Pacific Free Press was launched in March 2007 by Dutch-Canadian Richard
Kastelein of V.O.F. Expathos, in the Netherlands along with Chris Cook- CFUV radio journalist and Editor in Chief of Pacific Free Press. Cook is based in , Victoria, British Columbia.
The mission of Pacific Free Press is simple: to dig out nuggets of truth from
the slag-heap of lies, ignorance and witless diversion that has buried
public discourse today. Pacific Free Press provides a new venue for
disseminating hard news and insightful, fact-based analysis of the
harsh realities too often ignored or distorted by the mainstream press.
The Road that No-One Wanted; The Road that Never Should Have Been
by 'T Soeur I write this as the grand arbutus forests are crashing down the steep slopes all around us. It is Langford. In the midst of self-proclaiming "Mass Wasting" (just a development strategy - a style) one lost ravine, almost a canyon, deserves mention.
"The Powers that Be" once again acted in defiance of the wishes of long-standing residents along this "so-called" roadway just off Florence Lake Road. Many have lived there for decades on the shores of Florence Lake. And, they clearly expressed their opposition to development; to roads and driveways, and to wide paved cement "trails" in the ravine just behind them and immediately adjacent to their properties.
2. The War Is Stupid (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : Aaron B. Pryor
by Aaron B. Pryor
A few years ago, I felt that I needed a simple phrase that would distill everything I needed to know about the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States into one simple sentence. The phrase came to me as if it dropped out of the sky and bonked me in the noggin.
The war is stupid.
It is. Every piece of it, any piece of it, the very idea of it, its aims, its implementation, its offered justifications, its every single solitary failure, stupid is, stupid does, stupid.
In discussing Iraq, I often find myself quoting a little movie that made a bit of a stir in 1983, "War Games," a film that was likely the beginning of my unexplainable crush on Ally Sheedy, a film where the mega-computer Joshua about to end the world concludes prophetically that the only winning move is not to play. This is indeed the case regarding Iraq. Every time I hear a Republigoat whine that the Democrats don't have any good answers, my reply is that it's because there are no good answers, because the only good answer was used up in March 2003, the one where we don't invade Iraq.
On October 17th, with Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, and Donald Rumsfeld standing behind him, George W. Bush solemnly announced, “in memory of the victims of September 11th, it is my honor to sign the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law.”
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
“In memory of the victims of September 11th,” Bush passed a law that Robyn Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times calls “an obscenity against liberty and decency” and that the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) calls “unconstitutional and un-American.” A fitting tribute indeed for the victims whose names have been manipulated by this administration to justify everything from invading Iraq, to the USA PATRIOT Act, to torture, to tax cuts. This “honor” to the victims of September 11th is a national disgrace for which the Bush administration, both houses of Congress, and the media are to blame.
While the White House struggles to convince the nation that the MCA is perfectly legal and essential in order for the CIA to continue “one of the most successful intelligence efforts in American history,” the true implications of this act must be made clear. Out of the many dubious clauses in the act, the most egregious is the one that eliminates the writ of habeas corpus (the right to challenge the legality of one’s imprisonment), a fundamental right that dates back to the Magna Carta. In his First Inaugural Address in 1801, Thomas Jefferson said, “Freedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus I deem [one of the] essential principles of our government." Ironically, the Supreme Court case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that Bush’s original military tribunals were illegal and made the Congressionally approved MCA necessary, would never have occurred if the MCA had been in effect, as it was petitioned by a detainee.
Of the many atrocities and crimes committed by the United States in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, the military’s use of Agent Orange has left the most destructive legacy, resulting in the ongoing suffering of Vietnamese citizens and U.S. veterans. This is what was done.
“…This is the crime of which I accuse my country…and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it…But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”
James Baldwin, Letter to my Nephew on the 100th Anniversary of the Emancipation
War is Hell, but, for many, so is the aftermath, the ensuing “peace” that emerges out of war’s dust and ashes. Long after the last bullet tears through the flesh of the last soldier, the Hell of pain, suffering, and trauma remains. Though military operations in the Vietnam War have been over for decades, the war continues to rage each day in the form of children born with severe deformities, desiccated land that was once rich and arable, and veterans on both sides of the conflict who frequently develop new symptoms and are constantly plagued by old ones.The devastating effects of Agent Orange, a defoliant used to thin out the Vietnam jungle and destroy enemy crops, are a blemish on the U.S. national record and a glaring reminder of American foreign policy that has little respect for life and law. Decades later, the lethal effects linger, but there has been no justice.
