April 2015 Archives - Common Ground

Photo: Canadian Council of Chief Executives head John Manley, former prime minister and current Barrick international advisory board chair Brian Mulroney, Barrick chairman Peter Munk, and former foreign minister and current Barrick international advisory board member John Baird, pictured in 2012 at an exclusive dinner at The Museum of Nature where Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of Defense William Cohen was keynote speaker. Now, who is shaking hands, and what is the deal? photo by Jake Wright

Nigel Wright has been much in the news for the $90,172 cheque he signed over to Mike Duffy. Much less attention has been devoted to the scandalous implications of the $9 million payment from former Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to Peter Munk’s School at the University of Toronto. The anatomy of both deals sheds light on the abundant conflicts of interest linking the Barrick Gold Company with Conservative Party governments led by Brian Mulroney and now Stephen Harper.

The origins of Barrick Gold

After terminating his tenure as the most undiplomatic Minister of Foreign Affairs in Canada’s history, John Baird has been extended a place on Barrick Gold Corporation’s International Advisory Board. Its founding Chair was former US President George H.W. Bush. The international panel’s current Chair is former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

A close student of the relationship between Bush Sr. and Mulroney, in 1997 Anton Chaitkin came up with the phrase “Barrick’s Barracudas.” Baird is a recent recruit among this school of fishy predators inhabiting those murky zones of lucrative interaction between business and politics. This pattern goes back at least to 1984 when Adnan Khashoggi visited Ontario’s capital to establish a Toronto headquarters for the Barrick complex of companies.

In the period when he was laying out the political, legal and economic groundwork for what would become Barrick Gold, the flamboyant playboy Khashoggi was reputed to be one of the world’s richest men. This CIA asset and arms merchant also served as a front man for a group of Saudi Arabian investors that included Kamal Adham, the oil-rich country’s head of intelligence operations. This strategic link to Saudi wealth was crucial in the financial life of western capitals during an era when much depended on Saudi Arabia’s backing for the shift of the US dollar from a gold-backed to an oil-based currency.

Barrick Gold’s connection through Peter Munk to Canada’s Bronfman family dynasty formed a vital dimension of the Israeli-Saudi axis, an important factor in maintaining the Anglo-American empire. Edgar Bronfman’s activities, as the influential head of the World Jewish Congress between 1979 and 2007, provide us with a glimpse into the politico-economic juggernaut that included the Barrick complex of companies.

Khashoggi met with Ontario Premier Bill Davis in 1984 during a heavily hyped media event meant to promote the listing of what was then known as American Barrick or Barrick Resources in the Toronto Stock Exchange. Flash forward to 2015 when Newt Gingrich became John Baird’s co-appointee on Barrick’s international advisory panel.

In 2008, Gingrich became a candidate for the US Republican Party’s nomination in the presidential election. Multi-billionaire gambling czar Sheldon Adelson famously funded Gingrich’s neoconservative candidacy. Adelson’s political priorities include putting in place a US president that will agree to nuke Iran, the number one national nemesis of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Munk School’s role in promoting the hawkish policies of the Harper Government towards Iran

Several weeks before joining Barrick’s well-rewarded international advisory panel, Foreign Affairs Minister Baird conducted a press conference in Toronto along with Professor Janice Stein, then Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs. The Munk School originated in its present form in 2011. It began with a large donation to the University of Toronto from Peter Munk.

Munk became the most public face of Barrick Gold Corporation after Adnan Khashoggi was exposed in the Iran-Contra scandal in the late 1980s. Khashoggi and some of his fellow Saudi investors in Barrick businesses were exposed as key operatives in a complex web of illegal financial transactions on behalf of the National Security apparatus of the Reagan-Bush White House.

During and after his term as US President from 1989 to 1993, Bush Sr. took firm charge of Barrick’s most rapid phase of international expansion. To help him with this enterprise he recruited his peer, Brian Mulroney, with whom Bush had worked particularly closely in putting together the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA. NAFTA was instituted in 1992 shortly before both men left elected public office under clouds of infamy.

On January 6 of this year, Stein and Baird announced that the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper was directing a grant of $9 million to the Digital Public Square Project. In this scheme of internet manipulation, the U of T’s Munk School was enlisted in a federal operation reminiscent of old Cold War initiatives to encourage dissidents within communist countries to join forces and rise up in order to topple their Soviet-backed oppressors.

This Harper U of T initiative is being pressed forward in a context defined by Ottawa’s severance in 2012 of diplomatic ties with Tehran. The federal government’s unilateral decision to terminate formal relations was introduced with Baird’s inflammatory allegation that “Canada views the Government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today.”

Baird added to this saga of vituperation in 2013 by asserting, “The [Iranian] regime is hollow. It does not have the depth, the intellect, the humanity or the humility to bring about a better future for its people.” This most undiplomatic of characterizations was delivered notwithstanding the diplomatic transformations brought by the election in 2013 of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

The Digital Public Square initiative is a thinly disguised instigation of hostile regime change directed at Iran and also several other countries on the Harper government’s Enemies List. Professor Stein attempted to soft-peddle U of T’s role in this scheme. “It’s about making space for different narratives. It’s about making space for different voices,” she declared.

I was struck with a sense of irony when I first saw these words attributed to Professor Stein, who apparently coached John Baird regularly in how he should articulate Canada’s international positions. When it comes to issues like Canada’s relationships with the Islamic Republic of Iran, or, for that matter, the Jewish state of Israel, I do not hear a multiplicity voices in Parliament or in mainstream media coming from a wide variety of perspectives. What I have heard instead – especially on the airwaves of Canada’s public broadcaster – is a very narrow spectrum of blinkered, one-sided international commentary.

Indeed, I can report from my experience as a delegate in October 2014 at an international conference in Tehran that I participated in a much more free-ranging and broad discussion of global affairs than would be possible these days in the heavily censored CBC. The same comparison might be applied to the gate-kept academic environment at the U of T and certainly to the cloistered confines of its Munk School.

In 2013, the Munk School Director, Janice Stein, and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird were accused of stifling such free-ranging academic debate by a coalition of Canadian-Iranian community groups. They accused the organizers of an allegedly closed and secretive academic gathering at the U of T of making “a calculated attempt to sideline critics and censor opponents of the Conservative government’s policy on Iran.” Those invited to make presentations were said to display uniformly “hawkish views” unreflective of “the Iranian diaspora’s outlook.”

Barrick Gold, the neocon agenda and constraints on academic freedom

Peter Munk’s donation to the University of Toronto was negotiated in secret with the U of T’s former President, David Naylor. Dr. Naylor was recently appointed to Barrick’s Board. The Naylor-Munk deal of 2011 breaks new ground in terms of tying strings to the future flow of funding to an important academic unit at a Canadian university.

The Munk School Director must satisfy Peter Munk – and, after his death, the trustees of Munk’s estate – that he or she is meeting predetermined academic and “branding” guidelines. The U of T’s adoption of these conditions sets very unfortunate precedents for the corporate sponsoring of other academic institutions.

This constraint on academic freedom only begins the litany of negative implications permeating the Munk School’s positioning in the academy. As emphasized on the website of a campus-wide coalition entitled Peter Munk Out of U of T, “students have cause for concern that their school is so closely associated with this company… that is accused of human rights violations, labour violations, environmental devastation and/or corruption where they operate.”

This corruption begins in Canada and extends to many countries where Barrick operates including Peru, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea and Australia. Barrick’s horrendous record has been highlighted by many organizations and NGOs including Mining Watch and Protest Barrick as well as by many authors including Alan Denault, Sakura Saunders, Greg Palast, Alex Constantine and E. P. Heidner.

Especially serious from the perspective of the growing neocon assaults on academic freedom at the University of Toronto and other centres of higher learning is Barrick Gold’s history of trying to intimidate, shut up and destroy altogether its critics through a variety of coercive techniques. These include financially debilitating SLAPP suits, strategic lawsuits against public participation.

Barrick’s precedent-setting litigious assault in Ontario on the Internet postings of Chilean-Canadian miner, Jorge Lopehandia, became especially aggressive in the early 2000s. With his Vancouver-based associates Lopehandia has achieved considerable traction with the Chilean judiciary in demonstrating that he, not Barrick Gold, is the primary holder of title to the massive deposits of gold, silver and copper at the Pascau Lama Mine.

