The Real Human Costs of BC's Regressive Carbon Tax and Some Progressive Solutions

Ever wonder why a neo-liberal right-wing government like Gordon Campbell's would have promoted and passed BC's Carbon Tax? Because, especially as it's currently structured, BC's Carbon Tax is not only regressive ideologically but it's also a direct subsidy to his wealthy supporters. Before explaining just how such a 'motherhood and apple pie' sounding idea is being used as a weapon in the ongoing class war it's important to acknowledge that all of the well-intentioned environmental activists supporting this sham do so outta their genuine motivation to fight CO2 pollution and human induced climate change. Their cause is noble and, as this article will hopefully show, could be advanced by turning the tax's current regressive structure into a vehicle for progressive change.

The Campbell government began it's assault on the common sense arguments against the regressive nature of the carbon tax by assuring BCers that the tax would be 'revenue neutral'. What they weren't forced to explain by the compliant media was the details. What they did say was that they would make it neutral by cutting other taxes, and they did. First they cut corporate taxes and income taxes, both progressive types of taxation, which meant a direct subsidy of the haves by the have-nots. Next, they also instituted a low-income tax credit. Of course, over 20% of BC's population, the truly poor, already earn so little a credit is meaningless.

Not only is using a regressive carbon tax to reduce a progressive taxes deceitful but meanwhile the poor tightened their belts by spending less on other things. They may have spent a few less of their meager monies on heat for their families but they also spent less on food for them, their kids got to participate in less activities, they skimped on prescriptions, they traveled less - including less to the medical clinics and the dentists. The real and immediate effects on the poor are simply costs that will be paid in the future in the form of increased social costs like crime and health care.

It may be that BC's carbon consumption has gone down in recent years because of the carbon tax as proponents say, or maybe they've gone down due to the combination of the poor's belt tightening and the general vice-grip put on all middle class spending in the last 5 years caused the bankster induced worldwide recession. Neo-liberals, like corporations, are real good at putting lipstick on the free-lunch pig, unfortunately to many of us are only to happy to buy their bullshit.

But not all of the revenue generated by BC's Carbon Tax goes to cutting progressive taxes, much of it is given to favoured interests in subsidies as reward for their political support. But none, not one dollar, of the money raised by the tax goes to projects that reduce carbon emissions.

There are other solutions. For instance BC's Carbon Tax applies only to the purchase or use of fuels within the province, when in reality every action, every event, every person everything emits a certain amount of carbon. Check out the website 'How Much CO2 Is Created By…' and you quickly learn that everything has a carbon footpint not just fuels.

Some of the stuff folks consume isn't a necessity, it's a luxury. So one easy way to start turning BC's regressive Carbon Tax progressive is to turn it into a luxury tax. A luxury tax is a tax on non-essential goods, it mainly affects the wealthy because the wealthy are the most likely to buy luxuries such as expensive cars, real estate, jewelry, etc. A luxury tax could be applied only to all purchases over a certain amount or on all items of particular types or both. It's level could be adjusted to be 'revenue neutral' compared to the existing carbon tax.

Additionally, the revenue generated by a luxury tax could be directed by law into research on alternative energy solutions to our obscene use of the biosphere as a dumping ground for our waste. Surely there's alotta folks in BC and beyond who've already conjured up many more excellent progressive solutions. Personally though simply understanding the emotional cost of a deceitful, regressive tax like BC's Carbon Tax on the poorest among us seems ample motivation to use our capacity for compassion and empathy as the leverage to a progressive solution.

As H.L. Mencken once wrote, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

The Real KXL and Big Oil Resistors are on the Ground Protecting the Water, Land and Wildlife

As the excellent folks of the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance movement explain, "There are no safe ways to transport tar sands crud. Tar sands crud [bitumen] must be diluted from its asphalt like consistency to a thinner substance by a proprietary, undisclosed chemical cocktail as well as heated by stations every 40 miles to be moved through pipes.  The nature of this diluted bitumen (dil-bit) is a caustic and corrosive material that will sooner or later leak. The Keystone 1 tar sands pipeline alone leaked 12 times in its first year of operation."

Big Oil has declared that pipelines are the 'safest' way to transport petroleum products, including the tar sands crud. In reality they have a terrible safety record. Since 1990, over 110 million gallons of crude oil and petroleum products have spilled from pipelines across the United States alone.

The Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance folks, along with the folks of the Tar Sands Blockade and others including Bold Nebraska are on the ground resisting Big Oil stateside for the same reason Canada's First Nations and environmental activists are fighting the Northern Gateway Project up here, to protect the water, land and wildlife that sustain us all. Tar sands extraction and pipelines like the Keystone XL and Enbridge’s New Tar Sands Frankenstein pipeline must be stopped. It's all the same fight, there is no American water, no Canadian air, we're all in this together

Together this far-flung band of resistors is facing the combined forces of the largest capitalist industry in human history and the government officials they own and control. But the greater reality is that the resistance to Big Oil is only part of the issue. Big Oil can only exist, as Adam Brandt, an energy expert at Stanford University pointed out recently, "So long as the demand is there, energy producers are going to search for new supplies of fossil fuel - many of them using unconventional means like tar sands extraction. With growing global demand, the economic pressure to develop unconventional resources is enormous and not going away,” he said. “The emphasis should be on demand, not supply. If the U.S. stopped consuming so much of the world’s oil, the economic need for the tar sands would evaporate."

Though it's much more convenient to cover attractive celebrities staging protests about the evil suppliers and non-existent regulations, it's the demand side that drives every economic exchange. The celebrities in Washington, New York and Hollywood provide the MSM something to write about so they won't have to write about consumerism or about the only realistic solution to it which is so revolutionary they can't bring themselves to utter the words... both because their paymasters would reject their articles and because the only inevitable, inescapable solution - the collapse of extractive capitalism - would lead to the end of their Beamer driving, Gucci wearing, world trotting lifestyles.

Folks don't need to travel to Arkansas or Nebraska, or Kitimat or anywhere to join the resistance to dr satan's ['tar sands' letters better arranged] crud. Just stop dropout of the consumer culture where ever you are, stop driving to the mall to buy more needless crap, spend your time and energy growing a garden, walking in the outdoors, listening to the birds sing and watching the miracle unfolding around you.