In late 1961, despite strident objections from the State Department over the potential effects on civilians, the use of “burn down” herbicides in Vietnam was authorized by President Kennedy as part of “Operation Hades,” which would soon become “Operation Ranch Hand.” These defoliation and crop destruction efforts continued at a moderate pace until the war escalated in the mid-1960s. By early 1965, a new herbicide called “Agent Orange” was introduced.
Of the many atrocities and crimes committed by the United States in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, the military’s use of Agent Orange has left the most destructive legacy, resulting in the ongoing suffering of both Vietnamese citizens and U.S. veterans, for whom there has been little justice or reconciliation. This is what must be done.
The devastating effects of Agent Orange are a blemish on the U.S. national record and an obstacle impeding true reconciliation between the U.S. government and both Vietnamese and American victims of the toxic herbicide (for information about Agent Orange and its effects, see “Part 1: What Was Done” [link to Part 1]). For this reason, issues of international law, justice, and corporate and governmental responsibility must be addressed clearly and directly. Those who are currently suffering from the poisonous effects of Agent Orange, though, have found that the struggle for justice can be as toxic.
Breaking the Gaza Wall
by Allan Nairn Most all political violence consists of clear wrongs, like murder or unjustified war, but sometimes, sadly, disgustingly, some violence is justified as a last resort, and sometimes -- as a subcategory of that -- some of that justified violence is also wise, tactically.
Once you get far outside the murder and the crimes of war and those against humanity, some of the choices regarding whether or not to use some violence can be legitimately tough and debatable.
But the Gaza wall-breaking was an easy call: No people were killed, some may have been saved, and the spectacle of an exodus into Egypt effectively dramatized a gross injustice.
Why the United States Really Has Gone Broke
by Chalmers Johnson The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the “smartest guys in the room” -- the title of Alex Gibney’s prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron.
The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.
Father Andres and the Global Timber Thieves
by James North Father Andres Tamayo now gets company as he drives the church pickup truck around his rugged rural parish here in the frontier region of Olancho - four soldiers in battle dress sit in the back to protect him from being murdered.
Father José Andrés Tamayo Cortez,
Photo courtesy of the
Goldman Environmental Prize
Father Andres is part of a grassroots environmental movement that's trying to stop criminal deforestation, and the local timber barons have already killed some of his friends.
The environmentalists cannot trust the local police, so they, and their allies overseas, pressured the national government into assigning the young soldiers.
Red Mosque: Endgame for Musharraf?
by Graham Usher Last week Pakistani army commandos seized Islamabad's Red Mosque compound to force the surrender of several hundred clerics, militants and students holed up inside. More than a hundred were killed, including the mosque's charismatic tribune, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.
Thirteen hundred surrendered, including the mosque's chief cleric and Ghazi's brother, Abdul Aziz. It was the deadliest battle in Pakistan since the country's military ruler, President-General Pervez Musharraf, declared war on "extremism and terrorism" after the 9/11 attacks on America.
What does the storming of the Red Mosque signify? For some it marks the rupture of that nexus of relations between the army and Islamist parties, the so-called "military-mullah alliance" that has ruled Pakistan for thirty years. Others say it is no more than a tactical feint by Musharraf brought on by the provocations of Ghazi and Aziz and pressure from the Americans. For them the alliance remains in place.
The unfolding events in Myanmar have been distracting Chinese
Communist Party leaders from a most urgent business: planning for the
17th Party Congress, which is to convene in two weeks.
This would
normally be a critical period of tense last minute factional jockeying
for appointments of next generation top-tier leaders. But as the world
helplessly watches the military crackdown in Yangon, China’s elders
instead find themselves under pressure by western nations to do
something about stopping suppression in Myanmar, China’s close ally.
