October 2015

LeadNow’s Vote Together campaign

Leadnow: Vote Together campaign aims to defeat Harper’s Conservatives
by Bruce Mason

• If we wake up to a new government on October 20, the vast majority of Canadians will have defeated Stephen Harper at his own strategy game. Nursing a hangover from the longest, costliest and arguably the most significant campaign in our history, many will be vowing “never again” as they clean up the ‘party’s over’ mess of our last ‘first past the post’ election. We will all be able to take part in a more healthy democracy and political life. Thanks, in some measure, to “communities” like Leadnow.

Parliament_Buildings2At press time, a half million folks were involved in the independent advocacy organization. Tens of thousands had signed Vote Together pledges. And thousands more had engaged and shared in direct participatory decisions, door-knocking, leafleting, phoning and voting. And – get used to it – they aren’t going away.

Leadnow’s elections campaign manager Amara Possian told Common Ground, “What we are accomplishing is unprecedented, a game-changer. Excitement and momentum are rapidly growing in an incredible response across the country. Canadians are making this happen because they know we need to work together and work harder than ever to encourage others to join us.”

In less than five years, a small youth-led team gathered together before the 2011 election to grow exponentially. They wanted to do their part in helping to halt the existential threat of runaway climate change and build a fair economy to reverse the obscene trend of growing inequality. Campaigns have been conducted on everything from omnibus crime and budget bills to the Canada-China FIPPA investors deal, fast-tracked pipelines and tankers, the CBC takeover, senate expense scandals, robocalls and runaway rail cars in Lac-Mégantic.

“We poll our community to ask them what type of campaign we should run and again and again we heard from people who were excited about connecting with others and a national action plan that focused on working across party lines,” Possian explained. “Consistently, the number one concern was defeating the Conservatives. We can’t make any progress with this government. Canadians were tired of our broken, distorted democracy in which a majority of voters can vote for change and still see Stephen Harper win 100% of the power with thirty-something percent of the vote.”

Meanwhile, Conservatives stacked the deck by passing the absurdly named Fair Elections Act, with US-style voter suppression laws, spending millions of taxpayer dollars on partisan ads and building a massive elections war chest to outspend the other parties.

Knowing that the outcome of the election would come down to some 70 swing ridings, dozens of groups formed and fought to “knock off” Conservatives. Groups include public and private-sector unions, an anything-but-Conservative veterans group, the Council of Canadians and Dogwood Initiative, the small-government National Citizens Coalition, environmentalists, the Canadian Medical Association, First Nations groups, the international lobby group Avaaz and others ranging from “Voters Against Harper” to ShitHarperDid. Their varied goals included improving seniors’ care, restoring door-to-door mail delivery as well as electoral reform and strategic voting. Some urged voters to cast ballots for specific parties, most notably the NDP.

Leadnow built VoteTogether, uniting centre-left voters around one candidate in selected ridings. They shared information about positions on the economy, environment and democratic reform, as well as data on who had the best hope of winning, based on results from 2006, 2008 and 2011.

The independent and nonpartisan group crowd-funded to pay for detailed, expensive, riding-specific polling so voters in 13 key constituencies could pick the “best” local candidate to win seats. Rather than tell pledgers whom to vote for, Leadnow not only provided information required for victory, but they also vowed to make MPs accountable and to press hard for ongoing issues, front and centre in the media. Moving beyond ‘shallow’ mass Internet engagement, the goal was to catalyze voters into voting for the more responsive and accountable politician.

Leadnow currently has a small, dedicated staff team, including field organizers, and a powerful, fast-growing network and army of volunteers, which includes students, previously marginalized people and First Nations, along with advisers who support their work. It also has a member-driven legacy – a profound transformation of Canada’s political landscape, through sophisticated engagement and innovation, with people on the ground and a coherent strategy and clear goals.

Anyone in the Leadnow community can start a campaign. There are a few common sense guidelines (campaigns can’t be offensive, discriminatory, inaccurate or illegal) but members can start a petition on anything they want, big or small, local or national and take action immediately with access to tips and tools to increase exposure and growth.

As an example, the free, self-paced online program, Skills for Solidarity, opens up the long-overdue conversation between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples about their shared history and building a new reality, through personal stories, myth busting and more.

Leadnow offers a practical, effective leadership program to inform and inspire a new generation to work respectively around fear and conflict and forge lasting friendships. Before, during and after the election, you can glimpse Canada’s future going forward and people powered change at www.leadnow.ca

—

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

Imagining the October 20th headline

‘Young people vote in record numbers, end 9 years of Conservative rule’

by Brigette DePape

• October 20th is just around the corner. Imagine that day – the one after the election. Imagine that we have done everything in our power to change our country.
ParliamentTower
3 reasons why young people should vote.

  • Because our generation wants a change. Over 80% of young people in Canada believe a change in government would be a good idea. If more young people vote in this election, our generation can be game-changers.
  • Because Harper doesn’t want us to. With the so-called Fair Elections Act, he is making it harder for students to vote. The act takes away the ability for people to use voter information cards to prove their address, which tens of thousands of people used in the last election.
  • Because the current government is failing us on the issues we care about. Recent surveys show that the top issues for young people are health care, job creation, taxes, education and training, and the environment. As you can see in our Youth Voter’s Guide, the current government is failing us on these issues, whether it’s cuts to health care or youth employment programs. It’s also failing us on the moral crises of our time, refusing to launch an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and closing our doors to Syrian refugees rather than opening them.

3 reasons why young people did not vote in the last election, but will vote in this election.

  • Because we were busy. The most common reason why young people did not vote in the last election is that they were busy, whether with school, work or taking care of children. In the long run, I think we should be considering structural changes like elections on the weekend, as is done in so many other countries. But I’m hopeful youth will vote this time around if we are able to spread the word about different options for voting. You can vote now at any one of 400 Elections Canada offices. Campus polling stations, which will be on 40 campuses across the country, start on October 5. Advance polling runs from October 9 to 12.
  • Because we were away from our ridings. In addition to all the options above, you can vote by mail, but you need to do so in advance. So do this early!
  • Because we didn’t feel informed enough. Check out our Youth Voter’s Guide to see where the parties stand on different issues.

cartoon: a car brought in for servicing on a racetrack with banners showing all the current political issuesThere are reasons to be afraid. It is an extremely tight race. There is the very real possibility that there will be another Conservative government. But there is also the very real possibility that we will see a change.