Barrick Gold’s main man on the ground in Latin America is heir to the financial empire of Andronico Luksic Sr.. Luksic Sr. was one of the primary beneficiaries of the radical privatization of public property imposed on Chile after the US-backed coup in 1973. Banker Andronico Luksic Jr. has taken over his father’s hostility to Lopehandia’s unrelenting assertion of title to one of the world’s richest mineral deposits. Through the public exposure attending his politically-motivated efforts to extend improper loans to the family of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Luksic has botched his overzealous power play. His attempt to cozy up to Chile’s first family is generating much negative domestic publicity in ways that are engulfing Barrick’s Chilean outpost in the hot glare of scandal.

Lopehandia’s tenacious defense of his rights and interests is part of a tsunami of problems overwhelming Barrick in what was once advertised as its prime Latin American bastion. In 2013 in Canada’s Financial Post, Peter Koven accused Barrick of “screwing up the Pascua Lama project about as badly as any mining company has ever screwed up a major project.”

Mining the public interest for corporate and private gain

As Canada’s recent Minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird has played a key role in Barrick Gold’s litigious interactions with, for instance, Jorge Lopehandia. Lopehandia has had much company in bringing forward serious indigenous grievances in those many countries where Barrick’s Barracudas are active.

Barrick has emerged as a core polity in a structure of international affairs wherein fully 75 percent of the world’s mining companies are headquartered in Canada. It seems that very lax oversight of the Toronto and Vancouver stock exchanges, as well as the lack of any serious regulation by the our federal government, has made Canada a laissez-faire magnet for extractive enterprises of many sorts.

There is an unmistakable stench of conflict of interest surrounding John Baird in his work inside and now outside Stephen Harper’s cabinet. The most obvious indicator of this malfeasance began the moment he handed over a federal cheque for $9 million dollars to the Munk School of Global Affairs. The purpose of the grant was to advance the U of T’s transformation into a partisan partner in the Canadian government’s decidedly “hawkish” interactions with Iran.

Only weeks after this delivery of public funds to the Munk School, the Barrick Gold Corporation reciprocated. In his very first days as a private citizen, Baird joined the International Advisory Board of Peter Munk’s main medium of golden endowment to the University of Toronto.

John Baird thus followed a path laid out by former US President George H.W. Bush and by Brian Mulroney. Mulroney joined Barrick’s Barracudas after receiving cash from Karlheinz Schreiber for services rendered when he was the Canadian Prime Minister that cleared the way for neocon Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

As Foreign Affairs Minister, Baird had intervened in 2012 to fend off allegations that Harper’s former Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright, was guilty of conflict of interest in advancing Barrick Gold’s interests with his boss. Wright was then being investigated by Mary Dawson, Parliament’s Ethics Watchdog, on the suspicion that he had played a role on three separate occasions as an advocate of Barrick’s preferred positioning of Canada vis-à-vis mining in Latin America.

The National Post paraphrased the former Minister’s characterizations of Wright’s interactions with the Gold Company as follows, “Wright did nothing wrong; he merely listened to Barrick’s concerns, said nothing, passed the matter over to others responsible for the file and was not involved in any decision relating to the company.”

What credibility do these words now possess given Baird’s own subsequent induction along with David Naylor into Barrick Gold’s inner sanctum through the medium of the company’s deep infiltration of the U of T’s academic life? Here is yet another indication that the Harper government’s ethics initiative is a scam as epitomized by Baird’s bringing his very recent access to state secrets to the service of Barrick Gold.

With an accompanying email assurance as Stephen Harper’s Chief of Staff that the deal was “good to go,” Nigel Wright delivered the now-notorious $90,172 cheque to suspended Senator Mike Duffy. This payment is seen by many as a smoking gun in the high-profile criminal trial now underway in Ottawa.

Wright’s close friend is Anthony Munk, his former colleague in the giant private equity firm, Onex Corporation. Wright’s intimacy with the Munk family is marked in his role as godfather to the grandson of Peter Munk. “I have complete trust” in Nigel Wright, declared Munk Sr. in 2011. Munk’s trust in his grandson’s godfather was reflected in Wright’s appointment along with Andrew Coyne and Ken Whyte to the Board of the Aurea Foundation.

With its annual debates at the Munk School of Global Affairs, the Aurea Foundation constitutes another example of how neoconservatives operate to engineer the boundaries of acceptable discourse in the mainstream media and in the academy. This discourse most valorizes the deregulation of business and maximum latitude for the expansionary policies of Likudnik Israel, both political priorities for the newest of Barrick’s Barracudas, John Baird and Newt Gingrich.

An academic alternative to the Munk School of Global Affairs?

After two decades of intense engagement in the courts of both Chile and Canada with representatives of our country’s chief mining leviathan, Jorge Lopehandia’s survival speaks volumes. Not only has he retained his legal ground, but he is gaining strategic turf. From this adversarial experience, Lopehandia has developed his own personal perspective on what he sees as Barrick Gold’s ruthless and unethical way of conducting business.

Lopehandia is especially critical of the effects of Barrick’s accounting machinations on the declining value of the many pension funds invested heavily in what was once widely viewed as a blue chip company. The revolt of pensioners is being felt once again in 2015 as many managers of retirement funds repeat the main themes of their protest in 2013.

A common thread of grievance in their votes of non-confidence is Barrick’s very high rate of executive compensation. This penchant for huge payoffs to those at the top goes back to the days when George H. W. Bush was handsomely rewarded for engineering the transactions that catapulted Barrick Gold from obscurity to the world’s number one marketer of gold and gold derivatives.

As Lopehandia sees it, the high rates of reward to executives and their political advisors reflect the reality that Barrick’s most important asset is privileged access to the inner citadels of political, juridical and media influence. A common theme running throughout this process of infiltration involves the corruption of the state in order to harness its coercive force for the displacement of indigenous peoples from valuable natural resources.

The consistency of this expansionary pattern in the growth of Barrick Gold Corporation flows naturally from the history of the heavy trade in mining shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Toronto’s rise to commercial prominence has depended on dispossessing and displacing First Nations in the development of one mining frontier after the next in northern Ontario.

This same general trajectory of expansion through Aboriginal dispossession is continuing through venues such as Barrick Gold into the wider international realm. It is a process that is making Canada synonymous with the most dirty and exploitative networks of extractive industry.

A father of college-aged young men, Lopenhandia speaks eloquently of the tragic subordination of one of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious universities to the imperatives of corporatist subversion. He asks rhetorically, “Why pay homage to those who have benefited most from the kind of outrageous incursions that are giving the Canadian mining industry a bad name among many decent folks throughout Latin America and Africa? What messages are we sending to our young people by treating the likes of Peter Munk, Brian Mulroney, John Baird and Newt Gingrich as role models for the country’s future leaders?”

As Lopenhandia sees it, some of the funds poured into the Munk School of Global Affairs are in fact stolen from him and individuals like him in Barrick Gold’s global rush for spoils. He speaks eloquently of the kind of alternative to the Munk School that he would like to endow if he succeeds in his quest to put in place a more just model for mining sustainably the riches of the vast Pascua-Lama repository of precious metals.

Lopehandia underlines that any alternative to the Munk School in which he might become involved would have to promote rather than constrain academic freedom. The kind of institute Lopehandia has in mind would be an arena of academic meritocracy affording respect, recognition and security especially to those voices of dissent emanating from outside the charmed inner circle of privilege and power.

Such a centre of excellence would eschew rather than cultivate conditions of exclusion such as those that provoked the Iranian Canadian community groups in 2013 to accuse the Munk School of organizing a closed event to promote the hawkish policies of the ruling party. Rather than responding appropriately to this significant criticism, the anti-Iranian partnership of the University of Toronto and the Harper government was solidified in 2015 with John Baird’s and professor Stein’s announcement of substantial federal largesse for the Munk School.

A Lopehandia School of Globalization Studies would embrace, rather than spurn, those academics willing to speak truth to power, even when that power takes the form of a corporate leviathan like Barrick Gold with its still largely hidden history of serial dealings with the most dubious variety of former public official.

—

Anthony Hall is professor of Globalization Studies at the University of Lethbridge. He has written for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Canadian Dimension and many other periodicals. His most recent books are Earth into Property: Colonization, Decolonization and Capitalism and The American Empire and the Fourth World. Both volumes are published by McGill-University Press.

