humans shrink from performing. What is it that our medical establishment is constantly calling for that is in very short supply? You guessed it, human body parts.

Human body parts are in constant demand, especially by people who can pay big bucks for them, legally or illegally. Human eggs can be genetically modified in the Petri dish as easily as salmon eggs and grown normally in the wombs of poor women in return for food for the women’s hungry families. How could genetically modified humans be engineered to benefit corporations?

FrankenPeople could be sterilized in the Petri dish, like FrankenFish, kept clean and healthy, and have extremely small brains. When called upon, FrankenPeople would perhaps have several operations to remove various body parts before they would die from the operations, or be killed, humanely of course, having served their purpose. FrankenPeople would never know they were created only to serve as body parts primarily for the corporate elite. And the rest of us?

Would we be persuaded that FrankenPeople might be okay in case we needed an organ transplant for a loved one and had the money? A lot of money, of course, because the patent holder of FrankenPeople wouldn’t sell their items cheap. After all, they would argue, even though the processes of modifying FrankenPeople might have been engineered in public Canadian universities as was the FrankenFish, the holders could claim they invested enormous amounts of money in bringing FrankenPeople body parts to market. Science fiction? I’m not so sure. We have allowed patented genetically modified corn and grains without revolt. Patented genetically modified salmon are already on our shores. The patented pig is next. At what point do we as citizens refuse to cooperate with a sick and deranged economic system that doesn’t even realize how sick and deranged it is? Where is that point? Sweet mother of us all, where is that point?

GMO's, DFO's and EXPLODING WATERMELONS

2011-08-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

BC policy makers seem as entranced with hormones that make food grow fast and fat as the Chinese farmers are whose watermelons have recently exploded from over enthusiastic applications. Especially the BC Liberal Government is entranced with the use of hormones in the fish farm industry.

Our provincial government, along with all three of our universities and in close cooperation with our Department of Fisheries and Oceans, are in the process of totally changing the hormonal composition of our salmon. From the sex changing of males into females for fish farm pens to stocking our lakes and coastal waters with these hormonally disturbed fish without telling the public, has actually become the norm. The hormonally changed fish also go through a process (artificial female triploidy) that makes them sterile. Usually. By never going through sexual maturation the salmon grow bigger and fatter. But some few will remain able to mate with wild fish in our waterways, thus creating a veritable nightmare of increasing numbers of fish in the wild with screwed up hormonal compositions.

Much of this sex hormone manipulation of BC salmon emanates from the work of Dr. Edward M. Donaldson, DFO, Professor Emeritus, and UVIC adjutant professor. So what, you might ask? Doesn’t Dr. Donaldson have a right to do this? No. Not in secret, and not on our dime. Dr. Donaldson should have been drawing his salary from the fish farms instead of from us. And who are our publically funded universities serving? The public? Or private corporations like AquaBounty?

AquaBounty (started at Memorial and Queens Universities) has patented a salmon that is no longer even a salmon. The FrankenFish is part eel (eel genes have been sliced into the genetic structure of the fish) and grows up to four times the size of an ordinary salmon in less than half the time. Did our BC universities know about this monster creation beforehand or was it a privately held secret by Memorial and Queens Universities back east?

Of course our BC universities knew all about Frankenfish. Because they’re already here and are being grown in BC. Dr. Donaldson tells us in his REPRODUCTIVE CONTAINMENT OF GENETICALLY ALTERED SALMONIDS on page 114 “ Total containment has recently been implemented for the field testing of transgenic carp (FrankenFish) in the US… along with Atlantic Salmon (still talking about transgenic fish, the ones that have been dubbed Frankenfish) imported into British Columbia…”

And how does Dr. Donaldson suggest these FrankenFish salmon be held and grown in BC? First, Dr. Donaldson says they must be held in a land based system “with a 24 hour security system, triple screening of out flows, treatment of the effluent, surround of field trial ponds with dry ponds, and provision for removal or poisoning of fish in the event that a flood is predicted. “

This is obviously serious stuff. Almost like containing terrorists. Patented terrorists. So, as these FrankenFish are already here, where are the land based containment facilities capable of complete security where the FrankenFish can be grown in absolute secrecy? After all, how many exclusively land based, totally contained fish farms are there in BC?

Continued…

2011-08-06T09:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Gentle People,

I want to thank everyone who sent me happy birthday greetings and amusing videos for my 83^rd birthday on August 4^th. They were the toppings of a beautiful day of sunshine and renewed hope. Of course growing older at age 83 is somewhat different than growing older at 43 or 63. But not terribly. Once one realizes that every living thing on this earth is in a natural process of birth, growth, death, and rebirth again (in whatever form) then one can relax into the process. It’s when one realizes that every breath taken by a human being on this earth has been taken untold billions of time before by other organisms, including other humans, that our lives fall into perspective within the flow of time. And then time itself appears stunning, fascinating, and brilliantly coloured, wherever one is within the process. There. This is my little homely on my 83^rd birthday. And thanks again everybody. You’re all awesome. Love, Betty K

WHY MONSANTO LOVES CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES

2011-08-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

Monsanto also loves, besides two very important universities, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and one huge Frankenfish corporation named AquaBounty. The FrankenFish (genetically modified salmon) was in fact, born in Newfoundland, at Memorial University in 1996. Two Memorial based researchers, Garth Fletcher and Choy Hew, worked to create this fish that does not exist in nature, along with Peter Davies of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. (St. John’s Telegram: Jan. 24, 2011.)

This work on genetically modified salmon was protected by Memorial University and Queen’s with the final patent coming in 1996. At this point what had been a publicly funded venture became a totally private firm under the name AquaBounty Technologies, complete with a birth certificate in the form of their own private patent . But I would like to know how many people connected with these two universities now have stock, or stock options, in AquaBounty?

So we have two prestigious universities (Memorial and Queens) that took Canadian tax payers’ money to boost along and become part of an exercise that was secret, entirely corporate driven, without proof that genetically modified salmon (or other modified fish) did not pose a threat to the public health of Canadians or would not escape to breed with wild fish. But this is only half the story.

The part that is really creepy concerns the patents for these genetically modified salmon. Enter Monsanto. And the US Food and Drug Administration. That’s where the battle to certify Frankenfish is being fought. And Canada? Where the US goes is most certainly where Canada will go. And guess who will be sitting in advisory positions to the US government upon application for approval?

For one, Michael Taylor, the US Food Safety Czar. He was previously an attorney for Monsanto. He was influential in getting other genetically modified foods approved. Another adviser to the US on Frankenfish is Alison Van Eenennaam. She used to work for Monsanto. And also advising will be Kevin Wells, who works for a company named Revivicor, that is genetically engineering pigs (this from Jeffery Smith ,Natural Grocers.) And the answer from the FDA will be coming soon enough to our markets.

Canadian companies don’t have to label genetically modified food. Wheat, corn, soy beans, we don’t really know what we’re eating. And if the AquaBounty application is approved the flood gates will open wide like gaping jaws. We won’t know when we could be eating FrankenFish, or FrankenPork, for that matter. But we should be acutely aware of one thing…the most evil of all corporations to ever to come into being may very well wind up with most or all of the patents on all genetically modified salmon, and when escaped GM fish (by accident or design) mate with wild fish, Monsanto can claim they own all, or most of, the salmon in the seas and rivers. And make the claim stick. Harper’s new conservative judges (four new ones, a majority before he leaves office) will make sure it sticks in Canadian jurisdiction.

But AquaBounty isn’t the only worry. For twenty years, FDO researchers in BC have been experimenting with, and using sex hormones to satisfy fish farm demands for all female salmon in their pens. And not stopping there, our DFO fish scientists, along with BC governmental approval, have stocked a large number of our lakes with these sex changed and sterilized fish. Continued…

Action is the Mother of Hope

Betty Krawczyk
Schiver Rhodes Publishing
www.schiverrhodespublishing.com

Dr. KRISTI MILLER AND FRANKENFISH

2011-07-30T20:09:00.000-07:00

At issue in the Cohen Commission, currently taking place in Vancouver is whether fish farms have diseases that can spread to wild salmon, which in turn may have caused the salmon crash of 2009. Speculation is swirling around the testimony of Dr. Kristi Miller, a federal fish biologist working out of the Pacific Biological Station on Vancouver Island, and what she knows about fish diseases.

But the Harper government has silenced Dr. Miller. Which is odd, as it was the Harper government who ordered the Cohen Commission in the first place after the crash of the salmon population in 2009. Surely somebody around Harper must have advised him that fish farms were likely to come under discussion beforehand. Then there was the enormous run of Sockeye in 2010 (the largest run in one hundred years) that would seem to counterbalance somewhat the claim of real or threatened destruction of the Sockeye by disease.

I can’t see Harper panicking enough over the discussion of fish farms and fish diseases to risk criticism of being called a dictator (which of course he is) by silencing Dr. Miller. There has to be other reasons. But Harper can certainly silence Dr. Miller as the responsibility for fish farms was transferred from provincial jurisdiction to complete federal control by way of a recent law suit pressed by Alexandria Morton. Dr. Miller, in any event, is a federal employee. This leaves us in a bit of a fishy soup.

For starters Dr. Kristi Miller is not just a fish biologist. She heads a department at the Biological Station. Her title: Dr. Kristi Miller, Head, Molecular Genetics. And the title of her division is: Ecological Genomics. What is Genomics? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

“a branch of biotechnology concerned with applying the techniques of genetic and molecular biology to the genetic mapping and DNA sequencing of sets of genes or the complete genomes of selected organism, with organizing the results in databases, and with applications of the data (as in medicine or biology)

A little thick, you say? I agree. But let’s look at the operable words here. They are, GENETIC MAPPING, DNA SEQUENCING OF GENES, WITH ORGANIZING DATABASES, and WITH APPLICATIONS OF THE DATA. From what I know of scientific jargon, I believe this means that Dr. Miller and her staff are looking at fish genes with the object of changing or modifying them in some way. In fact, I think BC is hosting some of the prime architects of genetically modified fish that is causing such great consternation in other parts of the world. Now why would I think such a terrible thing was happening right here in BC?

Because the salmon that are called FrankenFish by the U.S. media have had their genetic structures altered by the DNA Sequencing of Genes, Dr. Kristi Miller’s specialty. These fish are drastically altered by the process of inserting added genes into the salmon eggs. The fish then grow huge. And they carry added material in their flesh…hormones and pathogens. They are being designed for fish farms. I believe these genetically modified fish are already being farmed here in BC on at least two different farms.

Added to the horror of the creation of these FrankenFish, other fish that have simply been sex changed and sterilized are now populating our BC lakes and coastal waters. I believe this is really the information causing Harper to panic. Dr. Miller might accidentally, or under questioning, start talking about how her main work, I’m beginning to suspect, is that of creating, or helping to create, FrankenFish. And a rising fear that, (as intimated by Dr. Edward Donaldson) the public might turn ugly upon receipt of this knowledge.

HELP! I'M FALLING...

2011-07-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

Help, I’m falling…
Into a slough of despair. The deeper I get into reading the scientific papers on how to create sterilized, sex changed, fish farm fish slurry out of what would have been beautiful, healthy wild salmon is turning my stomach. And I have a cast iron stomach (I’ve raised eight kids.) I’m also relatively shock proof. But, in reading another of Dr. Edward Donaldson’s papers, I find I am not shock proof at all. The salmon Dr. Donaldson (DFO, West Vancouver laboratories) and colleagues are designing to stock fish farms with, are not only also being stocked in BC lakes, but already have been released into BC’s coastal waters.

We are told in a paper entitled The Reproductive Containment of Genetically Altered Salmonids that salmon, triploided and directly treated with estradoil (the most potent of estrogens ) “have been released from both Capilano Salmon Hatchery and Big Qualicum Salmon Hatchery into British Columbia Coastal Waters.” Page 114
And in the same paper we read that these fish were caught and are being caught, by both commercial and recreational fisher people and consumed by humans. However, there are many problems associated with sterilization of salmon, as Dr. Donaldson goes on to inform us, because male hormones are also being used to sterilize fish. Why? Just for fun? To see what will happen? Just to see what will happen to wild fish when some of the treated fish are not completely sterilized as has happened before? There isn’t even a reason to use male androgens as fish farms want all females. Dr. Donaldson tell us on page 118, bottom of the page no.3

No. 3 “Androgens are potent steroids (testosterone, etc.) which are biologically active in humans. Operators must therefore utilize appropriate protective equipment and avoid self exposure.”

No. 5 “Androgen solutions must be disposed of after use in an environmentally sound manner.”

No.6 “While androgen residues are completely eliminated in a matter of two to three weeks after the termination of treatment and the sterilized fish at the time of marketing contain no indictable levels of natural androgen, the potential exists for consumer resistance to fish that have received androgen treatment during early development.”

The potential exists? Just the potential? That the public would be appalled at buying and eating sterilized, sex changed, super fat fish? With no real assurance that hormonal residues are not lurking in the mushy fish flesh? I think perhaps Dr. Edward Donaldson and his colleges have been driven more than a little mad by the secrecy they must labour under; by a grossly magnified sense of their own privilege to destroy and rearrange natural systems almost at whim, and by both provincial and federal governments who recognize only one mantra, that of profit.

This is the same sense of an almost god-like privilege that the logging corporations feel when they freely admit they are after every last old growth tree in this province so that natural forests can be replaced by tree farms. Is it such a stretch for the BC government and the government of Canada to feel that it might also be a profitable thing to change the very fish of the seas into manufactured versions of fish that can be patented? Not likely? Oh, very likely. I’ll tell you about Monsanto’s interest in these fish later. Also about the interest that an extremely prominent businessman in British Columbia has in FrankenFish.

2011-07-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

FAT, FALLOW, TRIPLOID FISH!

Bless my bones! The Times Colonist has actually paused for a moment in its never ending praise of the lords of commerce and brought a subject to the attention of the masses that might actually benefit our health to know about (Modified Salmon can breed with fish in the wild TC July 15.) This article is a reprint, more like a filler, not to be confused with an actual TC reporter doing any investigative work for the paper. Which the Times Colonist wouldn't allow anyway.

And the reprint didn’t get it quite right. Modified fish are already being offered for human consumption. They are already in fifty per cent of the fresh water lakes in BC (Fresh Water Society of BC.)These fish are called triploids because by treating the fish eggs shortly after fertilization, instead of developing with two different sets of chromosomes which is normal, the fish develop three. In the wild, a triploid fish is exceedingly rare and is always sterile. However, there is no assurance that these vast numbers of artificially triploided fish recently introduced into our lakes cannot reproduce in the wild.

The government of BC is stocking our lakes with these abnormal triploid fish because it makes a good photo-op for the fIsher people when one of these fish is caught. As triploid fish become adults without going through sexual maturity they get very fat. Would the government bother to tell fishermen that they are catching and eating abnormally fat fish with shriveled testes and ovaries? Good Lord, no. That would upset people. Still, it is the hormonally treated fish that worry me the most.