The Small Independents Have Become the Real Journalists at the Forefront of the Dilbit Battles

Tar Sands Crud still pollutes the creek in Marshall Michigan where the Kalamazoo River pipeline disaster occurred almost 3 years ago.

Reporters Elizabeth McGowan, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer of InsideClimate News, a small five-year-old online only, non-profit, non-partisan news organization that specializes in energy and environmental science news, are the winners of this year's Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. The trio took top honors in the category for their work on 'The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of', which reported the results of their seven-month investigation into the 1.1 million gallon spill of tar sands crud into a creek in Marshall Michigan, a community of 7,400, that feeds Michigan's Kalamazoo River.

The Pulitzer committee commented that the report helped broaden the national debate on pipeline safety issues, and pointed out how unprepared the nation is for the impending flood of imports of 'dilbit' - a more corrosive and more dangerous form of crude oil. The cleanup of the spill that happened nearly 3 years ago is still not complete and has cost over $1billion so far due to the extremely difficult circumstances created when the heavier than water tar sands crud sinks [as well as stinks]. The recent ExxonMobil pipeline spill near Mayflower Arkansas of dilbit underscores the continuing relevance of their of work.

The dilbit disaster in Michigan also taught big oil and the pipeline industry how important access to information is in the PR war that follows a pipeline failure. As the estimates in Arkansas climb to over 300,000 gallons spilled ExxonMobil continues to ramp up its focus on PR damage control rather than actual damage control.  At every turn they are attempting to obfuscate the truth by, for instance power-washing bitumen into a nearby wetland and then paying local sheriffs to keep cameras away, hiding the problem at the expense of the local watershed and everyone who relies on it for drinking water, hunting and fishing.

Why are law enforcement officials taking their orders from a private corporation? Not only are the local cops and officials taking orders from big oil but so is the FAA who within hours of the spill acquiesced to ExonMobil's demands for secrecy by declaring a no-fly zone above the whole area. By a few days later as a huge storm approached that was bound to spread the dilbit further into the marshes and Lake Conway itself Exxon's campaign of censorship and intimidation had put such a fear into the MSM that they wouldn't risk trying to gain access. If it weren't for the devoted independent activist journalists of Tar Sands Blockade who dodged the authorities and risked their safety during the thunder and lightening we would never have the evidence we do now of Exxon's workers pumping the crud polluted water over the dikes and directly into Lake Conway.

The Tar Sands Blockade activists, the folks maintaining the Mayflower Spill facebook site, the independent video streamers at Live Leak and those reporting at Treehugger are, like the reporters at InsideClimate News, leading the charge against the big oil billionaires who will do anything and everything to insure the continued flow of profits generated by dilbit no matter who pays in the long term costs, as long as it's not them.

The MSM is owned by the same selfish corporate forces as big oil. The MSM rely on the advertising revenue they collect from big oil and other corporations for their profits. Consequently the MSM have now relinquished the torch of inquiry to the small independent outlets and the volunteer army of citizen journalists who's courage and hard work both inspire and remind us that as George Orwell said, “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

All Bombs that Kill and Maim Innocent Civilians are Acts of Terror Delivered by Fanatics

During this morning's news conference US Pres.Obama said, "Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror." Unfortunately we've learned from experience that every word Obama, or any other lawyer or politician, utters must be looked at very carefully. In this case, it's the word 'target' that must be parsed. Obama includes the word 'target' to provide a logically plausible, but actually fallacious, argument for differentiating between those innocent victims in Boston yesterday and those who are innocent victims of his drone's bombings.

The agrument is fallacious because the definition of both the spoken term target and the inferred term collateral damage that the US militarists use to justify the equally innocent that their bombs kill and maim are 'in the eye of the beholder'. Fanatics can always justify their actions by defining their victims as 'other'. So yesterday's fanatical bombers can, in their own minds, justify the dead and maimed as collateral damage just as easily as the US militarist fanatics do.

The truth is it doesn't matter if yesterday's bombers turn out to be Muslim Jihadists, or extremist right-wing activists, or left-wing agitators, or false-flag black-ops militarists or Muslim-fearing Anders-Breivik types, or lone individuals driven by apolitical mental illness, fanatics of all ilks are crazy. The truth is that terror is terror whether it's being felt in the Hindu-Kush mountains, the deserts of Arabia or the streets of America.

Glen Greenwald's piece this morning contained the important word 'compassion' saying in part, "The widespread compassion for yesterday's victims and the intense anger over the attacks was obviously authentic and thus good to witness. But it was really hard not to find oneself wishing that just a fraction of that compassion and anger be devoted to attacks that the US perpetrates rather than suffers." Another important word to include here is 'empathy'.

All life forms are hard wired to react with fear when they encounter a situation similar to a previous one that caused pain and trauma, that's why terrorism is a potent weapon. But primates and many other species also have been proven to be hardwired with empathy and compassion by the possession of mirror neurons. A mirror neuron fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Dogs, for instance, have been shown to possess the highest ratio of mirror neurons among all the creatures tested so far. Someday neuro-science will most probably prove that all the various human fanatics have the lowest.

Hopefully someday we'll all, including the all fanatics who's fear filled ignorance allows them to justify their violence against 'others', have learned to take a deep breath and listen instead to the voice of compassion and empathy which is inside us all competing for our attention even in our most extremely stressful moments. Hopefully someday the killing and maiming of any innocent civilians, be it in  Pakistan, Yemen or Boston, will arouse the same reaction.

Rolling Jubilee - a Bottom Up Bailout Project of the People by the People

The Rolling Jubilee Project, is the brainchild of 'Strike Debt' which is a coalition of Occupy groups looking to build popular resistance to all forms of debt imposed on us by the banks. Their website says, "Debt keeps us isolated, ashamed, and afraid. We are building a movement to challenge this system while creating alternatives and supporting each other. We want an economy where our debts are to our friends, families, and communities — and not to the 1%."

Rolling Jubilee has devised a legal and ingenious way to abolish millions of dollars in consumer debt.by raising money in the form of donations by ordinary folks and then uses that money to purchase debt on the secondary market [for pennies on the dollar}, Rolling Jubilee has purchased millions of dollars in unpaid medical debt that is – or, was – owed by consumers. As of this morning the Rolling Jubilee Project has raised about 579,000 and with it abolished $11,580,719 of debt.

