Common Sense and Orphan Wells

Commonsense Canadian: Despite admitting there is an increasing trend of inactive well sites awaiting reclamation, the BC Oil and Gas Commission has slashed its budget for its orphan site reclamation fund from $4.83 million in 2013 to just $1 million in 2014.

According to the Orphan Well Association, “an orphan is a well, pipeline, facility or associated site which has been investigated and confirmed as not having any legally responsible or financially able party to deal with its abandonment and reclamation.”

Thanks to Honourable and Ethical Seekers of Truth

http://www.friends.ca/ILoveCBC/

Thanks to Canada and the work of the CBC I have evolved from a prejudiced European immigrant to a citizen of world community.

Canada has taught me the value of multiculturalism. I have been privileged to go where I would never have gone had I stayed in the UK. I have attended services in a Synagogue, a Sikh temple, a Catholic church and a Greek Orthodox church.

My daughter learned to dance in a Ukrainian Cultural club. My children have traveled around the world eagerly accepting the hospitality of different peoples.  I have eaten Chinese, Italian, Greek and Kosher foods. But mostly I have learned that people of different races are not a menace or a threat.  The threat is the way in which we have been trained to fear the stranger for the entrenched power of those who seek absolute power over continents.

And mostly I have learned so much about humility and a gentle approach to living with nature from our First Nations. 

Toula Drimonis says "The CBC provides a coast-to-coast identity, and support for our artists and intellectuals. It provides a popular forum for well-reasoned arguments, for ideas to flourish, for the kind of intellect that stands in stark contrast to popular infotainment produced and consumed daily in mass quantities."

From the beginning the CBC has taken on the mandate of bringing Canadians together by allowing Canadians to share their experiences across this vast land. 

CBC is a threat only to the transnational interests who have organized the destabilization of nations all over the globe, divide and separate the people, for the sake of cheap resources.  

Naomi Wolf: 10 easy steps towards fascism

Back in 2007 Naomi Wolf wrote an article in The Guardian on how a civilized democratic society can be reduced to a barbaric fascist state. This article is timeless and should be taught in schools, or should have been taught in schools. Is it too late? 

Here are the steps:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

It's worth revisiting the article for the comments Wolf includes for each one.

Sheila Malcolmson running for nomination for the NDP Nanaimo-Ladysmith riding

May 2005 photo by David Borrowman

“After 12 years in local government where I’ve been really happy and honoured to serve Islanders, I’m seeing more and more where a lot of the barriers to implementing the kind of protections and society that we want to hang on to is being thwarted at the federal level – whether that’s pipeline approvals and gutting environmental protection regulations, killing public input opportunities, gutting affordable housing and co-op funding – so much flows from the federal side, and that’s where I’m called to serve right now.”

Sheila Malcolmson in The Flying Shingle, March 24, 2014, in answer to the question why she is running for the nomination of NDP in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith riding.

Mending the Broken Promise

From Thomas Mulcair: 

The Conservatives' Unfair Elections Act, C-23, prohibits Elections Canada from promoting youth outreach and education initiatives, like Student Vote—a non-partisan school program that encourages young people to participate in the electoral system‎. Thanks to the advocacy work of Elections Canada, over 500,000 Canadian students learned about the voting system and were encouraged to participate in school elections during the 2011 federal election.

(For more information go to Craig Scott's page. )

The inherent promise in so much of what we have learned over centuries of human struggle, is that power is to be used for the greater good of all its citizens ~ to create societies that allow people to live peacefully and with enough resources to care for their beloved community. Freedom of information, a clean environment, and an education system that supports our children's physical and intellectual growth to become responsible and healthy citizens.

But this promise is broken whenever leaders divert their responsibility for their personal ambition of wealth, or to centralize power for an elite. Every ruling system no matter what it is called breaks the promise and destroys hope for the future when the covenant is corrupted.

We are all stakeholders here and if we choose to believe there is nothing we can do to get closer to a fair and just society, we break the contract and enable the opportunists to rob our children of a livable future. 

For Loretta Saunders

image found on Google - author unknown

I dedicate this page after reading the article by Darryl Leroux in Halifax Media Co-op, to the family of a bright and courageous woman, and to all people who have been sacrificed to the institutionalized hegemony of power over life.

David Suzuki Foundation: Pete Seeger: "From way up here the Earth looks very small"

"Like me, he was inspired by Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring to become a strong defender of the environment as well as human rights. In both social justice and environmental causes, he believed in the strength of grassroots efforts. As he told the CBC Radio program Ideas, "The powers that be can break up any big thing they want. They can attack it from the outside. They can infiltrate it and corrupt it from the inside — or co-opt it. But what are they going to do about 10 million little things? They don't know where to start. Break up three of them and four more like it start up."  David Suzuki - Science Matters