In his paper “Hormones and Sex Control in Fish with Particular Emphasis on Salmon” Dr. Edward Donaldson from the West Vancouver Laboratory tells us that in order to get all female salmon in farm pens:

“…all female populations can be produced by direct treatment with natural or synthetic estrogens.”

And Dr. Donaldson goes on to cite the experiments he is involved with that use the most potent of the estrogens which is estradiol, and a synthetic estrogen called ethynylestradiol. Remember the research scientists in the book OUR STOLEN FUTURE who told us that estradiol was so potent that it could affect life in the womb even if ingested in parts per trillion? From my own research there isn’t even a measuring device that can register parts per trillion of estradiol. How can Dr. Donaldson assure us with any degree of certainly that there wouldn’t be any residues of artificially imposed estrogen in the flesh of hormonally treated salmon that could have disastrous effects on a human fetus? Or toddlers? Or adults?

The biggest company behind the creation of “Frankenstein Salmon” or “Franken Fish” is an American company called AquaBounty. This company not only uses growth hormones that affect the way estrogens are utilized in the bodies of the fish, they actually slice the fish genes to produce a creature that grows at least twice as fast, sometimes even three or four times as fast, as normal salmon.

Experiments are being done here in Canada for AquaBounty. With Canadian money. And they are not just experiments. AquaBounty has a production facility on Prince Edward Island. And guess what? AquaBounty has also received a $2.9 million dollar grant from the Canadian government to assist in their research and production.

That’s $2. 9 million dollars of our money to help transform our sweet natural salmon that nourishes our bodies, minds, and hearts into…what? Into fish monsters that may cause birth defects, add to the burden of estrogen fed cancers, and may feminize men. This is what the Harper government is promoting and what our BC government has latched onto with gusto. ( The fish shown may or may not be a triploid.)

BRAIN FOOD? or FRAKENSTEIN SALMON?

2011-07-14T18:20:00.000-07:00

Brain Food? Or “Frankenstein” Salmon?

es, I’m talking about sex changed fish and fish farms. Again. The Cohen Commission is presently looking at (or will look at) disease and sea lice in fish farms (data complied due to Alexandra Morton’s wonderful work) but I have come to the conclusion that the increasing practice of using sex hormones (both estrogen and testosterone are used) to actually change the sex of fish in the pens is, in my opinion, even more egregious. Why?
I am worried about the sex hormone residue in some fish farm salmon that could very well seriously impact humans. From the book Our Stolen Future by Colborn, Dumanoski, Myers, they write (Chapter Four) that…
”As early as the 1930s, researchers at Northwestern University Medical School showed that tinkering with hormone levels during pregnancy was a dangerous business, particularly for the fetus undergoing rapid development in the womb…Although estrogen at normal levels is essential for development, too much of it can wreak havoc.” But how much artificially given estrogen would a human mother have to consume from fish for it to begin to affect her fetus?
According to Dr. Fred vom Saal, quoted from the same book, Our Stolen Future, it only takes the tiniest particle of estrogen imaginable to cause havoc in the development of a human fetus in the womb:
“When considering hormones such as estradiol, the most potent estrogen, forget parts per million, or parts per billion. The concentrations are generally parts per trillion, one thousand times lower than parts per billion. One can begin to imagine a quantity so infinitesimally small by thinking of a drop of gin in a train of tank cars full of tonic. One drop in 660 tank cars would be one part in a trillion, such a train would be six miles long.”
Let’s consider this. The fish farms want only female fish in their pens because a significant number of male salmon mature early and die. That hurts the bottom line. Better to hurt something else beside the bottom line, they seem to think, like secretly experimenting with, and then producing, farmed fish that very well may still carry enough surplus artificially induced estrogen in their bodies to affect the hormonal development of humans when ingested by pregnant women. Fish farmed salmon can be made all female by direct treatment with estrogen or by treating the mother fish with testosterone to cause her to become male but to develop sperm that will be all xx.
And who would tell pregnant women about farmed fish being hormonally altered? Certainly not our governments. They are providing the funds to get modified salmon “out there. “ At least the US so far has resisted the pressures of the major fish corporation (Agua Bounty) who created “Frankenstein” Salmon as they are beginning to be called, from being FDA approved there. Do we know what’s going on here in Canada and British Columbia?
How would we know? Would our governments tell us? In a pig’s eye. They won’t even tell us what brands of Canadian corn or soy beans are genetically modified. We suspect most Canadian brands are, not because our government told us but because other nations who refuse to accept our modified grains tell us. Then why would we expect our governments to change their secretive ways over modified fish? It’s in their best interests (in their present roles as enemies of the people) to keep hormonally modified salmon a total secret. The public mustn’t know that our elected representatives’ willingness to allow genetically modified basic food stuffs now extends to, oh so recklessly, sex changing our fish with the use of sex hormones. But we, the public, do know some things. Next time.

Christy, Sarah, and the Riot

2011-07-11T13:52:00.000-07:00

Christy, Sarah, and the Riot

Ever notice the similarity between these two right wing women? Christy Clark and Sarah Palin? Neither like other women, at least those engaged in actually working to benefit the community, such as nurses and school teachers (yes, I know men also work in these professions.) Both Clark and Palin try to project their love and concern for families in general in their rhetoric, but in practice most of their love goes to rich families. Still, these are two tough sounding ladies. Especially tough on crime. While Christy Clark hasn’t as yet flourished her rifle (if she has one) over her kill as does Palin, Clark can sound just as tough. Consider her “you-can-run-but you can’t hide” threats to the street rioters after the big lose.

Deservedly so? Yes and no. Am I being soft on crime to point out that young people ape the adults in their society? In every society on earth? Game night you had a bunch of young males (yes, a few females were involved ) who have a dearth of alpha male models of honesty and altruism to ape. Young people can be very idealistic; they yearn for good lives. Young men want to identify with something that will contribute to their growing sense of masculinity. They are searching for what it means to be a man. The only place they have to look is to the other men around them. Of course they recognize there are many hardworking honest men everywhere. But in a highly individualist and competitive society young men also recognize that honest, hardworking men are not necessarily rewarded fairly for their efforts. And they look up to men who know how to win. They have been taught by male culture that winning is everything? This makes everybody, especially young men, emotionally skewed. But where did they get this idea only winning counts?

From the adult alpha males (and females) in their world who consider losing anything important a humiliation not to be endured. And we heard this message constantly from the media leading up the game. Just the expectation of winning was front page news for many weeks before the game.

The message that came unremittingly from the media, politicians, and business leaders was that hockey was the thing that held Canada together. All of Canada was involved. This was it. We just had to win. We were bound to. All the important people said so. Obscene amounts of money were poured into this game. The testosterone in the air was palpable. Many young males identification with the hockey players became complete. And then our hockey players lost. Which meant many of the young men felt they had lost, too. This was not only a national disgrace, but a personal one. The high expectation, fueled by alcohol, turned to anger. Against whom? I believe their anger was, at bottom, directed against a society that betrays them at every turn. How so?

By expecting young people to be better than the adults around them. Christy Clark sounded like an avenging angel of the Lord out to skin these young people alive. But my belief is that she projected such outrage because she knows herself to be a plunderer and a coward. If she were not a coward she would order an investigation into the BC Rail fiasco. She would want to explain fully to the public why Basi and Verk were given 6 million dollars in return for their agreement not to name the higher ups in government they claimed had given them the orders to commit criminality. Could that be because Christy Clark was the deputy premier of British Columbia when the deals surrounding the BC Rail sale were made? And that she knows very well who the higher ups were because she was one of them? And is this the real reason she wouldn’t come out and debate David Eby during the bi-election? Because she dreads any pointed questions about the BC Rail sale worse than she would a coiled rattlesnake? I think so.
Well, Christy Clark, carry on. But those words “you can run but you can’t hide” directed toward temporarily out of control young people may come back to haunt you.

DON'T EAT THAT FISH!

2011-06-30T05:58:00.000-07:00

DON’T EAT THAT FISH!

I don’t like even thinking about fish farms and sex changed fish, much less writing on such a creepy subject. And it’s difficult because the information is so hidden. But then, anytime a government backed process surfaces that will please business but appall the public , it is generally kept as quiet as possible.

Why is the sex of fish being changed? For higher fish farm profits. A significant percentage of male salmon mature early and die in the pens before harvest. Blanket loss to fish farm producers. To avoid this loss, they want all females in their pens. You’ve probably heard this before.

But how to get all female fish in the pens? Well, fish scientists are all over this. They have devised ways. Either treat some females with male hormones that render the females male in all other respects but will only produce xx chromosomes in their sperm, or treat males with estrogen that will render them females. The sex-changed females won’t lay eggs, but their flesh will be firmer than the male salmon for the market and they will live longer. Voila! By splashing around some sex hormones, our fish farm fish become totally pleasing to the farm owners. But what does this sex changed fish flesh do to the consuming public?

In a publication entitled ORGANIC AQUACULTURE (June 23, 2010) we are told (page 4) that “Both artificially triploid (artificially sterilized) and monosex stocks (fish treated with opposite sex hormones) are consistently prohibited in international organic aquaculture standards”. Now why would these people take the attitude that anything is wrong with sex changed fish?

They quote the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements’ opinion that genetically modified organisms are bad news because of “Release of organisms which have never before existed in nature, and which cannot be recalled”, and “Unacceptable threats to human health.” There are lots more reasons but these two clawed at me. “Unacceptable threats to human health” and “Never before existed in nature and cannot be recalled?” Scary business. Okay, specifically, who or what is doing this to our fish? On the ground, so to speak. Somebody we can talk to about it?
Well, there’s Mr. Edward M. Donaldson. He works at West Vancouver Laboratory for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (unless he has recently moved on.) As far back as 1996 (Mr. Donaldson has been publishing papers on how to change the sex of fish since 1986) he co-wrote a paper called HORMONES AND SEX CONTROL IN FISH WITH PARTICULAR EMPHASIS ON SALMON and states that “The application of sex control in finfish aquaculture offers significant benefits for the optimization of production strategies…a review of methods…for the direct endocrine control of sex differentiation.”

“Optimization of production strategies”. “For the direct endocrine control of sex differentiation.” Don’t you just love this scientific language they use for screwing up nature anyway they possibly can for the benefit of industry? But this is not all Mr. Donaldson says. More later.

DAVID SUZUKI, THE PIPELINE, AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

2011-06-26T12:24:00.000-07:00

David Suzuki and other prominent environmentalists are urging Canadians to respond to their call to protest the Trans Keystone XL Canada Corp. pipeline (BCSEA-NEWS). We are advised by John Newcomb (jnewcomb@UVIC.CA) that the planned protests will take place in Washington, D.C. this summer. So far, so good. Sounds wonderful. Many young people will see this as an opportunity to express their disaffection at the way their world is being dismantled. However, the caveat immediately following this call to action does not sit right with me.

The caveat reads: “But Suzuki and other Canadians (BCSEA-NEWS) involved in the planned actions of civil disobedience have indicated they won’t risk being among those who might end up in handcuffs for fear they might lose the ability to travel to the U.S.”
Well, now. Fear rules. At least among our own generals of this war seeking to ward off environmental collapse. In the old days princes and kings would go into battle with their troops. They took the same risks themselves that they urged upon their followers. Afraid of not being able to travel to the US if one partakes of peaceful civil disobedience? Would that be so terrible? To the contrary, I think this would send the most striking message to the entire world. David Suzuki thrown out of the US and not allowed back because he actually physically protested the construction of a massive, murderous pipeline? Why, this action would give the entire Western world pause.

Other nations would conclude that our earth’s life support systems must indeed be critical for David Suzuki to risk arrest and perhaps they should themselves pull away from their own death oriented projects. But is the fear expressed by John Newcomb really that of not being allowed back in the US? I suspect the real fear he expresses, particularly for David Suzuki, is centered in the David Suzuki Foundation. I suspect that the most pressing fear is that of losing government funding and certain conservative sponsor support if David Suzuki actually risked arrest. Their attitude seems to be to let the troops, the young kids, run all the real risks while they act as the snugly secure generals. I don’t buy it. It’s not right. In my opinion it’s a cop-out and a betrayal of the young.

WHEN IS A SALMON'S DADDY ALSO IT'S MOMMY?

2011-06-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

When it is a B.C. genetically modified salmon. No such thing? Oh, but there is, and has been, for some time. In fact, I first heard of genetically modified fish fifteen years ago when I was living in Clayoquot Sound, on down from a fish farm. A young female worker at the fish farm told me one day that she was quitting her job because they were using sex hormones to change the sex of the fish. She was horrified. “It’s unnatural!” she shrieked.

At the time, I took this with a grain of salt. I didn’t know this woman very well, and her story didn’t wash. Why would the farms want to change the sex of their fish? It didn’t make sense. Not long after, I moved away from the Sound for various reasons, but never quite forgot the young woman and her story.

Gradually I began to accumulate hints of why fish farms might want to have sex changed fish, and/or their off-spring, in their pens. It’s because up to twenty per cent of male salmon “jack early” that is, come to maturity early. The female fish aren’t ready to engage (and will be killed before they are) so these males die. They are a financial loss to the farm. So the farms are looking for a way to elimate the males in their pens.
And guess what? There is a way. Several of them, in fact. With sex hormones. In a paper entitled Hormones and Sex Control in Fish with Particular Emphasis on Salmon from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans at the West Vancouver Laboratory, one way fish farmers can get all female fish is described. They simply immerse some female fry in testosterone which effectively turns them into males, that is, the treated females when grown produce sperm, act as males and are able to fertilize the eggs of normal females. However, because the hormonally altered parent is still genetically female, her sperm will contain predominately xx (female) chromosomes instead of equal amounts of xx and xy (male) chromosomes. An alternate method is simply to treat the male fish directly with estrogens to turn them into females.

Other experiments are also taking place on fish in BC, including fresh water fish. One is called “induced triploid fish” which means, without going into the details of the manipulation of the fish, that they are rendered sterile. A kind of eternal youth for the fish (they don’t go into reproductive mode) which means their flesh stays firm for the tourists palate. Isn’t that lovely?

Currently, fifty per cent of the small lakes in BC are stocked with these “induced triploid fish” (Freshwater Fisheries of BC.) How can it happen that the wild fish that used to bless us with their abundance and the natural sweetness of their flesh have become sex changed and sterile? Where are BC’s investigative reporters? Are all of them in Boston?

THIS DANGEROUS PLACE

2011-06-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

THIS DANGEROUS PLACE My Journey Between the Passions of the Living and the Dead. (Friesen Press, 2011)

While imprisoned for Contempt of Court in the spring of 2003, Betty Krawczyk searched for understanding into the reasons for her actions. Had she signed a paper promising not to go back to the Walbran Valley where she was arrested for blockading logging trucks with her group, Women in the Woods, she would have been released from prison until trial. But she refused. Her own stubbornness and intransigence before the courts of British Columbia baffled everybody, including Krawczyk herself.