Greenspan and the Myth of the True Believer
by Naomi Klein The tall graduate student, visiting the United States from Sweden, would not be satisfied with a quip. He wanted answers.
“They cannot only be driven by greed and power. They must be driven by something higher. What?”
Don’t knock power and greed, I tried to suggest -- they have built empires. But he wanted more.
“What about a belief that they are building a better world?”
Madame President
by Katrina vanden Heuvel Her husband is a former governor and president who presided over an economic boom. She is a popular center-left senator -- a tough, disciplined and savvy politician who has led voters to think that they will be getting two leaders for the price of one.
No, not Hillary Clinton. She is Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, newly elected president of Argentina.
Kirchner cruised to victory Sunday, becoming the Western
Hemisphere's second female president voted into office in the last two
years. (Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile, was inaugurated on
March 11, 2006.)
GWOT: El Salvador
by Wes Enzinna In September 2006, after the Salvadoran Congress passed the Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism, then-US Ambassador H. Douglas Barclay congratulated the Salvadoran people.
"The US and El Salvador are [now] partners in the war on terror," he beamed.
The law, modeled on the USA Patriot Act, establishes a special terrorism tribunal and allows for anonymous witnesses and undercover agents to participate in those trials. It also criminalizes acts such as public protests, street blockades and "publicly justifying terrorism" with punishments of up to eighty years in prison. More than a year later, this law has turned scores of Salvadoran citizens into fugitives.
D.C. SNAPSHOT: Bush Lawyers on Child Torture and Burial Alive
by Harry Hanbury on Jun 26, 2008
John Yoo and David Addington, two leading architects of the Bush administration's policies on torture, testified before the House Judiciary Committee. Even seemingly simple questions yielded evasive answers.
We now have six years of evidence that George Bush is not all there. The occupant of the White House has consistently demonstrated an extraordinary ability to evade reality and a reckless proclivity to steer the nation by a distorted compass made up of cocaine-induced delusions and two decades of insobriety. Add to this mix a little religious fanaticism and a gigantic ego that serves to accentuate an acute case of intellectual dwarfism.
In Bush, we have a man who accepts only the counsel of those that agree with his rudimentary understanding of history. The man is a gambling fool – the kind of loser who doubles up as his political fortunes evaporate.
It seems forgotten that the 9/11 atrocities happened on the president’s watch. Turn back the clock and witness a distraught nation rallying around the president and giving him a carte blanche to react as he saw fit. Recall that virtually every government around the world instinctively embraced America, wished her well, demonstrated solidarity and offered full cooperation in hunting down the terrorists responsible for the carnage.
In the months that followed, the president’s popularity went through the roof – some polls had him standing taller than any of his predecessors with a 90% approval rating. Instead of holding him accountable for his failure to protect the nation from threats that were all too apparent, he was granted a mandate to reshape the world and dilute our sacred civil liberties.
17. The Challenge of Affluence (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : Andrew Bard Schmookler
by Andrew Bard Schmookler Why Now?
The rise of the dark and dangerous forces now ruling America cannot be understood in isolation. This Bushite regime should be seen, rather, as a symptom of a more general moral crisis in American society, of an erosion of the moral structures that historically have held American society together.
So I have been arguing for more than a year.
But the question arises: why now? Why should American society be faced with such a moral crisis at this time?
The conservatives point to the Sixties as the culprit. As one who was a participant some 30-40 years ago in that social movement called the counterculture, I agree that the “Sixties” did indeed play a role.
But even if one accepted that “explanation,” the question would still have to be asked: why at this point in our national history? For like the Bushite regime, the Sixties too did not just happen to happen. That social upheaval, too, was the product of the larger set of social/cultural/economic/political forces swirling around in this society, and indeed in the larger world.
So, what has been distinctive about our times that would account for a general undermining of the integrity of the moral structures that –historically and traditionally (at least to a greater degree than in recent times)– have buttressed the order of American society?
I would propose that a major root of the breakdown can indeed be identified. There has emerged in our society a phenomenon that, being historically unprecedented, can therefore be adduced to explain this similarly historically unprecedented cultural development.