References
miningwatch.ca
protestbarrick.net
munkoutofuoft.wordpress.com

Universal Soldier

01/04/201522/12/2016

The evolution of a song

by Bruce Mason

Buffy Saint-Marie Cover — See Buffy Sainte-Marie interview in our March 2005 edition in Back Issues / Archives of commonground.ca

• It’s been 10 years since Buffy Sainte-Marie graced the cover of Common Ground and more than five decades since she wrote Universal Soldier, her international anthem to peace, which is just as vital and timely today. In a 2005 Common Ground interview, publisher Joseph Roberts stated, “Universal Soldier is just as timely today as when you wrote it.” She agreed, saying, “Yes, unfortunately.” Today, she has the same response, adding, “The root issue is always the same: corporate greed.”

As the drums of war beat more loudly – and Stephen Harper commits more Canadian soldiers to conflict – she shares the evolution of Universal Soldier below. Please see subsequent pages for our cover story on this timeless singer-songwriter, pacifist and social activist.

“In 1962, a couple of years before Vietnam was public knowledge and had escalated, I was stranded in a San Francisco airport and saw soldiers who were wheeling in bodies on stretchers and their wounded buddies in wheelchairs, all shot up and bandaged. I talked with them, asking, ‘Who’s responsible? You, the soldiers? The generals who give you the orders? The politicians who make war decisions? Or is it ‘We the People,’ who elect them?’

“I kept thinking about what I had seen and those questions aboard the flight to Toronto and in the basement of the Purple Onion coffeehouse in Yorkville. I worked on Universal Soldier like a college student looking for an A. I knew soldiers could be between five foot two and six foot four and [between] the ages of 17 and 31 so I included information like that. The line, He’s fighting for Canada, he’s fighting for France, he’s fighting for the USA, unfortunately, is as true today. I’d been studying Oriental philosophy and wanted to include all religions; I would add Islam now. I used never sees the writing on the wall because we have learned nothing from history. Just look around. I wanted to warn people, to get them out of their classrooms and onto their feet, like I am trying to do now with Power in the Blood. Like I said later, ‘You don’t want to give it to them in an enema.’

“I wanted people to understand that we are all responsible. And I don’t mean only the people who are like me. I mean communicate to all the people. There’s no sense being a closet genius. It doesn’t do me any good to keep the medicine in the bottle. The last line, Brothers, can’t you see this is not the way we put an end to war? wasn’t meant to scold, but as a question to someone you love. And the music ends on an unresolved chord.

“I sold the publishing rights for $1 to a guy I met at the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village. He wrote the contract on a napkin. In 1964, I signed a record deal, but I didn’t even know what a lawyer was and used the company’s – a mistake. Donovan recorded Universal Soldier in ‘65 and 10 years later I bought it back for 25,000 bucks – the good news is that I had enough money, after I had a few hits. I tell these stories – particularly to Aboriginal women – because we have to know who we’re dealing with, not just in the music business, but all the greedy global corporations.

In 1967, a GI on a troop carrier headed to Vietnam wrote lines from the song on the canvas bottom of the bunk above him:

You’re the one who must decide
Who’s to live and who’s to die
You’re the one who gives his body
As a weapon of the war
And without you, all this killing can’t go on.

“When the canvas was donated to the Smithsonian Institute, in 2004, they wrote in their magazine that it was a ‘mystery poem.’ They apologized and sent me about 700 letters, faxes, emails that pointed out that I had written that song. A lot of them explained details of how the song had changed their lives. That was very heartening. It was very kind of them to share their points of view. Usually, I don’t get to know about how songs impact people’s lives. To sit down and read their letters and feel those feelings coming from guys who are actually affected by a song like that, it was really quite moving.

“It’s about the personal responsibility of all of us,” she says of the song that was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005. “Because we can’t blame just the soldier for the war or just the career military officer or just the politician. We have to blame ourselves too since we are living in an era where we actually elect our politicians, including Stephen Harper.”

Power in the Blood

01/04/201522/12/2016

A conversation with Buffy Sainte-Marie

by Bruce Mason

• I’m upside down with a mean, 27-hour Australia-Hong Kong-London jet-lag, hoping my band can survive the pace,” reports Buffy Sainte-Marie, who turned 74 in February. She is referring to her whirlwind, globe-trotting tour in advance of the release of her album, Power in the Blood, on May 12. “It’s a beating, as we say, ha ha! In the UK and Canada later this month. Thanks for sharing my take and texts on the state of the world,” she says.

Her 18th album, Power in the Blood, the first in eight years, begins where it all started – with It’s My Way from her 1964 debut. These were the first steps of her ceaseless creativity and constant motion on her journey to finding her identity and conviction of self.

She also re-arranged Not the Lovin’ Kind and Generation, to be shared anew from the 70s ‘blacklist years’ when Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) called her a “loose cannon” and an “artist to be suppressed,” sentiments actively shared by Richard Nixon. The Cree singer-songwriter, activist, educator and visual artist – whose countless awards include an Oscar, Juno, Golden Globe and Grammys – became a regular on TV’s Sesame Street, during which she breast-fed her son on-air, in protest against baby formulas. In Power in the Blood, she continues to celebrate what she calls “the sanctity of life, the splendour of Mother Nature,” mixed up with scathing political and social commentary.

“Ever since Running for the Drum in 2009, I’ve been on the road with my band. Lots of countries, cities, Reserves, everything. I had all these songs, new and old, in my head. Some we perform every night, but had never recorded, or else had recorded during a time when I couldn’t get any airplay, so few people had ever heard them. I didn’t want to continue touring without a new record.

“I love thinking and I recognize and value the core of a universal idea simplified into a three-minute song, which can be as powerful as a 400-page book. What appealed to me in folk music were the songs that have lasted for generations, but I wasn’t trying to be one of those guys. I wanted to give people something original.

“To me, a good song stays relevant even though other good ones come along. I feel like all my songs are coming from the three-year-old I’ll always be, and the ones I keep loving are fresh to me every time I perform them.

Buffy Sainte-Marie
in concertApril 26 Sidney, BCApril 28 Salt Spring Island, BC April 29 Campbell River, BCApril 30 Capilano University
North Vancouver (sold out)

May 1 Capilano University
North Vancouver

Another Vancouver concert date may be added. For tickets and current information, see
buffysainte-marie.com

“The album and concerts include an ode to the sanctity of life, We Are Circling, and the splendour of Mother Nature, Carry It On, which is euphoric and hopefully, empowering. I found inspiration in UB40’s Sing Our Own Song, which is closely associated with Nelson Mandala and the anti-apartheid movement. But I gave it my own pow-wow spin. Farm in the Middle of Nowhere is what I call rockabilly Hawaiian – what my life is like these days – in the spirit of country music and Ke Sakihitin Awasis is another love song to Native culture.

“Some people like the love songs, others like the rockers, or the ones with a strong message. Some of the classics people always ask for – like Universal Soldier, Until It’s Time for You to Go and Up Where We Belong – they’re all so different from each other, go figgur!’

“Power in the Blood was written by my friends Alabama 3, about being ready for war. I modified it with their blessing, including, ‘When that call it comes/ I will say, no no no to war.’ Power can be the feudal system and the war racket or it can mean the power in your own DNA, your own brains and what you do in your own life. My poem, The War Racket, posted on my website at buffysainte-marie.com is my understanding that war is primarily about money and money laundering, re-routing all available monies from general domestic welfare – education, arts, public health, etc., into the bank accounts of the money junkies at the top. In modern warfare, in my opinion, both sides are obscene. The power racket has been going on since before the Old Testament, yet there have always been people like Jesus, Gandhi and MLK and there still are and a lot of change is up to you and me like in Universal Soldier.”

To help shape Power in the Blood, she enlisted three different producers, including Chris Birkett. It’s their fourth collaboration. “She pays a lot of attention to her lyrics,” he says, “and when Buffy says something, she actually means something.”

A good example is The Uranium War, with such lines as:

An enemy – I watched it grow
Corporate greed and lust for gold
And coal and oil
and hey now, uranium
Keep the Indians under your thumb
Pray like Hell when your
bad times come
Roll em up, strip em up,
get em’ with a gun.

Bruce Mason: You read the comment by Joan Baez in Common Ground last year: “This world is f**king falling apart and I don’t think it even matters who’s quibbling with who. Global warming is going to get us and that’s going to be it.”

Buffy Sainte-Marie: “She’s right, but personally I continue to keep my nose on the joy trail and if something is missing, I try to create it. Just do my best every day, take joy wherever I can, especially with animals. To me, the world and everything in it is always in a state of ripening – babies, elders, bozos and angels. This is how we grow; this is how we get to know (from We Are Circling). The human race is young; none of us is very mature, but we all can keep learning so don’t give up.

