Hey! It’s Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day!

But not just that.

Let’s make an effort to get out of our seats stuck staring at these screens. The screens are a long, long way from the earth.

We remember the earth, don’t we?  It’s where we came from hundreds of thousands of years ago. It’s where we will return to at the end. It’s waiting for us in lazy lagoons, budding maples and breeze-kissed hilltops.  Let’s take an umbrella in case it rains, wear layers; get it while it’s still there.

We can bring our photos back to the screens as a reminder we are still alive!

B.C.’s chief medical officer joins call to legalize pot; ‘It should be regulated’ -kpemberton@vancouversun.com

The photographs by Garth Lenz of what the tarsands are doing to our Boreal forest should make you cry. Maybe they will make you say STOP IT, NOW!
SocialDocumentary.net | Garth Lenz | Canada\’s Tar Sands and the True Cost of Oil | Canada

This is the way great moments in history begin.  This is the way great changes take place.  An awareness that something is wrong; that there is a need for immediate change.  That the status quo is unacceptable.

The corporate agenda does not include most of us except as fodder.  We are tired of being fed to that agenda.  We demand a better equity.

I recently bought a book titled ‘Vancouver Then and Now’.  As the title suggests, it’s a  look at Vancouver past and present; a juxtaposing of images from then and now.  I opened it to a double page frontispiece.  It’s a painting; an aerial view looking east over Stanley Park to Vancouver and the North Shore mountains beyond as it would have appeared in 1792 .  It depicts Captain George Vancouver’s ships anchored in English Bay.

                                     c Chuck Davis/Jim Mackenzie

The painting stopped me cold.  The whole of the landmass was covered in forest as far as the eye could see and the only sign of human activity was a few tiny clearings with just a hint of whispy smoke from longhouse fires at the extreme edge of this vast forest.

It was Vancouver barely touched by humans and although I had always been vaguely  aware that this was the way the city looked before Europeans,  I had never seen such an evocative presentation.  The full colour double page plate took my breath away.  And it took my mind away to a different time;  a different reality.  It woke me up.

Then, when I turned the page, I found another two-page full colour image;  a photograph of Vancouver now taken from the same angle as the painting from 1792.  I found myself flipping back and forth between the two depictions, letting my mind play with the wonder of  the striking differences between those two worlds.

c Chuck Davis/John McQuarrie

In these days of  downloads and e-readers I sincerely doubt that the cramped and colour-challenged e-reader screen would have left me so utterly  breathless.

Yesterday found me in a church in North Vancouver huddled with a group of devastated family and friends celebrating the life of a young man of 23 who battled cancer since 11 and finally lost.    We clung to the words of those closest to him, buoyed by the music he loved and tried desperately to find meaning in senseless tragedy.

Today I find myself inexplicably drawn to a glass of philodendron cuttings on my kitchen window sill.  In an hour I have filled pots with soil, planted the newly rooted branches and set them in the sun.

Help create a new national park!

A fragile “pocket desert” in British Columbia needs protection. You can help!

Please add your voice now to create a national park in the South Okanagan-Similkameen. This sensitive landscape is one of the most endangered in Canada. Developers are “paving this paradise” at a rapid rate.

This park is urgent! The B.C government is stalling.

We need to save some of these rolling hills and delicate grasslands before it’s too late. Please e-mail a letter today. It’s easy!

So if the figures I’m seeing are correct the Conservative  Bill S-10 will cost between 10 and 13 billion dollars.  The F35 fighter jet will cost around 16 billion dollars. The grand total will be between 26 and 29 billion dollars.

In these trying economic times I would think that such a large sum of money might be useful in better ways than pissing it away on prisons and planes we do not need.

Give it some thought and then get out and vote.  Canada needs a vote of sanity!

Just in time for the federal election here’s an update on the Harper Government Follies:

Re the purchase of F35 Fighter Jets:

“The memorandum of understanding Canada has signed . . . pretends $9 billion will buy 65 planes -about $70 million per aircraft,”  “Hogwash!” says Winslow Wheeler, a US military expert.  He stated the cost will actually be more than double that or $155 million per aircraft.

So not only is the Harper Government promising to buy 65 planes we don’t need, it’s underestimating the cost by OVER ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!!.  You’ll have to pardon my confusion for thinking  Harper’s economist background might be good for Canada in economic matters.

Neil Boyd, professor of criminology and Associate Director of the Criminology Program at Simon Fraser University has spoken out about the Harper government’s latest criminal code changes.

In an article in The Vancover Sun July 5, he questions both the motives and the rationality of the proposed changes.

“In these days of public sector restraint, there is one realm of waste that is often neglected -the planned and pointless expenditure of billions of tax dollars on new provincial and federal prisons, the consequence of a series of Conservative crime bills.

Never mind that Canada already is a global leader in rates of incarceration, far ahead of almost all of the nation states of Western Europe -and, perhaps paradoxically, Canada typically has higher rates of crime.

The more interesting and relevant finding from recent research is that rates of imprisonment and rates of crime are not related in any systematic way, from one nation state to the next.

What is significant, however, is the relationship between confidence in the political and justice systems of a country and rates of imprisonment. Polls consistently demonstrate that nation states with the lowest rates of imprisonment also have citizens who have the highest levels of confidence in their political systems and their justice systems.”

Boyd  goes on to question the Conservative government’s rather obvious disregard for scientific research into the roots and remedies of crime.

“As one contemplates the lack of science in virtually every crime bill dutifully trotted out in Parliament by the Harper Conservatives, one is tempted to either laugh or cry.

It’s easy to dismiss them as ideologically driven fools (and there is certainly a wealth of evidence in support of such a proposition), but I think we have a deeper problem -a fundamental lack of belief in the tenets of science.

Consider the recent legislative initiative regarding mandatory minimum sentences for any person who grows more than six marijuana plants.

Does it make sense to spend billions of our tax dollars putting the producers of a relatively benign mind-active drug in jail, at the same time that the executives of tobacco and alcohol companies are regarded as contributing corporate citizens?”

Does it, indeed?

So there you have it kiddies.  Before you vote, think on these things.