What is new and unprecedented is how affluent in recent generations we Americans, as a people overall, have become.
Over the past year, I’ve posted the first seven installments (six chapters and an excursis) of my unpublished book, THE RIVER AND ITS CHANNEL.
Here now is chapter 7.
The overarching question with which THE RIVER AND ITS CHANNEL is concerned might be stated: Is there something that we can trust to see that what unfolds in our lives and in the world is as it should be, or are we wise to try to impose our will and intention to make things happen as they should happen?
The book itself works by weaving together two levels: the telling of a story and the exploration of ideas. How the story unfolds is in itself organically connected with how the ideas get clarified.
One more thing worthy of note here. In recent weeks, a newcomer to NoneSoBlind –Galen Pickett– has been deep into reading the previous installments of THE RIVER AND ITS CHANNEL, and he has been making comments along the way. Since these have been serious and thoughtful comments, and since the posting of these previous installments was far enough into the past that it is unlikely that many people have seen those comments, I thought I would alert you to the fact that they are there.
Chapter 7
The Dance of Integration
What got me into thinking in a new way about the relationship between me and the subject of unfolding-vs. control was a conversation with someone for whom the relationship was clearly quite different.
Mara and I first “met” when she called into a radio show I was doing, but we only discovered this after we’d met socially. She and April had met through a third woman whom April knew because of their mutual interest in La Leche and whom Mara knew from their common involvement in a network of homeschooling families.
The most important task facing America now, after the election, is the same as it was before the election: it is to discredit the Bushite forces in the eyes of the American people, to drive the Bushites from power, and to repair the damage that those dark forces have done to America and to the world.
For the achievement of these goals, the Democrats in Congress and the anti-Bushite movement are natural allies. And how well both sides of this alliance manage their relationship, and perform their complementary roles, will be one important determinant of how successfully this task is accomplished.
The Democrats need to achieve two things with respect to the mess in Iraq: 1) They need to help move the U.S. toward the best possible policy to deal with this mess; and 2) They need to make sure that the responsibility for the mess attaches to the people who made it.
The second task is not less important than the first. That’s because the disaster the Bushites have created in Iraq is only one part of the serious damage they have done to America and to the world. And if the Democrats’ handling of Iraq enables the Bushite forces to maintain power after their present public faces leave office, this serious damage –to our Constitution, to our political discourse, to the environment, to the just distribution of power and wealth– will continue.
This issue of the politics of responsibility arises because –at least so it seems clear to me, but of course not only to me– the “best possible” outcome in Iraq will not be anything good.
Despite W’s continuing use of the word “victory,” the chances of anything like victory are – evidently – negligible to nil. Despite the Bushites’ talk of “success,” it is – apparently – unlikely in the extreme that the outcome will look to the American people anything like success. Despite the rhetoric about wanting the sacrifice of American troops not to have been in vain, there would seem to be virtually no chance whatever that the “best possible” outcome will have achieved anything remotely worth the many costs paid by Americans, let alone the suffering Iraqi people.
On Election Day, America took a step that history may show to have been absolutely crucial in saving this republic. At a time when the soul of America has been gravely endangered by our ruling powers, the American people have handed significant power back to the opposition party. Perhaps they will be an effective check on the hitherto unchecked power of this usurpatious presidency.
But winning even an important battle is not winning the war (if you will allow the martial metaphor– indeed, in a meaningful sense, this IS war).
To continue to roll back these dark forces, it is imperative that the opposition exercise its new powers wisely. In the coming days, I hope to explore here what that may require. I will begin now with some thoughts –and a question– about what the Democrats should do with their new-found power to conduct investigative hearings.
Earlier this year, when courage and clarity seemed dangerously rare among our politicians, many of us were heartened when Senator Russ Feingold stood up for the rule of law, proposing a motion to censure President Bush for his flagrant violation of both statutory law and the Constitution. Feingold quickly became a champion for many who hungered for someone in high places to speak the truth about the reckless criminality of this regime. We began to hear talk of a possible Feingold run for the presidency in 2008. And the idea had appeal to many, including me.