BM: Your recording, education and artwork utilizes computers and digital technology. Do you fear privacy loss and surveillance?

BSM: Same ol, same ol. There have always been crooks and they always have the same technology we have. Whatja’ think, it was gonna change just because you got a smart phone? They did too. But don’t give up. Support what you love where you find it, heal and protect the sacred when you get a chance and create something better out of whatever comes along, online and in the real world. Politically and personally, take care of your link with Life!”

BM: As a global citizen, artist, activist, etc., what do you hear about Canada and Stephen Harper?

BSM: How are we viewed? In Australia, in the USA, in Europe, citizens are seeing Canadians as fellow victims of the right wing destruction of the environment.

BM: What do you think of the rise of Aboriginal culture, internationally, particularly among women?

BSM: Thanks for the question. Yes, yes, there is good news and it’s lovely that other people know we’re here. But tragic realities change so slowly. In my experience, ‘we’ become trendy every now and then when Hollywood makes a movie, which seems to be about us – Soldier Blue, Little Big Man, Dances With Wolves, etc. – and fashion magazines feature fringe and war paint and Cher gets on a horse in a mini skirt. Unfortunately, the public buys it and thinks they’ve helped us out somehow.

On the other hand, the women who started Idle No More and the huge numbers of like-minded people of all genders, indigenous and non-indigenous, are a genuine grassroots response to the realities we all face today – most extremely in the front lines of Indian country: the destruction of the environment and the ongoing horror of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

My point is not just to praise and support this mass courageous activism, but also to call for continued ripening and growing positive action on every level. Myself, I get to be global as well as local, but at home we must insist on local politicians’ proper response to the issues. We’ve got to encourage their courage, support their positive efforts and howl against their continued collusion with the corporation governments, whether on the Reserve or in Ottawa. Politics is a greasy pipe and our citizen responsibility doesn’t end with voting; we still need to drive the car in the right direction.

One good thing is that a lot more people are now seeing the big racket for what it is. Even if you haven’t seen what I saw at [the] Fort McMurray tar sands – the heartless fracking in the arboreal forests, turning it into the surface of the Moon – even if you haven’t seen what I’ve seen as GMO companies spray their untested, restricted pesticides all over Hawaii and emergency room doctors have no idea what haemorrhaging children have contracted, people everywhere are seeing the climate changes in their own neighbourhoods, the middle class disappearing and the tiny collection of “brand franchises” – Prada, Chanel, (read Naomi Klein’s No Logo) – taking over every airport and shopping mall and becoming the new McDonald’s and Burger King while the great creatives behind them are silenced by the accountants and lawyers running the corporations and putting local mom and pop stores out of business. It’s pretty much the moneychangers taking over the temple, nothing new, but now everybody can see it.

Cradleboard Teaching Project

Buffy Sainte-Marie virtually invented the role of Native American international activist pop star. Her concern for protecting indigenous intellectual property and her distaste for the exploitation of Native American artists and performers has kept her in the forefront of activism in the arts for over 50 years. Since 1969, she has operated the Nihewan Foundation for Native American Education, whose Cradleboard Teaching Project serves children and teachers worldwide, free and online (www.cradleboard.org).
During the 1990s, Buffy Sainte-Marie focused her time mostly on the Cradleboard Teaching Project, using her multimedia skills to create accurate, enriching core curriculum based in Native American cultural perspectives. The American Indian College Fund presented her with their Lifetime Achievement Award. Cradleboard’s interactive multimedia CD-ROM, Science: Through Native American Eyes, features Buffy on camera as well as producer and director.
Visit www.cradleboard.org to learn more.

—

Bruce Mason is a Vancouver and Gabriola-Island based five-string banjo player, gardener, freelance writer and author of Our Clinic. brucemason@shaw.ca

eagle feather image © Alexander Potapov

The micro and macro of nutrients

01/04/201522/12/2016

by Nancy Lin DeGregori

• There are two types of nutrients we need for our survival: micronutrients and macronutrients. This division is based on the quantity of a nutrient the body needs. We need micronutrients in small amounts and macronutrients in large amounts. Claimed by macrobiotic enthusiasts, a careful balance of micronutrients and macronutrients need to be present to carry out this way of eating and (many say) spiritual way of life, with respect to yin and yang. Studies have shown that eating a macrobiotic diet may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and other chronic diseases and prevent and cure some forms of cancer, though long-term research studies are ongoing.

Micronutrients

Micronutrients are nutrients the human body needs in minute amounts to function properly; a deficiency leads to critical health problems. Good nutrition from eating a healthy diet is the foundation of any wellness program. The goal is to get an adequate amount of micronutrients in your diet by eating a large variety of healthy foods at a total caloric rate that will either maintain your present body weight or achieve your ideal body weight over a reasonably long period of time. Most of the diseases and conditions people face today are due to a deficiency of micronutrients. The World Health Organization (WHO) says if we ensure elimination of micronutrient deficiency, labour efficiency will increase multifold.

A list of micronutrients

Vitamins: Vitamins A, B, C, D, E and K and carotenoids.
Minerals: boron, calcium, chloride, chromium, cobalt, copper, fluoride, iodine, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, phosphorous, potassium, selenium, sodium and zinc.
Organic acids: Acetic acid, citric acid, lactic acid, malic acid, choline and taurine.

It is better to get these micronutrients from natural sources such as fruits and vegetables.

Macronutrients

Macronutrients – proteins, carbohydrates and fats – constitute the bulk of the food we eat.

Proteins are called the building blocks of life. It is what most of our body is made up of. Proteins themselves are made of amino acids. Some good sources of protein include fish, poultry, meat, legumes, soy, eggs, milk and milk products.

Carbohydrates are made up of sugar or starches. They are the main energy providers for our body. Excess carbohydrates are converted into fat and stored in our body. All foods have carbohydrates in some measure.

Fats are substances that your body stores for future use. Although most people think that fats are to be avoided altogether, there is a distinction to be made. There are good fats and bad fats and good fats are very necessary for the proper functioning of the body.

Proteins, carbohydrates and fats are to be eaten in proper proportion. If they are not, lifestyle diseases result.

The nutrition of micronutrients

The bioavailability of food consumed is an important issue in nutrition. But trying to calculate quantitatively how much of each known nutrient you are getting out of your diet is both a waste of time and impossible to do. It is recommended you do not try to quantify your intake of specific micronutrients from your diet.

Highlights of bioavailability of nutrients

Good nutrition from eating a healthy diet is the foundation of the biomedical model of natural health.

Any change in your diet, however small, that improves your natural health is a step in the right direction.

Micronutrients include vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals and water.

Micronutrients do not provide any energy to the body.

Poor nutrition is the result of consuming too little, too much or the wrong kinds of food on a regular basis. Food science, a root cause of poor nutrition, transforms natural, whole foods into garbage that fills the belly while developing excessive human appetites for fat, sugar and salt. Avoiding poor nutrition simply means refusing to eat junk food.

Nutrients compete with other nutrients for absorption. Some nutrients will enhance/reduce the amounts of other nutrients being absorbed by your body.

Food processing related factors

There is no best way to prepare food. Consuming fruits and vegetables raw enhances the absorption of some nutrients, whereas soaking and fermentation will increase the absorption of minerals in legumes and grains to the detriment of the water-soluble nutrients. Cooking by breaking down fibre generally increases digestibility of many nutrients, while all the oil soluble nutrients require the presence of fat for best absorption.

The macrobiotic diet

A macrobiotic diet isn’t simply a diet plan. It’s a way of life. If you are drawn to the concept of eating a natural, organic, plant-based diet (with a little fish) and embrace a Zen-like spirituality in both your life and food selections, a macrobiotic diet may be for you. Originally from Japan, the principle behind the macrobiotic diet combines tenets of Zen Buddhism with a Western-style vegetarian diet. Much more than a list of recommended foods, it is all about a spiritualism that transcends lifestyle, attitude and diet practices. The word “macrobiotic” comes from the Greek and essentially means “long life” or “great life.”

The macrobiotic diet regimen supports an Eastern philosophy of balancing foods to attain a balance of yin and yang. To achieve that balance, foods are paired based on their sour, sharp, salty, sweet or bitter characteristics. Yin foods are cold, sweet and passive while yang foods are hot, salty and aggressive. Some foods are prohibited because they contain toxins or fall on the far end of the spectrum, making it difficult to achieve and respect a Zen-like balance.