There are more reasons to hope. I get hope from meeting people, young people who did not vote in the last election but will be voting for change in this one. Young people who voted in the last election, and this time are committing to bring at least one friend who did not vote. I get hope from the students who are collecting vote pledges on their campuses, or young workers in their workplaces.

Incredible organizing efforts are happening across the country: the ImagineOct 20 concerts; Mrs.Universe Ashley Callingbull calling for voting to defeat Harper; the record number of groups organizing to get out the vote; our national day of action to get out the youth vote on October 5th; and grassroots initiatives to get out the youth vote, like #votingbuddies, where people take selfies and post online to encourage voting with friends. It’s clear that people care and are taking action.

Together, let’s make this change we want happen. Visit www.canadians.org/iwillvote to pledge to vote, and encourage your friends to do the same. Let’s be the game-changers nobody saw coming.

Adrenal exhaustion: the 21st century disease

by Dr. Gifford-Jones

• Are you tired for no reason? Having a hard time getting out of bed or feel run-down and stressed all the time? If so, you may have the first symptoms of adrenal exhaustion and must learn to “adapt” before it becomes a steady habit that causes more than heartburn. As Charles Darwin, the British scientist remarked, “It’s not the fittest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those who can adapt to their environment.” Or, as is often said, ‘It’s not the work that kills, it’s the worry.’

A bowl of small red berries
Schisandra chinensis is considered one of the most highly protective of all medicinal plants and the berry is included in many traditional herbal formulas for improving energy and mental health.

The thumb-sized adrenal glands are situated on the top of both kidneys and have been called the body’s primary “shock absorbers.” They produce a number of hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol and DHEA. If you encounter a sabre-toothed tiger, adrenaline shoots up, the heartbeat quickens and you prepare for battle and survival. Today’s hectic pace also keeps our adrenal glands in high gear.

Stress is the most common cause of adrenal fatigue. This can occur when a loved one dies or from overwork, physical and mental strain, chronic pain, infection, anger, sleep deprivation, chronic illness, depression and anxiety. As one wise sage remarked, “Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you haven’t been to sleep yet!”

Patients with adrenal fatigue may complain of cold hands and feet, low back pain, sweet cravings, headaches, arthritis and allergies. Cortisol dysfunction can also lead to low blood sugar, infertility, immune problems and heart disease.

Temporary and minor stressful situations result in slightly higher levels of adrenaline and cortisol. But day after day, stress is also associated with an increase in blood pressure and excessive levels of adrenal hormones. Finally, if there’s no relief from stress, adrenal hormones drop and adrenal exhaustion occurs. Adrenal fatigue is like withdrawing money from a bank account until there’s none left.

As adrenal hormone levels decline, apart from weakness and fatigue, digestive distress is one of the most common symptoms. Some people complain of nausea, constipation and diarrhea. There is also a tendency to weight gain, reduced sex drive and feeling better when stress is temporarily decreased, such as on a holiday.

So how do you fight adrenal fatigue? First, learn to “adapt” to stress. A good start is to separate the possible from the impossible. You can’t tell an idiotic boss to go to hell until you win the lottery. Or, as Joseph Stalin once remarked, “One has to live with the devil until one reaches the end of the bridge.”

Relaxation techniques such as yoga and meditation can be helpful. So can massage, as the hands-on approach does more than just give you a good feeling. Athletes get a good rub down to get rid of the lactic and carbonic acid produced by tense muscles. It also helps to exercise, get rid of caffeine, increase the amount of raw fruits and vegetables in the diet along with whole grains and protein.

Make sure you receive adequate amounts of minerals and vitamins. For instance, stressful situations eat up vitamin C. Studies show that, under stress, animals immediately produce 10 times their normal amount of C. Humans should also increase their intake of vitamin C to bolster their immune system. Studies also show that taking extra vitamin C pills, or Medi-C Plus, a powder that contains large amounts of C and lysine, can prevent atherosclerosis (narrowing of coronary arteries) and even reverse this process to prevent needless heart attack, the nation’s number one killer.

Another natural remedy called AdrenaSense also helps to combat adrenal fatigue. It contains a number of international root herbs whose health effects have been tested over time. For instance, Siberian ginseng has been used for years in Siberia and China and known for its adaptogenic and anti-stress properties.

Other herbs such as suma, Rhodiola, Schisandra berries and ashwagandha help to decrease depression, stimulate the nervous system, improve memory, enhance work performance, support the immune and digestive systems and have a positive effect on thyroid and adrenal function.

The dosage of AdrenaSense is one capsule, three times a day with meals and unlike many prescription drugs is safe and well tolerated.

—

Dr. W. Gifford-Jones is a graduate of the University of Toronto and The Harvard Medical School. During his medical training, he has been a family doctor, hotel doctor and ship’s surgeon. He is a Fellow of The Royal College of Surgeons and author of seven books. For comments, email Dr. Gifford-Jones at info@docgiff.com, www.docgiff.com

photo © Lshtandel

How terrorism loses and humanity wins

by Marianne Williamson

• Years ago I told myself not to worry about a devil… that it’s all in my mind. Then I realized that’s the worst place it could possibly be.

portrait of Marianne WilliamsonI don’t think there’s an external devil stalking the planet for men’s souls, but I do believe there’s a point of consciousness in all of us – whether we call it shadow, dark side, devil, or whatever – that is not a beautiful thing. When this aspect is allowed to drive our thoughts and behaviour – whether as an individual or as a group – it isn’t just neurotic. It is beastly.

We can pretend all we want that this doesn’t exist. We can insist that reason, civilized behaviour, international law and civic institutions have the upper hand; we can be grateful for the fact that any group psychosis is over there somewhere and surely can’t affect our daily lives. We can believe those things, but more and more now we know they aren’t true. Today, the beast is stalking the planet and it’s way too close to the barricades.

Yet how do we fight a collective psychosis, spreading like cancer and beginning to attack the major organs of our civilization? Whether it’s ISIS in the Middle East, lone crazy people taking up the cause, foreign fighters or domestic jihadists… the question on everyone’s mind is “What do we do now?”