Yesterday's excellent article by Matthew Charles Cardinale explains that banks routinely sell 'bad' debt for pennies on the dollar on a shadowy speculative market of debt buyers who then turn around and try to collect the full amount from debtors through threats and harassment. But instead of trying to collect the debts through practises that range from threatening letters to lawsuits, Rolling Jubilee is mailing letters to families saying that their debts have been forgiven. VERY cool eh!

A jubilee is an age-old event in which all debts are cancelled and all those in bondage are set free. It worked in Biblical times and it can still work today. For example, a kind of jubilee happened in Iceland after the 2008 economic crisis: instead of bailing out their banks, Iceland canceled a percentage of mortgage debt.

Web of Debt author Ellen Brown in praising the project and suggesting its expansion, says, “The Federal Reserve could just step in and buy the debt. Let’s say they bought a trillion dollars in debt. When they rip it up, they add money into the money supply...that’s how you stimulate the economy.”

The video below, a clip from the documentary 'Maxed Out', like the Rolling Jubilee Project, focuses on America, but Canadians, Europeans and everyone else everywhere are also subject to the same bankster mafia's profiteering on the backs of the poor.

Working Class Brits Vote 'Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead' #1 Because They Remember

The Brits aren't being cruel or ignorant, nor are they the first to dance in the street after the death of a person they've viewed as an oppressive tyrant. Thousands of folks in Germany, and beyond, danced in the streets when the news of Hitler's death hit, thousands danced when Yassar Arafat died, there were street dances recently in the more 'tony' sections of Venezuela just after Hugo Chavez died, thousands dance in South Florida every time another rumor circulates that Castro is dying, Russians danced when the Czar was killed, and again when...well let's face it, Russians like to drink vodka and dance.

Anyway, these past few days of seeing the Ding Dong song rise on the British charts as opened the space for the working class' side of the globalization debate to re-emerge. Without the space created by the social media campaign in support of the Din Dong song Terry Glavin's article 'An alternative view on Margaret Thatcher' would have faced only the unanimous condemnation of the corporate media not the two sided debate it has engendered. Mainstream media outlets from Vancouver's conservative Sun to America's liberal The Nation are running stories on both sides of Thatcherism, and as Martha Stewart says 'that's a good thing'.

By Friday the online campaign had propelled the "Wizard of Oz" song to No. 1 on British iTunes and into the top five of the music chart used by the BBC to compile its weekly radio countdown., by today - Saturday - the BBC won't comment on it's position. As Terry Glavin says, "Opponents of the late Margaret Thatcher are taking a kind of musical revenge on the former prime minister, pushing the song "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead" up the British charts in a posthumous protest over her polarizing policies."

Besides the rising tide of political power being wielded by the Internet generally and social media specifically, this explosion of working class consciousness in Britain also opened a space for connecting this particular issue with something more general. For instance, Canuckistan has seen a slightly different explosion of working class angst this past week through the TFW and outsourcing issues.

Outsourcing, offshoring and TFWs are all offspring of Thatcherism. Just as to some folks outsourcing is the well-spring of wealth creation when to others, like me, it's another obscene robbery of the poor by the rich, some folks see Margaret Thatcher as the 'Iron Lady' that saved our free world's asses and others, like me, see her as a linchpin for the sorry state of our increasing inequitable world.

There's a poll on the Guardian website asking the question: Do you want Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead to top the charts? Over 100.000 have voted in the last few days. Results so far [poll closes on Sunday morning] are 80% YES and 20% NO. Guess witch way mr; mud voted.

Naming and Shaming the Companies Using TFWs a Step Toward Making Them Pay The Full Costs

Now, just a few days after Dave Moreau blew the whistle on RBC's abuse of Canada's TFWP, they are in full retreat. They've issued a public 'mia culpa' that included promises that all the fired employees would be getting comparable jobs and that their business practices would change. Such is the power of bad publicity in our modern interconnected world. In reality their bottom line won't change a bit in the short-term because of the public's reaction to their getting caught doing exactly what thousands of other companies all across Canada are doing. The damage RBC fears is to their long-term PR persona.

RBC is in full damage control mode because they got 'named and shamed' by the whistleblower. The website Outsource Canada has province by province lists derived from StatsCan's voluminous and somewhat confusing tables. For instance, my home province of BC which currently has 166,400 folks registered with the government as unemployed and also has 28,065 TFWs which is 16.87% of its total employed workforce. The BC page's list of BC's companies, which includes hundreds of names, is really only a partial list because very few of the national corporations, including the big banks like RBC or the fast food outlets like Tim Horton's, are on it so...nonetheless it's well worth a cruise though the list to see how many of the places you frequent are there.

According to StatsCan, the largest number of TFWs across Canada are general farm workers including nursery, greenhouse and harvesting labourers  followed by food counter attendants, cooks, kitchen helpers and related restaurant occupations. The mind numbing lists and tables at StatsCan show that by far those highly specialized workers the program is supposed to help companies find are a tiny minority of the 338,000 TFWs now working in Canada.

According to another section of StatsCan, BC lost 16,200 full-time jobs last month. As BC Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair says, "These numbers reveal we don't have a temporary shortage of workers, we have a shortage of jobs." The Federation has long opposed the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, because the program drives down wages and severely limits the rights of workers entering Canada. "We know that over the long run with expected retirements and slowing birthrates, our workforce requires continued reliance on immigration," said Sinclair; "but let's invest in real immigration programs that allow prospective citizens the same rights as all Canadian workers. It's how we built Canada and how we should continue to build Canada.

Wading through the jargon can be almost as confusing as the stats. The term 'outsourcing' is commonly used as a catch-all term by us folks non-familiar with the lingo. Reading up on the definitions of outsourcing, offshoring, temporary foreign workers and outsourcing companies can drive a person to drink. The street level reality is that the earlier era's destruction of Canada's manufacturing industries by the free trade and globalization bandits was mostly offshoring. The current corporate scheme of hiding behind sub-contractors [outsourcing companies] that actually hire and import temporary foreign workers is what we call outsourcing.

In the end it doesn't matter much which knife slit your throat, the reality is that you're bleeding and useless you stop the bleeding quickly somehow you'll be dead. It would be nice to live in a world where a person could count on the government to step in and stop the metaphorical bleeding of Canadian jobs, but we all know that'll happen just after pigs fly. So the best option, the best tool we have is to make the dastardly companies pay the Public Relations price of their short-term profit motivated actions is to take a first step by  'Naming and Shaming' them.