Early versions of the macrobiotic diet included several stages that became progressively more restrictive, ending with a diet of brown rice and water – considered the ultimate in yin and yang. Although not scientifically proven, a macrobiotic diet of wholesome, nutritious foods may protect against cancer and other chronic diseases.

Focus on healthy foods that are low in fat and high in fibre. Be mindful of your daily intake of vitamins D and B12, iron, protein and calcium for people embracing the macrobiotic diet may be deficient in them. Whenever people eliminate food groups, it can create deficiencies and affect their health. Remember to balance the yin and yang. If you’re interested in trying a macrobiotic diet, start slowly. First, incorporate just a few concepts such as eating less unprocessed food. Then add more whole grains and so on.

What you can eat

Practitioners of the macrobiotic diet prefer locally grown, natural foods prepared and eaten in the traditional manner, such as baking, boiling and steaming. Lots of grains, vegetables, beans, fermented soy and soups – supplemented with small amounts of fish, nuts, seeds and fruits – are the basis of the macrobiotic diet menu. Other natural products, however, may be included to accommodate individual needs or during dietary transition.

It is essentially a “flexitarian” diet plan – a mostly vegetarian diet that allows occasional meat or fish – with rules governing eating, cooking and lifestyle practices such as eating slowly and chewing food thoroughly. Foods should be consumed in their most natural state and processed foods are not recommended. Other excluded foods are fatty meats, most dairy, sugars, coffee, caffeinated tea, stimulating beverages, alcohol, chocolate, refined flour, very hot spices, chemicals and preservatives, poultry, potatoes and zucchini. The diet also allows you to consume certain fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes, eggplant and peppers in limited quantities. Excluded foods are considered to be extreme, over stimulating, or too concentrated and therefore not capable of achieving balance.

Breakdown of a typical macrobiotic diet

Whole grains, especially brown rice: 50-60%
Vegetables (and seaweed): 25-30%
Beans: 5-10%
Fish, nuts, seeds, fruits, miso soup: 5-20%
Soup (made from ingredients above 1-2 cups/day

Followers of the macrobiotic diet believe food and food quality impact health, happiness and well being. Eating natural food that is closer to the earth and less processed is healthier for the body and soul.

—

Source: www.truthnhealth.com. Nancy Lin DeGregori, Ph.D., is the founder and CEO of TruthNhealth.com and the author of An Etiological Theory of Chronic Disease. She is also a holistic nutrition/health coach and fitness consultant.

images © Macrovector

Informed consent

01/04/201522/12/2016

Take the ‘Kingdom of Alanastan’ statins quiz

DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels

Portrait of columnist Alan Cassels

• If you haven’t heard the term “informed consent” before, it’s time you did. This term implies that anytime a medical treatment is offered to you, it must be explained in sufficient detail – as to its possible benefits and harms – so you can make a fully informed assessment of what to expect. This is vital because, after all, it’s you, the patient, who is going to put the pill in your mouth and you need to be fully aware of the consequences. I have this nagging feeling that some of our medical decisions could hardly be characterized as having been made after our being fully informed. Sometimes that might not matter. And sometimes that’s the most important thing of all.

The world of prescription drugs we all inhabit often finds no place for “informed consent” and nobody actually tests patients to see if they have even the most basic knowledge of the drug they are prescribed. Even if you are told to take the drug “for the rest of your life,” which is likely if you are prescribed a statin to fight your high cholesterol, you might not have the faintest clue of what it will do. I plan to change that when I’m put in charge.

In the Kingdom of Alanastan (motto: we put the “inform” in “informed consent”), things are very different. As its beneficent ruler, I’ve decreed that, before you line up at the pharmacy to fill your prescription, you have to prove you’re taking the drug with fully informed consent. So your doctor wants you to take a statin? Fine. In my kingdom, you must first correctly answer a few simple skill-testing questions. The science behind this quiz comes from a meta-analysis of 11 studies on statins involving over 65,000 patients and is about the most reliable assessment of the drugs I can find.

The Kingdom of Alanastan quiz to establish statin-informed consent:

Consider this scenario: There are two equal groups of 100 people who all have ‘high cholesterol,’ but no history of heart disease. In every respect, these two groups are equal, except:

Group A took a statin, a drug like Crestor, everyday, for the next five years.

Group B did nothing and they lived their lives as they always had.

Over the next five years:

How many more lives were saved in Group A than Group B due to the statin?

a) 10
b) 5
c) 1
d) 0

How many in Group A were prevented from having a heart attack because of the statin?

a) 10
b) 5
c) 0
d) 1

How many more people in Group A developed diabetes, over Group B, because of the statin?

a) 20
b) 10
c) 0
d) 2

How many in Group A developed muscle damage because of the statin?

a) 35
b) 25
c) 15
d) 10

How much did the members of Group A collectively pay for five years’ worth of Crestor if they shopped at an average pharmacy in Vancouver and paid for the brand-name drug, not the generic?

a) $5,000
b) $9,500
c) $28,600
d) $340,000

The right answer to every question is “d.”

Now go ahead and review the answers. Did you get any wrong? Hmm. I’m sorry, but when that happens in the Kingdom of Alanastan, the pharmacist pulls out a large stamp that says DENIED in bold, red letters. He then stamps your prescription and hands it back to you, saying something like, “Sorry Ma’am, you failed the informed consent quiz and my professional license prevents me from allowing you to have this prescription. Have a nice day.”

According to BC’s Health care consent legislation, getting consent is the responsibility of whomever is “providing or proposing to provide an adult with health care.” With a drug prescription, ‘consent’ presumably happens twice: when you agree to accept the prescription from the doctor and when you agree to get the drug from the pharmacy. Right?

Health care consent is not a trivial matter and in most jurisdictions there is legislation to make sure “valid consent” has certain requirements. In BC, for example, health care “consent” has to be given voluntarily, cannot be obtained by fraud or misrepresentation and the person consenting has to be capable of giving or refusing consent. Our legislation says the health care provider has to give the patient the “information a reasonable person would require to understand the proposed health care and make a decision about it.” This includes information about the condition, the nature of the proposed healthcare and the “risks and benefits of the health care that a reasonable person would expect to be told about and any alternative courses of health care, including the option of having no health care at all.”

While that might seem like a lot, I am wondering how much people learn about the marginal benefits of statins and the likelihood they’ll develop diabetes or muscle weakness? Probably not much.

Part of the problem is that health care providers themselves may not be fully aware of the adverse effects related to statins. At least that’s what emerges from the Spring 2015 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons in an article by Dr. Duane Graveline.

Graveline is both a physician and an astronaut, who documented his experiences with statins in his book Lipitor: Thief of Memory. He says “physicians are often dismissive of patients’ reports of weakness or cognitive decline.” Graveline’s just-published study looked into reports made to MedWatch in the US and found that between 2006 and 2013 there were almost 9,000 reports linking Lipitor and Crestor to “severe cognitive disturbance.” He underscores this point by explaining that statins block a metabolic pathway, coenzyme Q10, which affects the body’s energy producers as well as brain function. Graveline found reports on nearly 11,000 cases of rhabdomyolysis, a severe breakdown of muscle fibres, which is the most extreme kind of muscle destruction caused by statins.

Bad news continues to pour in from almost everywhere about statins. Just last month, the UK paper Express reported a research study linking statins to the development of Parkinson’s disease, which seems to follow how the drug can affect the brain and nervous system. So you might ask why millions of people around the world are still taking statins when they do almost nothing and can have such horrible adverse effects.

I’d put part of the blame on the industry funded researchers who have actively hid statin adverse effect information. Currently, a scandal in the UK is erupting where Sir Rory Collins, head of one of the world’s largest statin research teams, known as the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists, admitted he had not personally seen the full data on statin side effects. Really? He’s been touting the benefits of statins for years, all the while blissfully ignorant of the adverse effects? Really?

Elsewhere, the literature provides ample information about other serious adverse reactions related to statins, including transient global amnesia, permanent muscle weakness, diabetes, ALS, cancer and serious neurodegenerative conditions. Even if you passed my quiz, can you say you’re making a fully informed decision to take a statin?

The solution I see is that we all need to ask more questions about our drugs, like: Of 100 people like me, how many will be helped by the drug? How much will we be helped? How much could we be hurt? How long do I have to take it? How much will I spend? And is there anything better than this treatment you’re proposing?

These are questions you might want to start practising. Because soon, when I’m king, I’ll be instructing my pharmacists not to hand over your prescriptions until you’ve shown us you understand them and will use your medicines wisely.