This Dangerous Place poses these questions: What is the source of the human will? And an even more elusive question: to what degree can humans interact with the dead? Do the passions of people long dead still hang around in certain situations and seek to interfere with the lives of the living? This book asks these questions from lived experience. The answers may belong to the future. This is a true story.
This Dangerous Place can be purchased from the following sites:

friesnpress.com/bookstore / chapters.ca / amazon.ca / barnsandnoble.com
schiverrhodespublishing.com

Betty Krawczyk is the author of three previous books, including: Open Living Confidential, Lock Me Up or Let Me Go, and Clayoquot: Sound of My Heart, which was shortlisted for the VanCity Book Prize.
For more information please contact: betty.krawczyk@gmail.com

JUDGES SHOULD BE ELECTED

2011-06-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

Judges should be elected by the people, not appointed by Christian Fundamentalist Prime Ministers. Judges should have to run for office like every other politician, because in a fundamental sense, that’s what they are. They bring their own biases and political affiliations to the bench that heavily influences their rulings. And in many US States judges do have to run for election. The Canadian public should be able to ask judges how they feel about abortion, gay rights, universal day care centres, the war in Afghanistan, all the money that goes into the military, about decriminalizing drugs, and particularly questioned about the environment.

When judges rule on environmental issues we should be able to demand that they know something about the particular environmental dispute they will rule on. It’s heart breaking to see judges rule on environmental issues they know nothing about but have the power of life and death over, that is, which forests shall live or die, which salmon bearing streams, which watersheds, which wet lands. Nature has inherent rights and should be brought before the court as living things, not dead matter.
My last appeal to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada has just been dismissed. This case concerned Eagleridge Bluffs. The judge in BC who heard the BC Liberal government’s original application for an injunction knew nothing about the environment of the area and accepted a biased environmental assessment when only one third of the area had even been apprised.

But under Stephen Harper human rights issues are also on the block. Before there is another federal election Stephen Harper will have appointed seven of the nine Supreme Court judges of Canada. Poor us. Poor Canada. Poor Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We will have a majority of Conservative, Christian Fundamentalist Supreme Court judges, or ones in sympathy with this majority, who will rule on women’s rights, gay rights, the business model as life model, and the privatization of anything public that can be privatized. This is not fair. It is not right. But who will stop it?

For a long time I have held the belief that women as a group can actually change our seemingly comatose society into one that recognizes the following things…that corporations are not people and should not be treated as such by the courts, that the corporate model is not a model for our children (or anybody) to emulate, that private banks are causing poverty throughout the world and must be changed into public banks, that First Nations must be celebrated instead of ignored, that “gonzo pornography” is evil, that prostitution is a shame of the male world, and that there is an terrible discrepancy between the amount of our country’s wealth and attention toward hockey and other competitive sports to the determent of real news and real needs. Even the CBC leads the news with sports announcements, excitedly and approvingly, gushing about the obscene wealth generated by these games while BC leads the nation in child poverty.

We know when our entire court system is geared to the wishes of alpha males (corporate heads) instead of to justice. We need a women’s court; a mother’s court. A court by and for women, where women can demand better protection against rape and domestic violence, where we can learn to understand the law (and translate it from elitist legal jargon into regular English, French) and can refute case law when it is egregiously wrong in its rulings on the environment and human rights. I believe that women are the sleeping giant of our times and “when awakened the earth will tremble.” And rejoice.

THE CHRISTY CLARK SHOW ROLLS INTO TOWN

2011-05-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

THE CHRISTY CLARK SHOW ROLLS INTO TOWN
In Philip Round’s article entitled THE CHRISTY CLARK SHOW ROLLS INTO TOWN (Comox Valley Echo May 20, 2011) he reported that Christy Clark made certain statements concerning the proposed Raven underground coal mine. Premier Clark IS reported to have assured citizens of Comox Valley that the BC Environmental Assessment Office assessing the Raven Mine proposal was an “entirely independent” agency.

In a pig’s eye. I’ve been involved with, and watched, this agency long enough to know they do whatever the BC Liberals fancies. I’ve watched the EA Office give their okay for the destruction of Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver in order to make way for an unneeded highway to save about three minutes getting to the Olympics in Whistler, after only a third of the area was actually assessed. But there was also another bigger reason for this unprecedented approval after assessing only a third of the area. This highway, paid for by the public, was to be privately managed, and would facilitate the development of multi- million dollar homes on top of the bluffs. More like top of the world. For them. Because we got tricked into paying for private development. But the EA Office said in effect that it was perfectly all right to make their decisions with only one third of their environmental assessment completed. Entirely independent agency?

If this were true we wouldn’t have to endure the disgraceful loss of habit for endangered species, we wouldn’t have the continued logging in watersheds, we wouldn’t have clear cutting on mountain sides that causes flooding in the valleys, we wouldn’t have the ruination of salmon streams by careless logging, we wouldn’t have lice breeding fish farms that kill wild fish, and we wouldn’t have private industry damming up our rivers which further damage fish stocks. In other words, if our EA agency were truly an independent agency we would have sane and healthy environmental policies instead of sick, political ones.

Kevin Falcon succeeded at Eagleridge Bluffs in getting the EA to okay the concept that only a third of an area was needed for assessment approval to begin a project. Either the people at the EA offices were terrified of losing their jobs or all inexplicitly became brain damaged at once. A one third assessment could not possibly have represented the entire area of bogs, marshes, birds, red listed species of flora and fauna along with the Arbutus forests of Eagle Ridge Bluffs that was there. Kevin Falcon got his wish but in the process he has contributed to the loss of any lingering respect among many British Columbian for our provincial EA office.

But never mind. It’s an inside job anyway. The only agency in BC that makes the decisions concerning our environment now is the Ministry of Natural Resource Operations; the minister is Steve Thomson. Mr. Thomson is, in my opinion, merely an unobtrusive figurehead for this most important office. By pulling together all of our natural resources under one ministry the BC Liberals can speed things up considerably. This reorganization tightens the screws on the dissolution of the very concept of public ownership. They can sell off, destroy, give away and off load to the south, or internationally, any and all of our Crown Corporations and public resources with the greatest of ease. We are quickly and systematically being divested of all of our common property.

In my opinion, the decision concerning the Coal Coal Mine has already been made. It was made by Kevin Falcon and Christy Clark with Gordon Campbell’s blessing along with the wealthy investors salivating in the background. All that is left now to stop or slow the development would be peaceful civil disobedience. Anybody up for that?
Betty Krawczyk
Box 1117
Cumberland, BC V0R 1S0
Phone: 250-400-2444
Betty.krawczyk@gmail.com

THE TIME HAS COME FOR A WOMEN'S PARTY

2011-05-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things…and why the sea is boiling hot…and whether pigs have wings.” (Lewis Carroll, The Walrus and the Carpenter).

Actually, the Walrus wasn’t speaking to the Carpenter at this point, but to “all the little Oysters who stood and waited in a row”. Alright, already, we know what happened to all the little Oysters. They got eaten by the Walrus and the Carpenter. The Walrus and Carpenter were bigger; too big to fail. And too fast talking for all the little Oysters to actually divine the intentions of the Walrus and the Carpenter, until it was too late (notice how fast Kevin Falcon and Christy Clark both speak). I think we Canadians may be somewhat akin to the poor little Oysters in Carroll’s poem who “hurried up, all eager for the treat; their coats were brushed, their faces washed, their shoes were clean and neat...And this was odd, because you know, they hadn’t any feet.”

Or brains, either. But that’s the difference. We have both brains and feet. However, right now it is Stephen Harper who speaks in deadened, measured tones to all us little Oysters standing up in a row waiting to be eaten. By what? I could say Fascism because Harper certainly shows major tendencies to concentrate power under one rule, his rule. Yet it’s not the same. Hitler, regardless of whatever else he was about, was driven by hatred of the Jews. Harper is not. In fact, he sees Israel as being pivotal in bringing on the Battle of Armageddon which in turn will bring on the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.

Harper, in my opinion, is more driven by hated of people he sees as sinners, that is; gays, women who want / need abortions, addicts, poor people (if they weren’t sinners they wouldn’t be poor) children of poor people, environmentalists, artistic people, learned people (evolutionists-godless) petty criminals, (big time, well connection criminals can be forgiven) poor old people; the list is endless. Harper puts his money (our money) where his religious beliefs are. And what is really scary about this scenario is that Harper actually has much in common with the Muslims in his utter literal belief in written religious scriptures that breed the same type of fanaticism. And, I might add, disdain for women. Harper knows his religious beliefs are not shared by most Canadians which is why he never talks about his religious beliefs.
But we are not little Oysters after all. We know Harper will appoint judges within the next four years who will give him and his fundamentalist religious values a majority on our Supreme Court of Canada bench. The time has come for women to organize. A women’s union, or an outright women’s party. Not one necessarily to run against the NDP or the Greens, but one composed of women who are angry at what is happening to our children, our parents, our country, to our land itself and who are not afraid to show our anger. With a Harper majority and the BC Liberals still holding sway in BC there is no political centre any longer.
They themselves have polarized us.

We need a women’s party to protest the industrial use of hormones to maximize profits for corporations. Artificial hormones interfere with human reproduction and causes cancer. We need a women’s party to raise hell over genetically modified foods not being labeled. We need a women’s party with the clout to force our governments to give us reliable data on how much nuclear radiation from Japan is here, now, in BC, and to plan for the shutdown of all nuclear plants in Canada. We need a women’s party that will shame the governments of Canada mercilessly over the cost of college education, child poverty, and deforestation, subsides to oil companies, the privatization of health care, prison systems, and transportation

systems. Yes, the time has come. Any woman interested in coming together and contemplating such a group for discussion and action can email me:
betty.krawczyk@gmail.com

MOTHER'S DAY WITH STEPHEN

2011-05-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

I’m wondering how many mothers must have voted for Stephen Harper in order to give him a majority rule. On the face of it, it’s enough to bring motherhood itself into disrepute.

But things may not be as bad as all that. Harper got roughly 39.6 per cent of the vote (Toronto Star). That comes to approximately 5,829,350 people who voted Conservative. If we say that women would reasonably comprise half of these votes (as women are half the population of all voters) then only 2,914, 675 of the people who voted for Stephen Harper would be female. However, as more men than women traditionally vote Conservative then I think we might knock off another thousand along with the 675 at which point the number of women who voted for Harper would be approximately two million nine hundred and thirteen. Wow. From a population of almost 24 million people eligible to vote, less than three million women voted for Stephen Harper.

But how many of these less than three million females who voted Conservative would be mothers? An accurate percentage would be hard to come by. But what is there in the conservative program that would influence any mothers to vote for them?

Let’s see. Guns, as in Conservative opposition to the gun registry? But women don’t like guns. Except for Sarah Palin who belongs to another country (maybe another planet) and can’t vote in Canada. Military bombers and hardware? Mothers as groups aren’t terribly keen on war, at least less so than men. Wars, like guns, kill children. Fundamentalist religion? Ah, obviously some mothers do like this and raise their children so. But more prisons? Do mothers really feel safer with more prisons when violence is actually declining? When mothers know, as all women know, that violence is more likely to come within or around the edges of the family unit?

I think most of the mothers who voted for Harper came from two camps: one, well off mothers who are financially secure and just want their own children to be secure and can’t think beyond that. The other group belongs to the religious right, be it Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Sikh, most harbor loathing for gays and for women’s reproductive rights. And this group of mothers did not necessarily vote only their pocketbooks, but also for their religious ideologies. In my opinion mothers must move beyond these male constructs of money and religion which offer dissention and division, poverty and pain, class hatred and violence, and take their men and children with them, kicking and screaming, if necessary. Or none of us may survive. Our earth holds us, we stand or fall together. Happy Mother’s Day everybody!

HARPER'S FOUR HORSEMEN

2011-04-30T11:25:00.000-07:00

HARPER’S FOUR HORSEMEN
The Bible says many things. Among them, Jesus said there would always be poor people (the inference is that we mustn’t get too excited about them). The Bible also says that servants must obey their masters. And that wives must obey their husbands. Sweet. Rich Christian fundamentalists, who literally believe this, get to be kings on earth before they even get to the Rapture part, the point in the final Biblical blood baths (Book of Revelations) where they rise up into the sky with Jesus. Having finally escaped this convoluted thinking that saturated my early life in the US, (my father was an fundamentalist preacher) I now find myself living under the guidance of a Canadian prime minister who also is a member of this fundamentalist Christian club, one who believes literally in the Bible, particularly the Book of Revelation that gave us the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Revelations: 6:1-8).

These Four Horsemen have always made my head ache. The horsemen each ride different colored horses; white, red, black and ashen. And it is Jesus himself who sends these horsemen out to wreck terrible havoc upon the world, especially the ashen horsemen who has death written over him and is given authority to kill (by Jesus) with sword and pestilence and famine and wild beast. Fancy that. Whatever happened to the notion of “gentle savior?” Isn’t this a tad contradictory?

Nevertheless, the story of the Four Horsemen in the Book of Revelations is what fundamentalists believe literally, including Prime Minister Harper. And to buttress up Harper’s belief in these futurist horsemen, he has his own literal four horsemen waiting in the wings. These are the four judges of the Supreme Court of Canada he will appoint in the next four years to replace four retiring judges.

These new judges may be in many respects seem much like any other appointed judges except they will share one mind set because Stephen Harper will only appoint judges who believe as he does. They will perhaps belong to different churches, but will essentially hold very similar beliefs. They will believe abortion to be wrong and will rule against it. They will believe same sex marriage to be wrong and will rule against that too, along with most other rulings on Charter Rights. These are the four horsemen we must fear, not Biblical ones. Stephen Harper’s judicial four horsemen must not be allowed to ride. We must send out our own horsemen of hope and change, and not be dismayed by Harper’s Four Horsemen of death and destruction. And it is our vote on Monday that will halt Harper’s ride. Please let’s do this. Anybody but Harper.

OF RATTLESNAKES AND THE FEDERAL ELECTION

2011-04-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

Stephen Harper reminds me of the Cholla cactus in the Arizona desert. Cholla needles are fiendish. They seem to literally jump into one’s flesh. The needles have little barbs at their points containing tiny hinges. Once embedded in one’s flesh the tiny hinges open out. This prevents an easy removal and causes much pain. But desert creatures can also hide behind Cholla, potentially more dangerous things. Once when walking I stumbled upon a nest of rattlesnakes, half a dozen or more, behind a large patch of Cholla. The Cholla was readily visible, I could easily walk around. But when you are surprised by a partially hidden nest of rattlesnakes, and even if only one is coiled, you daren’t walk around. Or walk at all. If you are lucky and keep your calm you can slowly, very slowly, back away without harm. Which I managed to do in spite of fear and trembling and lived to tell about the adventure.

