Us and Them

There are some billionaire hedge fund owners and multinational CEOs who donate to divide civil society by investing in sites like Breitbart and hate media outlets like Fox News.  CommonDreams.org 

"Investigative journalist Jane Mayer wrote a book about their efforts titled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

“In April of 2016, the SPLC documented Breitbart’s embrace of extremist ideas and racist tropes such as black-on-white crime and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. Further analyses showed how under executive chair Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s comment section became a safe space for anti-Semitic language.”

Anti-Union groups like Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research have been funded in the millions.

What makes social justice and equality such a threat towards these elites that they  fund parties who are willing to take babies away from their mothers, incarcerate African Americans, support anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, denigrate indigenous people and support pornographic misogynist rape culture?

Since Canada follows US trends we can expect that right wing political parties are also supported by Corporate capitalist elites. Even CBC news has been tainted by right wing apathetic tones.

The spike in "public" support or acceptance of right wing attitudes came suddenly after Donald Trump got elected.  Our Prime Minister changed his tone from holding up indigenous rights to cheering for pipelines.

In a nutshell, the white supremacists have revealed to my imagination this Orwellian animal farm scenario:

People who are brown, Islamic, Jewish, female, intellectually curious, LGBTQ and poor - are the enemy.  Who else is left?  The ruling elite along with those who can be manipulated by propaganda.

So what is next if this hierarchy remains and rules?  A planetary playground for billionaires and their servants. One way or another - all life that cannot be exploited will be removed. Which takes us back to the Nazis who imprisoned and killed anyone who didn't subscribe to their goal of world domination.

In some states Christianity has been hijacked and changed to an evangelical cult to not only accept the brutality of Trump's campaign but to make him a God. Forget the centuries of Christian teachings of Jesus. The second coming is Money. It can change everything that invests in its supremacy as long as humanity has been emptied of conscience and compassion.  It is built on contempt for all natural life.  It is power without flesh. The worship of the monster revealed as greed, which will bring suffering to everything that is beautiful and worth living for.

Addiction, drugs and pollution will be the weapons of those who cannot tolerate any other kind of power beyond their own. If the land is flooded and the forests on fire, they will purchase land where it is not.

It won't be capitalism or communism or fascism - it will simply be the dark hole of power, the mindless, heartless machine. There will be no conscience to reveal the suffering of ourselves or others. Language will dissolve into clicks.  Knowledge will be erased. Whatever beauty can be found in nature will be a desert.

So if we do not voice our shared or diverse views, if we are irritated by people who have different experiences, people who have different faiths and wear different clothes, and you look forward to a time where everyone is just like you, and everything is what you like - you are helping the silencing of humanity.

26 Billionaires and 3.8 Billion Poor

A report (by Alexandra Jacobo) from Oxfam says inequality is not inevitable - it is a political choice. 26 billionaires own as much as the world’s 3.8 billion poorest people. "While the world’s richest people saw their fortunes swell by over $900 billion last year, or $2.5 billion a day, the world’s poorest actually lost wealth..."

While most of the world struggled to recover since the financial crisis in 2008, the number of billionaires has doubled. Public services have been cut while women are expected to fill the gaps with unpaid care. Men hold 50 percent more of the world's worth than women.

The global elite and large corporations fight against plans for progressive policies while their fortunes are increased with tax cuts. Health care, education and public services that attempt to reduce the gap between haves and have-nots are being dried up, shut down.

Pro-Life

It's so easy to say abortions are not nice if you have enough money to feed your children, pay the rent and sleep at night. If you have the support of an extended family and friends it's easy to imagine that an unplanned pregnancy will be loved and healthy and fed.


Denise Balkissoon's article in the Globe and Mail reports a 2017 study which found that "socioeconomic stress was the primary reason women in 14 different countries cited for seeking abortion". Millions of people in the world live in extreme poverty. Millions of women have no political voice to demand that men abstain from sex.


"If the concern is only what happens inside wombs, being anti-abortion also means being anti-women’s ability to raise healthy children and to lead their own lives with dignity."