Environmental and Animal Rights Activists Targeted as Eco-Terrorists and Jailed in Little Gitmo

An article a few days ago about.Daniel McGowan, an activist convicted in 2006 for his role in two Earth Liberation Front arsons in opposition to genetic engineering and to the logging of old-growth forests, was eye opening. McGowan was sentenced to 7 years and the court also applied what’s called a 'terrorism enhancement' which got him sent to a CMU. the article was on the website 'Green is the New Red' which concentrates on stories how animal rights and environmental activists are being targeted as 'eco-terrorists'  throughout the US and what their incarceration in the secretive prison units officially named Communication Management Units [CMU] and more commonly known as 'Little Guantanamos' means for American's safety, freedom and constitutional rights.

Following a link in that article to the Democracy Now interview with Andrew Stepanian, an animal rights activist also secretly jailed in a CMU opened my eyes even wider. Yesterday i watched another Democracy Now interview. This one was with an animal rights investigator detailing how he has spent over a decade secretly filming animal abuse and why that work is now imperiled by a wave of laws sweeping the country. These laws, like the one currently being adopted in Indiana, commonly called 'ag-gag' laws, actually extend far beyond the activities of animal welfare advocates to include environmentalists who defy publication bans to report on clearcutting, fracking, or in the current fiasco in Mayflower Arkansas, oil pipeline spill devastation.

The Little Gitmos were opened by the Bush administration. The first in 2006 in a special isolated wing of the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. A second was opened last year by Obama's Bureau of Prisons in Marion, Illinois. Most of the prisoners held in the CMUs have been Muslim men, but there have also been several political activists, including environmental and animal rights activists.

After reading of and listening to these stories it seems clear that the US's loud and proud boasts about being a 'Government of Laws' now thinks itself 'Above the Law'. The laws, as Cicero wrote in the days of the Roman Republic, “are silent in time of war." But unlike in Cicero's time the current empire feels free to declare war on an undefinable enemy like terrorists, on ideas which can have no defined territory and on drugs all of which create wars that have no end.

Canadians and folks in other vassal states shouldn't spend any energy feeling safe and superior because their laws are quietly evolving into 'harmonization' with the US's. Up here in Canuckistan the Harper regime is spending $billions on new prisons while the serious crime rate is plunging. Who do they expect to be filling all those new cells? Maybe they're planning on an influx of 'foreign funded environmental radicals' to lay down in front of the pipeline building bulldozers. Maybe a buncha 'idle' First Nations folks bent on defending their constitutional guarantees by defending the water, air and animals their cultures have lived in harmony with for thousands of years. Maybe you, maybe me, maybe the only moral address soon will be 'Little Gitmo'.

How Corporate Structure, Neo-Liberal Politics and Globalization Create Canada's TFW Fiasco

As University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan's book 'The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power' explains every corporation has one purpose -maximizing shareholder profits. Bakan's book and documentary [full version available online here] examine the corporation, considering its legal status as a class of person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychiatrist might evaluate an ordinary person.

A corporation, like any psychopath, may at times appear soft and cuddly but it's only an act performed to gain your confidence in order to further their only real agenda - maximizing shareholder profits. It's a corporation's job to avoid any cost that's avoidable in the service of their one master. Only by understanding the true nature of a psychopath can one avoid becoming a victim. Canada's corporations aren't dropping the ball on the TFW file one, they are doing their slippery best to slither through the loopholes in Canada's TFW program.

Just as it's the corporation's obligation to do every legal thing possible to maximize its profits, it's the government's job to create regulations that make avoiding costs that are socially deleterious illegal. Canada's Harper government is doing exactly the opposite with its religiously zealous, neo-liberal, laissez-faire non-regulations. For instance the US, 10 times larger than Canada, had 65,000 TFW admitted last year, Canada had 338,000.

This same free market madness and its idiot twin of globalization during the Brian Mulroney era 3 decades ago launched the Free Trade boondoggle that resulted first in the loss of  so many of Canada's manufacturing jobs and is now responsible for the rabid outsourcing in almost all of its economic sectors. Mulroney wasn't a lone wolf in this, he had allies, like Margret Thather and Ronnie Reagan, but apparently a person isn't supposed to speak badly of the dead so we'll stick to lambasting Mulroney.

The Harper government's huge expansion of what originated as a Liberal program designed to bring specialized workers into Canada that were unavailable now has thousands of corporations with TFWs doing such specialized work as flipping burgers at McDonald's, pouring coffee at Tim Horton's and every other damn thing that will cut the labor cost and thereby increase the profits of the Conservative's major financial backers.

Harper's neo-liberal, free trade ilk say Canada needs TFWs because Canadians won't accept jobs in the North, or in certain industries like slaughter houses but they never mention a free market in wages and that if people won't work for $10 an hour it's usually because they can't live on that little money. They never suggest that in a free market the company should offer higher wages and training instead of being allowed to bring in TFWs instead. Free traders always demand a free market for their capital knowing that the national borders which then become invisible to the movement of their capital will corral and restrict labour's freedom.

Canadians aren't buying RBC's CEO Gordon Nixon's denials, they understand, sub consciously at least, that they can never trust a corporate apologist because, though their words may be technically and legally true, their real agenda is being manipulatively disguised to control the situation. A the recent CBC Go Public investigation into the RBC and iGATE scandal has shown the two corporations have have been working together since 2005 to replace some Canadians with lower paid TFWs and to outsource the jobs of many others. It's shown also that RBC's contract with iGATE accounted for 11 per cent of RBC's total revenue last year, according to the firm's annual report, with RBC paying iGATE about $100 million. So it's not small, it's huge.

The Boycott RBC facebook site that started just a few days ago is growing by the minute. On it are whistleblowers from everywhere across Canada in every industry telling their stories, check it out, it's very uplifting. As always, RBC, and the rest of corporate Canada, are counting on Canadians to complain for a few days and then do nothing. Only time will tell, but apparently many RBC branches now have greeters at the door like Wal-Mart to chat up incoming customers, so they're at least hedging their bets eh.

A Wide Range of Whistleblowers Prove That RBC is Just the Tip of the Iceberg in Canada's TFW Scandal

The dam of silence has burst. Three days ago there was one leaky Dave Moreau talking to the CBC, in the next couple of days a few other folks in the same situation started telling their stories publicly. Overnight and today whistleblowers from every sector of Canada's economy are talking. The Temporary Foreign Worker Program scandal is not about RBC anymore or about whether they broke the rules. It's about the TFW program as an obvious sop to business and how it is destroying jobs and opportunities for a generation of young Canadians.