—

Alan Cassels has never been king of anything in his whole life and never will be, but hopes other kings will steal his ideas. He is a drug policy researcher in Victoria. You can read more of his writings at www.alancassels.com or follow him on twitter @akecassels

Gut flora & your health

01/04/201522/12/2016

by Dr. Mercola

Eating unpasteurized sauerkraut is one of the best ways to establish beneficial lactobacilli cultures in the digestive tract.

• While many think of their brain as the organ in charge of their mental health, your gut may actually play a far more significant role. The big picture many of us understand is one of a microbial world that we just happen to be living in. Our actions interfere with these microbes and they in turn respond having more effects to our individual health as well as the entire environment.

There is some truth to the old expression, having “dirt for brains.” The microbes in our soil, on our plants and in our stomachs are all a result of our actions. Antibiotics, herbicides, vaccines, pesticides and the tens of thousands of synthetic chemicals we’ve created all have impacts and result in reactions from these microbes.

Mounting research indicates that problems in your gut can directly impact your mental health, leading to issues like anxiety and depression. The gut-brain connection is well recognized as a basic tenet of physiology and medicine so this isn’t all that surprising even though it’s often overlooked. There’s also a wealth of evidence showing intestinal involvement in a variety of neurological diseases.

With this in mind, it should also be crystal clear that nourishing your gut flora is extremely important because in a very real sense you have two brains: one inside your skull and one in your gut and each needs its own vital nourishment.

The featured proof-of-concept study, conducted by researchers at UCLA, found that probiotics (beneficial bacteria) actually altered participants’ brain function. The study enlisted 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55 who were divided into three groups: 1) The treatment group ate yogurt containing several probiotics thought to have a beneficial impact on intestinal health, twice a day for one month. 2) Another group ate a “sham” product that looked and tasted like the yogurt but contained no probiotics. 3) The control group ate no product at all.

Compared to the controls, the women who consumed probiotic yogurt had decreased activity in two brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation. During the resting brain scan, the treatment group also showed greater connectivity between a region known as the “periaqueductal grey” and areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with cognition. In contrast, the control group showed greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion and sensation-related regions.

Your diet affects your mood and mental health

According to lead author Dr. Kirsten Tillisch, “Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut. Our study shows that the gut-brain connection is a two-way street… When we consider the implications of this work, the old sayings ‘you are what you eat’ and ‘gut feelings’ take on new meaning.”

The implications are particularly significant in our current era of rampant depression and emotional “malaise.” And the drug treatments available today are no better than they were 50 years ago. Clearly, we need a new approach, and diet is an obvious place to start.

Previous studies have confirmed that what you eat can alter the composition of your gut flora. Specifically, eating a high-vegetable, fibre-based diet produces a profoundly different composition of microbiota than a more typical western diet high in carbs and processed fats.

It’s important to realize you have neurons both in your brain and your gut – including neurons that produce neurotransmitters like serotonin. In fact, the greatest concentration of serotonin, which is involved in mood control, depression and aggression, is found in your intestines, not your brain! Perhaps this is one reason why antidepressants, which raise serotonin levels in your brain, are often ineffective in treating depression, whereas proper dietary changes often help.

Gut bacteria are vulnerable to diet and lifestyle

Processed, refined foods in general will destroy healthy microflora and feed bad bacteria and yeast so limiting or eliminating these from your diet should be at the top of your list. Processed foods wreak havoc on your gut in a number of different ways. First, they are typically loaded with sugar and avoiding sugar (particularly fructose) is, in my view, based on the evidence, a critical aspect of preventing and/or treating depression. Not only will sugar compromise your beneficial gut bacteria by providing the preferred fuel for pathogenic bacteria, it also contributes to chronic inflammation throughout your body, including your brain.

Many contain artificial sweeteners and other synthetic additives that can wreak havoc with brain health. In fact, depression and panic attacks are two of the reported side effects of aspartame. Preliminary findings presented at the 65th annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology also report that drinking sweetened beverages – whether they’re sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners – is associated with an increased risk of depression.

Processed foods are also typically loaded with refined grains, which turn into sugar in your body. Wheat, in particular, has also been implicated in psychiatric problems, from depression to schizophrenia, due to wheat germ agglutinin (WGA), which has neurotoxic activity.

The majority of processed foods also contain genetically engineered (GE) ingredients (primarily corn and soy), which have been shown to be particularly detrimental to beneficial bacteria.

Your gut bacteria are also very sensitive to and can be harmed by: 1) Antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary and when you do, make sure to reseed your gut with fermented foods and/or a probiotics supplement. 2) Conventionally-raised meats and other animal products as CAFO animals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics. 3) Plus genetically engineered grains, which have also been implicated in the destruction of gut flora. 4) Chlorinated and/or fluoridated water. 5) Antibacterial soap.

Reseed your gut flora

Considering the fact that an estimated 80% of your immune system is located in your gut, reseeding your gut with healthy bacteria is important for the prevention of virtually all disease, both physical and mental. The first step is to clean up your diet and lifestyle by avoiding the items listed above. Then, to actively reseed your gut with beneficial bacteria, you’ll want to:

Radically reduce your sugar intake

I’m being repetitive here to drive home the point that you can take the best fermented foods and/or probiotic supplements, but if you fail to reduce your sugar intake you will sabotage your efforts to rebuild your gut flora. When you consume sugar at the level of the typical American, you are virtually guaranteed to have a preponderance of pathogenic bacteria, yeast and fungi, no matter what supplements you are taking.

Eat traditionally fermented, unpasteurized foods:

Fermented foods are the best route to optimal digestive health as long as you eat the traditionally made, unpasteurized versions. Some of the beneficial bacteria found in fermented foods are also excellent chelators of heavy metals and pesticides, which will also have a beneficial health effect by reducing your toxic load.

Healthy choices include fermented vegetables, Lassi, an Indian yoghurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner; fermented milk, such as kefir and Natto (fermented soy). Ideally, you want to eat a variety of fermented foods to maximize the variety of bacteria you’re consuming. Fermented vegetables, which are one of my new passions, are an excellent way to supply beneficial bacteria back into our gut. And, unlike some other fermented foods, they tend to be palatable, if not downright delicious, to most people. As an added bonus, they can also be a great source of vitamin K2 if you ferment your own using the proper starter culture. Most high-quality probiotics supplements will only supply you with a fraction of the beneficial bacteria found in such homemade fermented veggies so it’s your most economical route to optimal gut health as well.

Take a high-quality probiotic supplement

Although I’m not a major proponent of taking many supplements (as I believe the majority of your nutrients need to come from food), probiotics are an exception if you don’t eat fermented foods on a regular basis.

Cultured foods like raw milk yogurt and kefir, some cheeses, and fermented vegetables are good sources of natural, healthy bacteria. So my strong recommendation would be to make cultured or fermented foods a regular part of your diet; this can be your primary strategy to optimize your body’s good bacteria.

If you do not eat fermented foods on a regular basis, taking a high-quality probiotic supplement is definitely recommended. A probiotic supplement can be incredibly useful to help maintain a well-functioning digestive system when you stray from your healthy diet and consume excess grains or sugar or if you have to take antibiotics.

—

Spin city – transit plebiscite

01/04/201522/12/2016

Scratching the surface of the plebiscite

by Elizabeth Murphy

aerial view of city — Oakridge Mall redevelopment of 11 towers up to 45 storeys tall is an example of what the City has identified as potential development for the Broadway Corridor if a subway is approved.

• We must look beyond sound bites coming from the multi-million dollar, publically funded Yes campaign for the transportation plebiscite. The evidence shows that the plan for the Broadway Corridor is more about implementing Metrotown-scale development than it is about transporting people.

With foreign capital taps wide open into local real estate and development, Vancouver is demonstrating the kind of deregulated extraction capitalism opposed by Naomi Klein in her latest book, This Changes Everything.

Manipulated growth projections are used to justify development we do not need. This is leading to overbuilding of about 2,000 units per four-year census period. By 2011, this amounted to a total of 22,000 unoccupied units. The point is not how do we force these expensive new units to be rented out, but why do we permit overbuilding?

Like the 1950s and 1960s neighbourhood clearing and urban renewal highway projects, this current tower oriented redevelopment of established neighbourhoods will prove to be a mistake.

Affordable older housing stock is being demolished to be replaced by tiny-unit, expensive cookie cutter condo towers or new monster houses. These are not affordable or viable options for most people or families in Vancouver. Increased development pressure will increase rents and the cost of home ownership.