Only we (especially women) don’t have time now to slowly back away from a potential nest of rattlesnakes we may be facing, and soon. We must brave the Cholla and swiftly take the rattlesnake nest by surprise. I’m talking about the federal election, of course. But what’s so different about this federal election? Because if Stephen Harper gets a majority, and maybe even just re-elected, we can kiss good bye many of the most important gains women (and men) have made in the last twenty year in human rights. How so? Because Stephen Harper has access to a nest of his own private rattlesnakes. When he says he will not open the abortion debate, or allow a private member’s bill to even come forward it’s because he doesn’t have to do these things in order to knock down women’s right to safe abortion. In fact, he hardly has to do anything to re-criminalize abortion.

How? Only by carefully and selectively appointing four new judges to the Supreme Court of Canada. It was a group of thoughtful and fair minded Supreme Court of Canada judges that knocked down the criminalization of abortion in the first place. But there could be a huge shake up in the next few years in the make-up of this court. Four Supreme Court Judges must retire within the next four years because of age requirements. And who will appoint the new Supreme Court judges of Canada? The Prime Minister. And if reelected, that will be Stephen Harper.

If Stephen Harper gets re-elected, especially with a majority, we can expect him to appoint new judges who are ideologically and/or religiously opposed to abortion just as he is. By achieving his objective this way, he can say he didn’t personally bring in the legislation to make abortion illegal again, that it was done by the Supreme Court of Canada. I believe most judges try to be. impartial. However, judges are people like everybody else and bring to their work their own belief systems just as everybody else does. I have experienced many times how the belief systems of too many judges in BC (most are former corporate lawyers) enables them to rule to the right (in favor of the logging corporations) in their judgments on environmental issues because that’s where their beliefs are. And Stephen Harper will certainly seek out the judges who share his views on abortion and homosexuality.

Stephen Harper belongs to a fundamentalist church (Christian and Missionary Alliance Church) that strongly opposes abortion (note: Harper wouldn’t allow abortion to be part of the overseas maternal health program). This church also strongly opposes divorce, condemns homosexuality, opposes universal day care centres, won’t ordain women and believes that Jesus Christ’s return to earth is immanent and that those who aren’t “born again” will be lost in a lake of fire. I think it fairly safe to assume that Stephen Harper will seek to appoint judges that reflect his own personal and/or religious beliefs especially if he is reelected.
But there are enough women in this country to stop Stephen Harper cold at the voting booth. Let’s do it. Just think of four new judges on the Supreme Court of Canada bench with Stephen Harper’s religious/ ideological mind set and how they will rule on issues concerning abortion and same sex marriage. Sort of like a nest of rattlesnakes all coiled to strike? Metaphorically speaking? Isn’t that enough to stoke up your much maligned latent (or overtly) feminist heart, men and women alike? And make us all decisive in the voting booth.

St

Courting the Ethnic Vote

2011-04-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

It’s disgusting. And truly frightening the way our politicians, particularly the Conservatives, are courting the ethnic vote. Listening to the spinners on CBC on the Michael Enright talk show this morning (April 17) about how politicians must get close to, and sympathize with, the value systems of ethnic communities gave me painful pause. Especially when Michael and his guests started talking about how politicians should be courting the Sikh community. And then I remembered, oh, yes, the Vaisaki parade in Vancouver on Saturday.

Everybody was there, including Prime Minister Harper. Mr. Harper even shouted the Sikh religious slogan “Wahegurujji Ka Khalsa, Waheguruji Fateh” amid applause (IANS). And also in attendance was our provincial premier Christy Clark and Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson and even Ujjal Dosanjh. Ujjal Dosanjh, what were you doing there? I wondered. Some Sikhs are threatening to kill you because you oppose their separatist ways. However, this Vaisakhi parade was in Vancouver. The real parade, the one our politicians wish would drop off the face of the earth, will take place on April 23 in Surrey.

And who or what do the separatists Sikhs want to separate from? Canada? Yes, but first, they have to separate from India. Their hearts are still back in the Punjab State of India. This is what they are fighting for, a country of their own in India. And our politicians who in previous years have been troubled by the Vaisaki parades because they raise banners and photos of their fallen heroes in their separatist cause, including the assassins of Indira Gandhi (she was shot by her Sikh bodyguards), and the Air India Bombers, have recently turned to jelly.

Even though Canadian courts have established that a Sikh (Talwinder Parmar) was the worst mass murderer in Canadian history, as he was the master mind of the bombing of Air India, our politicians haven’t had a lot to say about it. Parmar’s organization (Babbar Khalsa) is officially condemned as a terrorist organization by the European Union, India, the US and Canada. Which raises the question:. how can a mass murderer, condemned by Canadian courts, be openly honoured as a hero in this country in a public parade (see picture, Parmar is featured third from right) without our political leaders, both provincially and federally, including the Attorney Generals, making any serious complaint? And seeking to forbid such a thing, along with threat of prison? Any other group, if publicly celebrating mass murder and political assassination, would promptly be treated to the inside of a courtroom and then prison cells.

The Sikhs are gaining power. They now number around four hundred thousand in Canada and half of them live in BC, mostly Surrey. They are the fifth largest religion in the world and fastest growing religious group in Canada. And they are perceived by politicians, to be a single voting bloc, extremist and all. Which may be why our politicians are fluttering like the sweetest butterflies around these Sikh leaders who applaud violence and who seem to care mostly for gaining enough power on these shores to convince India they should have their own state. And is this the reason why Mr. Harper was shouting Sikh religious slogans at Saturday’s parade (IANS April 16) when he should be pressing for investigations into the extremist religious community leaders who are willing to kill our own politicians who oppose them? Well, in my opinion Harper would do just about anything for that block of Sikh votes…sing, walk on his hands, bark like a dog. He may even be willing to ape Gregor Robertson and don a Canuck jersey. Although I’m not sure what that Canuck jersey had to do with the Sikh religious parade and celebration but it did suggest that the Vancouver Vaisakhi parade was probably a white bread version of the real thing.

So this was probably safe enough for the politicians, far from the troublesome banners and placards that will be raised in the real parade on April 23 in Surrey. And how will our law and order prime minister (tough on small crime, soft on the big stuff) and survivalist Christy Clark (BC Rail? No, thank you, reporter, we won’t be having a public investigation into BC Rail) both will simply ignore the whole other parade and pretend those banners and placards on the 23rd that celebrate assassins, mass murderers, and criminal threats (the very definition of terrorism) just aren’t happening. But the show will go on. It may eventually come back to haunt these same politicians. And when it does I think both of the Vaisakhi parades may have some mighty sharp teeth.

- Betty K

Where is the Voice of the Environment?

2011-04-11T12:45:00.000-07:00

Where is the voice of the environment in the National Debates? Locked out, that’s where. The major broadcast media, including our very own CBC, has elected not to include Elizabeth May in the debates. I am shocked by the decision of CBC. This is our own public media. We pay for CBC with our taxes. Stephen Harper has been trying to shut down the CBC ever since he’s been in office. He doesn’t like all those nature programs that point to the very global warming he doesn’t believe in. The End Times he believes in (the book of Revelation) will come primarily through wars and not through global warming. So it follows that Harper will happily send us into wars but not into environmental protection. And it appears that CBC has caved under Harper’s influence. The CBC, Canada’s very own public radio and television has decided that Stephen Harper is right after all and Elizabeth May should not be heard across Canada.

I’m embarrassed by and for the CBC. They ain’t what they used to be. When I first came to Canada, forty odd years ago, I clung to CBC for the straight and fair goods. I don’t have tv on general principals but I still listen to CBC radio. However, I am increasingly finding that if I really want to know what is going on in the world I go to my computer and click on Al Jazeera English, BBC, and Seattle Public radio. I have come to social media hesitantly but am beginning to think that in the final analysis, as our country becomes more Fascist under Stephen Harper (the definition of Fascism is a situation where state government, along with corporations and banks, and the police and military merge to the point where they become a single entity) social media may be all we can depend on in the future. This is happening nationally and provincially.

Before Gordon Campbell left office he made sure of one thing. That he would leave a new ministry structure that would expedite the sell-off of our public forests, streams and lands to multinationals, some through Public, Private Partnerships, others through outright sale. This new ministry is called The Ministry of Natural Resource Operations and besides the management of lands, water and forests, it includes the management of First Nations. A strange mix, right? Can’t the BC Liberals tell the difference between trees and rocks and human beings? To them it doesn’t matter, First Nations are to be managed just as the trees and rocks and streams are so they must be included in and managed by “The One Land Manager” program described in the service plan (Ministry of Natural Resource Operations).

And who is to be the “One Land Manager” in charge of all of our natural resources that bizarrely includes First Nations people? One man. Steve Thomson. He is listed as the head of this Monster Ministry that will make any and all decisions concerning our public properties with the click of one button. But is Steve Thomson a head or a tail of this Monster Ministry? I suspect he is a tail, as is Christy Clark, both of whom will do the bidding in important matters of the same old crew, the ones who hold true influence in BC, the ones who really head the Monster Ministry. The ones who brought us the Olympics, expanding gambling and compromised health care and the unbelievable acceleration of clear cutting of our forests. And meanwhile, Elizabeth May isn’t even allowed to debate on National TV. And who else among the party leaders will forcibly proclaim that there will be no jobs on a dead planet and we must stop the destruction? Don’t hold your breath.

- Betty K

HARPER'S NEW PRISONS ARE FOR US

2011-04-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, the New Prisons are for us.

Else why would Harper be building so many? Especially when statistics show that violent crimes have actually gone down in Canada? I believe Harper’s big investments in prisons (up to ten new prisons, expanding old ones; billions of dollars) are to alley his worst fears of the Canadian people. Fears? Yes, in my opinion, I think that Harper fears public reaction to his future economic plans and that the prisons will be primarily to accommodate a wave of public protest against the joblessness and finale cuts in social programs he will make if reelected. And Harper’s uncompromising political agenda is buttressed by his religious ones.
Stephen Harper is a fundamentalist evangelical Christian of the Dispensationalist variety, that is, one who holds a literal belief in the Bible, particularly the Book of Revelations. This book describes the Armageddon, a name given to the events prophesied to occur when the earth’s people will be in total chaos and Jesus will return and create the “Rapture” for believers. And non- believers? Well, they get to perish in a river of fire. And I believe that Stephen Harper’s brothers in faith, Stockwell Day and Chuck Strahl (and supported by Jimmy Pattison who is rumored to be the richest man in BC) are returning to British Columbia to prepare for the Second Coming.

It can be argued that Mr. Strahl’s return to BC is connected with his asbestos related cancer, but this did not diminish his enthusiasm for Canadian asbestos mines and the perceived need to export it to poor third world countries whose people, in turn, will sicken and die from asbestos. I think this a rather peculiar, uncaring position to take, and until his decision to return to BC with Stockwell Day, Mr. Strahl insisted that he would run again. In my opinion, Harper called an election (by refusing input of the other parties) because he foresees another Armageddon, a financial one this time, perhaps to proceed his expectation of the Biblical one, when (if) he is reelected.

The financial Armageddon has to do with the high Canadian dollar. As of today (April 4th) the Canadian dollar is worth one dollar and three cents US (and climbing). But that’s good, right? To have a strong Canadian dollar? Yes, if we’re shopping in the US, but no, if our jobs and very livelihoods depend on exports. As everyone knows we Canadians live primarily by exporting our natural resources…wood, water, oil, and minerals. But when the Canadian dollar is so high then our exports are not as competitive in the world market and then many of our commodities just sit, waiting for the market to change. The market seems loath to change at the moment but it must be made to do so fairly soon or Canada will go broke. How to make our dollar go down?

Two ways...the Bank of Canada (or in reality our domestic banks) can print more money which would gradually devalue our dollar until it gets pushed down below par with the US. However, this would cause hyper-inflation. Or there could be some sort of readjustment at the Bank of Canada that would be the equivalent of an immediate devaluation. And that would be that. No more great American shopping and anything imported would cost lots more. However, some jobs might pick up immediately as more commodities would be shipped out. But, as always, the CEO’s and stock holders of our great international resource sucking corporations will take the money and run.

Perhaps those of us Canadians, who can, should go ahead and shop south of the border while our dollar is high. My guess is that if Stephen Harper is reelected the Canadian dollar will immediately plummet as he will not resist the demand from the corporations who own us to devalue the dollar (in cooperation with the banks, of course, and their obscene profits) and cut more corporate taxes (like they pay a lot now).

And the Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, Chuck Strahl, Jimmy Pattison fundamentalist brand of religion will flourish in British Columbia. The condition of the majority of us will resemble the condition of First Nations on contact…the exploiters take the land and resources and give us the Bible. Particularly the Book of Revelation. And if we vehemently object then yes, Harper’s new and expanded prisons will be waiting.

Fighting Over Scraps

2011-03-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

Fighting over scraps of public forests. That’s what we’re doing. Not even old growth, that’s all gone, but second growth. That was the scenario last Friday at Qualicum Beach. There was a rally, signs, speeches, citizen dedication and participation, all trying to muster support from the BC Liberal government against the logging of rare Coastal Douglas-fir in District Lot 33 in Nanoose Bay. The BC Liberal government sent excuses and the promise of more meetings. I was out front with my remarks. Unless citizens find the will to resort to, use, and support peaceful civil disobedience in defense of environmental integrity then we are whistling in the wind.

But Betty, some have told me, civil disobedience, even if it is peaceful, is against the law! How often I have heard that! But my reply is this…the law we are dealing with in British Columbia is grotesquely skewed in favor of the rights of corporations and opposed to the rights of citizens including First Nations. Like clean drinking water. BC Courts have refused to rule definitively that the people of BC have the right to clean drinking water. Fancy that. And the Harper government has steadfastly refused to introduce, or support, a national water program. How can we demand that we must save our watersheds from logging to protect drinking water when BC Courts have refused to rule that we have an innate right to clean drinking water? And the Harper government is meeting with corporations bent on damming our rivers for the US?

So log the watersheds, our courts have said, clear cut out the rest of the valleys, helli-log the mountainsides, drain the wetlands for development, dam up the streams for US hydro, destroy it all, slash and burn, who cares, certainly not Stephen Harper or Christy Clark. Harper is preparing for the Rapture of the Second Coming while meeting with corporate water mongers and Christy Clark is preparing for her role as provincial BC Liberal queen of 3’ps…more corporate pillaging, polluting and privatizing.

I heard this morning (CBC radio) that the US has agreed for Monsanto to plant genetically modified Alfalfa. Alfalfa is a huge crop on this continent; it feeds both people and animals. Monsanto intends to control the food supply of the entire world. And it will. Who will stop it? With no right to clean water and no control over our food supply and no right to halt the systematic destruction of our natural world what actually do citizens control? Nothing. Nothing of importance.
But there is such a thing as “ Natural law.” There is a lot of jurisprudence (legal discussions of law) around the concept of Natural Law. On page18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law last paragraph under the heading: In contemporary jurisprudence: “ …a law can be unjust without it being any less a law, (but) a natural law jurisprudence would say that there is something legally deficient about an unjust law.”