This scandal has been going on for years in industries ranging from the hated Tar Sands to the beloved Tim Hortons. RBC, and now the not-so-beloved other banks, just got caught because whistleblower Dave came out on a weekend - when the full RBC PR machinery was off and when the HD mining corporation's hiring of 200 TFWs from China had already primed Canadians to pay attention.

Successive governments, both Conservative and Liberal, have been willfully ignoring and even excusing this practice for years by saying that we need more skilled workers. Well we have a million and a half unemployed workers yet there were 300,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada last year. As Karl Flecker of the Canadian Labour Congress said, "Ottawa’s policy to allow employers to pay foreign temp workers 15 per cent less than the prevailing wage simply offers an incentive for employers to replace Canadian workers." For instance there are tons of construction job postings in Alberta and Saskatchewan's newspapers at ridiculously low wages. Few Canadians ever apply because they can't make a living at those low wage levels given the high cost of living now in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Profits are the real issue, the program is a direct attack on Canadian workers by driving down wages. A wage race to the bottom ensues when companies of any size or in any sector have one that is using cheaper TFWs.and the other isn't. Today on the 'Boycott RBC facebook page there are numerous reports that RBC is intimidating their IT workers all over Canada about the info that is being leaked onto the page. Jenny, who started and maintains the page says, "I want everyone to know that I will protect you at all costs - even if that means going to jail." One whistleblower says, "Today I show up for work and we staff have received a letter from Gord Nixon [RBC's CEO] explicitly telling staff to have no opinion, to be aware and say this is happening in all major banks and corporations." Going on to add, " Clients should know we have all been provided with scripted answers and told to comply and not to respond to individual inquiries."

My solution would be to eliminate the Temporary Foreign Worker Program immediately. Force companies who operate in Canada to hire Canadians, if they can't find capable workers, let 'em train them. Let them pay fair wages that are high enough for Canadians to live modestly and raise a family on. If companies can't compete with others who can exist while paying fair wages let 'em hit the road, who needs 'em. Further Canadians, who would then be earning a fair wage, would be able to afford TimBits that cost a few cents more, they'd be able to pay taxes instead of collecting UIC and welfare, they'd be able to afford an education for their kids, they'd not be forced to keep quiet for fear of being fired, they'd be able to stand up strait and proud and we'd all be better off for it. All of us that is except the profiteers and their politician lackeys.

Thousands of Outraged Canadians Join RBC Boycott Over Foreign Worker Outsourcing

The Royal Bank of Canada is in full damage control mode as thousands of angry Canadians from coast to coast to coast join the protests and begin moving their money in response to learning about RBC's outsourcing deal that will see some of its staff lose their jobs to foreign workers. The new Facebook site is exploding with 'likes' and comments from folks who have joined the boycott by either closing their accounts completely or being in the process of it.

The story hit a few days ago when Dave Moreau, an RBC IT systems support employee, went public by contacting the CBC. Moreau told the CBC that dozens of employees at Canada’s largest bank are losing their jobs to temporary foreign workers who are in Canada to take over the work of their department. Moreau, one of the axed employees said, "The new people are in our offices and we are training them to do our jobs."

RBC is the most profitable bank in Canada making almost $8 billion last year and another $1.9 billion in the last quarter alone. RBC, like every corporation serves only one master - its shareholders. This move, which could end up being the dumbest in Canadian banking history, shows both just how short-sighted and stupid that type of business model is and also empirically proves how little they care about their employees or their customers.

If this style of business offends you, as it does me, and you are a customer of RBC, there are concrete actions we can take to put a crimp in RBC's profits. Moving your money to a local Credit Union is one. You can find a Credit Union near you by using this Credit Union Locator, give 'em a call, you might have to make an appointment because they'll probably be real busy in the next while. Credit Unions are owned by their members and by investing locally they benefit the local community economically.

Next, why not send off a few emails. Here's a few address to start with:
RBC's board of directors : https://www.rbc.com/governance/contactus.html
RBC's public affairs manager: Mark.Hamill@rbc.com
Human Resource Minister: diane.finley@parl.gc.ca

Then check out the 'Boycott Royal Bank of Canada' Facebook page and sign the AVAAZ 'Canadians should have priority for jobs' petition.

To be fair, RBC isn't the only culprit, every one of Canada's big 6 banks has some type of outsourcing scheme underway, the only real difference is that RBC got caught first. In fact, Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program is full of loopholes big enough to drive any sized corporation's greed driven agenda through. Hopefully this stupid move by RBC will serve as an anti-corporate bankster tipping point and one day we'll all look back and realize how important today is.

The US Bubble Economy and the Entire Global Capitalist Pyramid Scheme Set to Collapse

According to Richard Duncan, formerly of the World Bank, the capitalist pyramid scheme is in a death spiral. Going on to say, "What's really disturbing about these findings is that the pattern isn't limited to our economy, it's the same catastrophic pattern in our energy, food, and water systems as well." If he's right then why is the Dow hitting record highs? Why are Wall St. bonuses soaring? Because, as Ellen Brown explains, the US is bubble economy who's vampire like life depends totally on the Fed's printing presses. The $3 trillion the fed has printed in the last few years has propped up the stock market and it kept the banks temporarily out of bankruptcy but in the end, when the bubble pops, it will take down the worldwide capitalist pyramid scheme.

In explaining the international debt pyramid scheme, world renown economic adviser Dr. Kent Moors says, "Most frightening of all is how this exact same pattern keeps appearing in virtually every system critical to our society and way of life. It's a pattern that's hard to see unless you understand the way a catastrophe like this gains traction," Dr. Moors says. "At first, it's almost impossible to perceive. Everything looks fine, just like in every pyramid scheme. Yet the insidious growth of the virus keeps doubling in size, over and over again - in shorter and shorter periods of time - until it hits unsustainable levels. And it collapses the system."

Roger Baker's latest series 'Terminal Capitalism' gives an excellent, concise, explanation of how interest on debt, both sovereign and personal, has snowballed to the point where the inequity of wealth distribution around the world means that either financial collapse or revolution are the only conceivable outcomes. This inconvenient truth isn't a secret, every government, every banker, everybody who pulls back the curtain and sees the little old man pulling the levers, knows that one day soon the collapse of the dreaded and unfunded 'credit default swap' flimflam will cascade through the world, the bubble will burst and, as always, the shit will flow downhill.

