September 2015 Archives - Common Ground

• The Canadian federal election of 2015 is rigged. Stephen Harper has leaned on his corporate cronies and assets in order to fix the outcome of two federal election debates in English-speaking Canada. The Leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May, is excluded from both events.

The economic debate takes place on Sept. 17 on the PM’s home political turf of Calgary Alberta, now NDP territory politically. The second and most heavily rigged debate takes place in Toronto on Sept. 28. The host of this debate on Canada’s foreign policy is Peter Munk and Toronto’s Munk institutes. These institutes – the Munk Debates and the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs – are basically Public Relations extensions of the constellation of corporate interests revolving around Barrick Inc.

Peter Munk and Barrick Gold

Peter Munk is the most public face of Barrick Gold Corporation, a controversial global mining conglomerate headquartered in Toronto. Barrick Gold draws on many heritages including Canada’s rich mining history. One of the highlights of this history is the development, starting in 1910, of the Hollinger gold mine around which the northern Ontario town of Timmins coalesced.

Media mogul Conrad Black used the Hollinger heritage as the brand name of his Anglo-American-Israeli media empire. Largely through the spin of Hollinger Inc’s Canadian flagship National Post, Stephen Harper was propelled to the forefront of national politics in Canada. In this election season of 2015, Harper is now seeking a mandate from the Canadian electorate to begin his second decade as Canada’s Prime Minister.

The wholesale destruction of indigenous peoples’ culture and self-reliance marks the darkest side of Canada’s mining history. Barrick has been a key instrument in the saga of internationalizing the mining assault on First Nations, especially in Latin America. This globalization of our country’s frontier expansions has made Canada the world’s reigning mining superpower.

The business story of how this Canadian-based power and resource grab went forward is fascinating, complex and rife with more than its share of corruption. The role of Peter Munk, Brian Mulroney, John Baird, and Nigel Wright in this saga of imperial Canada’s colonizing thrust helps explain the Liberal Party’s replacement by the neocon dynasty lead by Stephen Harper over the last decade.

Barrick’s Meteoric Rise from Obscurity
to Dominance in the Global Gold Trade

There is much more than meets the eye with respect to the locating of the federal leaders debate on foreign affairs. One telling detail took place last January when John Baird, then Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, handed the U of T’s Munk School of Global Affairs a federal check. The amount was 100 times larger than the bribe delivered to Mike Duffy from the private pocket of Harper’s Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright. Wright too has extremely close ties to Barrick Gold, the Munk Debates, and Gerry Swartz’s Onex Corporation where Anthony Munk, Peter’s son, is a top executive.

Yves Engler has identified the obvious conflict of interest in allowing a PR offshoot of a Canadian mining conglomerate to host a debate on Canadian foreign affairs at a time when Canada’s “extractive industries” are at the centre of a broad array of international contentions. In rabble.ca Engler writes, “while Canada’s status as a global mining superpower ought to be part of a foreign policy debate, don’t expect any discussion of regulating mining activities abroad on September 28… Nor should we expect discussion about matters likely to embarrass the military or major corporations.”

Such topics will probably be papered over, because as Engler predicts, a real spotlight on the reason for Canada’s dwindling stature and reputation internationally “might offend billionaire Peter Munk.”

In the 1980s, the point person on the Barrick complex of companies was the notorious CIA asset and Saudi arms merchant, Adnan Khashoggi. Munk was inserted to replace the flamboyant Saudi playboy once Khashoggi was made to become a fall guy in the Iran-Contra scandal. Munk stepped into Barrick’s spotlight after 1989 when the Torontonian came up with $4 million to bail out Khashoggi from a New York jail after the arms merchant got caught up with Imelda Marcos’ unorthodox gold transactions.

Barrick has been the lead navigator for an elaborate network of enterprises grouped together by the Harper government as the so-called “extractive sector.” Largely because of lax regulation and enforcement mechanisms in the stock exchanges of Vancouver and Toronto, Canada presently leads the world as the preferred headquarters for the transnational “extractive sector.”

The core of Barrick’s business model is the trade in insider information. Strategic data is regularly brought to Barrick especially by former politicians seeking to cash in on their privileged access to state secrets and global contacts acquired in the days when they held public office. Prominent among this genre of Barrick operative has been Mulroney and Baird who have followed the trail pioneered by the former US President, George H.W. Bush.

When he was in the Oval Office from 1989 to 1993 and during the years that followed his one-term US presidency, George Bush Sr. played a major role in the rise of Barrick’s fortunes. By virtually gifting Barrick the USA’s most lucrative gold mine on federal land in Nevada, Bush kick started a progression that projected the Canadian company from obscurity to dominance in the global gold business.

John Baird is Brian Mulroney’s new understudy on Barrick’s International Advisory Board. Baird knows well from his own extensive ministerial involvement with the relevant files that the activities of Canada’s most famous gold company have been volatile centres of turmoil and contention in the conduct of Canadian foreign policy. For instance, widely-reported revelations of environmental degradation together with Barrick’s corruption of Chilean politicians to promote the Canadian gold company’s disastrous Pascau Lama project have energized an upsurge of condemnations blackening Canada’s reputation throughout Latin America.

The growing web of international controversy is extending to transnational networks of police forces, media, courts, government ministries, financiers and politicians. The prominent individuals being drawn into this maelstrom include former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney, former Chilean President Ricardo Largos, banker Andronico Luksic Jr, and Peter Munk himself. How can the Munk Debates offer a platform of credible neutrality for a leaders’ debate on Canadian foreign policy when Barrick Gold has become such a toxic vehicle of Canada’s relationship with the global community?

Barrick at the Centre of a Firestorm of Criticism and Hostile Litigation

Earlier this year John L. Thornton moved on from his top executive post at HSBC, and his prior post as Goldman Sachs president, to replace Peter Munk as Chair of Barrick Gold. Thornton is taking over an office with a lingering residue of bad publicity. This legacy is epitomized by Munk’s nomination by Mother Jones as piggy number one in its rundown of America’s top ten embodiments of corporate pork.

Increasingly hostility is being directed at Barrick and its sister firms like GoldCorp. It is also being directed at the Canadian government. For instance the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights responded to Canada’s instant backing of the primary beneficiaries of the military coup in Honduras in 2009 by condemning the role of the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs.

Following the overthrow of President Manuel Zalaya’s government, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Ministry is alleged to have gone to work to help the Honduran coup leaders write “new mining laws” even as “targeted violence” was being pointed against “communities, lawyers, journalists, and activists.” The Harper government was the first national government in the Western Hemisphere to extend formal recognition to the post-coup usurpers of Honduran sovereignty.

The UK’s Guardian has paraphrased the Commission’s serious charges that Barrick and other Canadian mining companies active in nine Latin American countries have been, with the backing and sanction of the Canadian government, “destroying glaciers, contaminating water and rivers, cutting down forests, forcibly displacing people, dividing and impoverishing communities, making false promises about economic benefits, endangering people’s health, and fraudulently acquiring property.” Those who protest such assaults “have been killed or seriously wounded while others have been persecuted, threatened or accused of being terrorists.”

Barrick’s annual shareholders’ meetings have become the site of strife and acrimony because of the growing array of individuals, groups and associations claiming that the company has hurt them. At the low end of the scale are accusations that Barrick’s directors and executives are too highly paid and rewarded with lucrative stock options. At the high end of the scale are accusations that the company has repeatedly and systematically committed fraud by making false reports to security regulators and investors in a variety of countries.

Introducing Jorge Cortes Lopehandia and
The Pascua Lama Mining Debacle

Ground zero in Barrick’s litigious mess of claims and counterclaims is the Pascau Lama mine on the border of Chile and Argentina in the high Andes. The gargantuan mining project has been closed down by order of the Chilean judiciary. Barrick’s serial displays of incompetence, malfeasance and outright contempt for victims of the company’s recklessness have assumed epic proportions. Peter Koven at Canada’s Financial Post accused Barrick in 2013 of “screwing up the Pascua Lama project about as badly as any mining company has ever screwed up a major project.”

The company claims to have invested $8.5 billion in its Pascua Lama project with almost no return so far. There is virtually nothing in Barrick’s own accounting of this project, however, that can be taken at face value. The evidence continues to grow suggesting that the books have been cooked and that shareholders have been robbed, defrauded and scorned.

