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Wednesday, February 28, 2007



The Birds and Bees
of Education

by Coyote

The hamfisted, inexpert view


When I first checked my email this morning, a message from one of the many Tyee regulars with whom I still have an ongoing exchange back and forth, post my banning from Tyee, was there waiting for me. He urged me to check out a Tyee thread on the, alleged, poor performance of boys compared to girls in the world of academe. While normally that would right away roll my eyes into the back of my head and put me in a drooling, vegetative power snooze, especially one called Nightbloom who frequents those kind of "sexual identity" threads there, in a persistant bid to impose his own sexual identity confusion upon it , and I won't say more than that :-), but really just a swishing, obnoxious and pompous ass. iIt was nonetheless a rather interesting discussion. Mostly, I think, or at least I found it interesting as much for some of the unintended things it was revealing about the current... How say I? ...mutually unhappy state of the male-female relationship that some, at least, seem to be anguishing over-, on both sides of the two solitudes.

It was though, one anarcho, gwest and someone I'd not read before, raingirl, making the most sense, I thought, out of a subject that almost invariably seems to wind up chasing its own tail most of the time. And that is so, again from purely my "inexpert" view, because some time needs to pass yet for "boys and girls" to find out some things about the consequences that have gone on in the still ongoing, so called "sexual revolution". (Though I suspect, like all previous generations, for all the flim flam, both camps are probably still jerking and rubbing off more than there is any actual real loving sex going on between them. Too much mutal hostility for it to be otherwise, despite what was the assumed liberating consequence of the pill. Thank God for the immigration that actually maintains current population levels in the country, one might say. Though even here, a declining population might not be a bad thing, necessarily. :-)

And what says to me that is the case, is too much porn, hype, talk and cleavage show going on, evidence of the mutual frustration, for there to be a lot of mutual loving sex to be happening. You know, the kind that actually forms the material basis of "love", makes babies, forges families, and leads to any amount of real emotional fulfillment or sexual mental health. Even "fucking" very often can be just a kind of jerking off.

But back to educating boys and girls. :-)

In my experience at least, "most" boys and girls, 'allowing for the inevitable exceptions, learn differently... Basically that simple. ...with females being more "bookish" /laboratory inclined, and blooming in that kind of an environment. (My old lady reads way more books than I do. She's always in the armchair.) Plus they mature, or are more "settled" earlier. Or at least give the surface appearance of it-, though having raised all girls, I wonder sometimes how deep that actually runs. (Anyway, itself a complex subject.)

The driving energy of testosterone really fucks us males up for a very long time. And you girls just have to accept that.

We get there, but it's a longer and more risk fraught route is all.





It is likely even though, I also think, that girls and boys should probaly be educated separately, though more importantly differently-, again allowing for those pesky "exceptions", male and female, as always exist :-) Certainly most of the working class males I grew up with were more "hands on" and "in the field" in the manner of their learning, preferring the actual "physical" world of experience to the friggin' "theoretical" or "classroom realities" environment in which girls again, always seem to flourish the better. (Or is that too just illusion?)

Let 'em fuckin' have it was always our dominant attitude. And we didn't envy them in the least. We think it's weird, but then ehh... they think we are weird.

School, for me and most of my male peers, was the most boring and sterile experience of my life. I gladly leave it to the ladies frankly, for in the end, I do not think it makes them any "smarter", just more overall "straight line" and "conformist" in their thinking actually. (Sorry girls, somebody had to say it. We really think that. We say it about "educated" guys too. With what?... Exceptions.) And while we males come on later and respond more favourably on a much different "directional" education tack-, myself only having a formal Grade 8 education until I was into my thirties, at which point I completed my academic high school, simply to improve my job chances, I didn't and don't in any way feel that women are overall particularly smarter than me. Even the university educated ladies.

Indeed, I think it is just possible that many males, not all for sure, may understand something about "education", at least in this particular social model form, that women have been rather slow to pick up on, frankly, as a consequence of their different experience history-, having in turn to do with the particularities of the female's historical oppression experience. And what males , perhaps some instinctively, but more likely as a result of their relatively more "privileged" history overall, understand over women is, that the formal, academic school environment is not especially the best place to learn about life, nature and the essential character of reality at all, quantitatively or qualitatively. Really, at root, you're just learning to do it "their way". It is indeed stultifying to that pursuit more often. It was for me and many of my "brothers" certainly. (Exceptions, exceptions.)

I don't much care what goes on in the "academic" environment, frankly, or how successful females are there. Nor do most males, I think, AND more than small numbers of females. Not that it is entirely useless, I'm sure. It seems to work well enough as a fulfillment experience for a great many ladies, and again, those "exceptional" males. So the ladies are welcome to it, if that's where they think it is at. We'll see what effect the passage of more time and experience with it, for girls, has. (And it's not as if I have never been wrong. :-)

For me"higher academe" was and is, and likewise most males I suspect, though some feel threatened by it, and we met a few of those in the Tyee thread this morning, a non-issue-, other than the bullshit expectations "elite society" has and creates to "guilt us out". They want that straight-jacket conformity drummed into us all, that the education system serves the purpose of instilling, especially over a long period of time. We'll see. Don't sweat it either way says I. Though many a guy does suspect that girls, eventually, will discover what boys already seem to know, or are coming to know better: While formal education has some minimal, short-time frame uses, but across an entire life-time, its value is largely a myth. (Though it may well help to improve the cash incomes of women. We'll see there too.)

Dig in on it ladies. Our absence from the halls of academe is certainly not anything you or we should sweat about. I understand that you think it is the path to your liberation. Indeed, I hope it helps serve that end for you. But don't be surprised if it is a disappointment in the end. Though it may serve to advance the "material" interests of your lives some. Even then, there are many degrees still locked into menial tasks and minimum incomes.

Capitalism has not yet changed its exploitive spots.

Also, we should probably all just accept the reality that we, males and females, are different. (Though we yet be the two halves of the whole.) And you ladies pursue your dreams, no doubt. It's just that we males at least will not allow ourselves to be made or reconfigured by education or any other shit into the same. We still like the difference. Insist upon it. And, "Vive la difference!"

Go for it girls.

Which is just my, like I say "inexpert" plebeian view of it all, of course, formed amongst lower class males anyway. Oh, and working class women. Bless 'em. :-)

Tuesday, February 27, 2007


Some Thinking About the Working-Class Left
And "The Greens"...


by Coyote


Years ago, when I was a more or less traditional left-winger, we tended to have the utilitarian, and yes I'll concede, exploitive attitude towards the natural world that was more or less typical of the period, left over, I suspect, from the pioneer "frontier necessity" view of the world of the early settlers, come over from the poverty conditions of "industrializing" Europe, at least as it came down to me, I saw and understood it.

I remember on a trip to 'couver town and visiting some old "commie" buddies it was, comrades :-) I heard for the first time about this "Green" thing. Of course, these folks all knew at the time that, in addition to ranching, I was doing contract logging and "cat" or bulldozer work for, often forestry, pushing trails through the forests in "cattle country", which involved basically pushing up a wide swath of trees and scrub for miles and miles, in order to build fencelines to control the movement of cattle on summer forestry range.