Despite it's current $1trillion yearly deficit, the US spends $4,000+ per capita every year on the military and untold more on it's uber-secret security programs not because it's afraid of crazy leaders in tiny North Korea, not because it fears Iran's Ayatollahs, not because it fears the Chinese threat, or the Jihadists, or the Latin American socialists. The banksters, the corporate fascists and their puppets in every government including the EU, China, Russia and the US know the collapse coming and they  fear YOU.

The Mountain Pine Beetle Isn't an Ecological Disaster, It's Part of Nature's Immune System

NASA satellite image of Mountain Pine Beetle damage. {Larger, interactive version available here}

Last night's documentary on David Suzuki's 'The Nature of Things' was, as usual, beautifully shot and thought provoking but unfortunately also a bit misleading. Even its catchy title, 'The Beetles Are Coming', is misleading because the Mountain Pine Beetle [MPB] isn't an invasive species. As the documentary and the website say,  "It has lived with and co-evolved with the Lodgepole Pine for millennia." MPBs also inhabit and have co-evolved with ponderosa, whitebark, Scotch, and limber pine trees along the Rocky Mountain's forested flanks ranging from Mexico to the Yukon for at least 100,000 years.

Don't get me wrong, my kids and i have watched, loved and learned from Suzuki's Nature of Things for decades. This episode though comes off as a bit lopsided in that it so obviously is focused on only one of the many factors at work in the MPB's recent population explosion - climate change.

Although climate change is a big factor in the MPB epidemic other factors both human and natural play at least as big of a role. In the show an entomologist mentions fire suppression saying, "There is currently an over abundance of mature lodgepole pine, which is the host tree for the mountain pine beetle, creating an unnatural manmade situation. This is driven by social policy, and maintained by society's view that fires need to be put out." The cold-blooded MPB has a genetic resistance to cold temperatures, but clearly not to fire. Fires also naturally remove the host species, creating a mosaic of age classes and tree types.

Fire suppression is done to protect homes and lives but it's also done to protect the financial value of the timber. In addition there are other financial reasons beyond fire suppression why our interior forests contain an over abundance of similarly aged mature trees that the doc. doesn't mention including the massive clear cutting that has dominated our forests since the colonial capitalists took over. In the early days those clear cuts were naturally re-seeded, which at least created a partially mixed forest. In the last few decades they have been replanted mostly as lodgepole pine mono-cultures - tree farms. In both cases though the rssults are trees of a uniform age, a perfect habitat for all kinds of natural levelers - including the Mountain Pine Beetle

Normally, these insects play an important role in the life of a forest, attacking old or weakened trees, and speeding development of a younger forest. Unfortunately the short-sighted human 'profit' myopia has resulted what may be the largest forest insect blight ever seen in North America. The show beautifully shows that the MPB is now munching it's way into the Boreal forest in Alberta and is headed across the continent compromising both one of the world's great oxygen producers and it's capacity to sequester greenhouse gases as it goes.

BC's panic driven response in the last two decades has been to turn loose the lumber industry allowing it to mow down everything in sight in every huger clear cuts which of course will end up regrowing an over abundance of similarly aged trees. Apparently BC's leaders haven't learned that a 'forest' is an interwoven, integrated, interdependent ecosystem, that real forests have a great diversity of trees and other species that work together to keep themselves in balance. The Mountain Pine Beetle isn't an ecological disaster it's part of Mother Nature's immune system which is working to rid itself of the rogue primate who's technologies are the ecological disaster.

Confiscation of Savings in Canada Has Always Been Legal Because IT'S NOT YOUR MONEY

Stories about Cyprus-style forced depositor haircuts have been in the news lately because buried on page 145 of the latest Canadian Budget is the paragraph : The Government proposes to implement a bail-in regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital. In case you aren't familiar with bankster jargon, deposits are not “assets” they are “liabilities”. A plan that would turn “certain bank liabilities” into regulatory capital is a plan to confiscate deposits.

Financial analyst Martin Weiss warns troubled Cypriot banks are canaries in the coal mine. Despite the fact that depositors didn't create the problem, speculators, and bankers created it, they/we will pay instead of the banks shareholders. The policy of depositor confiscation having been accepted in Cyprus with barely a whimper from folks outside that country means it could now show up anywhere.

Toady's article in the Terrace Daily titled 'A Short Commentary on Banking and Money' by Divid Ealing, explains why its not our money, it's theirs. As much as is needed can be seized, anyone's life savings can be wiped out and there’s no place to hide.

Here's a few paragraph's from Divid's excellent piece. Please read them because, as the old saying says, forewarned is forearmed:

There's a reason the government can take your money and give it to the banks. The truth is, IT'S NOT YOUR MONEY! Let me say that again, it's not your money!

To help you get used to this idea think about it in this way. If you borrowed a tool, let's say a rake from your neighbour, you never own the rake. Your neighbour has just granted the use of it to you. When your neighbour wants it back he or she just asks for its return and it must be returned. Now let's say another neighbour needed a rake for a short time and you allowed that person to use it. If the owner wanted it back he or she would be able to go to the second borrower and claim it back. The ownership of any borrowed item is never in doubt. The owner always has legal claim to it.

The same principle applies to borrowed money. Look at any Canadian bank note and you'll see the owners name clearly stamped on it. It reads, BANK OF CANADA – BANQUE DU CANADA. At any time the Bank of Canada can instruct the government to claim its property and to place that property wherever they wish. The Bank of Canada has the same right as any property owner. The right to its property.

Raymond Robinson Ready Die in Protest Over Amendments to FN Funding Agreements

Grand Elder Raymond Robinson says he is ready to die for his cause and that he will not stop unless Steven Harper removes a series of amendments that were quietly, and recently, added to the First Nations Comprehensive Funding Agreements and agrees to a meaningful Nation to Nation dialogue with First Nations. As his facebook page says, Grand Elder Raymond Robinson grew up on the Cross Lake First Nation in Northern Manitoba. He is a residential school survivor, a spiritual leader and an outspoken advocate for the many injustices facing First Nation communities. He is a pipe carrier and Sweat Lodge Keeper.