The evidence suggests that titles have been fabricated, while the actual titles to the mineral resources of Pascua Lama have been misrepresented and subjected to political subterfuge. As a result, Barrick is being accused of making public share offerings based on proprietary claims to gold and other precious minerals it never really possessed.

After almost two decades of litigious struggle with the Canadian corporate giant and its Chilean subsidiaries, Jorge Cortes Lopehandia, a Canadian citizen from Chile, is gaining positive public regard especially in Chile. Jorge is gaining traction for his unwavering assertion that he, not Barrick, is the true holder of the metallic titles beneath large parts of the Pascua Lama project. Central to the strength of his position is the court injunction of 2001 against Barrick’s local branch, Compania Minera Nevada (CMN). The injunction results from Lopehandia’s presentation in court of registered titles obtained through his agent, Rudolfo Fancisco Villar.

In 2004 Barrick made one of its very few references to the contested title in its annual report to investors and security regulators. The authors of Barrick’s report acknowledged that three years earlier “Villar obtained an ex parte injunction barring CMN from selling or encumbering the claims while the suit is pending before the Chilean courts.”

In a subsequent proceeding in 2012 in the 2nd Civil Court in the City of Villenar, Jorge Lopehandia put the Chilean subsidiary of Barrick to the test. As he tells it, his opponents failed to pass. They could come up with nothing more than a word of mouth agreement to prove their title claims.

Jorge has struck up a partnership in Vancouver with Brent Johnson. Johnson is CEO of Mountainstar Gold that is helping, along with other interests, to fund the legal proceedings against Barrick in both Chile and Canada.

Lopehandia and Johnson share much in common. Mountainstar Gold is asserting in US courts that it is the proper inheritor of the titles to the Goldstrike mining property in Nevada. In a transfer whose legal validity is still being contested, the Goldstrike property was transferred to Barrick Gold through the actions of two US presidents, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

By virtue of having survived many rounds of combat with Barrick’s legal pit bulls, Jorge is emerging as something of a champion for those opposed to the degradation of Canada’s international reputation. Many are against allowing our country become an accommodating platform of convenience for the worldwide operations of even the most dubious of “extractive industries.”

Barrick’s SLAPP Suits in Canada and UK

As the contest unfolded, Barrick pressed charges in Ontario, beginning in 2002, against Lopehandia for Internet Libel. Barrick’s lawyers alleged that Jorge was disseminating on the worldwide web false information defaming the Canadian mining company and its Chilean subsidiary. Their legal procedures can be interpreted as a manifestation of Barrick’s propensity to press SLAPP suits—strategic lawsuits against public participation.

The aim of SLAPP suits is to exhaust and bankrupt those who criticize large corporations with deep pockets. This tactic serves the purpose of containing or blocking the spread of embarrassing information in the media, no matter how solid the relevant evidence.

Among those that have felt the wrath of Barrick’s censorious litigiousness are Greg Palast. Also targeted were the Guardian and the Observer, UK publishers of Palast’s investigative work. Other victims of Barrick’s SLAPP attacks have been Alan Denault and the publishers of his Canadian books on Barrick, as well as human rights lawyer Tundu Lussu of the Washington-based World Resources Institute.

The judges involved in the eventual ruling in 2004 in the Ontario Superior Court of Appeals sided with Barrick against Lopehandia making him, in Jorge’s own words, “a symbol of Internet Libel in Canada and around the world.”

Sakura Saunders, the Globe and Mail,
and the Munk Fellowship in Global Journalism

Sakura Saunders has played a significant role in many facets of this saga. She is a driving force in the Protest Barrick and Munk Out of U of T campaigns.

Saunders has identified the close ties linking Barrick Gold with the Globe and Mail, which bills itself as “Canada’s national newspaper.” The Globe and Mail is hosting the other major leaders debate on the economy. Like the Munk Debate, the Globe Debate excludes Elizabeth May, the sole female leader of a Canadian federal political party.

In an article published by the Toronto Media Co-op in 2013, Saunders explained the close ties between Barrick Gold, the Munk institutes and the Globe and Mail. She included observations of the partnership of the Globe’s partnership with Munk School of Global Affairs in training journalists. Saunders’ essay helps underline that those rigging the federal leaders debate on foreign affairs are closely tied in with those rigging the leaders’ debate on the economy.

Networking in Toronto on the Munk and Harper Teams

Rudyard Griffiths is the organizer and moderator of the Munk Federal Election Debate on Foreign Affairs. Griffiths describes himself as a “social engineer.” He is Peter Munk’s designate heading up a network of interlinked agencies that extends incestuousness to new frontiers of corporatized narcissism. It was Griffith’s who made the decision to exclude Elizabeth May from the event at Roy Thompson Hall on Sept. 28. The exclusion of May’s excellent female debating voice is part of the way Canadians are being cheated in DebateGate.

The federal leaders’ debate in Toronto is billed as part of the regular cycle of Munk Debates. The Munk Debates are run by the Aurea Foundation. Like the Munk School of Global Affairs, the Aurea Foundation receives funding from the Peter and Melanie Munk Foundation. Peter Munk himself has emphasized the overlapping character of the Munk Debates and the Munk School. In announcing his personal triumph in landing the main debating event of the 2015 federal election campaign, Munk beamed, “Whether it is the support we provide to the Munk School at the University of Toronto or the creation of the Munk Debates through the Aurea Foundation, Melanie and I are committed to broadening public knowledge, education, and informed discourse.”

The Advisory Board of the Aurea Foundation includes Prof. Janice Gross Stein, the Founding Director of the Munk School. Earlier in 2015 Prof. Stein was pictured in her trademark red glasses with the former Foreign Affairs Minister, receiving on behalf of the Munk School the federal check for $9 million. The purpose of this handover of public money from Baird and the Harper government was to help dissidents undermine Iran’s Islamic government. Prof. Stein was Baird’s closest adviser when he was Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister. The Munk School Director has been instrumental in guiding the Harper government in how to mirror Israeli policies.

Also on the Advisory Board of the Munk Debates is Allan Gotlieb, a former Canadian Ambassador to the USA, a member of the Trilateral Commission, A Canadian Panel member on George H. W. Bush’s Carlyle Group, and a senior legal adviser to Bennett Jones. Bennett Jones is a Calgary-headquartered law firm that does much work for the international operations of Canada’s extractive industries. Other members of the Advisory Board are George Jonas and Dr. Robert Pritchard.

Mark Cameron is one of the younger members of the Munk Debates’ Advisory Board. Cameron describes himself as Senior Vice-President and Energy Practice Leader with Hill and Knowlton Strategies, and a former Director of Policy and Research to Prime Minister Harper. Hill and Knowlton is the notorious international PR firm that hired “Nayirah,” the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador in the USA, to be the star crisis actor in a now-legendary press conference in 1990.

The tearful young woman identified only as “Nayirah.” claimed to have witnessed Saddam Hussein’s soldiers removing babies from incubators and smashing them into the floor to die. The purpose this PR fraud, at the highest level of international media manipulation, was to sell a new war. It was to arouse public opinion to back a US-led invasion of Iraq that would subsequently unfold as Operation Desert Storm. Selling wars has long produced the most lucrative contracts for the PR industry whose Canadian agents of spin include the Munk Debates.

Where the Barrick and Onex Corporations
Meet the Harper Government

Anthony Munk is a close friend and colleague of Nigel “good to go” Wright. Until recently, Wright and Munk Jr. worked together on the Aurea Foundation’s Board. They continue to work together as top executives at the Onex Corporation. Wright is godfather to Anthony’s son, Peter Munk’s grandson.

Gerald W. Schwartz is CEO of Onex Corporation that specializes in mergers and the restructuring of corporate assets. Schwartz is married to Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books. For a time Reisman had a big role in determining the invitation list to the annual Bilderberg meetings, a high-power event where new inductees are introduced to some of capitalism’s chief plutocrats.

Schwartz and Reisman are both avid supporters of the Israeli state. Formerly prominent Liberal Party backers, the most formidable power couple in Canada’s business community shifted their support to the Conservative Party of Canada when the Harper’s policies better embodied their own pro-Israel aspirations. As demonstrated in the friendship and business connections linking Anthony Munk with Nigel Wright, the Onex Corporation has become an important interface with the Harper government and its favoured Barrick Corporation.