Americans are very good with a to-do list. Just tell us what to do and our national character is such that we can usually do it. We can liken the Nazis as well as the Japanese Imperial Army during WW2 to operable tumours that were brilliantly and surgically removed by Allied forces. But today’s terrorist threat is not an operable tumour; it’s more like a cancer that’s already metastasized. It is wrapped around and hiding behind vital organs, constantly multiplying its hideous malformations. Invasive measures and surgical removal are not enough to handle this one. We’re going to have to boost our immune system; we need to deal with cause and not just effects and it would be a very good idea to pray for a miracle.

A holistic model of healing does not just apply to a physical body; it applies to a social body as well. Right now, our primary mode of fighting terrorism is allopathic, focused on suppressing and eradicating external symptoms. Clearly, those symptoms are deadly and the most powerful allopathic treatment is called for.

But the holistic paradigm emphasizes mind and spirit as healing modalities too. Internal powers should not be seen as the weaker stepsister of brute force. In fact, at this point, the use of brute force in fighting terrorism is doing as much to create enemies we don’t have yet as to kill the ones we do. No one knows this better than those who are applying the brute force yet we’re caught in the inescapable bind of having to apply it nevertheless. So, what are the internal powers that need to be identified? How do we harness them? What strategies best put them to use?

In seeking to answer these questions, we’re confronted by challenges more difficult than you might imagine. On an external level, our problems involve politics, police and military. On an internal level, our problems are no less difficult – not because they’re complicated, so much as because they challenge the very notion of what it means to be a civilized society in the 21st century. We need to ask deeper questions than, “What should we do?” We need to ask, “Who should we be?” And even more importantly, “Who should we be to each other?

A rally of two million people on the streets of Paris is a beautiful show of solidarity, ultimately even more so if it becomes a template for how we live our lives each day. We need to join as brothers and sisters now, not just as a reaction to tragedies, but as a way of preventing tragedies. Every decent man, woman and child at that rally in Paris felt like they belonged to something, felt they were part of something, felt they were standing for something meaningful that day – and that is the answer. What could be a more horrific irony than that jihadists say they feel a sense of community? Only one thing is more powerful than a brotherhood based on hate and that is a brotherhood based on love.

Humanity needs to understand this: it won’t be enough to only express our love for each other after a horrific event has occurred. We are challenged to change the very bones of our civilization – to shift from an economic to a humanitarian model – if we’re to even come close to diminishing the presence and decreasing the rise of monsters in our midst.

That is the only way we will adequately counter not just acts of terror, but, even more importantly, the radical, hate-filled philosophy that inspires them. As any expert will tell you, there is no way to track down and stop everyone who has ever been radicalized by a hateful cleric. A dark consciousness is the root of the problem and our biggest difficulty in addressing it is our refusal to give consciousness any credence at all. That is why a purely materialist perspective is inadequate to the task of formulating an effective strategy to combat terrorism. We will not create an effective way to win this contest until we are willing to acknowledge the ground on which it’s being played. And to play back on that level.

When it comes to terrorism – and when it comes to defeating it – feelings do matter, clerics do matter and philosophy does matter. This battle is being waged on deep subconscious levels. The force now tapping into the darkest corners of the human psyche will only be defeated from the most light-filled corners of the human heart. Terrorism is hatred turned into a political force and the only thing powerful enough to fundamentally override it is to turn love into a political force. But – that we will not be able to do until we are willing to make love more important than money and others more important than ourselves.

First, let’s look at money and then let’s look at us. Money runs politics in America today, which means financial interests determine the allocation of resources to everything from military to education to humanitarian expenditures. On a geo-political level, this is devastating in its effects, at home and abroad, because it leaves untended such dangerously high levels of human despair. Large groups of desperate people anywhere in the world should be considered a national security risk because desperate people are far more vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces. Until America deals with the fundamental issue of the corporate takeover of the US government, there is no reason to think that the driving force in our foreign policy will ever be a true desire for peace. When our leaders talk about protecting “America’s vital national interests” around the world, they’re more likely to mean protection of Halliburton, Shell, Monsanto and Exxon, than protection of the 17,000 children who starve each day or the billion human beings on the planet who live on less than $1.25 a day. There is so much unnecessary desperation, poverty, alienation and hopelessness that the Western world has allowed to fester, and so many points of hypocrisy in our own international actions for which we owe atonement and amends. At this point, America’s problem is not just that some people hate us; it’s that a lot of people who don’t actually hate us, don’t like us either. Those who don’t actually hate us have become more and more easy to radicalize by people who genuinely do.

Actually, though, the problem today is not radicalism but a lack of radicalism. We lack the radicalism of love. By this I mean the deliberate, intentional, spiritual, transcendent, devoted, courageous, committed, proactive love of people who have awakened to the absolute necessity – if we are to survive as a species – of seeing every hungry child in the world as a child we must feed; each transgression against the earth as a limiting of our grandchildren’s chances to survive on the planet; every uneducated child as a security risk; and every thought or action of love as a contribution to the field of energy that alone has the power to drive the monstrous scourge of terrorism back to the nothingness from whence it came.

Some people seem more willing to die than to change their minds, and that is the question before us today: are we really willing to die rather than evolve beyond the obsolete, unsustainable principles that currently organize our civilization? This is the revolution now to be waged: a revolution of consciousness, as we change our thoughts and thus our behaviour and thus our institutions and thus our voting patterns and thus our government and thus find in time that we have changed ourselves.

Any conversation less radical than that simply plays into the hands of those who despise us. Terrorism is a manifestation of the accumulated moments when humanity has chosen not to love; but we still have the opportunity to choose again. We have the power to override the heinous efforts of those who terrorize, to overrule them and nullify their malevolence. First, however, we have to override our resistance to doing so. We must overrule our ego-based reticence about surrendering to love and making our lives its instrument. That is the contest, which matters the most. Are we willing to rally to that cause, not just one day in Paris, but to the best of our ability every hour of every day of every year, not only when it’s easy but also when it’s difficult? Any moment when we don’t, is an inch of ground we cede to the terrorists. Any moment when we do, is a moment when we gain the upper hand, turn on the light that casts out darkness, and do the work of transforming- our civilization into the sustainable, beautiful, and wondrous thing it is meant to be.

Guns alone can’t do it. Bombs alone can’t do it. Surveillance alone can’t do it. But with God’s help, we can.

Election 2015: What is party policy on GMOs?