Mr. Robinson began this historic hunger strike this morning at 9AM EST and he has vowed to abstain from all food and water until his demands are met. This afternoon at 4PM EST Concordia University will be hosting Mr. Robinson in the Hall Building 7th floor, CSU lounge where he will lead a debate on the issue of the First Nation's treaty rights that are supposed to be constitutionally protected under section 35(1).  Instead, the Harper government is illegally utilizing the Comprehensive Funding Agreements to manufacture First Nations consent to minimize those treaty rights.

Raymond Robinson was in the news a few months ago when he and Theresa Spence conducted a hunger fast in an attempt to bring attention to FN's issues especially those surrounding natural resource protection. Harper's amendments would force First Nations to give up their protected right to sue the government over natural resource issues in exchange for funding.

Raymond Robinson has the support of lottsa folks, aboriginal and non-aboriginal alike, including me. Hopefully today he'll explain more fully the amendments to First Nations Comprehensive Funding Agreements that are reason behind his hunger strike. We all need to understand these issues more clearly...and very quickly.

Why, Overall, Dogs Are The Best People I've Ever Known

Rocky, the hero who dove into the frigid North Saskatchewan River and saved a little girl when his human asked him to.

Adam Shaw and his best friend Rocky are being hailed as heroes after jumping into the icy water of the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton Sunday to rescue two young girls, aged 9 and 10, who'd fallen through the ice at the river's edge while tobogganing. The . Fort Saskatchewan oil worker credits adrenalin and his trusting dog for saving their lives. Rocky's been a fictional hero for decades, but in Edmonton, Alberta, today there's a four legged 8 year old hero named Rocky who is definitely real.

It'd be the feel good story of the year except that everyday somewhere numerous dogs rise to the moment in the selfless service of their human pack. A few days ago it was an eight-year-old Chilliwack girl named Jenna Desrochers who's life was saved by her tiny chihuahua Honey who came to the rescue when Jenna was attacked by a pit bull 10 times Honey's size. The chihuahua raced in barking causing pit bull to let go of the little girl and refocus its attach on Honey long enough for Jenna to reach safety. Jenna's mom Leslie said the two have “always been buddies.” Later Jenna said she wasn’t surprised that help came from her tiny companion. “I thought that she would help me and she did,” she said.

Honey and his buddy Jenna who's life he saved.

Our best friends have shared their lives with our lives since long before we became 'modern' humans. A scientific analysis of the DNA evidence points to a very remote break between wolves and dogs, certainly no later than a hundred thousand years ago, around the time of the out-migration of Homo Sapiens from Africa. The earliest archaeological evidence about dogs and humans is in the Chauvet cave, in southern France: a set of twinned footprints, twenty-six thousand years old, of an eight-year-old child walking side by side, deep into the cave, with some kind of hound. Evidently our Neanderthal cousins shared their fires and food with them too.

Nobody can actually know exactly how our two species first teamed up. Humans almost always turn out to be the star.of their own story, so too for this one. Our behavioral scientists believe it's most likely that the in earliest encounters our best friend's ancestors figured out it was easier to get a meal from us than by hunting for themselves so they hung around our fires. They speculate that as time went by the cavemen adopted a cute, perhaps abandoned, pup or two and that the acute senses of the dogs served the cavemen well as early warning of impending trouble from other predators.

It's a feasible story from a totally anthropocentric point of view. We can't yet enter a dog's mind but perhaps one day we'll learn a different version from our best friends that's been handed down from mother to pup, a far different caninopocentric story. Perhaps we'll learn that the earliest dogs stumbled upon a group of stinking half starved savages huddled and choking in a smoke filled cave and decieded to take pity on them. Then taught them how to hunt successfully as a team, taught them the value of community and by their actions showed our ancestors the value of empathy. Perhaps it was the dogs that taught us how to be noble and civilized us.

This scenario is at least as feasible as the other especially considering the fact that i've witnessed, all these thousands of years later, my best friends as they've risen to the occasion so often through the decades it's impossible to remember them all. They've faced down huge bears, defended my wife against an attack from a group of drunken teens, chased off coyotes...taught me how be and showed me the meaning of unconditional love.

Mayflower, Arkansas Knows Dilbit Doesn't Small Like Oil But the Industry PR Smells Like Bullshit

The 20-inch 'Pegasus' pipeline that ruptured late Friday in the middle of a subdivision near Mayflower,Arkansas and Lake Conway, a popular recreational and fishing area, was carrying dilbit - a mixture of tar sands crud and solvents needed to make the crap pump-able. Exxon itself estimated today that the spill over 10,000 barrels [420,000 gallons] and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is categorizing as a 'major spill'.

The Exxon Pegasus pipeline was built for normal crude oil, not for bitumen.  Bitumen is not crude oil. It is a mix of bitumen, (think asphalt) extracted from tar sands and solvents to make it sufficiently liquid to flow. The huge difference in pressure and heat required  to force bitumen through pipelines means it's only a matter of time before they are worn away by the sand, rocks and grit embedded in the mixture. The mixture files grooves into the pipe metal or other material. When one section bursts and eventually that section is replaced, there are near and distant sections ready to burst as soon as the flow and pressure is resumed. Dilbit has no business going through a pipeline built for crude oil.

Dilbit doesn't small like oil and it definitely it doesn't clean up like oil as the 2010 spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan showed. Immediately upon contact with air the solvents that dilute the bitumen (the diluants) evaporate off much of the dilbit leaving the heavy goo to sink. After 2 years of work and almost $1,000,000,000, the mess still isn't cleaned up. Though hundreds of emergency workers are doing everything they can in Arkansas 24/7 to keep Conway Lake safe we all know shit runs downhill and 422,000 gallons is a lotta shit.

The heavy tar sands crud is a huge long-term danger to aquatic life and water safety but the approximately 30% that is 'dilutent' posses and even greater immediate threat to every living thing as it evaporates. The silence about the ingredients of the diluent is no mystery. The oil industry says the formulas are a trade secret but sources, including crudemoniter.ca, offer a dangerous and deadly list of the most common components of every solvent the industry likes to not talk about. There's the aromatics toluene, benzene, xylenes, ethylbenzenecy, clohexane and other naphthenes all known carcenogens. There's hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and thiols, traditionally also called mercaptans, all very toxic as well. Plus others not publicly published by science researchers.