"What effect do you think that is all having on the forest environment?" I was asked by one of these guys. "Do you think it is creating any problems?"

Or to that effect.

They were being carefully testy. The whole "green" thing was unknown to me and likely new to them as well.

Not really understanding the question actually... Forest environment? Never heard of the concept before. Forests were just a resource. An environment? ...I retorted with the first natural reaction that popped into my head. (Which isn't to say that I didn't love the land, the forests, and the life that flourished there, 'cause I did. It just wasn't sorted out, or all in some kind of fine spit and polish perspective order. I was too close to it, one might say. I was living it-, not particularly thinking about the finer points of it, or how I was making my living fit into it.)

"Well, not sure what ya mean, " I said, in all genuine seriousness. " Ain't nothin' wrong with the forest environment as can't be fixed or overcome by a big enough bulldozer."

Or words to that effect.

Which makes me cringe now at the myself that was of course-, when I look back and think about it.

'Cause it's true. That's how we thought. Even us "radicals" of the age, revolutionaries committed to the overthrow and transformation of capitalism.

Which story I tell by way of demonstrating the incredibly positive role played by the larger green movement, then just arising-, not immediately, but over time, as we the great unwashed working class left, came to understand what these folks were saying to us.. We lived in the natural environment, maybe too up close and visceral, lived off it and used it, shaped it and, not thinking, even unknowingly were destroying it unchecked too often.

If familiarity breeds contempt, we had a tad bit of an excuse, 'cause we were so close and intimate with it, on many levels, we didn't even think about it. Same thing as often happens to married folks, like to us married to the land and dependent for our sustenance on mining, cutting and shipping its "resources", probably better called assets.

The Green Movement over the subsequent years, if it didn't do a whole bunch else, and it has in the intervening period come to be co-opted and integrated into the corporatist value system of capitalism a great deal and in many ways itself, as has happened to our own working class "Big Labour" trade union movement, and fails to question it or really seriously challenge it..., it has still had a profound effect on the likes of myself-, and many others who work in the bush and on the land. And which is still becoming more and more true, even though we also fear its gonna lose us our jobs and starve out our families. Still, on a number of different levels, as a consequence of the building and growth of the green movement and its objective "educating role", I and most land/resource workers really don't, even can't, as much as we actively ignore it, in part 'cause we've got no real control over it anyway, and it'll take a social revolution to change the reality, we don't look upon "the environment" in quite that same way I/many of us did anymore. Mostly, we just don't know what we can do about it. (Of which there are cop-out elements as well, of course, no doubt, blind and plain pig-headed insistant on keeping their heads in the sand. Not a phenomena known only to working folks either.)

And while we/they don't necessarily know, at this point, what to do about it, even while we know the inescapable harm it is doing, which we'll sometimes even admit, in the right company and non-threatening circumstances, there is a growing awareness that it can't go on this way forever, even much longer. And we, those of us who live directly off the land, know that it is already doing harm to the way we earn our livings, that jobs are being lost along with the depletion of the wood and other resources-, going "south" as is said. Like I've already said as well, we just don't really know a whole lot about what the fuck to do about it (Without creating a whole bunch of family raising, meat and potatoes on the table harm.) And that can sometimes get lots of different class strata of folks acting contrary to what they, even, in their heart of hearts, know.

The question as to how bad it has to get, is a legitimate one. For Pavlov's Laws of Conditioned Reflex are still out their working on the whole of society as well.

Which is about where we are at. The Green movement has changed the resource dependent working class and others, at least that much-, even we old lefties that come out of that class milieu, and we know it.

To read the rest of this article, click Read More below.

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But we old, especially working class lefties, and double especially those of us with a long history of working the land, have a number of important things to teach you Greens no less, I think. Make no mistake about that either. And that is something you folks need to face up to, no less than we are having to-, as many still have to, in both camps. For if there isn't a resolution of this very quickly here, in this country of Canada, not only is there going to remain a continued state of conflict between the "middle class/intelligentsia-centric" green movement and the working class, the depletion of resources is going to continue, and effective control of these resources is going to continue to be alienated southward away from us, into the imperial hands of the US Empire. (A process, in fact, already well underway and established, rapidly reaching critical "irretrievable" mass.)

And what you, especially middle class/ intelligentsia greens need to understand and learn from us, quite frankly, is first the precise nature or character of the class/sexual and broader social mechanisms of economic capitalism in which we are all much trapped, see no way out, and are discouraged from even entering upon the search for, let alone actually attempting. The bourgeois (ruling and managerial class) notion of Democracy still, as the working class radicals of the 1930s Depression Era used to say, ends at the factory gate. (Or add any "white collar" equivalent you wish, just about.) There are always in place and play still, in the relationship between the working class and boss (his ruling class system), more subtleties and systems of ruling class manipulated checks, balances and control than are immediately apparent to the naked or obsessed legalistic eye. And there is the great weight of history and conditioned behaviours as well (those conditioned reflexes), to say nothing for fear of failure and the ever present uncertainty of the future generally.

For if history has taught the broad masses of the working class nothing else, it has taught them that it is simply often true, the better the Devil or Masters you know, than the one's you don't.

Save rarely. Save rarely. The risk is worth it anyway. And there is that aspect of working class history as well, where the class has risen against its ruling class handlers. Which often has its own "dark side" lessons as well, or "cautions" if you will-, where the "vanguard" becomes but the next "ruling class".

The point being, there are many complexities to real life, to the collective working class experience that justify its caution-, which can as well even be turned against it. As may be happening here around this very issue of the changes occurring in "the environment."

And it is that critique of the social and economic arrangement of dominant capitalism which it is necessary for more greens to come to understand-, the very dynamic underpinning and at back of it, driving the social and economic behaviours of the working class since the land closure acts, which drove the peasantry from the land into the new Industrial Revolution centres of rising capitalism... it being in need of that working class to work in its new factories and consume its products, till then tied as peasants to the land. Ever since then, capitalism and its greed and fear operating systems, in many ways unique if not exclusive to just"this system", have been the central operating force of economic and all other human behaviours-, such as are the very ones undermining those "natural world systems" to which you, greens, have helped and are helping us re-discover.

But it is here, at this point as well, that you greens need to develop, sharpen, be less timid yourselves in, critiquing the now global economic system of capitalism, its behaviours and its consequences, no less than you tend to be quick to criticize and exhibit contempt of we lower class stratas. And you need to get real, no less than we either.

You still yourselves have all the dots of a real environment, showing signs of serious developing "natural systems" crises to connect yourselves, which includes as a critical factor, real humans less than ideal in nature, possesed of a real economic and ruling class structured social system and, a fear and greed driven working economic interface with that "natural systems environment". And no small number of greens, though I am sure there are exceptions, still shrink too much from drawing the appropriate conclusions, not only about over population, for example, but about the economic system of capitalism, with it's never ending growth in production, consumption and market expansion needs and dynamic, as drives it all forward and expanding it geometrically over time, and continually undermining the incentives and opportunities to come to grips with it.