GMO corn

Source: Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, www.cban.ca

The federal election is October 19 and every political party will be asking for your vote. Each party has something to say about food and agriculture, but what do they have to say about the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)?

The Conservative Party

The Conservative Party is opposed to mandatory labelling of GM foods.

The Conservative Party opposed the 2011 Private Members Bill from an NDP MP that would have introduced an assessment of export market harm before any new GM crops are approved.

The Minister of Agriculture did not intervene to stop the legalization of genetically modified (GM) alfalfa in 2013 despite letters and protests requesting this action (but the huge controversy in the farming community has kept GM alfalfa off the market for the moment).

The Conservative party is proactively supporting the future of genetically modified crops, including by developing the new policy to accept “low level presence” (LLP) of GM contamination in imports. This policy is almost finalized and would allow a small percent (0.2% or higher) of some GM foods into Canada that have not been yet assessed for safety by Health Canada.

The New Democratic Party

The NDP has a wide-ranging food strategy called “Everybody Eats” (2014) that includes support for mandatory labelling of GM foods. The party says they would “develop clear, accurate and verifiable labelling for products that have undergone genetic modification.” In 2013, an NDP MP proposed motion M-480 for mandatory labelling.

In their food strategy, the NDP also pledges to support the organic sector (organic farming prohibits the use of GM seeds and other GM products) and to “encourage research that supports environmentally sustainable farming practices.”

The NDP also says it will “reverse cuts to public research facilities and regional projects” and “monitor and prevent anti-competitive behaviour and monopolistic practices in the agri-business supply sector.” This would address the ever-increasing concentration in the seed sector by biotechnology and agrichemical companies.

In 2011, the NDP agriculture critic proposed Bill C-474 that would have mandated a review of potential export market harm before any new GM crops were approved, and this proposal is now part of the NDP’s food strategy. (The Conservative Party was strongly opposed to the bill and all Conservative MPs voted against it in its last vote. Liberals’ MPs were split, with some voting in favour, but the Liberal Party did not support the bill. The NDP voted for it as well as the one Green Party MP and the Bloc Québécois.)

The Green Party

The Green Party of Canada released their Election Platform on September 9, 2015 and it includes a budget pledge to stop federally funded GMO research. It also stresses supporting local food and small-scale producers and says, “In a time of dominance by global industrial food systems, we want to rebalance the equation by creating resilient local economies fuelled by local growers, farmers, and producers.”

Their detailed 2015 policy platform called “Vision Green” says, “Genetically engineered (GE) organisms may pose a potentially serious threat to human health and the health of natural ecosystems. Many Canadians want to follow the example of the European Union and ban GE crops. At minimum, GE products must be labelled, giving consumers the right to know and to say no to GE foods.”

The Green Party is very clear that it would “require mandatory labelling of all GM foods and food ingredients.”

The Green Party also calls for a ban on GM alfalfa and GM wheat

The Green Party calls for a ban on the GM sterile seed called “Terminator technology” (there is an international moratorium on this technology but no national ban in Canada).

The Green Party also says they would ensure developers of GM crops are liable for any damages.

The party is also committed to transitioning Canadian agriculture to “100% organic farming” and says they would “shift government-supported research away from biotechnology and energy-intensive farming and towards organic food production.”

The Liberal Party

The Liberal Party of Canada has not made a statement on mandatory labelling.

The Liberal Party agriculture critic told CBAN, “The introduction of GMO crops cannot be allowed to endanger the livelihoods of other farmers and producers who have chosen a different method of growing.”

The older “National Food Policy” (2010) of the Liberal Party is only four pages and does not mention GMOs or specific issues that would impact the regulation of GM crops and foods.

In the last Parliamentary session, the past Liberal Party agriculture critic spoke out against the introduction of GM alfalfa however the Liberal leader at the time did not respond to petitions on the issue from his own constituents.

In 2001, the Liberal Party was in government but did not support Private Members Bill C-287 for mandatory labelling that came from one of its own MPs.

Daniel Bissonnette shells out

A boy examining the label of candy packaging

By Daniel Bissonnette

Ten-year-old Daniel Bissonnette’s passion for healthy food has inspired him to become a very busy activist. At the March Against Monsanto events in Vancouver this year and last, he spoke eloquently about the dangers of GMOs and junk food. And in his interview with raw food advocate David Avocado Wolfe, he talked about how kids are being deceived by the food industry. He has also been featured in numerous YouTube videos. In the transcript below from his Youtube video, Don’t Eat Another Halloween Candy Before You Watch This! Daniel lets us in on the scariest part about Halloween – the candy! (Watch his other YouTube videos by searching for Daniel Bissonnette.)

What’s the scariest part about Halloween? The costumes, the decorations or what if it’s the very thing you never suspected – your candy?

How do you know your Halloween candy is, in fact, a treat and not a trick in disguise?

Ever wondered what it’s actually made of?

When was the last time you read the ingredient list at the back of your candy or chocolate wrapper?

What did you find or not find on the label?

Did you count the number of ingredients? How many are there?

Are you sure every single ingredient is actually listed? What if they skipped a few? I mean, why would anyone not want you to know what you’re eating?

Each year, Americans purchase 600 million tons of candy for Halloween, for a total of more than two billion dollars! On Halloween alone, the average kid consumes 3/4 of a pound of candy! But what do parents and US children really know about the safety of these “treats?” Join me, detective Daniel Bissonnette, for this special Halloween report. Are you ready to strip the colourful packaging off your candy to see what’s really hiding underneath? Is it a trick or a treat and what can you do to protect yourself?

You see, I’ve travelled to the farthest corners of the globe – or more like my local grocery store isles and computer – to unravel the great mysteries of popular Halloween candy once and for all. Turns out the top global confectionary companies including Hershey’s, Nestlé, M&M/Mars and Kraft all use the following unsafe ingredients in their chocolate and non-chocolate North American formulations:

  1. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
  2. Artificial colours
  3. GMOs

But exactly how dangerous are these food additives anyways? Let’s have a look.

Turns out high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the cheapest, most widely used sweetener on the planet that will make you gain weight and take your health down faster than any other sweetener. In just 10 days of eating a diet high in HFCS, it can trigger early stages of diabetes and heart disease – 10 days?! It’s considered a major cause of obesity, and you know what? High-fructose corn syrup is as addictive as cocaine. How do you think Corn Candy got to be so popular? Oh, did I mention nearly all corn syrup is GMO? I’ll get to that later.