Schwartz essentially gifted the very brainy, effective and accomplished Wright to the PMO to become Prime Minister Harper’s Chief of Staff in 2010. Wright’s specialty at Onex has been mergers and acquisitions in the fields of aerospace, defence, energy and transportation. He was involved, in various ways, on the Canadian facet of the Harper government’s negotiations with Lockheed Martin, and related agencies, to purchase F-35 jet fighters.

Before being fired fired by Harper, Chief of Staff Wright faced his most serious allegations of conflict of interest – not on the F-35 file – but because of revelations he was contacted repeatedly to assist Barrick with its deals. Barrick’s intervention with Harper’s Chief of Staff involved efforts to modify Canadian government relations with the government of Argentina. Were issues related to Barrick’s Pascua Lama project connected to Barrick’s phone calls to Wright?

It fell to Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to intervene, in 2012, in order answer journalists’ questions about Barrick’s exploitation of access to Wright in order to lobby Stephen Harper on Canada’s foreign policy towards Latin America. The National Post paraphrased an interview with Baird on this subject. Baird is reported to have said, “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.”

Baird’s defense of Wright and, by implication, Wright’s boss, may have conveyed, for the gullible at least, a certain sense of detached objectivity when the explanation was offered in 2012. The words Baird expressed back then, however, have taken on entirely new meanings during this election season of 2015. The situation is radically different now that Baird has joined Barrick’s International Advisory Board after handing over $9 million in public funds to the Munk School of Global Affairs. Similarly, the perspective is altered as the federal leaders’ debate on the subject matter of Baird’s former portfolio is about to take place under the auspices of the Munk Debates.

How far did John Baird go in using his power as Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs to help Barrick and the corrupt elites the company enlists in Chile, and thoughout the world? When deciding whether to protect Barrick’s executives or its shareholders, what side did Baird choose?

What Will Be the Scope of the Federal Leaders’
Munk Debate on ISIL?

In an interview in Embassy News Rudyard Griffiths promised that Canada’s hostility to ISIL would definitely be the subject of debate between Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau. Reports of the Canadian government’s help to ISIL surfaced briefly in Canada’s mainstream media in March of 2015. Canadian news agencies echoed reports in Turkish media that a Syrian agent, employee or asset of Canadian intelligence operations based in Jordan had been arrested and identified. Mohammed Mehmet Rashid had been caught helping three young women from London travel into Turkey and then Syria in order to join ISIL.

The apprehended agent of the Canadian deep state was operating in the network of Bruno Saccomani, Canada’s Ambassador to Jordan with special responsibilities for Iraq. Saccomani was elevated to his post in the diplomatic service from his former position as a RCMP bodyguard for Stephen Harper.

Where is the insistence on getting to the bottom of a story that the Canadian government is involved in helping the very group that Canadian soldiers are being put in harms way to fight? Why should we be surprised that the same interests are apparently backing both sides of conflict, that there is money to be made from keeping the machinery of war perpetually churning? Often, it doesn’t matter what side wins or loses. For war profiteers the important thing is to keep the fighting going: divide and conquer and profit.

The question of whether or not Canada, and other Western Powers including the United States, is involved on both sides in the war on ISIL should figure importantly in any credible electoral debate on Canadian foreign policy. Certainly this discussion is very well developed in venues like Global Research.ca, Russia Today and Press TV, the international English-language broadcasting service of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Few Canadians realize that the Iranian Armed Forces are also at war with ISIL.

Crisis Actors, PR Companies, Police Informants,
and the Selling of War

The artificial nature of Harper’s war on jihadism is suggested by the main themes of Trevor Aaronson’s The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism. This text illuminates the role of police infiltrators in encouraging, setting up, entrapping, and often taking the credit for preventing acts of concocted Islamic jihad.

Currently the FBI has about 15,000 individuals on its payroll engaged in manipulating vulnerable Muslims to create the kind of fear that the perpetuation of the War on Terror requires. The picture the author draws of this kind of activity could well have been a factor in the prelude to the killing of two soldiers by two “recent Muslim converts” in the Ottawa-Montreal area in October of 2014.

The police and military response to the Ottawa shooter incident provided evocative imagery for front-page coverage in newspapers throughout the world. A survey of the photojournalism generated by the elaborate mobilization of anti-terrorist squads in Ottawa last October 22 raises suspicions. The extravagant content and massive deployment of the images by worldwide media could lead one to be sceptical. Was the operation meant, in part, to create pre-planned iconography with the objective of arousing international support for the anti-jihad cause. The basic narrative was that the war on ISIL is at once domestic and international.

The selling of this war against ISIL might in the light of future history turn out to involve manufactured elements as outrageously artificial as the images in 1990 of Hill and Knowlton’s tearful crisis actor, “Nayira.” What future did the White House of President George H. W. Bush’ (Honorary Ph.D, University of Toronto, 1997) have in mind for us by paying “Nayira” through its PR agency to pretend she had witnessed Saddam Hussein’s vicious army snatching babies from incubators and smashing them into the floor?

Removing the Barricades

The unregulated extraction of resources abroad, and the raiding of pension funds at home, give new meaning to the attacks of Barrick’s Barricudas. Surely it is time to end the farce of treating old sawfish like Peter Munk or Brian Mulroney or Henry Kissinger or George H. W. Bush as darlings of the academy who are above the law. Sooner or later we will have to come to grips with the fact the centre of organized crime and state terror is located in places like the boards rooms of HSBC, the International Advisory Board of Barrick Gold and the PMO of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

We need to move beyond old paradigms like the lionization of wealth and the intensifying marginalization of the wretched of the earth. We need to embrace life over death, to get off the grid, to say no to smart meters, GMOs, geoengineering, fracking, Tar Sands, forced fluoridation, more Fukushimas, species depletion, and the ongoing genocide of some our most vulnerable brothers and sisters

We need to sort fact from PR spin in order to ramp down the activities of the war machine with its voracious hunger for a steady stream of new enemies to vanquish. We need understand how it is that Barrick Gold’s poster boy of Internet libel would emerge a decade later as a prophetic critic of the more dubious tactics deployed in making Canada an international mining superpower. Only by casting light on such narratives of repression can we fully apprehend the larger implications of Harper’s crimes against democracy. This crime spree now extends to fixing elections in Canada through the rigging of public debate.

—

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.

Pharma’s banking on your allergies

07/09/201519/12/2016

Are patient groups actually representing the interests of patients?

DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels

Portrait of columnist Alan Cassels

• Who says “near death” experiences don’t pay?

Welcome to the crazy world of ‘emergency capitalism’ where a rare – but sometimes life threatening – condition is turned into a very lucrative market with the help of skilful fearmongering, the co-opting of patient groups and the buying of experts.

I’m talking about food allergies, the life-threatening type, given we seem to be living in an increasingly allergic world. Food allergies are particularly worrisome because, well, we are surrounded by the stuff. Most of the serious allergies are related to peanuts and tree nuts, milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat. A hyper-allergic reaction, known as anaphylaxis, is where your body goes on a major offensive in response to an allergen. It can often involve multiple body systems – including gastrointestinal, skin, breathing – and it sometimes leads to respiratory and cardiac failure and death. Some people only need a whiff of an allergen to send them over the edge.

Thankfully, for those at risk of an anaphylactic reaction, the drug epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, is packaged as a self-administered emergency medicine. It can basically save your life long enough for you to get to a hospital. As a “use only when required” drug, it is most commonly injected through a self-administered auto-injector into thigh muscles. The two kinds available in Canada are Allerject by Sanofi and Epipen, a Mylan product distributed by Pfizer.

Commercial drug makers are always driven to increase sales and market share, but how do they expand the patient population of those at risk of a life-threatening allergic reaction? Maybe they do the easy stuff first: take a product costing pennies to make, package it in a fancy auto-injector, stamp a one-year expiry on it – most of you would blow a gasket if you knew about the fraudulent use of medication expiry dates – charge $120 for it and get parents, school boards and others to stock it. Above all, push the fear because we all know fear sells.

