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“Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened…but do not be silenced”….Bertrand Russell
Dialogue’s e-mail newsletter is produced by Maurice King, volunteer publisher of the not-for-profit Dialogue Magazine. Send your letter and comments to: Maurice King
Deadline for the next issue of Dialogue Magazine:
The June-July Issue of the print magazine was mailed out during the last week of May. Just a reminder from Janet that the deadline for the next (August-Sept.) issue of Dialogue magazine is July 15th 2008. If you have any letters, stories, essays, poetry, cartoons or photos for the coming issue, please e-mail to: •••@••.•••
Thank you!
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In Dialogue Magazine, readers discuss and review many interesting books.
You can order them from Amazon.ca through the Dialogue website and thereby help support the magazine (at no extra cost to you!)
Take a look in our
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Canadian Action Party
We take this opportunity to thank Connie for her tremendous contributuions to the effort to awaken Canadians to the threats to Canadian sovereignty.
| Memo from Connie Fogal, Leader, Canadian Action Party.
Connie Fogal
May 6, 2008
I write to give you notice that I plan to step down as leader effective the date of our convention which we will be holding either in August or September of 2008. This means that the convention will include a leadership contest.
It is time for new blood at the helm. I have accomplished the task necessary when I became leader in 2004, which was to re-establish the party.
Under the courageous leadership of our founding leader, Paul Hellyer, every effort was made to unite a number of parties to present one unified front to the voters. That was a correct political effort then, but the valiant efforts were to no avail, and resulted in a weakened CAP organization. Despite that fact, the members at the 2004 convention voted to keep CAP functioning. I was put into the leadership and given that job.
Head office moved from Toronto to Vancouver. Everything had to be reorganized- from bank accounts, to office space, to bookkeepers, of satisfying new Elections Canada requirements to prove that enough of our members wanted CAP to continue to exist. Funding rules had changed eliminating benefactors and at the same time not allowing the small parties to be paid out of taxpayer dollar. There was no money to pay any staff or to fund anything. All the reorganization was done voluntarily. There was no money to assist the leader or the
executive to do its work.
With the determination of the membership, the party has survived all odds. It is the few generous ones who contribute the maximum allowed, and the many absolutely crucial small contributions that sustain us. The legal challenge to the financial discrimination that deprives the small parties from receiving the $1.75 per vote was lost. We and the other small parties are stuck fighting our way alone. The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear our appeal.
The most important success over the last four years is the
development of a top notch operations function such that our computer systems, our website, our entire communications system is highly secure and effective. This did not come easily. Indeed, it was with great difficulty, frustration, agony, and effort. New people to the scene have great difficulty grasping the system or accepting the need for its complexity. I ran a tight ship. It is that great communication system that now brings in some money daily and permits us to hire one full time staff person and some part timers to do the growing work, without which we could not function nor survive.
It is only in the last year and a half that our operations became sophisticated enough and developed enough to permit me, the leader, to get out and about to function more fully as the leader. My presence on the internet, on U-tube, on many radio programs, and especially on the circuit of those of the USA escalated the profile of CAP policies with significant success.
I believe the road is now well paved for whomever takes over as leader provided the operations remains intact. This small brave party is very special and requires very careful steering. There is no room for egos or power mongering. There is no money to coddle the leader or the leaders’s work. Whoever takes over will be a special person.
You will be pleased to learn that we have acquired very many,very capable special persons well able to lead this very special party.
CAP has always been way out in front leading in the dissemination of ideas and information that no one else will touch. We have many brave souls capable of carrying that torch. By this letter I am asking those stalwart leaders to come forward to stand for leader of CAP and let the membership choose from amongst you at our convention
this late summer or early fall.
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For complete article
End of Public Power in BC?
BC woos private power firms.
That’s where the Liberals are taking Hydro.
By Rafe Mair
Published: May 12, 2008
The B.C. government has blessed the proposal by the BC Transmission Corporation to put up transmission lines that Delta residents believe, based upon solid evidence, will pose a severe safety hazard in residential areas.
What is the BC Transmission Corporation? It is the spin-off from BC Hydro that the Campbell government spawned as part of the increasingly obvious plan to privatize BC Hydro.
The irony here is that the Tsawwassen victims of BCTC transmission lines are financing their own poison as their government feeds those lines by giving away their rivers and streams to private companies who alter their flows to generate power. Those companies then make a killing selling this power to BC Hydro and sending it over the heads of and into the bodies of the people of Tsawwassen!
What on earth can be in it for the Campbell government that they would take the risk of exposing citizens to serious health risks? Could it be for campaign funds from grateful corporate supporters or for right wing philosophical reasons?
Profits used to go to citizens
The Campbell government is issuing water licenses for privately owned power plants on rivers and streams all over B.C., creating power. BC Hydro is compelled by the Campbell government to buy this power at a price that will bring enormous profits for the private producers.
Before the Campbell government took over, BC Hydro, a Crown corporation, produced and distributed 90 per cent of our power requirements, giving B.C. homeowners and industries the lowest power costs in North America.