Recently, of course, Senator Feingold has taken himself explicitly out of the running. The reason he gave was that he intended to focus on his work as a Senator.
In such matters, it’s never entirely clear what is going on. How often have we heard that someone, stepping down from high office or choosing not to run, has based his decision on some overwhelming desire to “spend more time with my family,” when other less flattering reasons are visible?
23. The Mind of the Breadbaker (Opinion/Opinion)
Author : Andrew Bard Schmookler
by Andrew Bard Schmookler
From the time my little son was eight months old, he and I have done the grocery shopping together. When Nathaniel was a toddler, discovering at every turn what the world was about, I used to joke that I took him to the supermarket because I wanted him to know where food really comes from. It's not just something that's there when you open the refrigerator, I'd say, you've got to go to the Source, some place like Safeway, where it sits on the shelves. He shouldn't take our getting our daily bread for granted, I'd declare solemnly.
Back then we lived inside the Washington Beltway, but before our boy was four we left. I had found that my spirit was withering from living in a landscape where earth was just an occasional break from the pavement, just something allowed to exist in the interstices of the human grid. After a decade in a realm where the human element tyrannizes over everything, I yearned to have a place where the land around me was shaped less by my own kind than by the hand of living nature.
We moved out to the mountains of Virginia, and Nathaniel worked with me as we carved some terraces out of the hillside to grow our own herbs and vegetables. We carried chicken manure and horse manure down the slope to enrich the soil, we planted our seeds, we carefully monitored the moisture levels in the earth to make sure our plants had what they needed to thrive, and we kept some seeds from one year's harvest to plant the next. The idea of his knowing where our food came from was no longer just a joke.
The sacred, it would seem, is deeply and inextricably connected with that miraculous quality we call Life.
Life is inseparable from the whole domain
of value. If the universe were lifeless, how could anything really
matter? It is life –and the needs of living creatures—that makes one
course of events better or worse than another.
Life also is the epitome of the Wholeness
that is the essence of the Good and the Beautiful—Wholeness being
defined as the ordering of things in an ideal way. Whether one believes
that life on earth is the result of an undirected evolutionary process,
or that it shows the handiwork of some kind of intelligent Designer,
one can hardly behold the fabric of life without a feeling of awe for
the incredible intricacy of how life has ordered the matter and energy
of which it is composed.
One can surely judge the godliness –or lack of it—of any political leadership by the attitude it brings to the needs of life.
On Election Night of 2004, as I lay in bed much of the night awake and miserable, I found myself teetering on the edge of deep despair. By dawn, however, I discovered that I had turned back from that abyss and committed myself instead to a new mission. Actually, it was a new phase of the anti-Bushite mission in which I’d been passionately for the two months leading up to the Election: a mission of combatting the pervasive falsehoods of this evil regime; more particularly, a mission of speaking moral truth to amoral power.
In other words, a “prophetic” mission.
By January, I was on my local NPR station delivering a series of commentaries to convey my vision of the nature of what was happening in America, and of the nature of the path by which this country might be saved.
Key among those commentaries was one called “Prophetic Opposition.” Some months later, on the very day that I launched my main vehicle for presenting my vision –my new website NoneSoBlind.org– I published on Common Dreams a new version of that piece under the title, “What America Needs Now–A Prophetic Social Movement.”
I had chosen that piece to trumpet my arrival into the “blogosphere” because I felt that this essay, more than any other, captured simply and accessibly and dramatically what I hoped to convey to my countrymen.
Here, now, a year later, I am going to post this essay once again.
The American imperial behemoth finally lies panting at the sandaled feet of its nemesis, the ragtag resistance fighters, in the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan. Desperate attempts are on by the deniers to infuse new life into the flagging leviathan but alas, it is dying as sure a death as that of its masters’ dream. Albeit hideously so, even its death is promising to be spectacular. For the event will scatter far and wide, bits and pieces of the myth of American supremacy and the delusion of an empire.
Nothing can be sadder than the fact that a country that welcomed to its bosom victims of the abuse of other powers for centuries, finally became the greatest abuser of power itself. And in so doing, wrote its own epitaph.
