The proposed project would involve building 17 separate dams and river diversions, over 440 km of power lines, over 250 km of roads and over 100 bridges.

This forum will feature Professor Michael M'Gonigle, George Heyman of Sierra Club, Joe Foy and Gwen Barley of the Wilderness Committee, Aaron  Hill of Watershed Watch Salmon Society, and a spectacular slideshow from Friends of Bute Inlet.

The event is taking place at the University of Victoria Social Science and Math Building, Room A120 from 7:00-9:00 pm.

Please help us spread the word by forwarding this email, inviting your friends to attend the Facebook event, or helping put up posters.

Thanks!

Tria Donaldson | Vancouver Island Outreach Coordinator
Wilderness Committee  

The Pentagon Church Militant and Us

When it comes to our nation’s military affairs, ignorance is not bliss.  What’s remarkable then, given the permanent state of war in which we find ourselves, is how many Americans seem content not to know.

    There are many reasons for this state of affairs.  Our civilian leaders encourage us to be deferential toward our latest commander/savior, whether Tommy Franks in 2003, David Petraeus in 2007, or Stanley McChrystal in 2010.  Our media employs retired officers, most of them multi-starred generals, in a search for expertise that ends in an unconditional surrender to military agendas.  A cloud of secrecy and “black budgets” combine to obscure military matters, ranging from global strategy to war goals to weapons procurement.  The taxpayer, forced to pony up about one trillion dollars yearly to fund our military, national security infrastructure, and wars, is sent a simple message: stay clear and leave it to the experts in uniform.

    The powerlessness of ordinary Americans in military matters is no accident.  Recall the one-word reply -- “So?” -- Dick Cheney offered in March 2008, when asked to comment on popular opposition to the war in Iraq.  The former vice president was certainly far blunter than Washington usually is, and for that we may owe him a measure of thanks.  By highlighting the arrogant dismissiveness of Washington’s warrior-elite when it comes to American public opinion, he revealed more than he intended.

The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke to Toufic Haddad, journalist and author of Between the Lines: Israel the Palestinians, and the U.S. "war on terror" about the real reason for these protests. Haddad explains that Israeli colonization over East Jerusalem led to home demolitions, confiscations, and the flourishing of settlements all over the Palestinian Territories. Because these protests are supported by the government, Palestinian protests are systemically repressed, leading to mass arrests, injuries, and sometimes death. Alternative tactics, such as undercover police often lead to the tensions which are expected to rise as the Jerusalem Municipal Police approved another right-wing settler protest for Sunday through the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

 

by Chris Floyd   
Kucinich drops opposition to health-care bill (Washington Post).

Well, so much for conscience. The other day here, we had kind words for the stand taken by Dennis Kucinich against the boardroom-backroom boondoggle known as the health care bill. The main thrust of that post was not meant to be the innate wonderfulness of St. Dennis but the hypocrisy of the "Fightin' Progressives," such as Commander Kos and Alex Koppelman, who had launched a vituperative attack on Kucinich for daring to oppose the bill -- a measure which not only represents a complete and craven surrender of even the smallest crumbs of the progressives' original hopes for health care reform, but was also fatally tainted by the brazen bribe Obama took from the gorging, gouging drug and insurance cartels to make sure their destructive sway over American health care remains unbroken.

Still, I admit I was pleasantly surprised to see Kucinich stand up against the health care bill, apparently on principle, especially as he was also sponsoring a bill to end the Afghanistan War at the same time. (I realize the latter was a wholly symbolic act -- then again, all acts are symbolic to one degree or another; that is, they symbolize the moral stance behind the act, whether it is effective or not. Thus, "savvy" compromises on, say, appropriations for the Terror War or detainee policy or illegal surveillance symbolize an underlying acceptance of atrocity, tyranny and war crime.)

But I suspected the fix was in when I saw reports that Kucinich was flying with Obama for a presidential appearance in Ohio. There was little or no chance that Kucinich would have been engaged in such high-profile hitchhiking if he was not already in the bag for Barack.

What White People Fear
(from Spring 2010 issue of YES! Magazine)
by Robert Jensen
In the struggle for racial justice, it’s time to pay more attention to the fears of white people.

In a white-dominated world, that may seem counter-intuitive. In the racial arena, what do we white people have to be afraid of?

There are lots of things to fear in this world, of course; race is not the only aspect of life in which people face injustice and inequality. A majority of people of all colors (including working-class and poor whites) struggles economically in a predatory corporate capitalist system, and all women, regardless of race, cope with gender discrimination and the threat of sexual violence in a male-dominated world.

Kucinich and the Media
by David Swanson
When I worked for Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign in 2003, he routinely won the most applause at debates but was minimized or entirely left out of the next day's stories in the corporate media. This meant that peace, and fair trade, and single-payer healthcare were left out too. At one debate at the University of New Hampshire, Kucinich pushed back.

Ted Koppel of ABC opened the debate with questions about endorsements. The second round of questions was about standing in the polls. The third was about the campaigns' bank accounts. One had to wonder when, if ever, the debate would touch on, you know, what the candidates intended to do if elected. Kucinich cut Koppel off, saying:

"I want the American people to see where media takes politics in this country. We start talking about endorsements, now we're talking about polls and then talking about money. When you do that you don't have to talk about what's important to the American people."

The applause for this was so intense that the other candidates on the stage started joining in the media bashing. Kucinich had briefly changed the narrative from a horse race to a demand for decent political reporting.

In the wee hours of the morning on March 17th, the Black Fly Brigade carried out its first ever direct action, targeting the British Columbia Ministry Of Housing And Social Development, the government agency responsible for overseeing Income Assistance & Persons With Disabilities (PWD) programs.

 

The humble and terrible Black Fly

 

The Ministry office at the corner of Pandora & Quadra was tagged with messages in 15 spots - on doors, windows, walls and sidewalks - with messages such as "Stop The Cuts" and "Fuck Rich Coleman" (the fat pig Minister).

 

This act of resistance is in protest of the Liberal government's criminal contempt for the poor, its outrageously punitive cuts to health benefits for PWD clients, and its elimination of the basic shelter minimum for Income Assistance clients between the ages of 59 and 64.

 

The cuts were described as "cruel, wasteful and petty" by Victoria Times-Colonist columnist Paul Willcocks in his excellent March 10th opinion piece: http://tinyurl.com/y8nywkm
 
The spray-painted messages will be seen by both Ministry workers and Income Assistance clients when the offices open at 8:00am this morning, and it will hopefully spark more acts of resistance, from outside and inside, against the Liberal governments' class war on BC's poorest and most vulnerable citizens.