This is exactly what is happening to us individually, and as a people. We are bound by both “legally deficient” statute and case law that have been put there by corporate influenced judges (most have been corporate lawyers) and law makers. If we want our children to grow up sane and sound, or grow up at all, it’s time we all started looking at peaceful civil disobedience as a legitimate way to reclaim our innate rights as citizens in cooperation with First Nations.

- Betty K

Christy, You've Shrunk the Cabinet!

2011-03-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Christy, what happened to your cabinet? The media has rather congratulated Christy Clark on the slenderness of her new cabinet. After all, small is more manageable, right? Not in this case. Not if one ponders the full import of Steve Thompson’s new portfolio titled Ministry of Natural Resource Operations. Steve Thompson’s slogan is “One Project, One Process.” But what does this mean?

After reading Steve Thompsons Ministry of Natural Resource Operations service plan for 2011-2013 the intent of this service plan becomes somewhat clearer. Everything to do with our natural resources are to be held under Thompsons one portfolio and this includes Forests, Water, Energy, Environment, Mines, Tourism, Agriculture, and oddly enough, First Nations. But aren’t there separate ministries for all of these headings? Yes, but they don’t mean anything now. They have been hollowed out, gobbled up by the new Ministry of Natural Resource Operations. Christy Clark, you could boot at least half a dozen more out of your cabinet and you wouldn’t even notice. But what is the purpose of this amalgamation?

The purpose, under the heading of One Land Manager for British Columbia in their Service Plan for 2011-2013 on page 6, Steve Thompson explains: “This new structure will streamline government processes in the natural resource sector to better attract global investment and turn proposed projects and investments into actual worksites…” and same page, further down:..”The one project, one process approach for major investments creates a single framework that is timely, diligent, and science based.” In other words, all of the decisions made concerning our natural resources will be made swiftly by a few people in Christy Clarks new ministry, the Ministry of Natural Resource Operations. Very few people.

These people are making decisions that favor corporations who plunder the lands, waters, and the people of British Columbia and are doing it in our name. Who created this “One Land Manager for British Columbia?” This vicious reorganization that will swiftly accelerate the damming of our streams for US power, the increasing desire to fell every last old growth tree in this province, to nudge farmland into oblivion, to increase trophy hunting on Crown land, and to continue to work to divest First Nations of their rights in disputed territories? Whose brilliant idea? Gordon Campbell’s of course. He was, and still is, the “The One Land Manager”. He created this monster just before he left office. It was his last, swift kick in the pants to the people of British Columbian. Christy Clark? Steve Thomson? They will carry out Campbell’s mandate if they aren’t stopped. They must be defeated. What’s left of our natural resources depend upon it.

* Betty K

RALLY FOR COASTAL DOUGLAS FIR

2011-03-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 25 · 8:30am - 5:00pm
Qualicum Community Hall
Corner of Memorial and First Avenue, near the rail crossing (please note the event is not at the Civic Centre)
Qualicum Beach, BC

I am excited to be speaking at this event. This is the information I have received from Berni Pearce, the organizer:

"We thank you for your continued support of APLUC and the endorsements you have granted us in the past. Now we need you again -- to throw your weight behind saving the almost extinct Coastal Douglas-fir forest ecosystem (CDFmm), including DL 33 and other Crown land fragments, as well as the last remaining parcels o...f privately-owned mature CDF such as that under threat of development at the Nanoose Lakes.

We have received notice that the Ministry of Environment and the Forest Practices Board are holding a workshop in Qualicum on Friday, March 25, 9:00 am to 12:00 Noon, at the old Qualicum Community Hall -- entitled the 'Coastal Douglas Fir Stewards Workshop'. (See attached document for information purposes only - registration deadline has passed.)

In light of the dire situation for the CDF, we have decided to demonstrate our stewardship of the CDF by inviting the well-known defender of forests, Betty Krawczyk, to participate at the workshop and speak to many of us gathered out front. Apparently attendance is limited to pre-registered persons only. Betty has registered and we hope she will be permitted to attend. She will definitely be speaking outside as well -- and that's where you come in.

If you can, please come down at 8:30 am to greet Betty and then stay around until the coffee break around 10:00, when Betty will come out and address us. There will be speeches from others as well. Take note, the Workshop is not at the Qualicum Beach Civic Centre. It is taking place in the old Qualicum Community Hall, corner of Memorial Avenue and First Avenue, at the railway crossing.

It is a sad irony that the agencies which have the power and responsibility -- and have ignored the problem for so long -- now want to "encourage shared stewardship". These are the same agencies to whom we and others, including Nature BC, have been writing and pleading for years, in some cases for over a decade -- to no avail. Despite everything, the Coastal Douglas-fir forest is in more danger than ever -- at high risk for extinction -- while mature Crown land CDF forests are being logged off.

Since our last update, we have toured another piece of CDF Crown land forest which the Forest Service has apparently made available for logging. It is part of Lot 117 (also sometimes referred to as Lot 113), located east of DL 33. It is as rare and remarkable as DL 33 and equally deserves protection. However, both parcels are 'on the market' and DL 33 has already had a cutting permit authorized. The proponent may proceed at any time.

Yes, 8:30 am is pretty early, but we're hoping you will roll out a bit earlier than is perhaps your usual routine -- to celebrate environmental unity and to meet Betty. Betty often describes herself as the grandmother who stands up for the environment! This is a great opportunity for we grandmothers and grandfathers, moms and dads, brothers, sisters, and indeed everyone, to show our support for her and for CDF conservation.

Please bring your organizational banners and signs. We plan to have coffee available for you when you come. And we hope you can hang around for awhile.

In the afternoon, the WCWC and APLUC will take Betty and all comers on a quickie tour of endangered mature CDF forests in our area, starting with Lot 10 in Qualicum, where Island Timberlands is threatening to cut the trees if the City does not buy the timber rights from them.

Everyone is welcome to attend the tour! Meet at the Qualicum Community Hall, Memorial and First Ave., at 1:00 pm -- wear sturdy footwear, bring water and a snack.

Hope to see your banner and all your members on Friday, March 25th.

Thanks so much for your ongoing support.

Best regards,
Berni Pearce, on behalf of
Arrowsmith Parks and Land-Use Council (APLUC)"

Hope to see you there!

- Betty K

CHILD POVERTY IN WEST VANCOUVER

2011-03-14T12:10:00.000-07:00

Child poverty in West Vancouver? In that affluent municipality? Well, yes and no, according to Tom Fletcher’s article entitled Time to Enrich Poverty Debate in BC (March 9, Comox Valley Record). Mr. Fletcher bases his concept of child poverty in BC on the ideas of Liberal MLA Ralph Sultan of West Vancouver. In a paper called Child Poverty in West Vancouver, Ralph Sultan takes issue with the Statistics Canada report on child poverty that gave BC such a shiner.

Where did Mr. Sultan go for his research? Well, West Vancouver. The same West Vancouver I became acquainted with in 2006 in a blockade at Eagleridge Bluffs. The Bluffs were destroyed by Kevin Falcon, then Liberal Transportation Minister, in order to save about six minutes getting to the Olympics in Whistler. Still, this is an odd place to go to research a paper on child poverty. West Vancouver is the wealthiest municipality in BC and one of the top contenders for that title in all of Canada. Over seventy per cent of the homes in West Vancouver are worth well over a million dollars. Nevertheless, this is where Mr. Fletcher studies child poverty in BC to prove there isn’t any. Or when there is that it is primarily single women with children, some immigrants, and First Nations people on reserves who are responsible for clogging up the child poverty statistics that make BC look bad.

Especially single women with children. It’s their fault, Mr. Sultan seems to imply, that they and their children are poor. Never mind that outside the ethnic communities marriages now break down nearly half of the time and many will leave women with a child or two to support. And while Mr. Sultan claims that “his personal cause at the moment” is to get single mothers back into the work force he sneers at Quebec’s provincially subsidized day care. The cost to parents for day care in Quebec is seven dollars a day, or one hundred and forty dollars a month, which is the lowest in Canada. In BC the average cost for day care is six hundred to seven hundred dollars a month which is the highest in the nation. So we have both the highest child poverty rates in Canada and also the highest cost for day care in Canada.

No wonder the population in BC is shrinking. If it weren’t for immigration we would be in serious trouble. When women are expected to be both producers (get and keep outside jobs) and reproducers (make the babies, feed and water them to adulthood and be ready with abject Mea Culpas if things go off the rails in the process) without adequate affordable social services, then many women decide to pass on reproducing altogether.

Quebec is smarter. That province has leaders intelligent enough to recognize that population declines when governments refuse to provide adequate help with the costs of rearing children. And they don’t want to rely on immigration for population numbers as BC has done for years now. Instead of relying indefinitely on immigration for a viable provincial population, Quebec leaders are concentrating on growing their own. And to do this, the Quebec government knows it has to provide better services for Quebec women in order for them to feel comfortable about being able to provide for their children after they have them. And not just help when a child is starving or dying (in BC one child in three in the care of the province goes to bed hungry at night). In BC we also need programs that lends support where needed in all of the steps of child rearing, for all children of BC, not just the most desperately poor.

This province needs leaders who recognize that children must be a priority. What we don’t need are more pompous, sanctimonious pronouncements by BC Liberal Party politicians and correspondents, who, in my opinion, can’t write, can’t reason, and understand nothing about the lives of women and children outside their own class which includes most of the women and children in BC. And then to add insult to injury, these same BC Liberals love to quote Bible verses, especially the one where Jesus said: “Lo, the poor will be with you always”. This it to reassure the affluent people of West Vancouver where Mr. Ralph Sultan reigns as Liberal MLA that they do not have to fret about child poverty in the rest of BC. Get it? Because child poverty is sanctified by Jesus Christ. The Bible says so!

Canadian Oil & Us

2011-03-10T14:41:00.000-08:00

Does it strike anybody else as strange that while Harper and Obama are talking democracy and human rights about the mid-East revolutions but completely omit another very important component of the people’s anger? What component? Oil. Of course. But Harper and Obama avoid the subject. Why? Because many of the people in the mid-East countries are saying the oil in their countries belongs to them, to the people. And that it should be nationalized and every citizen given a fair share of the revenues. The revolutionaries are telling us that the foreign private corporations are sucking the oil of their countries dry, making the dictators and foreign corporations ever richer while they get the pollution and enormously high energy prices along with increasing poverty.They want to nationalize their oil. Is this kind of thinking inherently treasonous? Constitutes everything blasphemous against the holy alter of capitalism? Well, yes. Sort of. It more or less says that our kind of capitalism is injurious to humans and to the earth.

But simply nationalizing a country’s oil doesn’t necessarily bring an equal distribution of the revenues or lower energy prices for the people. Or any distribution for that matter. Consider Mexico. Their oil is nationalized. Their middle class is small and weak, fearful of change, and their poor is vast and hungry for everything that makes life worth living, food, shelter, health care, opportunity. Mexico’s rich is very rich and getting richer all the time. Especially with the Narcos pouring billions into the banks and other financial institutions for laundering. Mexico’s government is corrupt. So are the police. And increasingly the military. So nationalization of a country’s valuable natural resource does not in itself constitute a fair deal for citizens? No..

Then what does? In my opinion, certainly nationalization is a first step. Without it the oil Moloch’s demand for human sacrifices escalates (in ancient times the king Moloch was associated with child sacrifice). They think they have every right to skim the oil off the top of the sands of our country, ship it south and leave Canada with a enormous ecological nightmare and increasingly exorbitant prices for our own oil. And we pay. We will pay more in the future. But we shouldn’t have to. Our governments have allowed Canada to become a captive of international corporations and a country that doesn’t control its own natural resources will end a pauper. And that’s where we’re headed until we, as a people, start to claim the resources of this country as ours, as belonging to us. For twenty years I’ve watched the great, old growth public forests of British Columbia vanish into near nothingness along with the forest worker job description. The corporations promised they wouldn’t clear-cut and run, but they did. And we are left with trashed and chemically poisoned mountainsides and valleys. We need to nationalize all of our natural resources and that includes water, oil, and what’s left of Canada’s forests. The revolutionaries are telling us something enormously valuable about our future. And we should listen.

Christy, we don't all have Alzheimer's

2011-02-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

Christy, we don’t all have Alzheimers.
Christy, your timing is off. Minus a snap election there is a danger that the labour uprising in Wisconsin may come to roost on your new posts. In fact, it may do it anyway. There is the smell of labour renewal in the air. Jim Sinclair’s voice this morning (on CBC) was vibrant as he reminded us of your record as educational minister. Oh, I remember as well as Jim Sinclair, how you tried to bring down the teacher’s union! How you equated the teacher’s union as the enemy of education, and how parents had to scramble to provide the needed supplies you cut back; the school libraries you gutted, the special needs teachers, the school lunch programs, the physical education. However, in my opinion the BC Labour unions have not stepped up to the plate as passionately as they might have. Aside from your own vicious assaults on our education system (especially during the teacher’s strike) there was also under Campbell dictates the disappearance of the IWA (International Woodworkers of America), and the assaults on the nurses union, hospital workers unions, ambulance workers, in fact, practically all of the unions in BC. And you claim to be an outsider? Christy, we don’t all have Alzheimers. I distinctly remember you as the enthusiastic little cookie cutter of Gordon Campbell out to get the teacher’s union.
But there is something new breaking through human consciousness; both near and abroad. This new thing is not just for the wish of it, but for the demand of it, and that is the redistribution of wealth and that includes the wealth of our environment. We all own this land. What right has a few people to claim most of it as their own, leaving the crumbs for the poor and increasing the middle class to fight over? What right has governments to cater to the already obscenely wealthy? What right has our courts to declare that our environment belongs to this class of wealthy to destroy? What right has the wealthy classes to demand the poor become even poorer by trying to break their unions? And to try force everybody into Gordon Campbell’s, and now Christy Clarks, pitiful minimum wage category or contract subsistence?
The unions in the state of Wisconsin are saying no, no way, nada. And this refusal is spreading to Missouri, Ohio, and Michigan. And Christy…as your party journeys ever deeper into Gordon Campbell’s and Kevin Falcon’s Public Private Partnerships, and the consolidation of all our natural resources into one package that can be sold, given over, traded, or simply sucked dry by your in cabinet decisions that will still be influenced by…guess who? Gordon Campbell, of course. But Wisconsin will still be there, too…quivering under the possibility of a true labour revolt. And these other affected US states? They’re not far from our borders. Not far at all. In fact, they are very close. And some of us have very long memories.