The reason, as frequently is the case in the fall of empires, will be imperial overreach--that fatal roaming bug that spelled the end of most empires. From Philippines to Vietnam to South America to Afghanistan to Iraq and now to Iran…American Empire’s inevitable journey toward its grand finale suggests that it indeed has been administered the concluding dose by the colonial roaming bug.
Why it is happening is that America, drunk with its military power, stayed glued to its strategy of dominance while the world quietly passed her by. In her inebriated state, she failed to notice her rapid isolation and falling out of favor with most of the rest of the world and that, sooner or later, this universal dislike for Pax Americana was bound to result in an almost universal backlash.
“Ah, how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, but they themselves, with their own wicked ways, compound their pains, beyond their proper share.”
Thirty-five years ago on the twenty-fourth day of November I was certain war ended forever. Suffering had reached the maximum endurance level. This ‘certainty’ was not reality, of course, but my impression was based on an experience. If anyone read my first AFP article they were introduced to a suppressed, but nonetheless, seething anger in my heart’s belly. A certain people who wield official power do not live in accordance with a dimension of the Greek word themis. Themis is a word that embodies the capacity to know and do “what’s right.”
The epic texts attributed to the poet Homer are best understood if readers consider many performers provide these two epics. The Iliad makes it plain to see brains can be bashed and flung across the floor in war. The Odyssey is narrated in a forceful style, not much different, somewhat parallel, to Old Testament biblical characters who try to weasel out of responsibility and blame. We are all flawed humans. On the allegorical path of life, travels can be viewed from a transcendent distance, though the pathway is parallel, many go the opposite direction. We are observers of self. We observe others. We instruct. Learn?
I sure don’t want to tackle diverse scholarship opinion, hitch up with tense arguers, or deny a fact that all handed down ancient texts are tampered with by high-level committees, and open to discussions and reproof. I am not wishing to shun criticism of my personal views. What is interesting to me is these written down descriptive taunts in past literature are aimed at warmongers. Ancients became a sort of ‘religious’ instructor and guide, and universal truisms were read for centuries at rural festive celebrations.
The geese heard the barbarians scaling the gate-wall while the guard-dogs slept. …it offended his conscience to make a little money by sending to the slaughter-house an ox which had long been in his service.
-Plutarch, Life of Cato.
(This is a reluctant continuation from my last Studebaker classified post. An anonymous phone caller requested my address)*
To be the recipient of an insult is disgraceful; to return one is honorable. The contempt, cruelties, and prevarication of our day—rival any argument I know. There are many reproachable traits we observe in wartime which is abominable. Once, for instance, in our more innocent daily land-lover affairs, we may have been kicked black, red, and blue by a beast mule. That kind of assault is accepted without feeling serious insult. If we consider the source of the brunt-kick; healing will come with time. Avenging insult of certain kinds, it’s wise to ignore. When human-tyrants use base and beastly powers to butcher, destroy cities where innocent citizens dwell, and defile written words, such as: democracy, freedom, and justice…to horde capital, it’s best to Address it.
Walking with Integrity: The Peoples' Walk Carries Sacred Items to the East
by Brenda Norrell
Tohono O'odham and other Native Americans focused on protecting the rights of passage for Indigenous Peoples at the borders have made it to DC area. The Peoples Walk, arriving from the south, includes Tohono O'odham, Hopi/Pueblo, Dine', Lakota and other Native Americans. Walkers in the Peoples Walk are carrying sacred items and completing their journey.
While in Washington D.C., the walkers will meet with international leaders and international organizations, but will not meet with leaders of the United States government. The U.S. government has betrayed Native people, carried out genocide and is currently involved in the promotion of xenophobia and Nazi-style tactics at the borders, oppressing Indigenous Peoples at the southern and northern borders in their traditional homelands.
Langford’s Bear Mountain Interchange: Urbanization on the Western Frontier and the Blurring of Public and Private Interests
by Ben Isitt In February 1998, land surveyor Danny Carrier prepared a report for Western Forest Products (WFP) on “the development potential of Crown Lands …in the Municipality of Langford.” Carrier concluded that: “Possible impediments to development of the sites are public opposition, environmental issues and the required funding of off-site services.”2
WFP sought Crown lands in the vicinity of Goldstream Provincial Park for a high-end golf course and residential subdivision. The forest company also proposed a new highway interchange from the Trans-Canada Highway to service the development.