We working class radicals have been around for awhile too, if not in the hallowed halls of academe, and have learned a thing or two as well.


















Just
Goofin'
Around...........


Okay, that was fun playing around with Beers' head
yesterday,though it was at the expense of getting
some new stuff up here.Still, I have to get back to
taking care of things here.

All you good folks who spoke up on my behalf in the
Mair's Tyee thread, I thank ye. Right here. It got me right here. (Tapping his heart.) Which was the greatest experience of Tyee for me, actually; the good folks I have come in contact with, and is the real source of some nostalgia, and the only sense of loss I really feel about the way things went down on Tyee.

But eh..... that's life, right!! And lots of folks all over the world suffer way more than that for their vision and ideas about the future, and their efforts to transform the human condition. In that context, this is really dick.

Now, for me, back to Freedom of Speech.ca.

And don't forget to drop back in once in awhile to check us out, and drop the odd comment. And write for us if, when and as the spirit moves you. :-)

Coyote

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Monday, February 26, 2007


Views

Free Speech: A True Test

How far is too far?

Should anti-Semitic rants be made criminal?

By Rafe Mair
Published: February 26, 2007
email this article print this story

TheTyee.ca

I suppose I must start this piece on civil rights by enunciating, one more time, that I haven't a soupcon of anti-Semitism in my body. I say this because more than once, when I've talked about matters that involve Jewish people, or anything the Canadian Jewish Congress doesn't see as in agreement with its core beliefs, it has brought my editors a call or even a visit.

I ask this question: why is Ernst Zündel in a German prison and David Irving in an Austrian one?

Because both those countries, based on well justified national shame, make it a law to deny the Holocaust.

Surely this is unacceptable.

Quoted from an article by Rafe Mairs

The Bloody Hypocrisy: by Coyote

If you haven't checked out Tyee today, and this actually really excellent article by Rafe Mair, you ought to do so

But the hypocrisy of it being carried on Tyee "The Tame One", by Beers and Co., and I presume with a nod of approval from his friend and Israel defender Terry Glavin, (Actually, I suspect Terry is probably apoplectic.) is at the same time nothing short of astounding! That or Beer's is having an epiphanic moment on this very personal road to his Damascus.

But what e'er it be, they, or at least the Beer one, need to acknowledge that while they now are attempting to here prove their balanced "liberalness" in all likelihood, in allowing a defence by Mairs of all Holocaust Deniers, they at the same time banned me from their threads merely for my refusing, along with very many and a growing body of knowledgable and principled Jews by the way, as I have previously printed here, to concede the founding and continuing legitimacy of Israel.

The Holocaust happened. The Jews, along with millions of Russians and other Slavs, Communists, Anarchists, Socialists, Atheists, homosexuals and such, suffered terribly in it.

Which is not even the issue for which I was banned from Tyee. I acknowledge the Holocaust, in fact . I merely questioned the legitimacy of creating a Zionist State in the Arab lands of Palestine, UN sanctioned or otherwise, to atone for European crimes against the Jews, and that Zionist Israeli State's ongoing Holocaust in turn being delivered yet upon the poor suffering Arabs of Palestine-, who had sweet dick all to do with Hitler, and in fact, until they turned on them, provided sanctuary for escaping European Jewry.

It is time for you to likewise here acknowledge your hypocrisy Beer's, apologize to me, and undo the afront, possibly even criminal hypocrisy, in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, you imposed upon me.

And it is not that I really want to write on Tyee again. I am busy and preoccupied enough now here, while Tyee itself has become droll, right-wing nutbar dominated, and lacklustre of any real debate or ideas for fear of further arbitrary bannings by yourself. I may or may not write there though-, on occasion.

But what is at issue here, for myself for sure, but also for you and the interest of the online magazine you created, is that you clear the air, allow back in the real fresh air of freedom of speech again, restore back the unthreatened ideas balance on your threads, by apologizing to me, lifting your bullshit edict against myself, and us both simply move on.

For I really do not wish either you or Tyee any ill. This country and our communities need more left and progressive friendly forums, to break the Neocon nutbar/ Can West stranglehold on ideas and information dissemination, such as Tyee should, and Freedom of Speech.ca does provide, not fewer.

Suck it up Beers, and do the manly thing. :-) (Even if you have to tell Glavin to, "Fuck off!")


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Saturday, February 24, 2007







A Call To All
Ye Activist Scribes, Artists and Agitators!







Jean Paul Marat, slain French
Revolutionary,in His Bath, pen still in hand.


If you know of and are moved by something happening in your community, in BC or anywhere in Canada, such as fits within the context of Freedom of Speech.ca, as sees itself having a rather broad and flexible mandate, write about it and send it along to me here at <coyotl@telus.net>

In addition to doing some "agitational" writing myself :-), I am always on the hunt for new material and activist writing talent, rooted in their local communities, their issues, and that of their region and, by extension, the entire country.

Likewise ye activist photographers, cartoonists and such others, with pictures of demonstrations, meetings, other situations and actions, and emerging personalities within the new movement of progressives and radicals in the country, send copies of your pictures along to us here, so that we too can better integrate ourselves into and reflect what it is "the people's movement" and communities are concerned with and engaged in.

Coyote

Friday, February 23, 2007















One of many cascades down Glacier Creek.

The Drainage of Howser
and Glacier Creeks
The Rest of the Story


by an anonymous Kaslo resident

Both Creeks are very impressive with lots of habitat attributes.

Glacier Creek started to see logging in the early 80’s. That time in the 80’s was some of the worst logging practices ever. Much of the valley bottom was logged flat right to the stream.

The good news about the logging is the new growth since the 80’s. The drainage is coming back.

The valley has always been prone to rock slides in spring the run off is so intense the ground shakes as ice and boulders slide down the mountains and into the creek. Very impressive and completely natural for high flow creeks in the spring. It is the back door to Jumbo Pass and peppered with Glaciers and has some great opportunities to watch Grizzly Bears and Goats.

Regarding the hydro development project.

Glacier Creek and Howser Creek flow from the height of land between the east Kootenay and West Kootenay. At any home in Meadow Creek you look right up the Glacier Creek Drainage.

One of the most puzzling things about this project is this important point!!!

Water flows down hill creating power generation down stream from water held in what they call the pondage or in lay terms (A Dam). Most people understand that concept.

So here is the mystery.

Why generate power half way to Meadow Creek then turn around and build a (power line with road access) from the WEST KOOTENAYS TO THE EAST KOOTENAYS. What gives?

The real money gained is in the power line construction and road building!!!

The dam is one thing but everyone knows you cannot create power without getting the power onto the (grid).

This creates huge issues for wildlife and the eco system.

BC Hydro has built power dams by flooding out the Valley bottoms of British Columbia. BC has only 4 % valley bottoms and the impacts of this to wildlife is extensive and permanent.