Artificial colours: OK, are you kidding me? Seriously, mom and dads, if you’re going to let us eat that, don’t even bother disciplining us later with “go to your room” or “behave.” It’s a biochemical reaction, OK? Besides, if anyone needs discipline, it’s probably you!

Did you read the studies linking food colouring consumption to hyperactivity, aggression, violent behaviour, temper tantrums, uncontrollable crying or ADD and even cancer? In the Lancet journal there was a study published that found food dyes to cause brain damage and even reduce IQ levels. Honestly, Smarties? I wonder how their sales would do if it they renamed it Dummies? I mean, it’s made from petroleum – the stuff that’s used to fuel your car and pave roads. No wonder it’s banned in Europe. Yes, that’s right, ask Kellogg’s and Kraft foods if all their UK products are free of artificial dyes.

And then there’s the Darth Vader of all ingredients: GMO’s

Remember my other video about Jack and the Sun Chips? Well, if you watched it, you’d know why you must stay away from Genetically Modified Organisms. Unless you want to end up like the rats in the Seralini study or turn your gut into a pesticide factory, stay away. The truth is unless it’s certified organic or non-GMO-verified, likely GMO’s are in all your Halloween candy hidden as “food-like substances in disguise” and you have no idea. GMO’s, in my opinion, are by far the freakiest tricks.

So now, let me ask you, is your Halloween candy a treat or a trick? To me, it sounds like a bunch of chemicals, drugs and genetically altered substances put together in happy, colourful packaging. You know, even pharmaceuticals come with a list of side effects and why wouldn’t they? They are also made with GMO’s and food colouring.

But, [you say] my favourite part about Halloween is the candy. What am I going to do now? Glad you asked. You see, you might not realize this, but you can change all of that. As tempting as it might be to point fingers and blame food manufacturers and authorities for the deteriorating quality of our food, I think it’s time we took a good look at ourselves and realized this would not have been possible without the billions of dollars we’ve handed them each year.

But how could they deceive us like this? A better question would be:

What can I do to make a difference?

Here are a few suggestions:

Buy GMO-free organic treats. Not only are they way tastier and healthier, but that’s how you vote “Yes” for more real food.

Spread the message; share the video with your friends. This way, they won’t think you’re weird and make the switch to healthy snacks too.

Start a local GMO-free Halloween Challenge – because local activist are global heroes.

No matter how you look at the end of the day, you and me, the little guys shopping for treats, are the ultimate rulers.

I’m Daniel Bissonnette; have an awesome Halloween!

 

Vote for a better, cleaner Canada

Portrait of David Suzuki

SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki

•

No matter what anyone says during this long federal election campaign, climate change is the biggest threat to Canadians’ health, security and economy. The scientific evidence is incontrovertible – the research wide-ranging and overwhelming.

Wastefully burning fossil fuels at such a rapid rate is jeopardizing the planet’s life-support systems – harming human health, destroying landscapes and habitat, causing widespread extreme weather events and contributing less to the economy and job-creation than clean energy development. Not only that, our rate of using and exporting these fuels means reserves will be depleted before long. In the meantime, as easily accessible sources run out, fossil fuels have become more difficult, dangerous, expensive and environmentally damaging to exploit.

Canada has a long history of extracting and exporting raw resources to fuel its economy. But that’s no longer a sensible long-term plan, especially with non-renewable resources. It’s incomprehensible that a country with such a diverse, educated, innovative and caring population can’t get beyond this outdated way of doing things. The recent oil price plunge illustrates the folly of putting all our eggs in one fossil fuel basket.

As world leaders prepare for the December UN climate summit in Paris, we need our government to play a responsible, constructive role. Canada has been chastised at previous summits for obstructing progress and working to water down agreements. The summit’s goal is for all the world’s countries to reach a legally binding pact on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions to keep global average temperatures from rising more than 2 C, the threshold beyond which experts and world leaders agree could bring catastrophic consequences.

The consequences are already severe and will get worse if we don’t act. Increasing extreme weather – including heat waves, floods, droughts and storms – puts lives, agriculture and economies at risk. Subsequent conflicts over resources reduce global security and exacerbate refugee problems. Pollution from burning fossil fuels increases heart disease and respiratory illnesses, including asthma. Deep-sea drilling, oil sands mining and mountaintop removal destroy the ecosystems, habitat, wildlife and natural capital upon which our health and survival depend.

Everyone seeking election must get serious about the climate, so no matter which party or parties form government after October 19, Canada will be part of the solution.

Continuing with business as usual will only ensure more extreme weather leading to floods and droughts; negative health impacts, including increases in premature deaths; harm to food production and security; more pipeline, rail and marine accidents; and missed opportunities to diversify the economy.

Although climate change, resource development and infrastructure have been raised in this election, the talking points don’t always match the severity of the problem. It’s up to all of us as voters to question candidates and inform ourselves about the various party platforms before casting ballots – and to make sure all the parties and their candidates listen and make climate change a priority.

Canada is a great country, an example to the world of how people with diverse views, backgrounds and cultures can live well together and take care of each other. We are blessed with spectacular nature, abundant clean water, fertile agricultural land, rich resources, an educated populace, vibrant democratic traditions and strong social programs. But we can’t take any of it for granted. We must protect what we have and strive to be better, to move beyond our outdated ways of thinking and acting.

There are numerous election issues that can’t be ignored, including health, childcare, jobs and the economy, infrastructure, education, international trade and relations and our global responsibility to confront terrorism. Addressing climate change by shifting from the short-term prospects of the polluting fossil fuel economy to a more stable, healthy, green economy would go a long way to reducing health-care costs, creating jobs, diversifying the economy and improving our international reputation.

We have an important choice, as voters and as a country. We can heed the scientists, health-care specialists, religious leaders, politicians, international organizations, business people and citizens around the world who say we no longer have time to lose when it comes to protecting the climate and ourselves. Or we can carry on as if nothing is wrong, and live with the mounting consequences.

Exercising your democratic right as a voter is a critical step.