How common is an anaphylaxis death in Canada? An Ontario study found 80 anaphylactic deaths over a 25-year period. Extrapolating those Ontario numbers across Canada, it would mean about eight deaths per year in Canada. So, not big numbers, but let’s face it, the fear factor hovers large especially if your kid is one peanut away from possible death. What this results in is a strong cohort of hyper-vigilant, internet-savvy mothers (and fathers) who work hard volunteering to raise awareness about life-threatening allergies. The fact that there are so few deaths due to anaphylaxis in Canada is likely due to the work of those parents.

But, as I’ve seen in other patient groups, where there is a high degree of consumer involvement in a disease, there’s also a high degree of interest from companies wishing to tap into this ‘patient engagement.’ Sold as a harmonious alignment of interests between the momma bears – bent on protecting their cubs against any allergens – and the companies selling allergy-related drugs and paraphernalia, it’s easy to forget how much money is at stake. We’re talking billion-dollar industries, not just for epinephrine injectors, but for skin prick tests, inhalers, steroids, specialty foods, antihistamines, oral immunotherapy and so on.

One of those moms very focussed on this issue is Chantelle Olsson. She became involved in the world of life-threatening food allergies when her two-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a peanut allergy. She remembers people asking, “Why aren’t you doing more to prevent this?” Reflecting on this, she thought, “Yeah, why aren’t we doing more?”

In an interview from her home in Langley, BC, she told me she’s most interested in prevention and working to reduce the numbers of children affected by allergies. Her group, Families for Anaphylaxis Education, is different than many other groups working in this area in one important way: they don’t take money from the pharmaceutical or food industries.

In the allergy world, pervasive conflicts of interest exist. For example, Food Allergy Canada (formerly Anaphylaxis Canada) gets some of its money from ‘corporate partners,’ which are mostly food companies and the makers of the epinephrine auto-injectors.

Whether a patient group takes corporate money or not almost always determines their priorities. So why has there been such a rise in food allergies in recent years – maybe as high as one in 13 school-age kids? Could it be due to the way foods are grown or processed or because of the numbers or contents of vaccines, which have changed enormously over the last 20 years? Are kids being exposed to allergens too early, or too late? Should we care that a company making widely used childhood vaccines also makes one of the most popular epinephrine injectors? Who funds research looking at possible links between drugs or vaccines and the rising numbers of allergy-affected kids?

These uncomfortable questions are sometimes bandied about in a rich internet-based world, on parent forums and discussion groups. Parents of children who could suffer anaphylactic reactions have a lot in common and they are adept at using social media to make the allergy-infested world safer for their kids. Like in other disease areas when the industry-supported patient groups put their own spokesparents and trolls on social media parent forums, they are deciding what is or isn’t a legitimate discussion topic.

I’ve scrutinized the public relations world and Big Pharma for 20 years so I find it fairly simple to spot the ‘astroturf activists’ – the ones who are coached by a company’s PR department and who use slick talking points and send out attack trolls to rebuke criticisms of the industry. Question Big Pharma’s involvement, priorities or tactics on a Facebook allergy forum and you’ll likely get bitten by a troll or even booted off the forum.

Another popular tactic is the care and feeding of the ‘good mommies.’ Google “Mylan’s Food Allergy Blogger Summit” and you’ll see the story of 13 well-behaved mommy activists sent to Disneyland on the Mylan payroll, openly declaring their thanks to the company paying for their astroturf adventure with Mickey Mouse.

There seems to be a revolving door between the drug industry and the food allergy charity world. For example, allergist and immunologist Dr. James Baker was appointed last year as the new CEO of FARE (Food Allergy Research Education), a large American industry food allergy charity. The former senior vice-president of Merck’s Global Vaccine Division made his priorities clear when he took over the helm at FARE: “I’d like to make sure that we continue to work for access and, very importantly, for appropriate care for patients with food allergy.” In other words, our priority is moving product. No sense in focusing on prevention.

Chantelle Olsson is correct when she tells me “prevention is a four-letter word.” And concerned that no one’s taking prevention seriously, she adds, “The market for epinephrine injectors and allergy products is limitless and, unless we take action, we might easily see 50% of Canadian children with life-threatening food allergies within five years.”

With such little energy devoted to learning what is causing the spike in allergies in the first place, and tons to be made in pumping out grossly inflated $120 auto-injectors of epinephrine – needing annual replacement – the prevention message seems to be a low priority. Especially when it’s controlled by drug companies.

I’ve often written about the problems of conflicted patient groups – irritating people who contact me to defend their actions. I think most of these people are hardworking, dedicated volunteers working to make the world a safer place for their children. But, at the same time, they may be unable to see how their funders bias them and their priorities.

Many patient groups do honest, important, public-interest work without industry support. They may be poorer, but they can be authentic and able to avoid the massive delusions that come with being tools of industry.

—

Alan Cassels is a drug policy researcher at the University of Victoria. He writes about medical screening and drugs, consults with unions on drug benefits plans and is helping research tools to make deprescribing easier for physicians. You can read more of his writings at www.alancassels.com or follow him on twitter @akecassels

The buzz about superfoods

07/09/201519/12/2016

by Meghan Telpner

• There’s a lot of buzz about superfoods. They’re supposedly amazing for us with an endless array of nutrients that should save us from myriad health challenges. In most cases, the term “superfood” doesn’t actually mean a whole lot. It’s a marketing term that has become mighty trendy and powerful in promoting the sale of ‘health foods.’

Marketing aside, there might be some great reasons that many of the foods termed superfoods are becoming very popular. Widely used in the health food community, they are now also trickling into the mainstream. I like to think of superfoods as the most nutrient dense and health supportive foods we can enjoy. By this definition, many of the best-for-us superfoods might very well be growing in our own backyards – foods like kale, garlic, onions, blueberries and raspberries.

There are also superfoods we may be less familiar with and which grow further afield. Typically associated with myth and tradition, they often seem a little mysterious and carry some significant claims of healing powers.

In my own work as a cookbook author and culinary nutrition educator, I always do my best to balance it out for my readers and students. We don’t need every superfood in the store, but we might want a few. They key is to do your research, understand the properties of what these foods can do for us and choose the ones that will most benefit us individually. Here are a few of my favourites:

Maca: The buzz – This superfood is also known as Peruvian ginseng and is typically found in powdered form, though it comes from a root. Its benefits are vast and it has been found to help balance hormones, enhance libido and boost stamina. This herb is known to be an adaptogen, meaning it helps us adapt to what is going on in our environment and better manage stress. In this way, it may be viewed as supportive of overall health. With its malted, almost carmel-like flavour, many people enjoy it as a super-powered addition to various meals and snacks. Tips for using: Add ½ tsp. to a smoothie, sprinkle some onto your oatmeal or add a dash to a brewed tea.

Spirulina: The buzz – With its glowing deep green hue and finely powdered consistency, this algae is a fabulous food to help boost energy and fuel your cells. Its health benefits are tremendous as it contains a hefty spectrum of 10 mixed carotenoids giving us maximum antioxidant protection. Spirulina is also comprised of 60% highly usable vegetable protein and GLA, an essential fatty acid. Tips for using: Start out with ¼ tsp., add to smoothies, stir into oatmeal or yogurt.

Hemp hearts: The buzz – In appearance, these are roughly similar to sesame seeds except for some green colouring that is bursting with detoxifying chlorophyll content. They taste nutty and pair well with both sweet and savoury foods. Hemp hearts are powerhouses when it comes to essential fatty acids. These healthy fats boost our immune systems, ward off cardiovascular disease and give our brain function a boost. Hemp hearts are also a great source of plant-based protein as they contain all the essential amino acids and are very easily digested. Tips for using: Sprinkle on salads, throw into trail mix or use as a topper for hot and cold cereals.

Miso: The buzz – This salty-tasting, mineral-rich super food comes in paste form and is the result of fermenting soybeans along with a yeast. The bacteria used in the fermentation process synthesize vitamin B12 and, therefore, the resulting paste is a great source of this nutrient. It is also rich in protein as well as the minerals zinc, manganese and copper. Miso holds probiotic prowess as a result of being fermented and this helps keep our good gut bacteria thriving and digestive systems happy. Tips for using: A little bit goes a long way, as miso is very salty. Stir a few teaspoons into already boiled water for a quick satisfying soup. Add two teaspoons to an oil and vinegar salad dressing in place of salt for a Japanese-inspired flavouring.