Herb Doman, owner of WFP’s parent company, Doman Industries Ltd., wrote to the deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks objecting to “further delays.” 3Another WFP official, chief lobbyist Bob Flitton (himself a former deputy minister of lands in the Social Credit government of the 1980s, and today Bear Mountain’s Residential Project Manager) wrote optimistically: “the next step would be for us to have the surveyors ribbon the proposed subdivision boundary.” 4
Re: Quigg v LGB9 I hope your newspaper's favourable editorial policy toward the Bear Mountain development does not inhibit the fair and accurate reporting of Robert Quigg's lawsuit against Len Barrie and his companies.
Boosterist stories such as the Florida Panther's article in today's newspaper, like yesterday's coverage of boulevard improvement programmes in Langford and similar documented coverage over the past 12 months, demonstrate a clear pattern of pursuing an editorial agenda under the auspices of news reporting.
The Cat That Controls New Hampshire Elections Programming
by Bev Harris John
Silvestro and his small private business, LHS Associates, has exclusive
programming contracts for ALL New Hampshire voting machines, which
combined will count about 81 percent of the vote in the primary. And as
to Super Tuesday and beyond: Silvestro also has the programming
contracts for the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
Silvestro IS the New Hampshire chain of custody in New England -- Or at least, a very large component in it.
It’s hard to hear speaker Pelosi claim that “we will not abandon the troops” because the abandonment happened a few years ago. Congress abandoned the troops - and the Constitution - when they handed absolute authority to an obviously compromised sensibility. By any standard this was not the executive to whom congress should have deferred responsible decision-making. But they did and in so doing they abandoned the troops and the troops are now held hostage.
It’s not only for sentimental reasons the troops should come home. Yes – moms, dads, wives, children will heave a sigh of personal relief – but so will the country because we will no longer be at the mercy of what the troops might be forced to do by orders, circumstances and other pressures. If they do it – we do it – and what happens to them is happening to us.
Pelosi wore purple on her historic day. Purple is the mix of red and blue – as in red and blue states. She wore synthesis, which can be construed as either surrender or cooperation. But cooperation at this point is surrender. And the truth is, the surrender already happened and they that surrendered are now in charge and sounding defiant - and hollow. The defiance is moot. The proud declaration that we will not abandon the troops is only sad.
The troops have been abandoned to an illogical and corrupt consciousness. Cutting funding for the war would not be abandonment – it might be the beginning of atonement.
This sounds like a dream, doesn't it? Well, it's not. We have a unique opportunity right now to send Karl Rove to jail, but only if we take immediate action.
All we have to do is pressure the 40 members of the House Judiciary Committee, make them hold Rove in contempt and send him to jail. We've never had such a direct opportunity to hold Rove accountable. No, this is not enough punishment for his years and years of crimes, but it's a huge start, and will send a very clear message to the entire Bush administration.
We put together this video to explain the issues surrounding Rove's failure to testify before Congress, and why Rove should be held in contempt and sent to jail. Check out Send Karl Rove to Jail, and sign our petition to ensure that the HJC holds Rove in contempt.
Podcasts 
I write this as the grand arbutus forests are crashing down the steep slopes all around us. It is Langford. In the midst of self-proclaiming "Mass Wasting" (just a development strategy - a style) one lost ravine, almost a canyon, deserves mention.
A few years ago, I felt that I needed a simple phrase that would distill everything I needed to know about the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States into one simple sentence. The phrase came to me as if it dropped out of the sky and bonked me in the noggin. 
On October 17th, with Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, and Donald Rumsfeld standing behind him, George W. Bush 
by Aaron Sussman 
Most all political violence consists of clear wrongs, like murder or unjustified war, but sometimes, sadly, disgustingly, some violence is justified as a last resort, and sometimes -- as a subcategory of that -- some of that justified violence is also wise, tactically.