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Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation senior editor Ian Hanington. Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org

Go on now, eat your water!

by Jeff Rubin

• You might not recognize it when you’re chomping on an ear of corn or tucking into a plate of pasta, but it takes an enormous amount of water to grow what is on your plate. When you’re pondering the inputs that go into producing corn or wheat, it’s likely that seeds, soil or even the land itself come quickly to mind; it’s easy to forget the litres and litres of fresh water required. But we shouldn’t forget, given that agriculture typically accounts for over 70 percent of water usage in most countries.

This overwhelming dependence on the wet stuff means that a desert country like Saudi Arabia has to buy land in places like Ethiopia or Sudan in order to grow its food supply. Back in 1985, Saudi Arabia began an irrigation program with a view to becoming self-sufficient in wheat. Turns out that when you live in a desert and you try to grow your own food, you very quickly suck your aquifers dry of whatever fossil water nature has given you. In 2014, the Saudi government wisely announced that the kingdom was abandoning wheat cultivation.

In distinct contrast to Saudi Arabia, Canada has more water than its agricultural sector can use; by some estimates, farming uses less than 10 percent of the country’s total supply. Canadian food production, however, is limited by climate. If Canada had the growing season of Saudi Arabia, it wouldn’t be the planet’s eighth-largest exporter of food. Instead, it would supplant America as the world’s leading agricultural exporter. Alternatively, if Saudi Arabia had Canada’s water, the desert kingdom could easily look like the Imperial Valley.

If one thinks about agricultural production in these terms, food is actually the embodiment of highly processed water. And if that’s the case, then exporting food is really just a value-added way of exporting H20, in much the same way that exporting petrochemicals is a value-added way to export bitumen. Most of us don’t think of food in those terms – at least not yet – but we will when we start making full use of Canada’s greatest resource.

To get there, we’ll have to overcome some pretty ingrained biases. For most Canadians, the notion of bulk water exports has traditionally been viewed as something akin to the rape of the country’s most treasured resource. These same folk, however, have never been opposed to selling water in the form of wheat, lentils or canola. In fact, both federal and provincial governments have set up all kinds of programs to support farm exports, not the least of which was the creation of the Canadian Wheat Board.

Let’s take a closer look at wheat. It takes a whopping 1,500 litres of water to grow a kilogram of wheat on the Canadian prairies. So when you are exporting wheat, what you’re really doing is exporting processed water. In this sense, at least, the country is already a major water exporter – whether Canadians recognize it or not. In 2010, the country exported 78 billion cubic metres of water in the form of agricultural produce (the water needed to grow it). Based on that figure, Canada is already the third-largest water exporter in the world.

All the right stuff in all the wrong places

It’s really not at all surprising that Canada could benefit from exporting water – in either its straight-up or its value-added form. The country has a heck of a lot of the stuff. Depending on which definition you care to use, Canada has somewhere between seven and 20 percent of the world’s fresh water supply. The higher estimate refers to total fresh water resources, including the water frozen in glaciers and icefields as well as so-called fossil water in lakes and underground aquifers. The lower estimate refers to the country’s far more accessible share of the world’s renewable fresh water that is replenished through precipitation.

By either measure, it’s a lot of water for a country of 35 million – a figure that represents only one half of one percent of the global population of seven billion. In per capita terms, it makes Canada the Saudi Arabia of fresh water. And just as Saudi Arabia is a world leader in oil consumption per capita, Canada racks up an impressive ranking when it comes to how much water each of us sucks up.

All of that water is a good thing, undoubtedly, and in a world where water can be turned into increasingly expensive food, we should be thanking our lucky stars that geography has endowed us with the natural resources we currently possess. But the story is not that simple. The trick with Canadian water (or any water, really) is that it doesn’t always flow to where it is needed, or where it can best be put to use. Consider that more than half of Canada’s water supply drains north, either directly into the Arctic Ocean or into Hudson Bay. The rivers of the Mackenzie basin, for example, dump over 7,000 cubic metres of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean every second – out of reach of more than 85 percent of the country’s population.

A second but no less serious challenge is that Canada, with all of its water, just happens to be located on the other side of an invisible line, one that separates us from the much larger and thirstier American population to the south. Most agriculture in western Canada occurs within a 450-kilometre band north of the forty-ninth parallel. That’s a pretty thin strip of a country that stretches some 4,634 kilometres from north to south. Furthermore, some of that prime agricultural land is water-stressed. Southern Alberta’s South Saskatchewan River basin, for example, holds the province’s most productive land and contains almost all of its two million acres under irrigation. While less than four percent of arable land in Alberta is irrigated, that four percent produces a fifth of the province’s total agricultural output…

Farmers already siphon off no less than 2.2 billion cubic metres every year from the South Saskatchewan River for irrigation, roughly 30 percent of the river’s total flow. As irrigation needs grow, perhaps exponentially, more and more attention is going to be focused on water diversion. Aside from a slice of southeastern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan that is part of the Missouri River basin, all the water flowing across the Prairies heads either to the Arctic or to Hudson Bay. It’s not too hard to figure out where the water to meet tomorrow’s irrigation needs is going to come from. Moving water to booming areas of agricultural production may become as important to tomorrow’s Canadian economy as moving oil is to today’s.

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Cover of the book, the Carbon Bubble - earth in spaceExcerpted 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.]

Steve, it’s time to leave

by Michael Harris

• You can tell a lot about a person by what they believe in.

Cartoon: Stephen Harper raises his hands, clutching the hand of a terrorist in a black mask with a tshirt reading FearMoney, art, Jesus, Bingo – a road map to the soul.

In the case of Stephen Harper, he has built his government and his career on information-control and marketing.   The nerd nobody liked is getting even.  Which is to say, he now edits reality full-time.

As we begin the bumpy descent towards the October election there is only one question to be answered:  can Harper market his way to victory in the most important election in the country’s history?

Most important, yes.  All of the big elections have featured one overriding issue – reciprocity in 1911, conscription in 1917, free-trade in 1988.  In Election 2015, democracy itself is on the line.  The stakes don’t get much higher  – unless you’re talking medical marijuana.

Big changes are coming no matter who wins.  If Harper is returned, Bill C-51 will complete his journey to something so close to dictatorship that the differences will be trifling.  If Thomas Mulcair or Justin Trudeau triumph, the first-past-the-post system will be dead.   The election after this one will be waged under some version of proportional representation, like most enlightened jurisdictions with a continuing interest in democracy.