BC Hydro's then president said back in the 80’s that considering public opposition to large projects, we will have to look to smaller Hydro projects that don’t require flooding valley bottoms. The Duncan Dam in Meadow Creek flooded out 30 miles of the best wildlife habitat and forest in the province. It creates no power just water storage for the dam on the Kootenay river in Montana. All that for our American neighbors.


Oaxaca, the Great Mexican
Social Volcano Rumbles

by G.S. (Reprinted with permission)


Nancy Davies and I had been living in Oaxaca City seven and a half years when the uprising began. This several-part essay is an introduction to her book, The People Decide: Oaxaca’s Popular Assembly, soon to be published by Narco News Books.[*] Her stream of reports to the Narco News Bulletin during that turbulent period offers a unique running commentary on the initial phase of what is, in my opinion, an historic struggle to change the way Oaxacan society operates. The city is her turf. She knows a fair part of it intimately, and is a keen and biased observer, never neutral in interpreting what she sees.

Part One: A Historical Sketch
19 September 1985: The Mexican volcano
trembles, civil society surges

The great Mexican volcano, Popocatepetl, its snow-capped upper reaches soaring to almost 18,000 ft above sea level, its huge deep crater encircled by a vast irregular rim, always alive with smoke and steam trailing up into the sky, and at times threatening to erupt, reflects the geophysical seismic activity of this land of many


Popocatépetl, seen from the City of Puebla on 14 November 2006
Published in La Jornada. Photo by Imelda Medina/AP.

mountains. About 45 miles northwest of ‘Popo’, as it’s commonly called, lies Mexico City, the world’s most populous metropolis, with about 25 million souls. At 7:19 am local time on 19 September 1985 an earthquake that measured 8.1 on the Richter scale brought unprecedented devastation to the city.[1] A massive self-mobilization of ordinary citizens responded spontaneously to rescue as many as possible of those trapped alive in the wreckage. Many speak of that event, which shook the heart of Mexico, as the beginning of an enormous surge in Mexican civil society. It is that civil society, triggered by the uprising in Oaxaca, that is now making the Mexican state tremble, threatening an eruption from below as the government fast loses its legitimacy in the view of most Mexicans.

Civil society, as distinct from government- or corporate-based organizations, exists in every modern nation-state. It arises from peoples’ efforts to meet needs and desires unfulfilled or thwarted by governments, e.g. the desire to be secure that their human rights will be respected. Every nation with a population divided into a very rich part and an impoverished part, if it is to maintain the privileges of the wealthy, cannot avoid violating the human rights of the poor.

In Mexico a great deal of poverty exists in Oaxaca State. The violation of human rights by the state is fierce.[2] That is the basis for the remarkable uprising that began in May 2006, which is now pitting the state and federal governments and corporate interests (national and international) against a formidable group of organizations, most of them part of Mexican civil society.

Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero are the three most impoverished states of Mexico. These contiguous states, among the richest in natural resources, lie along the Pacific coastline in southeastern Mexico. Oaxaca, shown darkened on the map,

is flanked to its east by Chiapas and to its west by Guerrero. Its population (according to the 2005 census more than 3.5 million [3] but perhaps closer to 4 million residents) is unique among Mexican states in that it contains the largest fraction, 2/3, and the largest absolute number of people with indigenous ancestry (the 2005 census indicates that 35.3 percent speak an indigenous language [4] ). Corruption is endemic throughout the world and Mexico is no exception. The most powerful and privileged members of the society are the principal beneficiaries. The overwhelming majority of the indigenous population is among the most impoverished. They have been sympathetic to and inspired by the struggles of indigenous peoples in other parts of Mexico to better their lives, such as the attempts of the Zapatista base support communities in Chiapas that have declared themselves “in rebellion” and asserted their autonomy, in opposition to state and federal efforts to crush their attempted autonomy.
A key player – the powerful Oaxaca Section of the
National Education Workers’ Union

There are about 70,000 teachers in the state educational institutions, all state employees. About ten per cent of Oaxaqueños live in the capital city, the other ninety percent are in many smaller communities – cities, towns, villages and rancherias (tiny groupings of dwellings smaller than villages) – throughout the state. Private schools and colleges are primarily in the capital. Most Oaxacan children and parents are thus in closest contact with those teachers who are state employees. These teachers and other education workers belong to the Oaxaca part, Section 22, of the National Education Workers Union (Sindicato Nacional de los Trabajadores de la Educación SNTE).


Oaxaca City, the capital of Oaxaca State, sits in the Central Valley between two chains of mountains, indicated by inverted red Vs. The Northern Sierras separate the Central Valley from the lowlands adjacent to Veracruz, and the Southern Sierras separate it from the coastal area along the Pacific. The capital city, with about ten percent of the state's population, is roughly in the center of the state. The "heart" of the city is the famous Zócalo, where the sleeping teachers were first attacked by state forces on 14 June 2006 and ultimately driven out by federal forces on 30 October, three days before the attack on the university. The map full size is available at the website
SNTE is a very large and powerful union, hierarchical in structure, a company union created by the governing party over 70 years ago. From the start it was in bed with that ruling party, the Revolutionary Institutional Party (El Partido Revolucionario Institucional –PRI). It remains essentially a government union, although the PRI lost the presidency, for the first time, in 2000. Until recently, the General Secretary of SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo, was second from the top of the PRI hierarchy, just below Roberto Madrazo, the unsuccessful PRI candidate for president in the 2006 election.

Among Mexican teachers there is another formation, the National Educational Workers Coordinating Committee (Comité Coordinador Nacional de Trabajadores Educativo – CNTE). In Oaxaca the CNTE, whose members belong to SNTE Section 22, play a leading role in setting Section 22 policy. Section 22 has long been regarded as one of the most militant, independent parts of SNTE. Both designations Sección 22 SNTE and Sección 22 SNTE-CNTE are used interchangably.

The teachers are considerably better off than the impoverished majority of Oaxaqueños. From the start of their occupation of the city center on May 22, until the attack on their encampment on 14 June, a good many small business people and others in the so-called middle class held mixed views of the teachers’ action. Some of them were quite critical. As part of the state’s middle class, teachers are, by Oaxaca standards, far from poor. There is thus an economic class-divide between them and most of their students’ families. Normally one might expect a lack of sympathy on the part of the mostly poor families for the economically privileged teachers. However, immediately following the police assault support for the teachers surged throughout the state and beyond. Students and their families in particular swarmed to support the teachers.
This crossing of class lines happened because of the personal bonds between many of the teachers and their pupils. Both groups were victims of institutionalized governmental neglect. The teachers were obliged to accept assignments to remote, impoverished communites. Many of them met their students in makeshift quarters lacking the basic needs of a functional school: shacks without sanitary facilities, blackboards, and so on. Funds allocated to provide help to the poorest pupils, for clothing, meals, paper, pencils, books, disappeared in the corrupt administative chain. This bleeding of educational funds happens because there is no fiscal accountability, i.e. it is not even legally required in Oaxaca to maintain records of appropriations and expenditures. No bookkeeping! Teachers spent part of their pay to help their students. Naturally the union’s demands included both increased pay for the teachers, improved physical quarters for the schools and the monetary support for pupils that they were supposed to receive, according to law.