This plebiscite is a crucial step to fulfilling the decade’s long play initiated under former premier Gordon Campbell and Kevin Falcon when they set up TransLink to push forward the Canada Line for the winter Olympics.

As shown by the City of Vancouver’s policies under Transportation 2040, and explained further through the City’s KPMG report, development along Cambie at Oakridge and Marine Drive stations are examples of what to expect along the Broadway Corridor if the plebiscite is approved.

The Oakridge site was approved last year for upzoning to 11 towers of up to 45 storeys jammed around the mall. The scale certainly does not conform to neighbourhood character along the Broadway Corridor.

The Broadway Corridor has been identified by the City as a Frequent Transit Development Area (FTDA) for transit oriented development in the City’s Regional Context Statement. This blankets Commercial Drive to UBC and 4th Avenue to 16th Avenue, through Grandview, Mount Pleasant, Fairview, Kitsilano and Point Grey.

The Urban Land Institute (ULI), an urban design think tank, stated in its 2014 report that there is enough zoning capacity in Central Broadway to support a subway since the existing C3A zoning is only 60% built out. However, the City’s current policies show that upzoning of the Broadway Corridor is the intended outcome if the subway is approved even though upzoning is not necessary.

We need to reconsider the impacts of an unsustainable tower model placed outside of the downtown core; this is proven to be the least possible energy efficient form of development.

Further, if the plebiscite passes and densification precedes the decades-long process (including phase 2 to build a subway to UBC), it will result in massively increased congestion for the next 20 years.

Instead of adding more electric trolley buses to service increased population, the use of more diesel spewing busses will result in increased GHG emissions, particulate pollution and traffic congestion. With most of the funding going into expensive rail technology, little will be left for expanding the electric trolley bus network that could substantially reduce noise and pollution at a fraction of the overall cost of rail. A subway is about $250 million per km, streetcars $40 million per km and electric trolley buses only $1 million per km plus $1 million per double trolley bus. Electric trolley buses, including rapid bus or express routes, could implement system-wide reductions in pollution and noise immediately at a very modest cost if more money went into this now.

There are also many unclear aspects to the Broadway plan such as which part is to be elevated and which is budgeted for a tunnelled subway. Will it be cut and cover or a bored tunnel? Will this affect small businesses along Broadway the same as the devastation on Cambie Street with the cut and cover for the Canada Line?

How will the civic amenity services – community centres, parks, libraries, daycare – for the increased concentration of development be paid for? Community Amenity Contributions (CACs) paid by development only cover about 10% of the total costs of development. Property taxes will have to increase again to subsidize the costs for civic amenities.

But if development is used to pay for transit as contemplated in the City’s Transportation 2040 plan, the CACs will go towards paying for transit rather than civic amenities and facilities. This will require even more property tax subsidies to cover amenities.

The City of Vancouver’s lack of democracy, transparency and accountability breeds distrust. Recently, the community of New Yaletown sued the city to reverse an arrogant development scheme. In the BC Supreme Court decision on January 27, 2015, it was ruled that the public must be provided all relevant information, presented concisely and intelligibly, in order to enable informed public input. That the City is appealing this court decision shows how little they are willing to be held to account and how they value development above democracy.

Further, unlike a referendum, this plebiscite does not require financial disclosure. There have been media reports that $7 million in public tax funding has been given to the Yes campaign, with questions raised about additional unreported amounts from private sources that stand to gain from a Yes win, such as developers and transit infrastructure providers. Are public funds going to political parties and their supporters? We will never know what the funding sources are or where the money is being spent. But watch for all the advertisements they are buying with your money to trick you into voting Yes.

The questions about the plan for the Broadway Corridor need to be publically debated. A plan supported by the community ought to be reflected in City policy before the authorities are given more power and money. This plebiscite question is premature and should be voted down.

—

Elizabeth Murphy is a private sector project manager and formerly a Property Development Officer for the City of Vancouver’s Housing & Properties Department and for BC Housing.
info@elizabethmurphy.ca
www.elizabethmurphy.ca

Cathedrals to cartoons

01/04/201522/12/2016

Art, satire and spirituality in the 21st century

• article and photo by Geoff Olson

On a six-week trip to Europe back in the eighties, I discovered I was a fiend for cathedrals. Each destination usually involved a trek from train station to cathedral to pub to hostel (not necessarily in that order). It made for a pleasing combination of the sacred and profane.

From the gothic stateliness of Notre Dame in Paris to the wedding cake opulence of Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Europe is an open-air museum of huge Christian erections, so to speak. I marvelled at the medieval equivalents of NASA Moon missions – architectural projects that continued beyond the lives of the masons who began work on them.

Whether it be masonry and stained glass or reinforced steel and concrete, architecture stamps a cultures worldview onto the skyline. As mythologist Joseph Campbell once observed, when you approach a medieval town, the cathedral is the tallest structure on the horizon. When you approach an 18th century town, the palace is the literal peak of power. In a modern city, the tallest structures are the office buildings, particularly financial institutions.

In Spain, I was struck by the entirely different feel of Moorish architecture, built when Southern Europe was under the sway of Islam. While premodern Christian churches strain your neck with architectural feats of verticality, Moorish structures hunker closer to the ground with courtyards, running water and garden beds. The sense of deity conjured up in the latter places isn’t so much a distant and faintly alarming authority as a divine presence in the here and now.

To tell the truth, I have never been a great believer in any of the sky god cults, as the late Gore Vidal dismissively described the three reigning monotheistic religions. But I can appreciate the will-to-beauty expressed in some of their finest works.

From its beginnings, Islam prohibited artistic recreations of people, animals and landscapes as competition with the first and greatest creator, Allah. But that doesn’t mean art was or is absent in Islamic architecture. The walls and crenellated arches of the 11th century palace fortress Alhambra in Granada, Spain are embossed with beautiful, elaborate patterns. (The word Arabesque means an ornamental design consisting of intertwined flowing lines.)

I recall conversing at the Alhambra with three quiet, but friendly, Muslim visitors in white smocks. One of the men tried to explain something to me about spirit and breath. In typically tourist fashion, I responded by asking to take their picture. They consented somewhat reluctantly and lowered their gaze for the shot. Representational imagery again.

And this is why satirical depictions of Allah and his prophet Mohammed are such a sensitive issue to many Muslims; it is taking representational imagery to the furthest limit of blasphemy.

“Bomb them, bomb them, keep bombing them, bomb them again!” screeched Fox News fixture Jeanine Pirro on January 10th, in response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris three days earlier. The hyperventilating host of Justice With Judge Jeanine then introduced terrorism expert Steven Emerson, who claimed Birmingham is a no-go city for non-Muslims and that London police enforce Sharia law. Truth is a taffy-like substance to Fox News, but this was too much of a stretch even for Rupert Murdoch’s junk news factory. Emerson apologized for his statements shortly after.

Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, makes for ideological coats of many colours. There is about as much difference between mystical Sufism and fundamentalist Wahhabism and as there is between Unitarianism and the Westboro Baptist Church (the “God hates fags” crowd). Yet most news consumers would be hard pressed to tell the difference between Sunni and Shiite sects.

Across the world, moderate Muslims are at constant risk of getting seriously “othered” – lumped in with militant religious extremists who consider martyrdom the highest expression of their faith. The latter find sitting targets among those who consider insulting such faith to be the highest expression of their liberal press freedom.

In the Charlie Hebdo massacre, guilt lies squarely on the side of the assassins. Yet the magazine’s editor and cartoonist Stéphane Charbonnier went for reckless endangerment of his staff by green-lighting a number of inflammatory depictions of Muslims that were unredeemed by a shred of wit, artistry or cleverness. One cartoon from Charlie Hebdo portrayed a bearded, naked man in a turban, seen from a rear angle, with his genitals dangling and a large yellow star over his anus. The caption: “Mohammed: A star is born!”

As an editorial cartoonist, I wonder how any Muslim, fundamentalist or otherwise, would interpret such a cartoon as anything other than an attack on their culture or faith, to say nothing of some Islamophobic cartoons that have circulated in US media. One that comes to mind depicts a pregnant woman in a burqa with her belly exposed, in the form of a bomb (population bomb, get it?).

The Arab world is predominantly Muslim, and Arabic people are Semitic by definition. Cartoons of leering Jews with giant hooked noses and wild beards would be condemned as anti-Semitic in the western world, and rightly so. So why does that not hold for satirical depictions of Arabs?