AFTER THE LAST TREE IS FELLED JESUS WILL COME BACK

2011-02-16T15:34:00.001-08:00

"After the last tree is felled, Jesus will come back." Who said that? James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s Interior secretary made this assertion before Congress in 1981. So why am I quoting this ridiculous man? Because while an American, Watt’s remarks serve as something of a warning for Canadians. James G. Watt was a fundamentalist Christian; one known as a Dispensationalist. Never heard of them? Don’t know any? A Dispensationalist is a member of that segment of Christianity who believes in the “Rapture”, as most fundamentalists do (that is, that Christ will bodily return to earth and believers, living and dead, will rise up to meet him in the air as Christ descends ). This part of it doesn’t concern me. People can believe whatever they like. But the other parts of their belief system concern me a great deal. One main concern is that Dispensationalists believe it pointless to worry about environmental degradation as the end of the world is so near. Besides, they long for the “rapture” that will come as soon as the world is aflame with wars and evil doing and environmental degradation, then as Mr. Watt said, Christ will come back. And eventually only the good people (believers, no matter how criminal) and Jesus Christ himself, will abandon the totally shambled earth and rise to heaven. Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is a Dispensationalist and so is Stockwell Day (The Armageddon Factor by Marci Mcdonald).

So why am I so worried about this? People have a right to their religious beliefs. Except when world heads of state allow their religious beliefs to interfere with the wishes of their own people, and/or to enflame tensions in other countries. Stephen Harper does both. So does Stockwell Day when he gets a chance. But just how does it hurt other people that our heads of state have certain religious beliefs? Because the ones we have now interpret the Bible literally. And because Dispensationalists also interpret the Bible to mean that the “rapture” they long for can’t come until the above conditions are met plus one more…that Israel has to be in command of the countries surrounding her. Wonder why Harper can only see good in Israel and only evil in the hearts of Palestinians? Why he seems totally out of step with the rest of western countries on environmentalism and women’s issues such as his refusal to allow abortion as part of maternal health abroad? And why he can’t acknowledge that the rest of the world is admitting that Bush’s war on drugs degrades and endangers everybody and are looking at other solutions besides prisons for the addicted and obscene profits for drug cartels that are so readily laundered by our banks?

Canada is beginning to resemble Mexico rather than the US. Obama has had at least a little influence on social and foreign policy for the better. Harper’s big interest is in convincing people that violent crime is on the rise when it has actually fallen (CBC Current Feb 15) and that we need more prisons. Harper is huge on punishing his own people. And more prisons would be good for the economy, he figures. Construction jobs, guards, etc. And private companies to run them. And then the prisons will be there, waiting, when Harper’s policies start producing protests that might be a little too hot to handle. And when the last tree falls? Well, then we’ll get Jesus.

Truth Floods Into The Comox Valley

2011-01-10T11:21:00.000-08:00

Presently residing in the Comox Valley, I was struck by a letter to the editor by Mr. Rick James in the Comox Valley Record (Jan. 7, 2011). Mr. James believes in his own perceptions instead of the lies we are persuaded to believe by government and logging corporations and his letter is a harbinger of hope. Political life has reached the point where many of us are numbed down and dumbed down to the point of no return. And in my opinion there will be no return unless we listen to people like Rick James.

Mr. James suggests that the recent threatened flooding in Courtenay was not due to “natural uncontrolled impacts” as pronounced by Stephen Watson, spokesperson for BC Hydro, but was instead, caused by the incredible amount of logging going on “up along the headwaters of the Valley’s rivers and streams over the past 10 or twelve years”. Mr. James goes on to say the logging is essentially stripping the higher-elevation forests down into a “barren, lunar landscape”. And in turn, is responsible for the huge inflows of water into the Comox Lake reservoir which seriously threatened Courtenay with flooding.

We have to recognize that the courts and the present Liberal government of British Columbia (and their apologists i.e. Stephen Watson) will protect the rights of logging companies to cut forests on hill and mountain sides to the bone even though it will bring massive flooding in the future to the towns below. Consider the flooding of Bella Coola last September and the massive clear cutting around and above the town. Ditto the BC towns and settlements of Port Hardy, Holberg, Kingcome Inlet, and Port Alice who were also terrorized by massive flooding; all were surrounded by clear cuts. In the book COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond (New York Times bestseller) Diamond details the total deforestation of Haiti as the reason Haiti is now a failed state and an occupied state (by US personnel). There is nothing left on Haitian hillsides to catch the rains; their towns and cities are virtual mud holes. Can’t happen here?

It’s happening as we speak. What can stop it? Anger. Enough anger to prompt citizens to start thinking about peaceful civil disobedience, to learn about it, to acknowledge it as part and parcel of the evolution of the law and the Charter and an equitable society. Either we stand up, or stand down. If we stand down our children will inherit scrub grasses, mud holes, ill health and few jobs instead of forests and fish and reasonable economic stability. As a people, we have to make some serious decisions. Our government officials including the courts are too incompetent or corrupt to make decisions for the greater good. It really is up to us. Thank you, Mr. James.

FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS

2010-12-14T11:36:00.000-08:00

Yes, in West Van. Where the mayor lives. Ten people shot in a gang squabble just like in Mexico. How did so many young men in BC become criminal gang members? And how did they become first person shooters (the real name of some violent video games) in real life instead of living vicariously through the games they received from Christmas’ past like they were supposed to do? Am I blaming the violent video games for gangland behavior?

No. Only as a contributing factor. The main reason for gang violence is the same one that haunts Mexico. That all levels of government and business are still clinging doggedly to the business model of corporations which dictates in times of stress to downsize, computerize, and load off shore. Great. For the companies. But then what do Canadians, especially young people, do for jobs that will enable them to live reasonably?

Provincial and federal governments tell us that is a problem for the individual person even while they up the cost of living and education for all young people. So what can young people do when they can’t find jobs or earn enough to go to school? No answers from heads of banks, university or government economists. That’s because even the ones who recognize that we are all looking into the bowels of an economic upheaval won’t say so. Out loud. It takes a techie economist like Hank Williams (I don’t know if this Hank Williams sings) who works in, and reflects upon, how technology itself is bringing on a great upheaval. And to write about it.

In his article entitled : THE REAL PROBLEM WITH THE ECONOMY IS THAT IT DOESN’T NEED YOU ANYMORE: Williams says that due to technology It takes, and will take, many fewer people to produce goods for consumption, which in turn leaves the benefit of this increased consumption in the hands of fewer and fewer people. In 1995 Jeremy Rifkin (American economist and writer) wrote a book entitled THE END OF WORK. Riftkin said then what Williams is saying now. Work as we know it is being rapidly automated without consideration of the many young people trying to enter the job market. And too many young males are finding their own solutions to the problem.

THIS DANGEROUS PLACE: Where law and justice collide

2010-12-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

     The BC Appeals Court has just brought down a decision on my sentence for blockading at Eagleridge Bluffs in 2006. My appeal was denied. And of course I’m disappointed. I’m always disappointed in the decisions of the BC Supreme and Appeals Court decisions concerning people’s struggles over trying to protect public and/or First Nation’s property. However, there were a few interesting comments in this decision.
     Mr. Justice Tysoe, in writing for the majority, with Madam Justice Rowles and Madam Justice Bennett concurring, wrote that the case law submitted by Michael Brundrett (Crown) comparing me to violent pedophiles thus: Page 5, no. 14, “As the Crown indicated at the hearing, those cases are relevant for the legal principles they contain concerning the limits of the scope of appellate review in sentence appeals and not for any other purpose.”
     But I have trouble with this. As I understand it, the scope of appellate review is supposed to compare like cases to like circumstance, not go wildly off the rails as Michael Brundrett (Crown) did by underlining the judge’s opinion in one of these cases suggesting that I could be compared (in his submissions for appellate review) to these cases and should be put away for life. At least Mr. Justice Tysoe, along with Madam Justice Rowles and Madam Justice Bennett, refused that option and mentioned that even my ten month sentence was high. And they did throw me another little crumb.
     The Appeal Judges did not seem convinced that Madam Justice Brown was right in refusing me credit for the month I spent in prison waiting for Cameron Ward to return from vacation at the beginning of my trial. I felt I was being unfairly criminalized without my lawyer being present and in a fit of pique rescinded my undertaking. Mr. Justice Tysoe wrote: Page 9, no. 29, “The rationale (for refusing me credit that could have been applied to my ten month sentence) was that it was Mrs. Krawczyk’s decision to remain in custody. I have reservations whether this approach is correct in principle…I think the point should be left to another occasion when the court has the benefit of full submissions.”
     I’m not sure at the moment what full submissions on this point might consist of but I will find out. Because there will be more of this governing by injunction as the Attorney General is apparently too lazy and morally lax to do his job while many First Nations and other environmentalists are gearing up for protest. And I will go with what the Justices of the BC Appeals Court have given me, meager it might be. I will apply to be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada. In other words, I will appeal this appeal. And I want to thank all of you who stood by me, who came to court, who spoke out, who wrote to the Attorney General’s office because you also love this land, the waters, the wild animals and forests of British Columbia as I do. And you love justice. How can we possibly lose?

Polygamy? Polyandry? Ha, ha!

2010-11-24T14:39:00.000-08:00

BC Liberties Association, what are you thinking? I want to laugh at your application to the court to consider (more or less) legalizing Polygamy. But I can’t. The matter is too serious. Especially for young women born into fundamentalist religions. And for the rest of us, too. The very idea of young women being legally married off as second, third ,or fourth wives to old men or middle aged men, because their religion demands it, is sob story material. How can parents do this to their young daughters? No young girl wants to be married off in these circumstances. It’s unnatural. Youth calls to youth. Sadly, mothers don’t have much to say about this unnatural reversal of biological order. Their religion binds them to male rule. Fathers in Bountiful and polygamous inclined Muslim communities more or less trade their daughters or other young female relatives off in marriage as multiple wives to other favored men and in return, receive, or their other male relatives receive, a like compliment. Tit for tat. However, I think CBC Radio (On the Island) inadvertently (or perhaps by design) pointed out a flaw in this practice of extreme male privilege.

Yesterday (Nov. 23) the producers of CBC On the Island interviewed a woman who said she lived with two men. She favors the legalization of polygamy because that would open the door to polyandry (one woman with two or more husbands) and she would like to be legally married to both of her men. Well, again, tit for tat. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Or vice versa. Surely a Charter Challenge would also rule in favor of allowing equal opportunity for ever younger legal partners for women, too. And in these dire economic times a well-heeled older woman could easily attract a couple of younger men for husbands. And she could legally list them both as dependents on her income tax returns. Polygamist would also benefit hugely through income tax. Many Canadian Muslims are very wealthy. They would save huge amounts of money if they could claim their multiple wives legally. Ditto for the Bountiful men.

My research tells me that Polygamy is practiced where there is a desire for more children (besides the sex part) and as a result populations expand. Polyandry is usually practiced where there are scarce resources. Polyandry restricts the expansion of the population. It’s a math thing. One woman can only have so many children regardless how many husbands she has while one male theoretically can have a hundred or more with multiple wives. Now, it’s true Canada needs a bump up in population. But is Muslim polygamy the answer? Give me break. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the burden of populating Canada more densely should rest almost entirely on the shoulders of Muslim men (and Muslim women, too, of course) even if we pay them in generous income tax exemptions and other economic goodies.

But the potentially stickiest flaw in this scenario? Children get born. While Muslim men are smug sure of their paternity (the punishment for women straying is severe) the women in Polyandry marriages (even older women have babies these days) in case of divorce, would have to resort to medical tests to determine which of her husbands is the biological father. And if she is legally married to both, would this even matter? And you think visitation privileges are a nightmare now? Can you even imagine?

It’s true the Muslim community is rapidly gaining power and prestige in Canada, but in spite of the near passage of Sharia Law in Ontario last year (it was the work of Muslim women themselves who defeated it) the Muslim community cannot dictate to Canadians what our laws should be. Too bad when immigrating to Canada some of the men have such trouble trying to bring multiple wives into a country that allows only one. Too bad these men feel they are discriminated against in this county because they can’t legally have multiple wives. We are Canadians here. For God’s sake let’s stand up and act like it. Shame on you, BC Civil Liberties Association.

Is He Hitting the Bottle Again?

2010-11-19T10:52:00.000-08:00

Just pondering. But Gordon Campbell actions are similar to those who are either just going into, or trying to climb out of, a drunk. And at 81 I’ve seen a few drunks in my life. How else to explain our premier’s reeling, radical political moves in the last few months? Of course just the fact of setting a provincial record for low approval ratings is enough to drive a body to drink. But if this isn’t the case (that our premier is drinking unduly and I have no proof that it is) then as citizens of this province we must try to make sense of Mr. Campbell’s actions.

But this is difficult. He’s going, he says, but he will be the one to say when. Perhaps as premier Mr. Campbell has other things to do before he goes besides just shuffling people and posts. He may even create more new posts. His latest new post is breath taking…the one that brings mining, forestry, river power, and of all things…First Nation Peoples into one big portfolio. And given his stated expectations that his people will follow his dictates even when he is no longer premier, it seems that Mr. Campbell plans to manage this portfolio, even from afar if need be.

This is scary beyond measure. Especially when Mr. Campbell doesn’t seem to realize that First Nation Peoples are people, not trees or rivers or minerals. To me Campbell resembles a drunken driver careening down a freeway with a bunch of unbuckled kids in the back seat. And we’re the unbuckled kids. We’re scared, but we need to ask the premier something. Like while he is taking back his rash promise that if we would be good kids and stop screaming he would buy us some ice cream cones (15% tax) but he didn’t have the money for cones anyway, having spent it at the Olympics Pub, dare we ask that he take back the HST before we hit that logging truck also careening down the road? And get thrown into that run-of- the- river dam? And be met at the hospital with the news there is no room for treatment for our massive injuries because the emergency was shut down last year and anyway there isn’t a doctor in the vicinity anymore?

Is He Outta Here? Really? For Good?

2010-11-08T14:09:00.000-08:00

Is He Outta Here? Really? For Good?
No, not really. Well, his physical presence may be soon gone, but Gordon Campbell’s will to privatize and impoverish his corner of the world will live on for many years regardless of who runs in or wins the next provincial election. The generous tax breaks our premier gave before his early retirement will allow the HST to live simply because the provincial government will need the HST to keep from going bankrupt.
Gordon Campbell hates unions and adequate social services and taught others to hate them, too. Why? Because they take money from the private sector. He thinks the private sector is the ultimate in human development. Those at the top of the private sector make all the rules for everybody else including the government. Because they’re the smartest, Campbell thinks, therefor the best. They deserve more of what they already have. For them democracy is an unrestrained market where they can plunder at will. The result?
Now one child in three in provincial care goes to bed hungry at night. Private food providers who serve the elderly also serve the prisons. Mushy everything, scarce protein, heavy carbs. Slashed public schools, ferries, services to anything that helps women, children, the poor, homeless; we have the lowest minimum wage in Canada and the highest child poverty rate. And now just by an order in cabinet (laws put in place by Campbell) the provincial government has the power to take public lands out of Tree Farm Licenses, make them private, clear cut, export the raw logs and then sell the land to developers, minus consent of First Nations, or the rest of us, or even the legislature.
Gordon Campbell has lied and bribed. But there are corrupt politicians all over the world and Campbell is unusual only in one aspect. He has maneuvered to bring all of the natural resources of this province under one big controlling umbrella without even the knowledge, much less the consent, of his own cabinet.
And who is now holding this huge umbrella? Gordon Campbell. At least for the next few months. Time enough to make some really big deals with resource hungry foreigners. And who will stop him?