When BC Hydro made money it went to the government as dividends providing money for schools, hospitals and the like. Under the Campbell government plan, we will pay amongst the highest costs in North America and all the profits will go to shareholders, most of whom don’t even live here. Not only is this a license to print money, but the rivers and streams will be badly abused, fish will be at great risk, roads will be built and transmission lines erected and the wilderness will no longer be a wilderness.
These private companies aren’t competing in the market place — they are private monopolies on the dole, big time, from taxpayers’ money
Why would the Campbell government want to drive up the cost of electricity, give away taxpayer money to (mostly) huge private companies and desecrate the environment at the same time? Is it for campaign funds from grateful corporate supporters or for right wing philosophical reasons, or both?
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For complete policies
Refederation Party of BC Calls for changes in the Canadian Federation.
From the party’s recently developed policies entitled “Refed’s policy for governing BC democratically.”
The Party says it intends “to bring about major changes in the existing political system in BC, in order to benefit British Columbians. To do this requires a dual policy – one for provincial issues and one for federal issues.
BC Refed’s provincial policies can be carried out, if approved by the BC electorate, within the province.
But BC Refed’s policies on central government issues require not only the support of BC voters, but also negotiations with the central government, due to shared jurisdictions set out in the BNA Act.
Note that the BNA Act forms part of the statute called the Constitution Act, 1982. Ottawa claims this Constitution Act 1982 as its authority to rule Canada (but a statute is not a constitution, so the central government lawfully has no constitutional authority to pass statutes, including the Constitution Act 1982).
BC Refed policies in areas of provincial jurisdiction
The main thrust of BC Refed’s provincial policies is to provide good governance for the general welfare, with an emphasis on a sustainable economy.
All actions of a BC Refed government in Victoria will be subject to voter approval through a simple mechanism to ensure voter control of government between elections.
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Maurice. I am sending you a quote from The URSULA FRANKLIN READER: PACIFISM AS A MAP by Ursula Franklin (2006) taken from page 27.
In my opinion, the quote captures what is being ‘done to us.’ It explains not only the actions of the federal Harper’s but also the provincial Campbell’s governments.
I personally have been trying to figure out the context within which I see Canada rapidly going down the drain, contrary to what I believe Canadians want. This three paragraph quote from Franklin’s book, provides this context which explains the actions of our governments. Some of the readers of your next News from Dialogue would appreciate the quote below. I hope it generates a lot of discussion to help expand our awareness of how our governments have been coopted to act against the public interests and the common good.
Quote from The URSULA FRANKLIN READER: PACIFISM AS A MAP by Ursula Franklin (2006) taken from page 27.
Far from having good government, we have puppet governments that function like those of the Nazi-0ccupied countries of Europe, serving the Empire of the Marketeers.
With no peace dividend after the end of the Cold War, and no end to global conflicts, the mechanism of war was “transposed into another key,” from a military conflict to a commercial conflict, an economic war for economic dominance. In this war the enemy is “us,” those people and organizations that oppose the corporate takeover of global institutions. The goal of the new war is control of “the commons,” and its strategy is called “privatization,” dismantling the public sphere and occupying its territory, opening up for profit all those activities previously thought of as commons – culture, health care and education.
We are occupied by the marketers, as Nazi-dominated European countries were occupied during World War II; and like these countries we have a puppet government in place to run the country for the benefit of the occupiers. We need to respond by protecting our families and communities, and seeking strategies of resistance to this occupation. We need to work for global justice “not because it gives us a competitive edge, but because it is right.”
Read more about Ursula Franklin
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URSULA FRANKLIN READER: PACIFISM AS A MAP
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Click here to send Ken an e-mail
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INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC OF WESTERN CANADA
Ken Kellington
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
A minority of French Canadians in Ottawa and other
parts of Ontario, who are bilingual in French and
English are working to achieve their goal of a
bilingual nation at the expense of the rights and
freedoms of the majority of English speaking
Canadians.
Western Canadians have for decades been working,
without success, to achieve an effective voice in a
parliamentary system of government, that is controlled
by Quebec and Ontario.
The Official Languages Act of 1969, created even greater divisions between Central Canada and Western Canada, where less than five percent of the population are bilingual in French and English.
These actions in the City of Ottawa that strip the rights and freedoms of a majority of English speaking citizens to achieve a politician’s dream that we were a bilingual nation, have given many Western Canadians greater urgency to work to becomming a Free and independent Republic of Western Canada.
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Click here to read more of Rex
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Deep down, the front bench is shallow
REX MURPHY
Commentator with The National and host of CBC Radio’s Cross-Country Checkup.
Scandal is the adrenalin of politics. There is nothing that quite so fires the partisan blood as the spectacle of the other party caught with its pants down. And that, both metaphorically and otherwise, is what we have had this week.
So we can only estimate the glee of the opposition parties on Parliament Hill when Maxime Bernier managed to wed carelessness over an official document to his combustible relationship with Julie Couillard, the pneumatic siren who apparently robbed Mr. Bernier of whatever sense of caution or maturity he may feebly claim to possess. Throw in the atmospherics of Ms. Couillard’s past associations with the Hells Angels just for colour, and what we have seen on the Hill for most is a reality that outstrips the wildest dreams of an opposition mind at its most permissive.