Raw cacao: The buzz – Raw cacao comes from the bean of the cacao plant. It is most commonly found in powdered form although the beans can be purchased as well. It is extremely rich in antioxidants as well as many other nutrients. Raw cacao contains massive amounts of the mineral magnesium – essential for bone health – which is believed to be the most deficient nutrient among people consuming a standard westernized diet. This food also contains chemicals, which allow more serotonin to circulate within the brain. This helps to keep our moods elevated and lively. Tips for using: Mix with boiled water/milk and honey for a raw hot chocolate treat, blend into smoothies for a richer flavour or try the recipe noted in this article.

You can incorporate superfoods into virtually any dish, once you get to know their taste and texture. The recipe shown for Iced Mocha Maca Magic from The UnDiet Cookbook is a game changer. Forget the caffeine-packed, dehydrating cup of joe or those horrifically calorie-excessive, chemicalized iced coffee drinks from the chain stores. This ice-cold bevvy provides all the flavour of coffee plus protein and superfood power to make your cells do the running-man.

Meghan Telpner is a nutritionist and bestselling author of UnDiet: Eat Your Way to Vibrant Health. Her follow up, The UnDiet Cookbook, is due out in October. She is the founder and director of The Academy of Culinary Nutrition. More at MeghanTelpner.com

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Recipe excerpted from The UnDiet Cookbook: 130 Gluten-Free Recipes for a Healthy and Awesome Life copyright © 2015 Meghan Telpner. Photography Copyright © 2015 Maya Visnyei. Published by Appetite by Random House, a division of Random House of Canada Ltd., a Penguin Random House Company. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Iced Mocha Maca Magic

Prep time: 6 minutes Serves 1

2 cups water

10–15 organic coffee beans, ground or

1 tsp. ground organic coffee

2 Tbsp. raw cacao powder

1 Tbsp. Dandy Blend or preferred organic coffee substitute

2 Tbsp. hemp seeds

1 Tbsp. goji berries (optional)

2 tsp. maca powder

1 serving protein powder of choice

1 Tbsp. coconut oil or organic ghee

1 Tbsp. honey or maple syrup

1 cup ice cubes

Make it like so: Blend the water and coffee together and then pour it through a fine mesh sieve or coffee filter. Place the coffee-infused water and remaining ingredients in your blender and blend until smooth.

photo © Ildipapp

The aging Darlington reactor

07/09/201519/12/2016

Aging Darlington reactors dangerously close to Toronto

There are safer options than refurbishment

by Gordon Edwards, ccnr.org

• A recent Action Alert by Fawn Edwards of Greenpeace is deserving of close attention. It has to do with the proposed re-licencing of the four large nuclear power reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, following public hearings scheduled for November.

While Ontario Power Generation (OPG) plans to permanently shut down the 8 nuclear reactors at Pickering by 2020, they are seeking an unprecedented thirteen year operating licence for the 4 nuclear reactors at Darlington. The Darlington reactors – the largest in Canada’s nuclear fleet – are sited on the north shore of Lake Ontario, between Toronto and Port Hope.

The Darlington reactors are seriously degraded and will require extensive rebuilding of the core and primary heat transport system to continue operating, a dirty and dangerous refurbishing job that will cost at least ten billion dollars. Thousands of highly radioactive pressure tubes and calandria tubes will have to be removed robotically and packaged for safe storage for a period of hundreds of thousands of years, along with tens of kilometres of radioactively contaminated “feeder pipes”. These dangerous radioactive wastes will be trucked north to the shore of Lake Huron near Kincardine to join the growing volume of radioactive waste that is currently stored there.

Previous experience with refurbishment of CANDU reactors at other locations in Ontario and New Brunswick has been characterized by years of delay and billions of dollars in cost over-runs. During a refurbishment operation at the Bruce site, on the shore of Lake Huron, over 500 workers were exposed to plutonium-contaminated airborne dust for over three weeks in 2009 due to the incompetence or disregard of overseers. Managers neglected to provide their men with respirators, failed to heed a radiation alarm, ignored company records that plainly revealed the presence of contamination in pipes that were being removed and subjected to a grinding operation, and neglected to properly test the air for contamination.

Anyone can intervene in the November licensing hearings by sending in a letter or a brief, with the option of appearing in person at the hearings and making a 10-minute oral presentation. It is even possible to testify by telephone using a tele-conferencing setup that the Commission has made available for intervenors. One only has to request it.

The Ontario Government, the sole owner of OPG, can decide not to refurbish the Darlington reactors by instead buying replacement power, investing in community-based energy conservation, and accelerating the installation of alternative energy sources such as solar, wind, and industrial cogeneration facilities. The province of Quebec has a very large surplus of water-generated hydropower for the foreseeable future, and calculations have shown that the entire output of the Darlington reactors could be replaced if Ontario purchased excess power from Quebec. A fair price for that power could be mutually advantageous to both provinces, and be much less expensive than the Darlington refurbishment option.

Although the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission staff promised to publish a report outlining the consequences of a severe nuclear accident at Darlington, they have instead produced a report that describes a release of radioactivity that appears disproportionately low – at least 10 to 100 times less than what would be reasonably anticipated in the event of a severe nuclear accident involving up to four reactors. The Commission therefore risks misleading both the public and government authorities who are responsible for emergency planning measures.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently published a report on the Fukushima triple meltdown in Japan. The following paragraph, taken from the first page of the IAEA report, is particularly applicable to the attitude of Canadian nuclear authorities who simply do not want to communicate the results of their own internal calculations to the public and to decision makers.

“A major factor that contributed to the accident was the widespread assumption in Japan that its nuclear power plants were so safe that an accident of this magnitude was simply unthinkable. This assumption was accepted by nuclear power plant operators and was not challenged by regulators or by the Government. As a result, Japan was not sufficiently prepared for a severe nuclear accident in March 2011.” [2015 Report of the IAEA, Foreward, written by the IAEA Director General,]

—

Dr. Gordon Edwards has acted as a consultant to governmental and non-governmental bodies, including the Auditor General of Canada and the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning. He was awarded the Nuclear-Free Future Award (Education Category) in 2006.

The hidden ingredient in engineered food

07/09/201519/12/2016

by Dr. Thierry Vrain

• In the most recent poll I have seen, the US television network MSNBC surveyed people in the US, asking them if they wanted to know what was in their food and if they would support a legislated mandatory food labelling policy. Ninety-three out of 100 people (93%) expressed their concern and distrust of the food supply by voting yes. I have seen many surveys like this over the last 10 years and people have consistently expressed their concern and anxiety about GMOs while the industry and its governmental regulatory agencies in Canada and the US laugh it up because they have “science” on their side.

The secret – what is not being discussed in the open – is that almost all engineered food crops and a good number of non-engineered food crops are routinely sprayed with a powerful antibiotic – glyphosate – that doubles as a popular herbicide. There is so much of it in bread and all processed foods that contain cereals, soy, corn, canola oil and sugar that, in 2013, the EPA had to raise the legal residue levels in all food and feed crops. And, of course, Health Canada follows their guidelines for MRL (Maximum Residue Limits). For example, soy can now contain 20 parts per million (ppm) and cereals (wheat, oat, barley) can contain 30 ppm. If you were a bread eater – someone who gulps half a loaf every day – imagine what your intake of glyphosate would be. And imagine the residues in dairy and meat products when animal feed can legally contain up to 100 ppm.

There are many areas in the US and Canada where RoundUp® Ready crops are grown and where 75% of water and air samples contains traces of glyphosate. The EPA’s MRL for glyphosate in drinking water is below 0.7 ppm. Above that, the EPA warns you will become severely ill, quickly. The MRL in Europe is considerably less.