Harper wearing a crown that looks like a castle, with Richard Nixon peering out from insideUnder the latter scenario, the phenomenon of winning all of the power with 38 percent of the vote will disappear.  Another Stephen Harper will be impossible.  Which is why our Marketer in Chief will wage this election like Attila the Hun armed with rocket propelled grenades.  The country will be knee-deep in the blood of his adversaries by October 19.  But can marketing work a fourth time for the man who thinks reality is what he says it is?

Harper certainly has the money and the media friends.  In his view, no one ever lost many elections underestimating the stupidity of the people.

Just look at what Canadians have already swallowed from this Board of Trade personality with a streak of Caligula somewhere in that taciturn mix:  the empty promise of transparency and accountability; Bill C-51; a feckless war in Iraq; a view of the environment which gave marine life in Prince William Sound a nice coating of oil; and some goofy imitation of trickle-down economics that didn’t work for Ronald Reagan and hasn’t worked for Canadians – unless you drive a Bentley.

As powerful as marketing is, like everything else, it has its limits.  You can’t really talk about the current Conservative Party as a ground up operation the way the old Reform Party was.  Harper has no grassroots, just AstroTurf.

Cartoon: Harper and Trump passing each other, Harper in a red royal robe and trump in a suit covered in dollar signs.Nor does he pass the Kentucky Fried chicken barrel in Calgary basements to raise money anymore.  Why would he?  He now has his very own Republican-style, Political Action Committee tasked with buying the election before the writ drops.  The party is Harper and Harper is the party.  And the record of the Harper party is catching up with this prime minister like a rubber cheque.  Suddenly, the government he leads looks like the Hindenburg coming down sideways.

The PR-as-reality machine has slipped its gears .  Consider the economy.  Aren’t we really better off with Steve, the CPC fondly asks?

Not unless you believe a recession is the fulfillment of the government’s action plan.  Steve of course is denying Stats Canada has it right.

As for balanced budgets, if you go one-for-seven in baseball that puts you on a bus from the bigs to the boonies.  It took Harper seven years to balance his first budget.

Even then it was done with money filched from the EI fund and pudding-headed stock sales.  With the oil industry firing on two cylinders, Harper has worsened things by cutting government spending by exactly .2 percent in the 1Q.  The great economist.  Remember, this was the guy who said there was no recession back in 2008.

Nor can Harper market away the fact that his former parliamentary secretary, Dean del Mastro, was sentenced to jail for cheating in the 2008 election.  “An affront to democracy” the judge observed – a fitting epitaph for the Harper years.

Before that happened and while Deano was under active investigation by Elections Canada, Harper made him the government’s spokesperson for ethics and electoral matters during the Robocalls controversy.  If the New England Patriots need a new ball-deflater, Deano could be their boy. Steve would surely give him a favourable reference, being so big on deflating balls himself – politically speaking.

Maybe the guy who said ‘Peterborough, c’est moi’ in his resignation speech thought cheating was okay.  The Conservatives cheated in 2006 and 2008.  Peter Penashue cheated.  And someone cheated in 2011 using lists of non-supporters from the CPC’s Constituent Information Management System, the party’s computer system.

I wonder who that could have been?  Perhaps the people who had information on “matters of some significance” who wouldn’t talk to investigators from Elections Canada, according to Elections Commissioner Yves Cote.

And how many sailors have to jump ship before you call it a mutiny?  Nearly three dozen non-offering MPs is a sizeable percentage of the whole crew.  When you add in cabinet lunkers like John Baird, Peter MacKay, and James Moore, not to mention small fry like Christian Paradis and Shelley Glover, you have to start wondering about the captain.  After all, these people are professional wind sniffers.  They smell defeat.

Then you toss in the fact that social Conservative MPs have largely left the party, finally realizing that Steve’s commitment to their cause was strategy not philosophy.  He played them like fifty-cent fish.  Like Napoleon, Steve is everyone man’s woman and every woman’s man in the world of Conservative politics.  The question is, does he really believe in anything but information control, marketing, and bossing everyone around?

The terror thing is wearing pretty thin too.  The Harperites mention it six times a day in the House of Commons merely to scare all those people who would happily vote for the resurrected Joe McCarthy if he miraculously appeared on the scene.  And the country is still waiting for this PM to provide the evidence for his bizarre claim that ISIS has “executed and is planning attacks against Canada and Canadians.”  As for his accusation that the criticizing the fight against ISIS is “irresponsible electoral politics”, the last time Harper said something like that was when he was retailing whoppers about the cost of the F-35 stealth fighter jets during a federal election.

Justin Trudeau has it absolutely right on the war in Iraq.  He is not soft on terror.  His critics, including the painfully out of touch panel on the CBC’s Power and Politics, are soft-headed.  Wars on nouns are notoriously unwinnable.  It should be dawning on people by now that when you stand a greater chance of being introduced to the wider life by a lightning strike or a bull moose on the highway.  Since 9/11, nearly twice as many people have been killed by anti-government fanatics than jihadists, according to the New York Times.  ISIS is what you call a manufactured threat.  It is marketing to scare you into perpetuating a government that lives on fear and deception.

The surest sign that Steve the marketing fear-merchant is losing his touch is what just happened in the Senate.  The Conservative-controlled Upper Chamber actually passed a piece of legislation that will erode some of the undemocratic powers that all party leaders have assumed, and which Harper has wantonly abused.  There will be no more kangaroo courts run out of the PMO – and no more victims of this man’s political malevolence like Helena Guergis and Bill Casey.

And how will Stephen Harper market his way out of the revelations of the Mike Duffy trial?  Will the public stand by and watch Duffy scapegoated while the Senate withholds evidence crucial to his defence?  Did the Senate claim parliamentary privilege for its own internal audit into residency issues because that audit shows that if Duffy is guilty of anything it may be “an officially induced error” – legalese for doing what he was told was okay by Senate staff?  Like a lot of other senators did?

Will the trial reveal that Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin were not at the heart of the residency scandal at all, but the PM himself?  Well placed sources say that both Duffy and Wallin asked to be appointed from Ontario and that it was Harper himself who insisted they take their appointments from PEI and Saskatchewan respectively.

Not only did Wright tell the RCMP that Duffy was likely entitled to his living expenses under existing Senate rules, but there are also 880 emails between Duffy’s then lawyer Janice Payne, the Senate leadership and senior staff in the PMO about the deal.