This is a scandal that sparkles; it’s in a league of its own. You could tell that we were in truly fresh territory here when veteran press gallery observers had to reach back to the dim mists of the last century and the Gerda Munsinger affair to find anything of like parallel. The Munsinger story is so grey and mouldy it has museum dust on it I pay him the ultimate compliment when I say that if the Bernier affair had happened in the United States they would have finished casting the Movie of the Week already, and Pamela Anderson (with a change of hair colour) would be looking at a personal renaissance as the very obvious choice to play the buoyant Ms. Couillard.
Stephen Harper must be furious. And that must be a phenomenon in itself. He will have noticed that as gasoline prices per litre reach something of an equivalence with platinum by the pound no one has been talking about Stéphane Dion’s carbon tax this week. Whatever slender thread of an agenda the Conservatives could claim to have left has been blasted by the thunderstorm of the opposition’s operatic denunciations.
I know there are serious matters at stake here – the documents left to mildew for five weeks, a foreign affairs minister sharing an orbit, whether tenuously or not, with a biker gang. But I suspect what really hurts the government, and drives Mr. Harper’s formidable fury is that the whole mess is, finally, so silly. We may mutter on as much as we please about “state secrets” or “grave harm to our allies” and all that, but really this whole business is foolish.
It is silly, and “silly” is the one characteristic we never thought to drape over the Harper administration. But it projects something even more deadly for the Prime Minister. It shows how alone he is. Alone in this sense: that once you get past the picture of the Prime Minister himself, his obvious intelligence and capacity, and raise the question of who on his front bench is his equal or near equal, the answer is no one.
And how is this point best illustrated? Well, not the least of the ironies that dance in their legion around l’affaire Bernier is that, when Mr. Harper looked to find an immediate stand-in, he went to … David Emerson. That’s correct, the very man who on the night of his election victory in Vancouver as a Liberal so splendidly pledged to be, and I quote, “Stephen Harper’s worst nightmare.”
And when now Mr. Harper is caught, truly caught, in a monumental pickle and casts about for a rescue, who is the only adult in the room? The answer is the no-nonsense, high-achieving businessman, first recruited by Paul Martin, who was so explosively sworn into the Harper cabinet bare weeks after uttering that impeccable taunt I just quoted. All the depth on the Conservative front bench is contained in the person of a man elected as a Grit.
Most of the other early meteors in the Harper heavens have had their brief flare, spluttered and fallen to earth. Rona Ambrose, effectively departed the spotlight. John Baird, for a while, seemed to offer (outside the House) something resembling a warm human temperament in conjunction with a streak of competence. Since wandering into Environment however – he replaced the afore-mentioned Ms. Ambrose – Mr. Baird’s lustre has dimmed. The Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, earns most of his headlines pummelling the Premier of Ontario, the very province in which the Conservatives most need new support. Mr. Flaherty is a brilliant kamikaze pilot – a vote getter he is not.
This is what the Bernier affair graphically signals to the Canadian public – the lack of charisma, talent, judgment, or simple maturity in the Harper front bench. And unlike all the other semi-scandals that have distracted us this last while, this one – for all its silliness and folly – signals an ominous message. The Harper government is, more or less, just Stephen Harper.
Well, to be fair – Stephen Harper and David Emerson. A genetic Conservative and a competent Liberal – the Harper team.
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NORTHCOM, Canada Command release fraction of new Canada-U.S. military pact
US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) has posted portions of a Civil Assistance Plan, signed with Canada Command on February 14, to its website, although it appears to be missing as many as 23 annexes – there is reference to an Annex W – that are still classified. (more…)
Life, Liberty, Water: An article in Yes! Magazine by Maude Barlow
As climate change and worldwide shortages loom, will people fight over water or join together to protect it? A global water justice movement is demanding a change in international law to settle once and for all the question of who controls water. (more…)
Canada ducks for cover on copyright; plans to sign ACTA without parliamentary approval Canada is under significant pressure from the U.S. government and the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), among other business groups, to reform its copyright legislation. International documents leaked to the press last week indicate that the Harper government is preparing to sidestep Parliament by signing a NAFTA-like international treaty that would radically change what types of currently legal activity will be cracked down on and by whom. (more…)
For more information on the SPP, please visit
www.IntegrateThis.ca.
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SPP Watch
SPP WATCH makes the links between daily news items, new government initiatives and the ongoing Security and Prosperity Partnership talks between Canada, Mexico and the United States. As well as regular SPP updates, we will continue to post new reports, interviews and multimedia presentations critical of what is sometimes called the “deep integration” of North America. The site is updated regularly so visit often.
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Dialogue magazine is now in its 22nd year of non-profit publication, dedicated to providing you with a print magazine not beholden to corporate advertising and thus allowing Canada’s Independent Voices an opportunity to be read without censorship.
Thank you for your continued subscriptions, donations and participation.
Sincerely,
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Maurice King (Volunteer Publisher)
Dialogue Magazine. |
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