Twenty-two homes were immediately evacuated in the subdivision near Mayflower not because of the crud itself but because of the dangerous evaporating diluents in the air. By today Exxon and Enbridge have almost as many Public Relations propaganda artists spinning this story as Arkansas has cleanup workers on the job. Hopefully folks will see through the smokescreen of industry bullshit, but if the past is any predictor of the future...

Thousands at WSF in Tunis Sing, Dance and Speak Out to Show Us How Another World is Possible

This year's World Social Forum wrapped up today in Tunis, Tunisia. Once again this year thousands of people came from every corner of the globe to celebrate and that 'Another World is Possible'.  The food sovereignty group La Via Campesina, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, was among thousands of groups at the WSF.

More and more people around the world have converted to organic and sustainable practices - the 'People's Solution' - because they work. Ibrahima Coulibaly of Mali, part of La Via Campesina network, said at a news conference, "Agribusiness and transnational corporations are a major threat to the world. They control the best land, and are grabbing even more land everywhere. Instead of producing food for people, they produce crops for export markets– bio-fuels for cars or animal feed for industrial meat factories. But farmers are also uniting globally."

An excellent example of how another world is possible comes from two stories in the news here in BC yesterday. The first, prominent on every lamestream media outlet around Vancouver, was about the thousands of Canadian cars lined up for at least 2 hours at all the Canada/US border crossings. They, the brain-dead consumer class, in their thousands, still are the majority for sure. They still live their lives searching in vain for the right stuff. The second story was about a successful hemp growing and processing industry in 100 Mile House area and how it appears to be just what the economy of that area needs.

Organic. bio-diverse. agriculture works everywhere, including my front yard. Not only does it work to build living soil and produce healthy food but as Vandana Shiva, a fixture at the WSF says, "Biodiversity and soils rich in organic matter are the best strategy for climate resilience and climate adaptation. Forty per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, which are responsible for climate change, come from the use of fossil fuels and chemical-intensive industrial globalised system of agriculture."

The World Social Forum shows us all that another world, a better world, is possible.

Legendary musician Gilberto Gil, a leader of Brazil’s tropicália musical movement of the 1960s,.sings a Reggae version of 'Imagine' at WSF yesterday.

Canada is Now a Rogue Nation Ruled by Harper's Petro State Politics and Evangelical Delusions

Canada, once considered an enlightened and progressive country, was one of the first countries to sign the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification 1994. Two days ago it became the first to walk away, Canada is now the only UN member country, 193 to 1, not part of the treaty.

Head of the Council of Canadians and world renown water expert Maude Barlow condemned Harpo's decision to withdraw from the UNCCD saying, “Anything that they’re involved in that can lead to more evidence that we’re a planet in crisis environmentally they don’t want to be part of. They simply do not want this information coming forward."

David Suzuki says in his blog, "Canada is becoming increasingly isolated on the world stage, especially when it comes to environmental issues For our government to stop working with the rest of the world to resolve some of the most serious issues we face is a betrayal of Canadian values."

Barlow and Suzuki correctly focus on the upcoming scientific UNCCD meeting that will undoubtedly define AGW as the principle cause of the planet's accelerating desertification as the reason for Harpo's new policy. Others point to statements by Harpo and his henchman John Baird about only 18% of the UNCCD's budget going directly to remedial work as simply a smokescreen to evade the fact that most of the budget goes into the accredited scientific research they so desperately want to discredit. The UN's researchers will conclude that dirty fossil fuels like coal, tar sands crud, and fugitive methane released by fracking - industries that pay the Conservatives bills - are the primary causes of desertification, an anathema to Harpo and his ilk.

Like their Tea Party Republican counterparts in the U.S., Harpo's conservatives are opposed to science as a matter of faith. They truly believe that their imaginary being - "God" - is sovereign over creation and therefore humans can do no real damage. Harpo belongs to the Christian and Missionary Alliance, an evangelical Protestant church with two million members. Alberta's petro state is one of its great strongholds on the continent. The church believes that the free market is divinely inspired and that non-believers are "lost."

Deluded religious fundamentalists like Harpo and the Tea Partiers are, IMO, the greatest danger humanity faces. They believe, like Dispensationalist Christian James Watt said when discussing his method of environmental management after being chosen Secretary of the Interior by Ronald Reagan, that, “We don't have to protect the environment because the Second Coming is at hand."

Stunning Documentary 'River of No Return', a Calling to Remember What We've Forgotten

Last night my best friend Pancho and i were treated to a rare glimpse into the relatively untouched and protected part of Idaho named the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness when we watched the PBS-Nature documentary 'River of No Return'. The documentary is shot and narrated by wolf biologist Isaac Babcock and his new wife Bjornen. It's about the year they spent there on their unconventional honeymoon.

At 2.5 million acres the federally protected area is part of the largest road less area left in the lower 48 states It's mountains, rivers and plateaus are home to otters, elk, deer and coyotes, blue birds, Chinook salmon and bighorn sheep and countless others including 9 newly-restored wolf populations who roam freely raising their young and hunting together. Isaac Babcock spent 13 years prior to marrying Bjornen working with the Nez Perce Tribe in Central Idaho in the wolf reintroduction program in the area so he knows it and its residents well. The two document their adventure as they go through the seasons. Near its end Bjornen, an incredible woman as you'll learn if you ever get the chance to see this stunningly beautiful documentary, says, "I found something I didn't know I'd lost".

It's encouraging that areas like this are allowed to exist, encouraging that the remnants of our wild past are in some small way protected from us. Important and beautiful it is, but wilderness it isn't. As the documentary mentions every year hundreds of forest service workers build and maintain the many miles of trails used by horse excursions, adventurous hikers and scientists like Isaac and Bjornen. In addition some ranches that existed before 1980 when the US government protected the area still exist there.

Wilderness, where the flora, fauna, microbes, minerals, forces and faeries live in their interconnected, interdependent oneness, is very rare today on this small blue planet overrun by a species of rogue primates. The dichotomy between human materialistic growth demands and the deeper Gaian reality has created a situation where places that preserve some of the ancient wilderness's genetic inheritance, like the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, is probably the best we can hope for. Its important to remember that this situation is temporary  It's important not to forget that unless we humans learn to live in harmony with our Gaian cousins we will, sooner or later, be reduced to a thin shiny line in the sedimentary record.

My best friend Pancho is seldom interested in TV but last night every time the wolves howled her ears stood up and she jumped to attention. It occurred to me that she remembered some of what we've forgotten.