15 May 2006: In a quarter-century tradition, Section 22
of SNTE warns of state-wide strike

On National Teachers’ Day in Oaxaca, 15 May, the already frustrated leadership of Section 22 of SNTE declared that if their negotiations with the state government did not progress, they would initiate a state-wide strike the following week. They were demanding an upgrade in the zonification of Oaxaca, which would increase the federally-designated minimum wage for all state employees in Oaxaca. The rationalization for having lower legal minimum wages in poor states, like Oaxaca, is probably that it’s supposedly cheaper to live in a more impoverished region than in one with a higher average income. Such an upgrade of Oaxaca, although it would affect waged workers in Oaxaca who are paid the minimum wage, would not affect the teachers, whose pay is above the minimum. For themselves the teachers demanded a salary increase.

Negotiations from the 15th to the 22nd between the union and the state, instead of moving towards a compromise agreement, became even more acrimonious. Beginning 22 May, a large group of teachers, other education workers, family members, allied individuals and members of allied organizations, numbering perhaps between 35,000 and 60,000 (hard numbers are impossible to know) from throughout the state occupied the center of Oaxaca City — the large central park (the zócalo) and some fifty-six blocks surrounding it — with their encampment. Local business people like hotel and restaurant owners were by and large critical due to their financial losses caused by the disruption. Quite normal. The ritual of an annual teachers’ strike was by now familiar, but never before had it been so massive and so prolonged, and with no end in sight.

During a period of barely three and a half weeks (22 May to 14 June) the strength of the teachers’ opposition to Governor Ulises Ruíz Ortíz (URO) continued to grow. Additional adherents, nursing their own grievances against the dictatorial regime, joined with the formidable SNTE contingent. Frequent marches, and two mega-marches, the first on 2 June with between 50,000 and 100,000 (the police and SNTE estimates, respectively), and the second on 7 June with 120,000 [5] brought to the city demonstrations of size and vehemence never before seen here. I watched the 7 June march from the parapet on the north side of the Plaza de Danza as endless mockery of Ulises Ruíz paraded past, demanding boisterously that he leave the governorship. Undoubtedly there were state spies in civilian clothes with cameras, cell phones, video cameras and tape recorders, but no one seemed in the least intimidated or cautious. The entire event was permeated with a sense of peoples’ power.

14 June 2006: Violent attack by state police, citizens
outraged, surge of support transforms the struggle


The rest of this story, covering the events of this very important citizen's struggle in Mexico, still ongoing, from June 14th, 2006 , can be read at the link below.(Scroll down to this date, 14 June, 2006.) This was just a tease to get you interested in this story, much under-reported in this country.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

BCPOLITICS.CA LINK

I just put up a new link today, to Peter Dimitrov's blog, BCPolitics. Peter, a Vancouver lawyer, is the author of the original article and story on BC Hydro, and about the privatization of BCs rivers and creeks for purposes of private Hydro Power generation development. CHECK HIS SITE OUT.
http://www.bcpolitics.ca/






Canada: The Colony
That Chose
to Remain
a Colony

by Coyote





Understanding how and with what "official" attitude Canada emerged from World War 2, as a quasi-colony of Great Britain, chafing at the limitations of its so-called membership in the greater British Commonwealth, which was, both Great Britain and its remaining imperial "Commonwealth", already in decline and being replaced by the increasingly global ambitions and presence of the United States, goes a long ways to explaining our current national quandary vis a vis the now in full bloom US Empire and our subservient, again quasi-colonial position within it.


Well before the war ended, but when victory seemed assured, Allied leaders turned their attention to the shape of the postwar world. A new world organization to replace the failed League of Nations was already promised in the Atlantic Charter issued by Churchill and Roosevelt in August 1941. Citing the functional principle, Ottawa was determined that Canada should play a role appropriate to its status in this and any other international organization created. Canada especially would not accept any lesser position than she had held in the League. For that reason, Canada opposed Churchill’s suggestion that the new world body rest on a system of regional powers. In this scheme, the Commonwealth, with Great Britain firmly at its head, would join China, the Soviet Union and the United States, as great powers dominating the organization. At the prime ministers' conference in May 1944, King stressed that this idea - a faint echo of Britain’s fading hopes for a common imperial foreign policy - was unacceptable to Canada. (From the Govt. of Canada Website , from an article titled Planning the Post Second World War World. )


That said, for the above is more than a bit naive, even untruthful, from the earliest foundations of this country, especially our evolving "national" ruling class of elites in this country never did much display a strong "independent or nationalist instinct", in terms of concrete action, but was always more content with first "imperial" fidelity as a "dominion" of Great Britain, and the simple pursuit of self riches as is characteristic of capitalism, driven for a time by the development of the national railroad system, for example-, though it did serve an early nation building end for a time. All roads, however, paved with that early manifest preoccupation with riches and fidelity to a British Empire Motherland, such as I grew up with as a youth, especially in the post Second World War, lead to the instinctive need or desire, with the collapse of that British Empire, to content again, independent Canadian national development with the mere suckling at the teat of the new, aggressive and rising US Empire ambition.

And as that ambition and intent of the rising US Empire more and more manifested and asserted itself in the world and fell to warring with the USSR and China, (and of late the old Middle East former Arab colonial world of the deceased British Empire), our ruling class, and possibly much the population, for it too seemed much content to at least go along, in the postwar weariness with conflict, and increasing prosperity that came with rebuilding war destroyed Europe, with exceptions, fell ever increasingly into a pattern of dependency and puppy dog loyalty, or at least obedience, to the new Imperial US Motherland.

And in the shaping of the postwar world, part of which involved the creating of the United Nations, so long as there was some inclusion or modest recognition by the new emerging Big Powers, especially the US, that was and remains the role we largely fell into over time: Increasing dependency, with denial of course, integration into the cold war military system of alliances (NATO, NORAD) with the US, and more formalized of late, but always taking shape and evolving, integration as well into dependency on the US economic behemoth, and its transparently unequal and yet so-called "partnership" trading and "economic integration" schemes. Which has now in our time reached its final stages of "absorption development" with Canadian military involvement in US Empire war adventures in the Middle East, earlier Korea of course, and at the "North American continental level" with the ongoing "continental integration and co-operation", read "subservience" of our national military system, including officer corp, to US military command determined priorities and targets. A relationship which has especially gathered momentum under successive Liberal Governments since our last modestly "independent minded" Prime Minister, the dying gasp of a separate Canadian ambition and identity, which was Pierre Trudeau. (For all his limitations and ruling class determined flaws, in my view.)