As immigrants from former colonies of the west, Muslims are both cheap labour and cheap scapegoats when required. And when they are residents of their own land, convenient targets from the air. Being fodder for crass cartoons is just par for the course. (In my copy of Charlie Hebdo, cartoon Muslims are circled by flies.)

Needless to say, the “Je Suis Charlie” bandwagon left without me.

This is not to say there is no such thing as Islamic radicalism, and that’s what makes the hypocrisy of the west so stunning. The US and UK are staunch allies of Saudi Arabia, even though it has one the worst human rights records in the world. The theocratic petrostate holds public beheadings, treats women as chattel, makes conversion to Christianity a capital offence, and funds militant religious extremism across the Arab world.

Yet when Saudi King Abdullah died on January 23rd, Westminster Abbey lowered the British flag at half-mast out of respect for an unelected figure that presided over this backwards regime. Effusive praise from President Obama and other world leaders followed.

Islam has never been any one thing. While the rest of Europe was plunged into a literal and figurative darkness, 11th-century Seville and other cities in Spain had lit streets. Scholars kept the flame of Ancient Greece alive in Arabic translations. Muslims, Jews and Christians lived peacefully together until Spain was united under Catholic rule in 1492, and Jews were forced to convert to Christianity under the Inquisition.

And now it appears a new darkness is descending – one that profits bankers, arms merchants and political demagogues, to say nothing of blinkered ideologues from megachurches, mosques, media outlets, and university “terror studies” departments.

Yet I remember how those light, airy courtyards in the Alhambra spoke to me in a language older than words, as did the stained glass windows of cathedrals across Europe. I’m surely not the only religious doubter to have breathed deeply and felt a great calm in these places. Ah, the link between spirit and breath; in retrospect, I suspect this is what those three gentleman in white smocks were trying to explain to me.

—

www.geoffolson.com

Nuclear Symposium addresses important issues

01/04/201522/12/2016

by Gordon Edwards

• Engaged people of all kinds – physicians, researchers, aboriginal leaders, decision-makers and activists – from many parts of the world are converging on Quebec City in mid-April to exchange information and views at the World Uranium Symposium.

Attendees will hear presentations on all aspects of the nuclear fuel chain. They will learn about radiation, reactor accidents and nuclear waste. They will hear first-hand accounts of aboriginal communities impacted by uranium.

Uranium is the key element for nuclear technology, whether civilian or military. Without uranium, there would be no nuclear weapons and no commercial nuclear power plants. Accordingly, the three-day symposium deals with the uses of uranium, its impacts and questions of social justice and aboriginal rights.

Speakers include former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, US nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, Australian physician Helen Caldicott and many more. Aboriginal representation from Australia, Greenland, Africa and the US will complement the strong presence of aboriginal communities from Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

Before the discovery of nuclear fission between 1938-1939, uranium had no commercial market. Uranium mining and refining began in Canada during WWII, when Roosevelt, Churchill and Mackenzie King agreed to cooperate in the building of the world’s first atomic bombs and oversee uranium supplies in the post-war era.

Canada’s uranium industry first focused on weaponry, and boomed for 22 years. In 1965, Lester Pearson declared that uranium from Canada would be sold for peaceful purposes only. In 1974 however, India exploded its first A-bomb using plutonium (a uranium derivative) from a Canadian reactor given as a gift.

By 1978, it was revealed that radioactive waste from reactors would remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. Worse, all used nuclear fuel contains plutonium, the basic element used for atomic bombs.

Then came the meltdowns: Chalk River 1952; Windscale 1957; Three Mile Island 1979; Chernobyl 1986; Fukushima Daiichi 2011.

While Saskatchewan may be the Saudi Arabia of uranium – home to many productive mines and rich deposits – BC and Nova Scotia have banned uranium mining altogether.

To ban or not to ban? Quebec hasn’t decided yet. There is a temporary moratorium on uranium mining in the province, pending the outcome of a generic environmental assessment. The report is expected by mid-May.

For more information and to register, visit uranium2015.com/en

—

Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., is president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. He is a retired professor of mathematics and has served as a consultant on nuclear issues for over 40 years. ccnr.org

GMO Bites: April 2015

01/04/201522/12/2016

GMO Inquiry reveals where GMOs are in Canada
In the ground and on our plates

by Lucy Sharratt

• “Where in the world are GM crops and foods?” It should be an easy question to answer, but our government does not provide that information. The first report from CBAN’s GMO Inquiry 2015 is out and answers this question for the first time.

We all want to know where the genetically modified (GM) foods are on our grocery store shelves, but without mandatory labelling it takes some major detective work to find out.

It has been 20 years since the first genetically modified (GM, also called genetically engineered) crop was approved in Canada. Currently, four GM crops grow in fields across this country – GM canola, corn, soy and white sugar beet –and the government does not monitor how much of each GM crop is grown.

Statistics Canada does tell us how much GM soy and corn are grown in Quebec and Ontario, but other provinces also grow some soy and corn as well as GM canola and GM sugar beet. By examining these numbers, reports from the US government, information from industry and international organizations, combined with CBAN’s own market analysis and understanding of Canadian government regulations, CBAN has clarified the status of GM crops in Canada.

Approximately 95% of all the canola grown in Canada is GM and almost 100% of all the white sugar beet (grown for sugar processing) is Monsanto’s GM herbicide tolerant Roundup Ready sugar beet. Surprisingly, the amount of GM soy is actually far less than GM canola and sugar beet. In fact, around 60% of the soybeans produced in Canada are GM. This is because we export a lot of non-GM food-grade soybeans to Japan, and even to the US, for processing into tofu and soymilk. Other soybeans in Canada, produced for crushing into animal feed and oil for processed foods, are mostly GM.

Around 80% of all the grain corn in Canada is GM, but another major finding from CBAN’s research confirms there is very little GM sweet corn grown in the world. While we still don’t know exactly how much is grown, a recent international report validates what CBAN discovered from its own test results: Last year, CBAN tested and found only one GM sweet corn among 137 samples of fresh corn from nine provinces.

Finding out where GM foods are on Canada’s grocery store shelves is even more complicated because Canada regulates GM foods inside a broader category called “novel foods,” which includes non-GM foods. Further, the government does not specify which GM foods are actually on the market. This easily leads to confusion about what is being sold in our grocery stores.

For instance, GM tomatoes, GM rice and GM wheat are not on the market anywhere in the world. Ninety-nine percent of all the GM crops grown around the world are varieties of GM corn, soy, cotton and canola. More than 99% of these are either (or both) herbicide-tolerant and insect-resistant. It has been this way for the past 20 years, but it could all change very soon. In February, the US government approved the GM “non-browning” apple and if our federal government approves it as well, the GM apple would be the first GM fruit grown in Canada.

CBAN’s new report is the result of a public interest group in Canada – for the first time – digging for the details of where GM crops are in the ground, ultimately ending up on our plates.

This information is critical for the next step in CBAN’s GMO Inquiry 2015, which is to investigate the impacts of GMOs on the environment, consumers and farmers.

Please see the summary pamphlet and detailed report at www.GMOinquiry.ca

—

Lucy Sharratt is the coordinator at the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), www.cban.ca

Neoconning the public

by Anthony J. Hall

Universal Soldier

The evolution of a song

by Bruce Mason

Power in the Blood

A conversation with Buffy Sainte-Marie

by Bruce Mason

The micro and macro of nutrients

by Nancy Lin DeGregori

Informed consent

Take the ‘Kingdom of Alanastan’ statins quiz

DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels

Gut flora & your health

by Dr. Mercola

Spin city – transit plebiscite

Scratching the surface of the plebiscite

by Elizabeth Murphy

Cathedrals to cartoons

Art, satire and spirituality in the 21st century

• article and photo by Geoff Olson

Nuclear Symposium addresses important issues

by Gordon Edwards

GMO Bites: April 2015

GMO Inquiry reveals where GMOs are in Canada
In the ground and on our plates

by Lucy Sharratt

by Anthony J. Hall

The evolution of a song

by Bruce Mason

A conversation with Buffy Sainte-Marie

by Bruce Mason

by Nancy Lin DeGregori

Take the ‘Kingdom of Alanastan’ statins quiz

DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels

by Dr. Mercola

Scratching the surface of the plebiscite

by Elizabeth Murphy

Art, satire and spirituality in the 21st century

• article and photo by Geoff Olson

by Gordon Edwards

GMO Inquiry reveals where GMOs are in Canada In the ground and on our plates

by Lucy Sharratt

GMO Inquiry reveals where GMOs are in Canada
In the ground and on our plates