Violent Pedophiles and the Attorney General

2010-10-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

Robert W.G. Gillen

Assistant Deputy Attorney General

Criminal Justice Branch

Dear Mr. Gillen,

Re: your letter to Mel Galea:

You assure Mr. Galea and others that the way in which Mr. Brundrett advised the Court on my sentence appeal was right and proper. You insist that by Mr. Brundrett's use of the cases of two violent pedophile sex offenders in comparison to my sentence for blockading at Eagleridge Bluffs was not at all meant to equate me with these two debased men with diseased minds.

I take umbrage with your protestations of innocent intent, but first, I am sure you will agree there are two kinds of law; statute law (Criminal Code) and case law (what other judges have decided on like cases). We also need to explain to others who may not know that on sentence appeal, the Appeal Court can adjust a sentence up or down, so there is always a risk of a greater sentence when appealing an original sentence.

And as you know very well, Mr. Gillen, but others might not, materials that are to be considered by the judges (three judges) on appeal are submitted in advance in writing before the actual court hearing. And because I brought the appeal I had to submit a Factum, that is, my reason for appealing, and it was per court rules; in writing. Again Mr. Gillen, as I am sure you know, but others might not, This Factum is extremely important as it is the primary information submitted by me upon which the judges will make a decision. After receiving a copy of my Factum, Mr. Brundrett then submitted to the Court his Responses to my Factum and his recommendations that the Court should follow in case the Court decides to give me additional time. And of course, Mr. Brundrett's written response to my Factum was the most important material the Court would see from the Crown's side.

And while it is true that Mr. Brundrett did not verbally say in Court that he thought I should be sentenced to life imprisonment or given a twenty-five year sentence like the violent pedophile cases he brought forth for comparison, he said it through Case Law. That is, in his written submissions to the Court which carries most weight ,Mr. Brundrett, by his submissions and comparisons, signalled to the Appeals Court that the Attorney General's office thought I should be given life imprisonment.

And the case that Mr. Brundrett emphasized in his submissions is as follows: In Regina v. M. (C.A.) , J.A. Jessup expressing the sentencing principal in Hill, at p. 147: " When an accused has been convicted of a serious crime in itself calling for a substantial sentence and when he suffers from some mental or personality disorder rendering him a danger to the community but not subject to confinement in a mental institution and when it is uncertain when, if ever, the accused will be cured of his affliction, in my opinion the appropriate sentence is one of life." And Mr. Brundrett emphasized the words "the appropriate sentence is one of life" by underlining them.

By emphasizing this section of Case Law Mr. Brundrett has accomplished two things: (a) he has equated my mens rea (my mind) with those of these debased men and (b) has attempted to anchor in the judge's minds the notion that I have committed like crimes (after all, repeated infractions of the law) and should therefore be similarly sentenced. If this were not so, why would Mr. Brundrett have submitted these two horrible cases as comparable to my own? And according to Madam Justice Brown in sentence of me (Page 2 of Madam Justice Brown's Oral Reason for Sentence [3]; ..."A sentence should be similar to sentences imposed on similar offenders in similar circumstances."

Mr. Gillen, I am not a similar offender nor am I, or was I, in similar circumstances as these two debased violent pedophiles presented to the court by your office and I am highly offended that you and Mr. Brundrett seem to think I am. Protest as you please, the case law that was submitted by your office to guide the Court in considering my appeal case is conniving and cowardly. Perhaps it reflects the attitude of the Attorney General's office only too well. Sincerely yours,Betty Krawczyk

2010-10-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

The way the Court system works is a mystery to most people including me. It's the language, for one thing. It's in a special code. The biggest problem I have encountered is simply trying to break the code. Even after all these years of being hammered by legal language I am still puzzled by most of it but what I do understand, or think I do, I will pass along to you.

First, I asked the Court in my written factum, which must be submitted to the Court before the day of the hearing, that I be given a new trial with a jury. The Crown (Mike Brundrett who represents the Attorney General of BC) asked in his written response to my factum, by using case law (what other judges have decided in other cases) that the Court should consider that I be declared a dangerous habitual offender and given life. This was evidenced by Mr. Brundrett in his written response by using two cases of violent pedophiles who attacked their own children repeatedly. By this Mr. Brundrett accomplished two things:
(a) he associated my name and person with violent, debased men in the hopes of anchoring this message in the judges' heads
(b) he brought to the court's attention that I had repeatedly broken other judges' orders- which is what an injunctions is and which no judge likes to hear about.

I based my argument on two main things:
(a) that a summary process (which mine was) is defined in the Criminal Code as sentencing that does not exceed six months. I was given ten.
(b) when Madam Justice Brown ruled on my application that she would not allow for a jury trial, she was not considering sentencing me to over five years (which is the time frame for being eligible to apply for a jury trial) and yet the Crown came back on appeal and recommended to the Court, through case law, that I should be sentenced to life in prison. Only in his written words to the judges did Mike Brundrett recommend this and, sneakily, only in his written responses to the Court did he propose that I should be given life. And to make sure the appeal judges didn't miss his message, he emphasized "should be given life".

The appeal judges have reserved their decision. Of course I am hoping for a new trial with a jury, but failing that, it would be heartfelt hopeful if they gave me enough room in their decisions to take it to the Supreme Court of Canada. If they did, I would walk to Ottawa. I think...

In any case, I will be sure to let you know.

In the mean time, you can listen to my interview with the Current on the CBC regarding the appeal arguments:

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/09/sept-2210---pt-2-betty-krawczyk-case.html

Betty K

What The Women In Prison Said

2010-10-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

What The Women in Prison Said
Having spent a considerable amount of time in British Columbia’s jails and prison over eco-disputes (my objection to the rapid deforestation of this province) I have always listened to any conversation going on around me with the ear of a journalist (that’s what I am, in addition to being an activist). As the women prisoners accepted me as a criminal (after all, that’s what the Attorney General said I was), the inmates spoke freely before me. And I didn’t flinch from these women’s stories of child rape and family abuse, poverty, addictions, pimps, violence, gangs, and the means they employed to survive, as they were truth telling as they had experienced it. And at age 82 I am reasonably shock proof. Except one story I heard over and over from many different women, stories repeated endlessly in the prison compound and prison yard. It was about the Pickton farm and the murdered women.
At first I didn’t believe these stories, stories that went above and beyond the fact that an insane man had killed sex trade workers and fed them to his pigs. But the reasons behind this as described by the women, were simply too ghastly to be true. I dismissed the stories completely. The police, the RCMP, the provincial government just could not allow such things to happen as these stories suggested, the ones circulating in prison, especially in a civilized country and province like British Columbia. There just simply could not be any elevation of degradation beyond killing women and feeding their bodies to pigs. Even when a jury convicted Pickten of second degree murder because, as I understood it, they believed other people must have been involved, I did not want to give credence to these inmate’s stories. But lately, I’m not so sure. And these doubts have been prompted, by of all things, an article in the Times Colonist.
Sept. 29, Pickton inquiry already off track
“Former attorney general Wally Oppal is the wrong choice to head the Pickten inquiry. Its credibility has been dealt a serious blow before the work even begins.”
And the article goes on to point out that Oppal’s appointment creates a perception of bias and conflict of interest. As former attorney general he sat at the cabinet table and discussed policy issues that could well be part of the inquiry’s focus. And he defended the Liberal government’s position on policing and other relevant issues. When he was Attorney General he tried to keep evidence from an inquiry into the death of Frank Paul, a native man dumped in an alleyway and left to die and he was, until he was defeated 16 months ago, a partisan politician. That is, a liberal hack. And Oppal will not, according to The Times Colonist (hardly a left leaning paper) recommend for sweeping change, including a regional police force, and the very terms of reference will prevent the commission from addressing relevant issues like how did it happen that these women’s disappearance was treated so trivially by everybody in charge? The women I heard talk in prison think they know. They think the grisly truth is that criminal gangs were making “snuff” films at Pickton’s farm. Evidently there are men in the world who will pay big money for videos of women being murdered and dismembered. Could it be true? Well, certainly Wally Oppal’s commission won’t find out.

For Harriet

2010-09-30T15:47:00.000-07:00

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For Harriet
Play video
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Added on 29/09/2010
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Dylan has left a new comment on your post "BETTY LOCKED UP FOR LIFE?":

Hi Betty I wrote a song inspired by Harriet Nahanee. Check out the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osubQ4FmEeE
From Betty: Readers please watch this video. It's quite beautiful. I believe that Harriet's spirit still lives at Eagleridge Bluffs. And certainly her spirit lives with me.

CLEAR CUTTING =LANDSLIDES AND FLOODS?

2010-09-28T18:42:00.000-07:00

Clear Cutting = Landslides and floods?
Yes. Not always, but mostly. From Haiti to Pakistan to Mexico and to Port Alice, Port Hardy, Bella Coola, to…well, wherever there are massive mudslides and flooding the first thing to inquire is how extensive is the clear cutting in the area. Many of Haiti’s largest towns are primarily big mud holes because they have no trees left to hold back the rain from the mountainsides. There is speculation that the recent accelerated clear cutting of the forests in Pakistan is primarily responsible for the massive flooding there. Industrial forestry is swallowing up forests in every part of the globe including British Columbia and yet nothing seems able to stop it. It’s almost as if one giant chain saw is denuding the forests of the earth under various giant forest corporations and their smaller subsidies that contract out to even smaller independent subsidiaries. And usually with government subsidies (the money of all of us private people who together make up the huge public tax contribution to this province.) These subsidies from us is given to the very corporations who besides stealing our trees, are making mud holes.
And it is so unnecessary. Some countries are trying to move toward community owned (leased to a community of forestry workers) forests and forestry workers who know how and are willing to do selective logging. Without this kind of intervention, could British Columbia also become a province of giant mud holes where thriving cities and towns used to be? Of course. We have everything here to make that happen; the practice of clear cutting, dwindling forests due to over cutting, tree diseases, forest fires, and most of all, giant corporations determined to cut it all down even if that requires just shipping out the raw logs. And we have our uncaring provincial government who evidentially loves giant logging corporations, the bigger and more destructive the better, and an attorney general (political appointee) who will try to lock anybody up forever who dares protest. It a perfect storm of converging factors designed to denude British Columbia of what is left of our forests. And first Nations pride. And the beauty, health, and glory of British Columbia and its entire people.

BETTY LOCKED UP FOR LIFE?

2010-09-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

BETTY LOCKED UP FOR LIFE?
That’s what the Attorney General is asking the Appeal Court of BC to consider on Sept. 22 (forgive me, first poste said Nov.22, a terrible error when asking people to come support you, but it is Sept. 22) I appear to appeal my sentence from Madam Justice Brown. Yes, it’s true. They’re asking for life. The Crown (Michael Brundrett) has given the Appeal Court two cases to consider on how the Appeal Court should consider my appeal. Simply lock me up for life by declaring me a repeat offender, a dangerous offender, and re-sentencing me under a sentencing process of “combined offenses”. And the Attorney General uses case law in his requests to the court. Both concern men who are violent pedophiles who attacked their own children. Just look at this:
In appeal of the first case: (R. v. M. (C.A.)
Jessup J.A. (appeal judge) expressed the sentencing principal in Hill, at p. 147:
“ When an accused has been convicted of a serious crime in itself calling for a substantial sentence and when he suffers from some mental or personality disorder rendering him a danger to the community but not subjecting him to confinement in a mental institution and when it is uncertain when, if ever, the accused will be cured of his affliction, in my opinion the appropriate sentence is one of life.” And the Attorney General has emphasized the last seven words in the Crown’s response.
So here we have the Attorney General of BC asking the Appeal Court of B C to give me a life sentence because I had the audacity to appeal my sentence in the first place. But honestly, what annoys me the most is that the Attorney General of BC equates peaceful civil disobedience with the diseased minds of violent pedophiles who repeatedly rape their own children and in the second case, also sell the images. In other words, the Attorney General thinks I am a pervert who is rather the same as these two men and should be locked up for life. My mental or personality disorder that cries out for justice from the Attorney General, for protections of BC forest and streams is equated by the Attorney General with these two cases of men’s violence, incest, rape, and pedophilia. Could it be possible that the Attorney General doesn’t know the difference? My appeal on Wednesday is being ratcheted up by the Attorney General ( a political appointee) to a crazy point of desperation that if successful, would be such a black mark on Canada we would all suffer. Please come. Wed., Nov. 22, 9: 30, for a rally, 10: 00 for court. Supreme Court and Appeals, 800 Smithe ST., back steps corner Howe and Robsen. Love. Betty Krawczyk

A HEAD'S UP

2010-09-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

Sept. 22, 9:30 am
Criminal and Appeals Court
800 Smithe St.
Rally at 9:30 on the back steps of the courthouse (Howe and Robson Streets)
...Court commences at 10:00 am

Come rally with Betty at the Appeals Court of BC. It’s an important court date for Betty and for all citizens who value the right to free speech and expression in support of our forests, waters, and wildlife.

It is also a date to honour the memory of Harriet Nahanee. Harriet Nahanee also planned to appeal her criminal sentence along with Betty for their actions at Eagleridge Bluffs, but instead, died a few short days after release from prison.

Although Betty has already served her ten month sentence for actions at Eagleridge Bluffs she is appealing the sentence on principal. Betty has been working hard on the appeal process and her day in court is September 22nd. She strongly believes that the BC government holds the specter of long prison sentences over citizens heads in order to keep people from using peaceful civil disobedience, when all else fails, to protect our forests and waters. This appeal is intended to help prevent future protesters from being victimized in the same Betty was.

Be there early, 9:30 am, Wednesday, Sept. 22. Criminal Appeals Court. 800 Smithe Street. Back steps of courthouse, Howe and Robson. Speakers. Bring your banners and drums. The courts hold the key to our being able to protest with dignity as a right of all.