But the piece de resistance, of course, underpinning and driving it all, under the hand of ruling class guidance, is the unequal and subservient economic relationship with this new US Empire that started out high in the immediate postwar mountains, as the dam of British Empire influence in the country and the world finally broke, as a kind of stream, is a now become near unstoppable river of broken and never really realized economic benefit treaties unequal daily trading patterns and assumptions, as primarily benefit the Imperial US Motherland of course. In which increasingly polluted and unequal economic wasteland, with again some significant exceptions, we remain in many ways still, what we were under the earlier British Empire influence; hewers of wood and drawers of water for their industry, independent development and global power. Through such as the shattered illusions of NAFTA, all the side water, oil and wood sharing deals that give them guaranteed access to our natural resources, tie and commit us to them, and the multitude of arbitration tribunals and court cases as have served that end, the "would have been a country" that is Canada has finally come down to the deep ocean, about to drown the "national dream" in what is the already "official" commitment to the North American Union.

It is often said that in the relationship between politics and economics, it is economics that invariably rules in the final analysis. A reality which I believe to be largely if not entirely true, in the normal course of events, especially where long established ruling class values and assumptions are allowed to continue sway and to rule. But there are always "choices" as well, of course.

And there is always available to hand, where there is the understanding and the courage, of course, the option for working class and other population strata, where it becomes obvious and understood by them, that a course ruling class driven economic forces are upon is not in their or the "national interest", to come together, organize, and develop strategies and tactics of their own as will change the economic and political dynamic as seems so bent and skewered against them. There is always a choice in such situations even, to either submit or resist.

For this country the hour draws late of course, as our discussions here of water have served to help make clear, but even then, it remains much a matter of "choices" we now have to quickly make as a people, around organizing and acting..., or submitting.

NOTE: I hope to, as opportunity allows, to explore this subject of the country ongoing, the ruling class determined course we are on, the military, national development, and economic implications that are already being forced upon us by our unequal, quasi-colonial, rapidly become "full" colonial relationship with the US.






Tuesday, February 20, 2007

check the picture closely.

From Kaslo, BC
The Glacier Creek Story


Here is a letter published in the Watershed Sentinel (in Comox, BC), from a reader in Kaslo, reporting on Glacier Creek near there.

Dear Editor:

My friend recently gave me a copy of the October ’06 issue of Common Ground magazine. You can get your copy at 1-800-365-8897. This issue is vital to those of us who care what is going on with hundreds of run-of-the-river projects being proposed all over BC (at a fast pace with a gold rush mentality.) I admit it was an eye opener for me; the implications more far reaching than I had realised. The cover is entitled “Our Stolen Rivers” …Get the big picture…The Enronizing of BC Hydro.. Inside this issue is a middle pullout section which explains Bill 30 (which essentially eliminates local involvement) and gives both sides of the story from the Corporate Sales Pitch to just how exactly BC Hydro is being endangered. The last page of insert claims there is still some hope and gives us a list of what to do. Write letters and talk about www.hydrofactsbc.ca .

The easy money game plays out something like this: Developers, putting up virtually no capital except what’s necessary to pay for the license and a few other expenses, obtain a water license and begin energy purchase agreements form BC Hydro. When they win a bid, they have in hand a 15 to 450 year contract to sell energy to BC Hydro. Then they are off to the bank for a loan and present the banker with a long term guaranteed cash flow. Because BC Hydro is effectively backing this loan with the purchase agreement, the interest rate is very low. When the loan is paid down, the company owns the asset. The public, which has financed the arrangement, gets no assets, no protection for future price increases, and no guarantee that the energy will not be exported. With hundreds of such projects all over BC, there is no way to determine the cumulative impacts.

Water licenses give rivers away to private companies. What is happening is a stealing of our commons. We are being given reassuring language to keep us asleep. BC Hydro, one of our most valuable and profitable public assets is apparently being deregulated and dismantled for private profit as was BC Rail, BC Gas, etc. According to Murray Dobbin in the Georgia Straight, there are some 496 run-of-the-river projects being proposed. He claims that the entire North American electricity industry is being restructured to serve the US market. The blatant giveaway of BC’s water resources should set off alarm bells everywhere.

The theft of the commons is occurring quietly and without public knowledge. If we don’t know we won something, or we do not care, it is easy for some slick corporation to steal. Especially if certain provincial and federal government toadies are in on the deal and not telling voters. Is the reason they are not holding a fall session of BC legislature a fear that they may be discovered? The Common Ground insert and articles explain much. One can note the patterns. I believe that future generations are counting on us to get corporations out of our wild waters. The battle for the Ashlu drainage is ongoing near Squamish. Closer to home (Kaslo) we stand to lose Glacier Creek. People get upset about Jumbo Mountain Development at the top of Glacier Creek. Do they think a dam and a tunnel carrying water 6km. though a mountain to the Duncan reservoir will be any less devastating?


Glacier Power BC has now become Canada Glacier Power. A change of name, a change of proposals, I believe nothing they say…I have Glacier Creek running through my property. Initially we were offered a well, free electricity and perhaps a buy-out to compensate for the possible loss of 80% of the water. As far as I’m concerned if we lose much water in winter the whole creek is likely to freeze as the creek has spread out and freezes from both top and bottom, The valley beyond my homestead is precipitous and logged from top to bottom. It is prone to avalanches and great walls of ice have come down before, taking out anything in its path. A dam 3 km above my place leaves much to be desired, Now that they have no need to run their initially proposed 8 ft. pipe down the middle of the road but rather are proposing a 6 km. tunnel through the mountain instead, we are being offered zero compensation for the loss of the creek (which was why we bough the place.) I have lived here 13 years and this creek has immeasurable spiritual and healing powers. To tunnel vibrant live waters through a tunnel and turbine is sacrilege. Glacier Creek is unique!

Let’s face it folks, a tunnel and a turbine are not run-of-the-river projects. The only green thing about this plan is the money they hope to generate. I quote a letter from Neil Murphy, the chief proponent of Glacier Power BC.

“I do not know at this point what the exact BC Hydro price for power will be. The past PPA price has averaged out at 54 dollars a mega watt hour. The plant at Glacier Creek should be able to produce
80,000+ mw hrs annually at 11% mean profit which would be up to 475 thousand dollars a year profit.

If it is higher that would be great from any viewpoint. The annual fees and provincial/federal tax rate is 37% so I and my son would make a comfortable living. When you have the debt retired (25 years) then you have the license to print money. The profits are substantial from this point onward to the end of the lifespan of the power plant (70 to 100 years).”

Where are Friends of Glacier Creek? We need your input now!

These invaders plan to move in, take our water and give us only grief. Where are their ethics? How environmentally benign is taking away 80% of the water? There are FISH!

written by: Gabriella Grabowsky, Rainbow’s End Ranch, Glacier Creek FS Road, Kalso BC,


PUBLISHED WITH THE PERMISSION OF: Delores Broten, Editor Watershed Sentinel PO Box 1270, Comox BC V9M 7Z8 Ph: 250-339-6117 www.watershedsentinel.ca

Monday, February 19, 2007




WHO THAT???



Check out the anonymous comment left on the Invitation to Terry Glavin and David Beers thread..

Who dat masked man what just streaked stark naked through here?

Beauty. I believe somebody just blinked. :-)

Added note: Coming soon, a new format from Raven.


More Deceit, More Lies, More Cover-Up. The Gordon Campbell BC Government and CanWest Global Press and Media.

by Robin Mathews


It doesn't stop.