Father Andres Tamayo now gets company as he drives the church pickup truck around his rugged rural parish here in the frontier region of Olancho - four soldiers in battle dress sit in the back to protect him from being murdered. 
Last week Pakistani army commandos seized Islamabad's Red Mosque compound to force the surrender of several hundred clerics, militants and students holed up inside. More than a hundred were killed, including the mosque's charismatic tribune, Abdul Rashid Ghazi. 
The Nation magazine offers a five-part series on the "global war on terror," and how it is working in five countries throughout the world. 
The unfolding events in Myanmar have been distracting Chinese
Communist Party leaders from a most urgent business: planning for the
17th Party Congress, which is to convene in two weeks. 
The tall graduate student, visiting the United States from Sweden, would not be satisfied with a quip. He wanted answers.
Her husband is a former governor and president who presided over an economic boom. She is a popular center-left senator -- a tough, disciplined and savvy politician who has led voters to think that they will be getting two leaders for the price of one. 
In September 2006, after the Salvadoran Congress passed the Special Law Against Acts of Terrorism, then-US Ambassador H. Douglas Barclay congratulated the Salvadoran people. 
We now have six years of evidence that George Bush is not all there. The occupant of the White House has consistently demonstrated an extraordinary ability to evade reality and a reckless proclivity to steer the nation by a distorted compass made up of cocaine-induced delusions and two decades of insobriety. Add to this mix a little religious fanaticism and a gigantic ego that serves to accentuate an acute case of intellectual dwarfism. 
Over the past year, I’ve posted the first seven installments (six chapters and an excursis) of my unpublished book, THE RIVER AND ITS CHANNEL. 
The Democrats need to achieve two things with respect to the mess in Iraq: 1) They need to help move the U.S. toward the best possible policy to deal with this mess; and 2) They need to make sure that the responsibility for the mess attaches to the people who made it.
From the time my little son was eight months old, he and I have done the grocery shopping together. When Nathaniel was a toddler, discovering at every turn what the world was about, I used to joke that I took him to the supermarket because I wanted him to know where food really comes from. It's not just something that's there when you open the refrigerator, I'd say, you've got to go to the Source, some place like Safeway, where it sits on the shelves. He shouldn't take our getting our daily bread for granted, I'd declare solemnly. 
The sacred, it would seem, is deeply and inextricably connected with that miraculous quality we call Life. 
The American imperial behemoth finally lies panting at the sandaled feet of its nemesis, the ragtag resistance fighters, in the sands of Iraq and Afghanistan. Desperate attempts are on by the deniers to infuse new life into the flagging leviathan but alas, it is dying as sure a death as that of its masters’ dream. Albeit hideously so, even its death is promising to be spectacular. For the event will scatter far and wide, bits and pieces of the myth of American supremacy and the delusion of an empire. 
Thirty-five years ago on the twenty-fourth day of November I was certain war ended forever. Suffering had reached the maximum endurance level. This ‘certainty’ was not reality, of course, but my impression was based on an experience. If anyone read my first AFP article they were introduced to a suppressed, but nonetheless, seething anger in my heart’s belly. A certain people who wield official power do not live in accordance with a dimension of the Greek word themis. Themis is a word that embodies the capacity to know and do “what’s right.” 
In February 1998, land surveyor Danny Carrier prepared a report for Western Forest Products (WFP) on “the development potential of Crown Lands …in the Municipality of Langford.” Carrier concluded that: “Possible impediments to development of the sites are public opposition, environmental issues and the required funding of off-site services.”2
John
Silvestro and his small private business, LHS Associates, has exclusive
programming contracts for ALL New Hampshire voting machines, which
combined will count about 81 percent of the vote in the primary. And as
to Super Tuesday and beyond: Silvestro also has the programming
contracts for the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
It’s hard to hear speaker Pelosi claim that “we will not abandon the troops” because the abandonment happened a few years ago. Congress abandoned the troops - and the Constitution - when they handed absolute authority to an obviously compromised sensibility. By any standard this was not the executive to whom congress should have deferred responsible decision-making. But they did and in so doing they abandoned the troops and the troops are now held hostage.