All this doesn’t tell you much until you learn that one part per million is antibiotic to most bacteria – glyphosate is actually a powerful antibiotic that has been masquerading as an herbicide for over 40 years – and that we all have a hugely diverse community of bacteria in our lower intestine, now commonly referred to as the Microbiome. When I was a kid, my mother used to call it the intestinal flora and somehow it was part of good health, but we did not know how important it actually is. We all have 100 trillion bacteria inside – with the same weight as our brain – that basically direct the show. All those autonomic functions – heart, lungs, digestive system – seem to work well without us having much to do with it. It is becoming obvious that the biochemical language of the Microbiome to each of our major organs is required for proper function.

The diversity of the Microbiome is essential to the health of many organs and particularly sensitive are the brain, the immune system, and, of course, the digestive tract. So when you eat everyday foods containing more than 1 ppm of glyphosate – the level where it kills all bacteria in the lab – you should logically expect antibiotic damage to the Microbiome. Consequences can include celiac, Crohn’s, allergies, asthma and many other immune deficiency symptoms such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, autism and eventually all manners of cancer. And that’s just for humans. We know that fish, frogs, rats and pigs become ill and promptly die. You can easily Google the published and peer-reviewed studies that support every word of this statement. You can also watch my lecture on YouTube: Engineered Food and Your Health: the Nutritional Status of GMOs.

It appears we are back in the 1970s when, every few days, the tobacco industry was spewing safety statements with the studies to prove it. Now, the strategy about the safety of GMOs is slightly different. The industry – essentially, the chemical company Monsanto – is keeping the public and media focused on the engineering technology and GMOs. And they have all the studies to prove their safety. I also suspect the industry actually generates much of the anti-GMO rhetoric we see in the major media and on the Internet. I call it “controlled opposition.” Their job is to remind you there is an intense debate about GMOs, with lots of public opposition. This industry regularly fuels the debate about the safety of GMOs. Apparently, anything goes as long as it keeps the focus away from the antibiotic in the food system.

Very few people bother to question the huge increase in this antibiotic – masquerading as an herbicide – in our environment, and particularly in our food where it reached toxic levels many years ago. The levels are probably so scary that Agriculture Canada, Health Canada, the USDA and the FDA dare not even go there. Almost all agricultural chemicals of concern are measured every year and kept in check, except for glyphosate, which is regarded as completely innocuous since its first registration as an herbicide 40 years ago. Therefore, the government sees no need to monitor its use and residue levels in food and water. The recent classification by the World Health Organization that glyphosate is a “probable carcinogen” should trigger in Canada an outright ban of this molecule in the food or, at least, a follow up of its effects on humans as is normally done with other pesticides.

If I were the vice president for promotion at Monsanto, I would do a number of things to keep this secret from going public. I would do all the standard things, of course, like hiring the best advertising brains in the business, emphasizing safety and singing the wonders of the genetic engineering technology. I would also keep your attention on the debate about the engineering technology, i.e. are GMOs good or bad for you? I would spare no trick of the trade to keep your attention away from the toxicity of the herbicide that is sprayed on your food. I would create a small army of graduate students (and scientists, of course – only the size of the bursary differs) and other mercenaries to engage with the anti-GMO “activists” and constantly remind you of the insanity of your fear. Most of the pro and anti-GMO rhetoric is just that: a lot of hot air and a lot of fear. Anything goes as long as it keeps your attention away from the secret ingredient. I would even have books published on the topic, some with all the available evidence of corporate malfeasance exposed in plain view, as long as the emphasis stayed away from the secret.

But I am not a vice president, although I was more than once in my science days, but that was another millennium. Aside from being a concerned consumer, I now find it necessary to alert you of this sordid story of corporate greed that causes so much illness. All I can do is speak and write publicly about this issue and hope you will do your part.

—

Dr. Thierry Vrain, a former soil biologist and genetic scientist, worked for Agriculture Canada for 30 years. He was the designated spokesperson to assure the public of the safety of GMO crops. Since retiring 10 years ago, after taking into account scientific evidence ignored by most of the bio-tech industry promoters and government regulators, Dr. Vrain has reversed that position and now warns of the dangers from GMOs.

photo © Rene Van Den Berg

Vote for health freedom

07/09/201519/12/2016

• Our government tells us it is allowing supplements that have been proven to be safe and effective when, in reality, it is selectively blocking the most effective supplements, i.e. those with a marked therapeutic value that directly compete against pharmaceuticals.

Health Canada’s latest moves are to limit the amount of selenium allowed in supplements and to place L-lysine on a list that would require stringent toxicological testing. While selenium is an important anti-cancer nutrient, L-lysine is helpful for cold sores and shingles and competes effectively against Merck’s shingles vaccine at a fraction of the cost.

Slowly but surely “Health” Canada is acting to limit our health options! We must focus on removing the Harper government if we cherish our natural healthcare freedoms. Consider donating to the Constitutional Challenge being brought against Health Canada by high profile constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati. Find out more at www.cnpa.ca, which redirects to the CNPA Facebook page.

We are in this together! Canadian Natural Products Alliance (CNPA) is a grassroots organization made up of natural health practitioners, manufacturers, retailers and responsible health conscious Canadians who are dedicated to preserving their healthcare freedoms in Canada.

Your body, your ecosystem

07/09/201519/12/2016

by Kristin McCahon

• When we visit our doctor with problematic symptoms, the physician will often write us a prescription or sometimes suggest surgery or a particular therapy. This isn’t to say the doctor hasn’t diagnosed the underlying problem. Physicians know perfectly well that back pain can indicate a tumour and limb numbness can be a sign of ALS or MS.

Once a diagnosis has been reached, most doctors will follow a standard course of treatment determined to be the most effective for that condition. It will be based on clinical trials and observations of people with the same diagnosis and set of symptoms. There may be some adjustment to the treatment regimen depending on the seriousness of the symptoms or the stage of the disease, but the treatment is still, more or less, one-size-fits-all.

Unfortunately, particularly as we age, the acute care model is not always successful at treating chronic illnesses because these diseases are complicated, deep-rooted and many faceted.

The search for treatment solutions and the deep-seated desire to return to good health has led many people to try TCM (traditional Chinese medicine). TCM has the advantage of having thousands of years of experimentation and knowledge behind it. It is also appealing because its practitioners try to determine why the illness has surfaced at all so it begins to provide answers to some of the “Why me? Why now?” questions we all have. TCM is also attractive because the treatments are often not pharmaceutical; they may involve a mix of selected herbal therapies, acupuncture, massage and meditation.

While TCM offers symptom relief for many people, we are also left wondering how scientific it is and if it really works. A possible answer lies in an emerging field of study: the microbiome – the name for the vast colonies of microbes that live in the human body. Scientists have begun to study the role of the microbiome and its influence in the immune system. Their research is proving that this collection of bacteria, which outnumber our own human cells at a ratio of 10 to 1, is associated with many of the chronic illnesses we wrestle with, including obesity, heart disease, diabetes, asthma and some cancers. According to the American Microbiome Institute (www.microbiomeinstitute.org), research has shown a “direct relationship between diet and the abundance of certain gut microbial communities” and “some scientists speculate that the gut microbiome may cause cravings for certain foods and influence dietary choices.” Their findings go some way in explaining why some of the herbal therapies that TCM prescribes appear to be effective.

Another approach to chronic illness may also find its mechanism within the microbiome. With its focus on nutrition, functional medicine is a relatively new medical methodology that holds allure for those seeking science-based medicine that is also holistic. Dr. Jeffrey Bland, founder of the Institute for Functional Medicine has pioneered this approach in the US. Functional Medicine does not simply take the “lifestyle” approach common to some alternative therapies. It looks for the underlying cause of illness. It is rooted in science and, as Catherine Guthrie notes in her comprehensive article, “Functional Medicine: A Science Whose Time has Come,” considers the patient’s “biochemistry, physiology, genetics and environmental exposures… when looking for the cause of a specific medical issue or set of symptoms.”

Before treatment begins, the practitioner spends a long time with each patient, trying to determine the exact cause of their symptoms. The practitioner will ask detailed questions about diet, previous illnesses – including those from childhood – lifestyle and anything that might be causing stress. The practitioner may also order tests – standard and more specialized lab tests – and do a physical exam.

In an episode of House Call: Finding the Cure for Chronic Disease, Dr. Mark Hyman explains it this way: when a patient goes to the doctor and complains of tiredness, poor concentration, lack of energy and the inability to care much about the outside world, they are often diagnosed with depression. But that is just the name for a cluster of symptoms. There are a whole host of disparate, underlying problems that can create the cluster of symptoms called depression.