One rotten deal (of many) has been cut off. The others continue. The attempted heist by Gordon Campbell/Alcan of the Nechako River has been blocked. The "suspects" were caught red-handed. Their deal? To give Alcan a contract guaranteeing, on-going, a profit of 1400% from energy sales to B.C. Hydro. Campbell fronted for the deal, publicly calling it a good deal for British Columbians (and trying to keep its terms secret).

The B.C. Utilities Commission ruled Campbell's claim false.

Campbell went to Kitimat, remember, didn't meet the Mayor or City Council. He ignored them. He announced a very large expansion of Alcan aluminum smelter capacity to come soon. That seems to be false, too. Alcan keeps saying that unless it gets the 1400% profit deal it may just freeze everything. Or go away. So Campbell's announcement was fog, fakery, flunkeyism.

What you see is what you get in this matter, unless you work for the Leonard Asper family at CanWest. What you have to see (if you're normal) is Gordon Campbell acting in flagrant breach of the trust placed in him by the people of British Columbia. That is not, however, ever, what you hear or read or see from any of the CanWest lap-dogs in B.C., including the Vancouver Sun's editorial writers.

Questions have to be asked about them all. Are they hired because they register below the moron level in I.Q. tests? Are they so indoctrinated they can't think? Are they so terrified of losing their jobs they'll write anything? Or do they have a clear design? The answers don't really matter. What matters is that British Columbians are misled, deceived, told half-truths, fed obviously false Gordon Campbell propaganda, indoctrinated with corporate bilge, and led away from seeing the primary breaches of the trust they have placed in the Gordon Campbell government.

Do the flacks at CanWest really do all that?

Try Vaughn Palmer, the man I call "Gordon Campbell's personal representative at the Vancouver Sun ": Senior (ahem) Political Columnist there. What can he say when Campbell is caught red-handed? How can he cover for his (real) boss in such a situation? To begin, Vaughn Palmer doesn't look at what is in front of his eyes. He refuses to admit Campbell led the dirty deal with Alcan after trying to keep it as a secret deal, kept from British Columbians. He won't admit Campbell is doing a wrecking job on B.C, Hydro.

He doesn't tell his readers Campbell had a golden opportunity to serve the Province. Campbell could have set to work to build B .C. Hydro to be the grand energy servant of British Columbians: ecology-smart, progressive, assuring low-cast manufacture and housebold use, AS WELL AS quietly pouring billions into the Province's general revenues to be used for education, health care, Kyoto concerns, and more.

Palmer won't tell his readers Campbell split B.C. Hydro into three parts, ruled it can't generate more power but has to buy it from private sellers like Alcan! Palmer won't tell his readers Campbell gave (in a secret contract) one-third of B.C. Hydro to Accenture, the dubious, off-shore, former dealer-with-Enron, to look after B.C. Hydro's billing, metering, and financial affairs.

Vancouver Sun scribe, Vaughn Palmer preparing his texts for the Can West Bible.

Vaughn Palmer won't tell his readers what you see - one third of B.C. Hydro in an all B.C.-owned distribution operation set up so British Columbians can't control it, can't get a decent profit from it, and must surrender to it all ability to sell energy wherever it wants (in the U.S. grid) for the profit of private owners Gordon Campbell has set up and is setting up.

Do you wonder how Vaughn Palmer can show his face in public? Do you wonder how he can go on writing the pap he does for CanWest? The answer may be that Palmer thinks he's on the winning team and when B.C. is destroyed, the friendly corporations will give him a private yacht to sail off the B.C. coast. He can call it "Lap-Dog" or "Fraser Institute" and equip it with a sound system that only transmits speeches by Gordon Campbell. Paradise! In the meantime, is Palmer following a carefully prepared design?

Consider Vaughn Palmer's column on the B.C. Utilities Commission ruling that stopped the dirty Alcan/Campbell/B.C. Hydro deal. Palmer reports on "the premier's rationale" for the dirty deal. It would supply energy needs (?) at "a competitive price". Pardon. 1400% profit to Alcan reflects a competitive price? Palmer has refused, ever, to say what the profit take would be for Alcan. Then, once again, Palmer pretends smelter expansion at Kitimat and the dirty deal were contained together in a pack.

They aren't. They never were. Then - to reveal the depths Palmer will sink to - he blames the failure of the deal on B.C. Hydro, which seems to have let Campbell down by telling the truth here and there. No, it said, B.C. Hydro doesn't need Alcan. No, self-sufficiency isn't involved in the dirty deal. (Indeed it is not. B.C. Hydro would be stunningly self-sufficient into the far future if it were put back together again, not privatized, allowed reasonable development, and given the chance to involve new ideas.)

Hydro appears to have fallen into "mistakes" that made it look as if the deal might not have been so bad after all. But the mistakes were easy to spot and the B.C. Utilities Commission spotted them. How did the mistakes come to happen?

Trust Vaughn Palmer. He asks questions. Did B.C. Hydro expect a Utilities Commission rubber stamp on the dirty deal? Was Hydro "going through the motions Š not caring to be a conduit for a subsidy-in-all-but-name for the aluminum smelter"?

Trust Vaughn Palmer. To avoid. Perhaps B.C. Hydro was tired of having its throat cut on behalf of Gordon Campbell's corporate friends. Could it be the people at Hydro knew (as Palmer pretends he doesn't) that the smelter "deal" was in no way tied to the 1400% profit deal on energy sales by Alcan to B.C. Hydro? So if Hydro supported the "heist" with a 1400% profit on it, there was no guarantee the smelter expansion would ever happen. The dirty deal would mean cozy, dirty profit for Campbell's buddies, but less than nothing for B.C. Hydro, Kitimat, or the B.C. people.

Gutless Vaughn Palmer refuses to finger Gordon Campbell for trying one of the dirtiest, smelliest deals in B.C. history. Instead, Palmer turns on the public servants in B.C. Hydro, already stretched on the rack by Campbell and his pirates. Palmer stands over the poor B.C. Hydro people with a lash. Bold, brave, courageous Vaughn Palmer. Is that bold posture by Palmer part of the design?

Readers who suffered that Parade of Palmer Political Pornography shouldn't be surprised that precisely six days later (Vanc. Sun, Feb 12, 07 A10) they were given another fog job, an editorial: "The Newspaper's View", titled "B.C. Hydro lets its customers down". The Newspaper's View we may take to be the view of Leonard Asper, the monopoly corporation's CEO. (CanWest papers write "Right" - whether the truth or not - or the writers don't last long.) The (faceless) editorial writers (like Vaughn Palmer) fell not on Gordon Campbell, but on B.C. Hydro. A coincidence? An accident?

The editors admit they earlier got things wrong. They thought the deal was great; it turned out to be lousy. But did they really get it wrong or did they pretend it was okay, hoping the dirty deal would go through without being noticed? Didn't they look into it - that important deal - those powerful, august managers of the Vancouver Sun? Didn't they know that with Gordon Campbell's knife in their backs, the B.C. Hydro representatives couldn't tell the truth about the sham deal they were being pushed into?