Those emails show clearly that the genesis of the repayment scenario was PMO-driven and known at the highest levels of the office – contrary to Steve’s confabulations.  That means there will be no closet dark enough to hide the prime minister.  In what will surely be Canada’s Rubicon election, not even the Merchant of Marketing can fool all of the people all of the time.

The Temple of Abstraction

by Geoff Olsen

• In the splendid 2015 Pixar film, Inside Out, the characters Joy and Sadness momentarily get trapped inside Abstract Thought, a building complex inside the mind of 11-year-old Riley Anderson. The panicking pair break down into blocky Picasso-like structures, and are reduced to simple geometric forms before a narrow escape pops them back into shape.

pyramids made from US dollar billsAbstract thinking has allowed human beings to make great discoveries, amazing machines, and astounding works of imagination – including computer-generated films like Inside Out.

Human beings, born utterly defenceless at birth, are the ultimate generalists. What we lack in biological specialization, we make up for in scientific specialization. We have become the Earth’s apex species through abstraction.

The base-10 mathematical system was abstracted from human hands, and “slipped from the fingers that described it, becoming applicable to anything… Substituting numbers for objects changed the world, for better or worse,” notes Daniel Tammet in his 2013 book, Thinking in Numbers.

Through observing and measuring, generations of scientists tore apart the claustrophobic heavens of medieval scholastics to reveal an unimaginably immense cosmos of great age. They discovered shape-shifting entities in the microworld – as bizarre as anything from the world of myth – and made them dance through logic gates in our consumer electronic devices.

In modern times, money is so thoroughly abstracted from any real-world referents – including precious metals that theoretically back its worth – that commercial banks regularly create electronic credit through mere keystrokes. And on the world’s stock exchanges, algorithms perform trades in microseconds, with valuation represented by a ghostly stream of electrons.

The word “abstract” is of Middle English origin, derived from Latin abstractus, literally meaning “drawn away.” It has a secondary meaning of “extract, isolate, separate, detach.” Is it any surprise that the nations of the industrialized west are now populated with abstracted, isolated workers hooked on antidepressants and electronic distractions? (Distract is a close etymological relative to abstract, from the Latin distract – “drawn apart.”)

“What is abstraction?” asks Adbusters publisher Kalle Lasn in his 2006 cinderblock of a book, Design Anarchy:

“The utopian realm of pure form
Universality of expression, of emotion, of thought
The hue of infinity
A glimpse into the spiritual structure of nature itself
The culmination of thousands of years
of human aesthetics

A fear of death
The loss of empathy
An escape from nature
A form of ecocide through wilful ignorance
The incestuous victory of the single-minded logic freak
The fatal flaw of Western civilization…”

All of the above, perhaps? Writing by the Yellow River in 1895, French philosopher Paul Valéry recorded an imaginary dialogue with an Eastern sage.

“You have neither the patience that weaves long lines nor a feeling for the irregular, nor a sense of the fittest place for a thing…For you intelligence is not one thing among many. You…worship it as if it were an omnipotent beast…You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.”

If there can be said to be a global fundamentalist religion in today’s world – and I think of fundamentalist religion as a body of superstitious beliefs safeguarded by emotional resistance – then it would be popular idea of science as the final guide to truth and progress.

Consider “big data” and its supposed promise of liberating human beings through numbers harvested from computers. The faithful believe that identifying previously unseen patterns in this Himalayan range of bytes will translate into greater health and prosperity for consumers, even while such quantification offers darker possibilities for the surveillance state.

I call it the ‘Temple of Abstraction.’ And as with all churches, membership has its privileges for those who have drunk the communion wine.

Consider, for example, the recent projections of the economic ‘worth’ of ecological services performed by the environment. Economists believe they can put a dollar number on watersheds, bogs, rivers and forests. The financial value of water filtration, pollination, the breakdown of vegetable matter into soil – pretty much anything nature does that benefits human beings – can be valued in millions to trillions of dollars, depending on the area and service examined.

These econometric studies might as well be elaborate jokes told by a drunken prof in a university pub. It’s the economy that is embedded in ecosystems, not the other way around. Such studies indicate how far we have become “isolated, separated, and detached” from the wilderness within and without.

On the charitable side, you could read this as progress of sorts, a retreat from interpreting nature as an easily ignorable “externality,” as defined by classical economists. Yet the ultimate value of the biosphere is literally incalculable – and this is without taking into consideration that other living creatures have the right to exist in and of themselves. The idea that the natural world might have a non-monetary value in which our needs are not factored is neither quantified nor quantifiable. It’s a concept that lies outside of the hairless ape’s numeracy and parochial ethics.

The assumption that science is a value-free guide into a rational future is just as questionable, as author Derrick Jensen observed in his book Dreams:

“The notion that science makes no ethical or moral claims is absurd, I’m surprised otherwise intelligent people so often accept this. First, the precepts of science – including the notion that universe is mechanistic, and including the emphasis placed on repeatability (which follows from and reinforces the notion that the universe is mechanistic, or not a wilful decision maker, or not filled with wilful decision-makers) – carry with them extraordinary moral weight, in that they lead to certain behaviours that carry with them moral consequences.”

In ancient world views, the world is alive with “wilful subjects with whom you can enter into relationships,” the author notes. But regarding these subjects as objects – that is, resources, cogs in the cosmic machinery, or lumps on insensate matter – doesn’t just make a pattern of exploitation and collapse possible, but inevitable.

“It’s easier to kill a number than an individual, whether we’re talking about so many tons of fish, so many board feet of timber, or so many boxcars of untermenschen,” Jensen concludes.

Abstract thinking has brought immense technical blessings to human beings, extending our lifespans through medicine and sanitation, while pushing the biosphere to its limits. It has allowed our technocratic priesthood to build and destroy with greater skill and at greater scales. As British novelist Aldous Huxley once observed, “Applied science is a conjuror, whose bottomless hat yields impartially the softest of Angora rabbits and the most petrifying of Medusas.”

But expect no commissions of enquiry, no truth and reconciliation reports, on the darker side of our ability to name and number, to sow and reap, and to give or take life. The scripture of the ‘Temple of Abstraction’ is embedded in textbooks, newspapers, television news, annual company reports – and hidden in plain sight in our hearts and minds.

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www.geoffolson.com