Though each of these underlying causes should be treated differently, it is common medical practice to treat the symptoms with a standard treatment protocol. In his book, The Disease Delusion, Dr. Bland notes, “The diseases and conditions we call chronic derive from a variety of causes… and because the drugs for the illnesses treat only the dominant symptoms… you don’t really get over a chronic illness… Instead, it either persists or recurs; in fact, it actually gets worse over time.” “Pelting” the symptoms with different drugs, as Dr. Bland puts it, won’t fix the underlying problem.

This is where the functional medicine approach comes in. The treatment regimen will usually involve making changes to the patient’s lifestyle and can include a combination of traditional pharmaceuticals and vitamins, along with complementary, supportive therapies, such as stress reduction techniques, exercise and a special diet. Functional medicine treats the body like an ecosystem; it looks for the root causes of health problems and doesn’t just focus on the symptoms. It then works to address those underlying causes and thus create in each patient a healthy system.

—

Kristin McCahon holds an MA from the University of British Columbia. She is a freelance writer with a long-standing interest in health and the causes of disease.

Dr. Rogers Prize

September 26
free public colloquium

If you find these approaches to health and wellness exciting, you can learn more about them at a free public colloquium in Vancouver on September 26 as part of the Dr. Rogers Prize. The $250,000 Dr. Rogers Prize for Excellence in Complementary and Alternative Medicine is awarded every two years to celebrate the achievements of researchers, practitioners and others in the field of complementary and alternative (CAM) health care.

For full details, please see

www.drrogersprize.org

The Carbon Bubble

07/09/201519/12/2016

What happens to us when it bursts

by Jeff Rubin

• If you want to know a thing or two about bubbles, just ask a kid. At some point or other, many of them have mixed dishwashing liquid with water and hit the backyard running, with a small plastic wand. The result can seem a little like magic: weightless, ephemeral balls floating on the breeze.

What any kid will tell you, though, is that bubbles aren’t built to last. As they float ever higher in the sunlight, they inevitably pop. In a flash – poof! – they are gone.

Canada’s carbon bubble, like its backyard cousin, is popping. For nearly a decade, the country has been chasing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s dream of becoming an energy superpower. It’s a dream the Conservative leader laid out shortly after assuming office in 2006. At the time, it seemed a solid-enough plan: the world needed oil to power economic growth and Canada had oil, in spades. And for a while at least, it seemed to work. The oil sands – the Harper government’s anointed engine for the country’s economic growth – ramped up production. Oil prices rose to unprecedented triple-digit highs and took the Canadian dollar along for the ride. Investment dollars poured into the oil sands, oil royalties poured into the Alberta Treasury, and Fort McMurray became a 21st-century boomtown. On the surface, everything seemed to be coming up roses.

portrait of Jeff Rubin — Jeff Rubinphoto by Kathryn Hollinrake

But from today’s vantage point – with world oil prices dropping to levels not seen since the Great Recession and demand for the fuel softening even in traditionally solid markets – it’s clear that the journey to realizing Harper’s vision wasn’t destined to be all smooth sailing and fair weather. The country’s master economic plan was predicated on some key assumptions: that oil prices would inexorably move higher; that our neighbour and the world’s largest oil-consuming nation, the United States, would continue to have an insatiable appetite for our high-cost fuel; that the economy of the world’s second-highest oil-consuming country, China, would grow indefinitely at double-digit rates, single-handedly driving world demand for oil as it had once done for coal; and that emissions from the extraction and processing of bitumen, one of the dirtiest carbon fuels on the planet, would not count in the face of the world’s laissez-faire pursuit of growth.

Since 2006, one after the other, each of these assumptions has fallen by the wayside, and Canada’s oversized oil industry – and its whole oil-driven economy – is paying the price. As the carbon bubble bursts, billions of dollars of investment and government royalties, not to mention thousands of jobs, are vanishing just as quickly as that iridescent sphere that once floated even higher in the sunlight. Poof!

Financial bubbles are, of course, nothing new. They have been a recurrent theme throughout modern history. While they’ve taken different forms over the centuries, at their core, they are essentially the same.

In the 1600s, Holland’s upper classes went berserk for an unusual status symbol: tulip bulbs. By 1636, the bulbs were trading on the stock exchanges of many Dutch towns and cities, encouraging everyone to speculate. At the height of the craze, the rarest bulbs commanded as much as six times an average person’s salary. Ten years later, prices dropped and a massive sell-off began, leaving many people in financial ruin.

In 1711, the South Sea Company presented the British government with an IOU for £10,000,000 in exchange for the rights to handle all trade with South America. Investors swarmed, paying as much as £1,000 per share. Nine years later, those shares were worth nothing. South America remained firmly under Spanish control and the British trade rights for the region were worthless.

More recently, the world witnessed the greatest financial meltdown of the postwar era when securities financed by subprime mortgages given to unsuitable borrowers crashed as delinquent payments triggered a collapse in US housing prices. The mortgage-backed securities, which had been assigned the highest rating by credit rating agencies, were widely held by financial institutions around the world, many of which failed or required massive, publicly funded bailouts.

All of these bubbles had something in common: like Canada’s current “energy superpower” dream, they were built on false premises. People just weren’t going to continue sinking years’ worth of earnings into a status symbol that bloomed for two weeks and then went into hibernation. They weren’t going to keep pouring money into a company whose British charter to control trade was meaningless in a Spanish- ruled region of the world. And US real estate values simply weren’t going to climb forever, particularly when insolvent homeowners financed by subprime mortgages mailed in their keys and just walked away from their payments. In all of these cases, a correction was bound to occur, and occur it did, with horrific repercussions for those who failed to see the writing on the wall.

And now it’s our turn. No sooner have we turned the page on the subprime mortgage bubble than we find ourselves facing what could be an even more daunting one. While Canada escaped relatively unscathed from last decade’s Wall Street–centred crisis, it won’t be so lucky this time around. The country’s oil sands–leveraged economy is at the epicentre of the bursting global carbon bubble. No oil industry in the world is more vulnerable to plunging prices than the oil sands, home to one of the planet’s most costly and emissions-intensive oils. In today’s convulsive oil market, where record-sized boom-bust price swings have become the norm, those high costs leave the oil sands’ future very much in doubt – and the Canadian economy suddenly in need of a new engine for its growth.

This, then, is the fallout of chasing Harper’s dream. Finally, we look to the future. How can you, as an investor, manage the turbulent times that a bursting carbon bubble brings and how can the Canadian economy weather the storm? While slower growth and a warming climate may indeed sound the death knell for what until now has been seen as the country’s most valuable economic asset, the latter, at least, could offer more than a silver lining or two.

As a high-latitude country, Canada’s climate will change more than most, and as it does, new economic opportunities will emerge. In fact, the climate change that the Harper government has been so fervently trying to deny may present far greater economic opportunities for Canada in a carbon-constrained future than we ever had in our oil-soaked past. In seizing these opportunities, we will soon come to realize that oil is not our most valuable resource after all. That title will soon belong to something Canadians often take for granted, but that others – like residents of, say, California – no doubt wish was a little more abundant in their neck of the woods. Water, it turns out, is about to become a whole lot more valuable and important to our economy than it’s ever been before.

Recently, one of this country’s national newspapers dubbed the oil sands the “business story of the decade.” But the headline told only half of the story. The rise of the oil sands is certainly one of the biggest business developments ever to grip the Canadian imagination. And why not? Enormous expansion, huge numbers of jobs, a steady stream of revenue – it’s compelling, to be sure. Today’s newspaper headlines, however, are telling the other half of that story – the fall. And this part reads very differently. Instead of stories of massive expansion connected to gleaming new pipelines, we’re reading of extensive layoffs, abandoned projects and scaled-back operations. As the world turns away from high-cost fuel and carbon emissions, the oil sands’ imprint on both the landscape and the economy is going to get a lot smaller.

It may seem hard to imagine a future beyond the carbon bubble – when the economy and the country’s ambitions are no longer all about oil. But you’re about to discover that this future is closer than you think.