The Sun editorial writers don't ask any embarrassing questions of Gordon Campbell. Like their fellow Lap-Dog, Vaughn Palmer, the editors go for the jugulars of B.C. Hydro representatives. Surprise? Not at all. Private corporate power in North American wants to destroy publicly owned B.C. Hydro. The Vancouver Sun editors (I say) are simply doing their job: misrepresenting the facts, covering-up for the dirty attempt of Gordon Campbell, working tirelessly to destroy B.C. Hydro. The editors even mislead on the "incentive" touted to get Alcan to expand smelter facilities at Kitimat. The editors call it "the $110 million incentive".

The "incentive" - with no binding demand that smelter facilities be built - was a two billion dollar, on-going sale of energy to B.C Hydro in a deal that would deliver 1400% profit to Alcan. If Vaughn Palmer's Lap-Dog column stinks, the Sun editorial is a disgrace to the (already craven) level of argument for which the Sun is becoming infamous. But we can end, fortunately, with a humourous note (for those who like Black Humour).

Apparently, concerned, caring, intelligent citizens have challenged the editors for the false, idiotic, mindless editorial: "BC Hydro lets its customers down". (It should, to begin, have been entitled: "Gordon Campbell's Dagger Found Between BC Hydro's Shoulder Blades".)

Apparently, the editors were sympathetic to the complaints. If I'm not wrong, they suggested they may have taken the wrong tack. It has even been suggested the editorial was written all confused and in a rush. Will the editors write an apology and tell the real story? Will they do something? Of course not. Don't be silly. After all, they work for the Asper family. After all, CanWest is a big, private, reactionary, monopoly corporation whose sympathies are with all the reactionaries in Canada (and the U.S.). B.C. Hydro must be completely destroyed, those reactionaries believe. "What", the editors might ask, "do you think we're paid to do? Do you think we're paid to serve British Columbians? To tell the truth? To report fairly? We work for CanWest. Remember."

Funny eh.

Friday, February 16, 2007


Now, check out that weather, ehh?

The tide (of winter) turned here today. The long, slow run to spring has begun in Revelstoke. On our balcony at least, (the Mrs. having moved me into one of those "condo" thingys) it got up to better than 10 C today, and all could sense the cusp of a change occurring. Spring has begun its irrevocable movement northward, to our climes.

Now we could get nailed by a sudden surprise yet, for sure, we are still on the cusp, and it may seem like it is going to remain winter forever-, but the change has begun. :-)

And ehhhh, check out those "hit stats" in the right hand column, the same one as my "links". They ain't no rip roaring hell, but ehh... I thought maybe there was only one or two folks reading this site about every third day. :-) (And ehh, check out those folks sites in my links. They's all "Ace" people. Blood tested everyone.)

The only thing that could be sweeter is a two foot peter. lol














Victoria Water District Rivers, Lakes and Streams Applications for Private Hydro Power Generation Development.

We are moving along with the list of these BC rivers, creeks and streams slated for privatized hydro power development. Additionally, with some 2000 of these waterways slated for power development, in which General Electric Corp is already involved in the background with a number, the likelihood of these applications, as matters move forward, falling under global, especially US corporate control is extremely high. Indeed, it is almost a certainty, as development occurs on these waterways, and given US burgeoning energy needs to sustain its bloated capitalist development, that these water application rights will be sold off to them, alienating them forever from Canadian control and utility, for recreational and simple aesthetic values, as well as any future economic development and sustainance needs, as we, as a distinct people and country, may decide.

It is not rocket science here, one and one continues to add up to two, and the nature of US Empire imperialist development continues to operate upon the entire world, and we will not be exempted from that pressure reality. We will idly stand by here and fall into chickenshit silence and obedience to the diktats of these US Empire needs, collaborating with our own capitalist marketplace conservatives and other US Empire Loyalist wannabes, in which case the inevitable will happen. OR we can begin to organize ourselves as a people to influence and put a stop to this dynamic being imposed upon us, both from within and in collaboration without.

I, personally, opt for this latter defence of the nation and "the peoples' interests" course. Clearly many others have yet to decide. Nobody said that life was forever going to be easy.



Application # Water Source Water Use ft/sec Company


Victoria Water District


F117999 Jordan River 366.6 BC Hydro & Power

F118000 Jordan River 2500 BC Hydro & Power

Z116950 Muir Cr. 209 Hydromax Energy Ltd.

Revelstoke Water District

C117108 S.Cranberry Cr. 137.2 Advanced Energy Systems

Z118772 Cranberry Cr. 86

Z115381 Soards Cr. 159 Monashee Power Ltd.

Z115583 Pat Cr. 148

Z117109 Kirkup Cr. 70.6 Robro Six Hldgs.Ltd.

Z117136 Mulvehill Cr. 67.1

Z117268 Drimmie Cr. 35 Bugaboo Power Ltd.

Z121488 Goldstream Riv. ? Valhalla Power Corp.

Z122408 Norman Wood Cr 264.86 Selkirk Power Company

C121742 Cranberry Lake 268 (storage-power) BC Hydro & Power

Cranberry Cr. 235 (power)

F121741 Cranberry Lake 268(Storage-power)

Cranberry Cr. 136 (power)

Prince Rupert & Terrace WD:

C117480 West Kitsault Riv 110 Alice Arm Hydro Electric Corp

Z116941 Clary Cr. 353

Illiance River 353

Z117301 Gwunya Cr. 70.63

Z117303 Klayduc Cr. 70.63

La Rose Cr. 70.63

Z117305 Stark Cr. 74.15

Z117309 Kelskiist Cr. 88.29

ZZ Cr. 88.29

Falls Cr. 2

C101260 Anyox Creek 750 Anyox Hydro Electric Corp.

C101260 Anyox Cr. 27160(storage-power) Anyox Hydro Electric Corp

Z117300 ZZ Creek 77.16

Z117304 Lyall Cr. 67.1

C114597 Cascade River 88 Regional Power Inc., Toronto

Cascade River 5000(storage-power)

C119458 Brown Lake 105.9 Epcor Hldgs.

C116502 Homestake Lk. 136 Kitsault Hydro Electric

Kitsault River 96

Z117307 Trout Cr. 105.94

Z122199 Kisault Cr ?

Z121408 Clary Cr. 80.3 Kitsault Resort Ltd.

Z121409 Lime Cr. 94.5

Z122167 Gabion River ? Gitga’at Dev. Corp

Z119104 McKay Cr. 353 574768 Bc Ltd. Burnaby,BC

Z120217 Maroon Cr. 141.26 Daryl James Hanson, Telkwa

Z120368 ZZ Cr. 87 George Henry Pattison

Z120448 Europa Cr. 755.72 Plutonic Power Corp

Z121233 Europa Cr. 755.72 0728078 BC Ltd.

Z120796 Kinskuch River ? Interpac Power Corp

(storage-power) 54000000

Z120867 Shawatlan Lake ? City of Prince Rupert