On Our Way to Mexico

2010-07-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

On our way to Mexico?
For a visit to Mexico’s white, sunny beaches? Maybe. But aside from the beaches and colorful night life perhaps we should also look at the rising violence in Mexico that isn’t waiting for the night to fall. Most of us have become increasingly aware of the frightening, ever increasing, ever encroaching violence of the drug cartels in Mexico. That awareness was emphasized this past week by the murder of Rodolfo Torre Cantu. Cantu, a popular Mexican politician, was gunned down on June 26 along with four aids a few miles from Ciudad Victoria in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Because of his opposition to the drug lords? That’s the story (The Guardian: 6/29/2010)
In my opinion, unless there is some drastic government action not only on the part of Mexico, but also Canada and the US, the entire North American continent could be headed into government of, by, and for, the drug cartels. Certainly as long as the War on Drugs is the order of the day, the murders, social unrest, and egregious corruption will rule along with increasingly compliant governments who work together to keep “The War on Drugs” operating. There are already drug czars in Mexico who pay the salaries of the police along with those of other municipal employees. In these instances the drug cartels have come not only to be stronger than their municipal governments, but to actually be their municipal governments. And they simply kill anybody who protests. And their domination is escalating especially as more segments of Mexican people come to the conclusion that there is little difference between the corruption of the illegal rule by the drug lords and the corrupt rule of their legal governments.
Can’t happen here? As long ago as 2005 there have been warnings of the influence of organized crime in and around Canadian harbours by RCMP (Van. Sun, May 14, 2005 article by J. Fowlie). The RCMP report said that organized crime was well entrenched in Canada’s three largest marine ports which include those of Vancouver and went on to state: “With these criminal elements exerting general control over their work area, law-abiding co-workers often find themselves coerced into cooperating in illegal acts or turning a blind eye. The intimidation tactics can also target customs and police officers.”
What on earth does this mean? That criminal elements have actually been controlling our ports to allow into our country whatever drugs, illegal weapons, even human trafficking as they please? Have Canadian ports become the very property of organized crime? What on earth is wrong with our government? With the RCMP? Too busy protecting the thousand person strong entourage Obama brought into Canada for the G-20? Too busy tear gassing concerned Canadian citizens who protested this outrageous expense (among other things)? Too busy to care? The only intelligent answer is to legalize drugs, all of them. Unless the world’s governments get up the guts to wipe out the black market on drugs organized crime will rule. And more of us will die as Mexican citizens are doing. Mexico is us.

2010-06-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

Our very own four Stooges

Wonder why Stephen Harper seems joined at the hip to Israel? There are several reasons, but in my opinion the main one is religious. Which may sound strange as Harper is not of the Jewish faith. However Mr. Harper is a man of faith. He is an Evangelical Christian of the fundamentalist variety who literally believes the Bible prophesy predicting Armageddon. In her new book “The Armageddon Factor” by Marci McDonald, Ms McDonald describes how The Battle of Armageddon is described in the Bible (Revelations) as the final battle on earth between “good” and “evil.” The righteous is predicted to win, of course, even though the earth will be destroyed. But shortly before the final destruction the “rapture” will begin with Jesus Christ descending once again to earth. But none of this can come to pass, according to Biblical prophesy, until the Jews have gathered and have complete control over Jerusalem and environs. Harper is a quiet, literal believer in this biblical prophecy and is mindful of Genesis 12.3 “He who blesses Israel will be blessed, and He who curses Israel will be cursed”.
Sounds weird? Yes, because it is weird. We have a prime minister who most people don’t even realize is a fundamental evangelical Christian and that his religious beliefs are affecting Canadian policy in profound ways. Look at Stephen Harper’s record on women’s rights, environmental destruction, global warming, freedom of speech, drastic downsizing of funds for the public while handouts to private wealth goes on unabated and the slashing of democratic procedures in general that are making us look like smucks internationally. It is Mr. Harper’s private religious beliefs that are guiding public policies both at home and abroad. This is why Mr. Harper has not strongly condemned, or condemned at all, Israel’s deadly attack on foreign nationals in international waters.
The other three party leaders? Why are they are afraid to move on the matter? Fear of saying the wrong thing? Of alienating Canada’s Jewish population? But by not voicing disapproval of Israel’s actions are they alienating the Muslims? These three are paralyzed. None of them (Liberal, NDP, Green Party) are strong enough to actually voice disapproval of Israel. Is it possible they don’t know that it is wrong for Israel to attack unarmed foreign nationals in international waters? What is wrong with these three? Has the possibility of losing votes so paralyzed their consciences’ they truly don’t know right from wrong when it jumps up and hollers in their faces? So we have a fundamentalist Evangelical Christian at the helm who is rooting for the Armageddon and three wanabees in the wings who are afraid to voice disapproval. God and Goddess help Canada. She is going to need all the help she can get from her people as her leaders are without sense or moral compass.

WOMEN IN THE WOODS AND RICK JEFFERY

2010-05-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

WOMEN IN THE WOODS AND RICK JEFFERY
WOMEN IN THE WOODS originated around my kitchen table in Victoria back in 1999. I first met Rick Jeffery in 2003 during our blockade in the Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island when Jeffery was spokesperson for Hayes Logging. There was a series of meetings on the blockade line. I talk about these meetings in my recent book: “OPEN LIVING CONFIDENTIAL: from inside the joint “which resulted in a ten month prison stay (try the library or Goggle schiverrhodespublishing.com) for me. Jeffery got promoted.
Jeffery is now CEO for Coast Forest Products Association. And he thinks the HST will just be wonderful for corporate logging. Remember THE BAND and their recording of TAKE THE LOAD OFF FANNY AND PUT THE LOAD RIGHT ON ME? Well, the corporate world Jeffery represents is “Fanny” and we are the “me”. HST means the corporate logging world pays less tax now and we pay more. And the Corporate logging companies can continue to make stupid, uncaring mistakes in their methods of logging that have devastated the integrity of the public forests in this province with impunity. Like the banks, corporate logging companies are considered too big to fail and will continue to get hand outs from government, especially the Gordon Campbell government, no matter how corrupt. This province has been riddled with corruption in the forests since Honest Bob Summers, as he was called, was jailed for accepting bribes in return for a huge Tree Farm License. Sommers was the first forestry minister of BC. He got five years. But the corporate logging company who bribed Sommers was not indicted and even got to keep the Tree Farm License they secured through bribe money.
And the corruption continues in the corporate logging world. We see this in the way the First Nations are swindled out of their land rights and how thoroughly the old growth trees have been wiped out. We see corruption in the dubious swaps that allow forestry giants to take what they claim is their private land out of Tree Farm Licenses. And they neglect to mention that the corporations were granted access to most of the old growth on Crown lands in return for the initial inclusion. Now that corporate logging has sucked up all of the valuable timber the corporate owners want to swap back again. And the Camp bell government agrees. The forests are gone but the ruined and clear cut land can now be sold for development. To Campbell’s rich friends. And corporate logging was granted these vast tree farm licenses in the first place on the condition they must have mills attached. That stipulation no longer applies. Workers jobs are now hitching a ride with the raw logs that are being increasingly shipped out. I believe that the corporate logging in BC is so corrupt that there is no hope for it either morally or financially. The logging corporations are imploding by their own greed and lack of care for the workers and lack of respect for First Nations. We need to nationalize our forests along with our water and banking systems. If we don’t our country will eventually be as denuded as Tahiti and as broke as Greece.

MOTHER EARTH AND MORALES THE DEFENDER

2010-04-24T18:08:00.000-07:00

Mother Earth and Morales the Defender
Democracy Now reports how Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, addressed a world referendum in his country on the effects of global warming (April 21, 2010) and Morales’ words stunned me with their truth and purity. And just in time. For me, too many pieces of the puzzle were missing. Like why, oh why, do our own leaders highjack any real effective climate policies? And President Morales, an indigenous man of the people formulates a simple answer; it’s because the only free thing our western leaders believe in is the free market. And in this free market so beloved by our government leaders and corporations lurks the vehicle which stupefies the body politic. And what is this major vehicle? It is the stun gun of capitalism which dictates that the personhood of corporations tops the personhood of real persons.
The superior personhood of corporations is truly a remarkable concept. It’s why Stephen Harper can treat us like idiots. Why he can act like a god with no superior on earth or in heaven. Why Gordon Campbell can preach family values while living a double life; why these men feel protected by all of the forces of the universe. It’s because they consider themselves part of the clique of the superior personhood of the corporations and furthermore, they revel in it. These men also know that the mother of all corporate personhoods, the private banks of Canada, at least in practice, trumps Mother Earth and all of nature. How? By drowning us in compound interest. Compound interest charged by private banks keep the rich shrieking in glee and the rest of us scratching. But it has always been this way, hasn’t it?
No. We actually have a public bank. It’s called the Bank of Canada. It has the power to loan money to the Canadian government for all public expenditures. Without interest. Instead, at corporate insistence, the Bank of Canada loans the money (taxpayer’s money) it takes to keep our country going, directly to the private banks first, who then loans it back to the government. And not with simple interest, but with compound interest. So instead of taxpayers just paying directly for the government expenditures (transportation, infrastructure, and federal programs) we must also pay this original loan with compound interest. And all this compound interest money (taxpayers money again) of course now belongs to the private banks. This is why the private banks are so very rich and getting richer. And it’s a global phenomenon. In order to pay back monstrous debts of compound interest governments have no choice but to give way to the bank corporations on all levels, environmentally, socially, and financially, just as at the moment, Greece is in the process of capitulating unless the people find the guts to revolt. Bolivian President Evo Morales says the real enemy of Mother Earth is capitalism. I agree.

HOW TO JUDGE A MAN'S METTLE?

2010-04-17T17:35:00.000-07:00

True Indication of a Man’s Mettle?
How to judge a man’s mettle? Like the mettle of our premier, Gordon Campbell? In several ways. Take our west coast old growth rainforests. Where have they all gone? It seems to the logging corporations. These forests were at one time public rainforests. Now they are mostly corporate logged out lands just ripe for private development. But how do public lands become private developments? By orders in council. With just a few swishes of the pen by Gordon Campbell along with whomever is wearing the hats of forest or environmental minister at the time, men mostly ignorant of and disinterested in nature, as Gordon Campbell himself is. Another way to judge a man’s mettle?
By the way he treats women. Remember how Mr. Campbell dragged his wife out to front for him when he was convicted of drunken driving? What woman can forget that look on Mrs. Campbell’s face as she stood by her husband’s side, staring blankly into the cameras? And as far as I can determine, Mrs. Campbell hasn’t been seen publicly with her husband since. And it’s been years. Nobody talks about this. I wonder why? Isn’t a premier’s martial status a subject for public discussion? It is everywhere else in the world among politicians. This isn’t just lust for gossip, it’s because there is some sense among the general body politic that the way a man treats women, whether they are wives or current or past mistresses, indicates in some measure his very capacity for love and tenderness and fairness.
Okay, so maybe I am reaching here, but if the premier of this province doesn’t love or treat his wife fairly but pushes her out on the stage when he is in trouble, how can he be expected to love and protect our trees? Or our water? Our grizzly bears? Our wild salmon? Our children of whom one in five is below the poverty line? Our democracy? Our jobs? I wish Mrs. Campbell would come out on the public stage and speak to us. After all she is still, as far as any of us are aware, the First Lady of this Province. Maybe she could give us some insight into why her husband, who is supposed to be a businessman, is literally giving away our province for practically nothing.

A PERFECT STORM OF CORRUPTION

2010-03-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

A Perfect Storm of Corruption
Well, corruption has been with us all along, right? Government, corporations, organized crime; we eat their life systems every morning for breakfast, so what? The “what” is that these systems are now converging to the point where nothing much can function except the corruption. And all these different branches of corruption sit atop the rotten carcass of our banking system.
Okay, talk of banking systems make people’s heads ache. It makes mine ache, too. Who the hell can understand the banking system? It’s like lawyer’s talk, or mathematicians talk, or physicist talk…it’s a whole different language. And that’s why we have to labour so hard to understand it. But understand it we must or we will shrivel and die as a people. Literally. Exaggeration? I stand accused. But I tell what I see and write what I think. And I, as well as others, can see the perfect storm gathering on the horizon.

The private banking system, domestically and globally, is the eye of the storm. Yes, we all know this at some level, and many are getting a real hate on for the banks because of the huge bonuses paid to the executives. But those bonuses are small winds compared to threatening tsunamis roaring over our oceans and lands because of The Royal Bank, Scotiabank, CIBC, Toronto Dominion and others. What’s so bad about these banks? The way they lend money. Money they don’t actually have. If they don’t actually have the money, you may ask, how do they give loans?
When any of us go in into a private bank ( 95 per cent of loans in Canada are given by private banks) to apply for a house loan (mortgage, or whatever) we are under the impression the bank has the money to lend to us. But they don’t. The tiny fraction of reserve they hold compared to what they have loaned out (four billion held in reserves nationally compared to the one point five trillion they have loaned out) they can’t possibly have the actual money to loan. So what do the banks do? They counterfeit some new money. Their own printing presses? Sort of. They write up official pieces of paper that says in the future you will pay real money back to them along with compound interest on your loan of their private bank bogus money.
Can we as a people comprehend that our banks are private Ponzi-like schemes that are threatening to implode and that we, as innocents, are collateral damage? And that it doesn’t have to be? The federal government is allowed by law to borrow from the Bank of Canada, the people’s bank. Without interest. Certainly not compound interest. Then why aren’t we doing business with our own bank instead of private banks that charge compound interest? Because our heads of governments and heads of private banks do business together, profit together, and are, with few exceptions, crooks together. If we can recognize this, as a people, then we can do something about it.

OhCanadamovie.ca And Me

2010-03-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

OhCanadaMovie.ca and Me
This film by Dan Matthews of Mathewsmedia.ca is, for me, like a comet blazing across the sky of my understanding of our banking system. I started wondering about the banking system years ago when some renegade economic guy (Harry Browne, recently deceased) wrote a book in 1970 entitled “How to Profit from the Coming Devaluation”). I wasn’t impressed with the man’s libertarian attitudes, but I was impressed with his simple explanations of the banking system.
Harry Browne told me (so to speak) that whenever I put a hundred dollars in the bank, that this hundred would be loaned out and then when I spent the hundred myself there were now two parties spending the same hundred. Browne also clued me in on how going off the gold standard meant that the only thing backing the US banking system was faith in US production. Well, that seemed kind of iffy to me, even then. But now, with Dan Matthews telling me in this film OhCanadamovie.ca that the reason Canada is now in a debt position is because of the compound interest the private Canadian Banks charge on all loans. And then he goes on to tell me that these money loans that we think the banks actually have when any of us make a bank loan for anything is something the banks actually have on hand. It isn’t so. When any of us make a private bank loan (of which ninety five per cent of all loans in Canada are from private banks) they don’t actually have that money. Well, how can they say they’re giving you a loan of actual money when they don’t have it and then demand that you pay back compound interest on money they didn’t have in the first place, that they just generated out of thin air?
Well, it’s legal. According to an interview with Paul Martin on OhCanadamovie.ca the Bank of Canada Act (1934) was modified in early 1991-92 and then modified some more by Paul Martin a few years later until the private banks now don’t have to have any money in reserve when they make loans. Absolutely none. The outcome of this is that the banks have out in loans one point five trillion dollars while only keeping four billions of real money in the bank vaults. And the banks are collecting one hundred and sixty million dollars a day, including provincial and federal debts, or sixty billion a year. And this is real hard earned money from Canadian workers, not the fake money the banks created out of nothing in order to suck up real tax payer money. And the government doesn’t have to make loans from these private banks there is the Bank of Canada that belongs to the people and doesn’t charge interest at all to the government. Please watch this movie. It’s on YouTube. And an aside…I’m reading from my books at The Laughing Oyster Book Store in Courtenay on Vancouver Island Saturday afternoon at one o’clock. Anybody in the neighbourhood at that time, do drop in.