Making your way through a conversation about climate change, fossil fuels and the economy can be a bit like navigating the tricky terrain of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. The landscape is rocky, there are fire-breathing dragons at every turn and you’d better be on the alert for enchantments that can make the truth seem like fiction, and vice versa. Partway through, you find yourself wanting nothing more than a map marked with a big red dot and three familiar, comforting words: you are here.

As any traveller can tell you, knowing where you are is important – in Middle Earth or anywhere else. If you don’t know where you’re starting from, how can you figure out where you’re going? How can you avoid getting stuck in the no man’s land between Bag End and Mordor? Or, more to my point, between a carbon-shrouded past and a renewables-fuelled future?

So where are we? The answer to that question, unfortunately, is “in a bit of a mess.” For decades now, we’ve looked the other way as global temperatures and sea levels have risen, as the ice caps have shrunk and as greenhouse gas emissions have grown unchecked. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, we’ve chosen to believe that we can go on living the way we’ve always done. We can’t. Our past choices are catching up with us, quickly.

If you happen to call Canada home, things are bleaker still. You reside in a country whose government has not only been wilfully turning a blind eye to the problem but has also been building the country’s economic future on a foundation of high-cost, emissions-intensive heavy oil – a foundation that can’t possibly hold as climate change forces us to move away from our unhealthy reliance on fossil fuels.

This failure to truly see where we are, and to act accordingly, is going to have repercussions – for the economy as a whole, and for you. In order to avoid those repercussions, you first need to understand them. You need to know, in other words, where you are.

—

Excerpted from The Carbon Bubble by Jeff Rubin. © 2015 Jeff Rubin. Published by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Penguin Random House Company. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved. [Editor’s note: We encourage Common Ground readers to read this very important book.]

Acting our best

07/09/201519/12/2016

Antony Holland 1920-2015

by Bruce Mason

portrait of Anthony Holland — Anthony Hollandphoto by Victor Anthony

• He was the oldest working actor in Canada, if not the world. Certainly, he was one of the busiest – at 95! – and probably the most passionate and endearing as well, both on-and off stage. Antony Holland’s legacy is important. He is credited with creating the most successful theatre school in the country and pioneering the profound idea of casting prisoners in plays – in and out of their cellblocks. His films include scenes with Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Warren Beatty and countless others. His legendary live performances are innumerable and inventive and his one-man shows, a revolutionary theatrical concept. Above all, they were lessons for living well.

As the Globe and Mail recently observed, Antony Holland’s “insatiable lust for life – most especially the theatre life – kept him running full-speed for nearly a century.” The tribute was re-published and shared widely around the world.

Antony once told me, “I am finding many more roles in my mid-80s; there is far less competition and I can assure you that I am getting very good at coughing a lot and dying on stage… Among other things, theatre provides an opportunity to hold out a mirror on the world for those who choose to look, and in some cases, lives have been changed mightily by the experience.”

Antony Holland – who referred to me as his “unpaid publicist” – was a raconteur, par excellence, with more than nine decades of memorable stories, tucked way in a mind that could recall entire plays of his beloved Shakespeare, at will. In WWII, he was conscripted into Britain’s Royal Corps of Signals and shipped off to fight in the Egyptian desert. For entertainment and to boost morale, he staged makeshift theatre on the troop ship and later at the famed, abandoned, Royal Opera House in Cairo. The hit show so impressed the brass and their wives that afterwards, backstage, he was promoted to sergeant – and eventually, a spy – and reassigned to tour North Africa, performing for tens of thousands of his fellow soldiers.

Returning to England, he landed a job as vice principal of Laurence Olivier’s Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, inspiring young actors such as Daniel Day-Lewis and Jeremy Irons. His speciality was stage-fighting and he taught a legion of students to fence, including a grateful Gene Wilder.

Tired of an actor’s hard life and hard knocks, he emigrated to Vancouver to indulge another passion – growing vegetables – and a dream of becoming a successful market gardener. Instead, he drove taxi in New Westminster, supplemented by gigs on CBC radio until a call came from the Haney Correctional Institution in Maple Ridge to establish a theatre program. “I created it because, as someone suggested, people put in prison should be rehabilitated,” Holland noted. He recalled numerous award-winning shows starring reformed inmates from solitary confinement.

In 1965, he turned his attention, obsession and expertise to founding another theatre program – the future Studio 58 at Langara College – as the city developed into a TV and movie hub. “I wanted to train actors to earn a living, not just read scripts or go on to university, including dance and musical courses and performances, lighting, costumes, publicity and cleaning up afterwards. And I hired theatre professionals as part-time instructors.”

His successor Kathryn Shaw (1985) explained, “All his actors had to work backstage before they could work onstage and grads became known for being well-rounded theatre people, the ones who start companies.” The founder and director of the highly successful Bard on the Beach, Christopher Gaze, adds, “At least 50% of our casts come from Studio 58 and we couldn’t have achieved what we have without it.” The school now receives hundreds of applications from across North America and, sadly, Holland will miss acting in the celebration of its 50th anniversary this month. In July of 2014, Holland was awarded Membership in the Order of Canada for his achievements as an actor and teacher and for founding Studio 58 to cultivate the next generation of Canadian performers.

“Care to purchase a pavlova?” Holland had enquired, pointing to a basket suspended on his arm at our first of many meetings, often to discuss Common Ground. Holland was selling wares fresh from the baker’s oven he had installed back-stage to help finance the theatre revolution he was staging and waging, from his charming clapboard theatre in a forest on Gabriola Island. He called it “No Bells and Whistles.”

“No need to rehearse endlessly or fuss with lights sound and costumes,” he explained. “Theatres are trying to compete with the movies for God’s sake – sit back, chat, eat your popcorn, don’t really get involved. Costs are killing live theatre; no one can afford large casts. We must get back to the ‘gist of the thing,’ the language, good scripts. I’ve got hundreds upstairs for when I need them.” And just as uncharacteristically, he promised the audiences, “Guaranteed to be wonderfully entertaining or your money back!”

He left us with definitive portrayals, such as Lear and Shylock and his award-winning, late-life triumph, Tuesdays With Morrie, a dramatization of Mitch Albom’s bestselling memoir about the wisdom of a dying professor. Some worried that Holland, in his late 80s, lacked the stamina to sustain the rigorous schedule of the 2006 Arts Club production, but he thrived and it was held-over and taken on an extensive tour.

He always had good news to share, including this: “I’ve got a role – National Lampoon’s Thanksgiving Family Reunion. My character suffers from flatulence, but I’m only required to make the gestures; the sounds will be added by the technical department, later. It could create a whole new audience for me: 10 to 14-year-olds who like that sort of thing.”

Antony Holland wasn’t granted his final wish: to die – literally – on-stage, but he was performing enthusiastically just days before his final exit in a Nanaimo hospital.

Celebration of Life for Antony Holland

Sunday, September 13, 3pm

Unity of Vancouver, 5840 Oak St.

Post photographs and share stories at

https://rememberingantonyholland.wordpress.com/

War is a racket

07/09/201519/12/2016

By Major General Smedley Butler (1881 – 1940)

• Smedley Darlington Butler was a United States Marine Corps Major General, the highest rank authorized at that time, and at the time of his death the most decorated Marine in US history. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, Central America and the Caribbean during the Banana Wars and France in World War I. Butler is well known for having later become an outspoken critic of US wars and their consequences, as well as exposing the Business Plot, a plan to overthrow the US government. By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.

War is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I], a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war, nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the self-same few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again, they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep’s eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion] their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other’s throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making. Hell’s bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers? Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for.

He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in International Conciliation, the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

“And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace… War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it.”

Marine Officers at Veracruz. Front row, left to right: Wendell C. Neville; John A. Lejeune; Littleton W. T. Waller, Commanding; Smedley Butler

Undoubtedly, Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes and even his navy are ready for war – anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter’s dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe, too, whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his re-arming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to 18 months. Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient, the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then, our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now, the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the “open door” policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in 35 years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn’t they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children? What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?

Yes, and what does it profit the nation?

Take our own case. Until 1898, we didn’t own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time, our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became “internationally minded.” We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington’s warning about “entangling alliances.” We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favourable trade balance during the 25-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few, this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.

—

Excerpted from War Is a Racket, by United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler.

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