The less power women have over their own bodies, the less reverence there is for life. While men argue over who will be bombed, who will be shot and who will starve to death, women grieve over the well-being of their children.


I'm not saying that women are pro-life and men pro-death but our hierarchical, colonial, neo-liberal, society -- has not succeeded in proving we are pr0-life in our values and habits.


Our habits tend to punish those at the bottom rather than re-direct resources to elevate life.

The Cheap and Easy Way to Power

This was originally posted November 12, 2016.


"So what you have is a voting base consisting of evangelical Christians, ultranationalists, racists, disaffected, angry, white working-class sectors that have been hit very hard....[and] an increase in mortality among these sectors, that just doesn’t happen in developed societies." Noam Chomsky, Today's GOP Candidate for "most dangerous organization in human history"

The easiest way to power is to pump the masses with false hope and fantasized superiority. Tell them they deserve to be angry because they are worth more than the "others" who are lower down on the scale of privilege.

Begin with very powerful interests like big corporations. Tell them over and over again they alone are saving the world from poverty by creating money; that money is pure power which rises above the complexities of human nature. Tell them your party will be on their side as long as you get the funding you need to carry the campaign to the end.

Then simply use the same method, with different instructions to the masses.  Even though they are not included in decision making policy, and not in the room where policies are created, they need to call on an "inherent superiority" such as class or skin colour. Then change the teachings of your prophets to match your agenda.

Don't bring facts or intellect into the campaign. It emphasizes reason, knowledge and leads to social justice. Once ideas are debated there are no winners. Intelligence is a private muscle which will stay true to the party line as long as there is a salary, otherwise it will wander off. Raise children to be suspicious of their own experience and interpretation of the world, replace their self worth with doubt and self contempt. The earlier the mind is intercepted with doctrine the easier it is to influence and control. "Give me a child until he is seven and he will be mine for life", said a priest.

Set one group against another. This builds a multi-generational division where parents will do most of the indoctrination. Catholic versus protestant. Christians versus Moslems, Jews, Hindu's and all other faiths. Liberal versus Conservative, Wealthy versus Poor, Men versus Women, Man versus Nature. This ensures the ongoing war in the minds and hearts of every living creature.  This also ensures that good ideas will never replace fear.

Once these systems are established, they will prevail and be generated by the poorest and weakest of the world. The oppressed become oppressors (Freire). For thousands of years this is how humanity has been governed. As long as they are in denial about their own needs and worth, they will fall in line and do your bidding.

There have been different labels and descriptors for ruling systems but they operate on the same principle - it is the worship of power over life. The holding up of violence over compassion. The celebration of ignorance over self-knowledge.

When life is not held as sacred it's easy to make abortion illegal while planning to starve the offspring.

However, the essential and everlasting way to power is that of a society built on the free and enduring inquiry of who we are and what we can do to solve the problems that face us.

Petty Cruelty in the World's Greatest Country?

"No, this is about petty cruelty turned into a principle of government. It’s about privileged people who look at the less fortunate and don’t think, “There but for the grace of God go I”; they just see a bunch of losers. They don’t want to help the less fortunate; in fact, they get angry at the very idea of public aid that makes those losers a bit less miserable.

And these are the people now running America." Paul Krugman. NYTimes.

This is a clear article to read, but I wonder why anyone wants to see people starve and suffer?  What values have generated in such a social climate that the Republicans and Trump supporters are for this. Are people generally this cruel or is the state simply manufacturing consent? How does this benefit the American nation?

When a child is born

If we are privileged enough to live in a community that protects and values life, we come in contact with friends and relatives who have a new life to celebrate.

When I look at a new born I am in awe again with the beauty of it. The tiny hands and fingers, the flesh that looks almost transparent it is so delicate. I am taken away from the world of power, politics, strategy and cynicism.  And what I am looking at is a mystery in the flesh, a potential that hasn't revealed itself.

This new life could become a peace maker, a defender for justice, or a billionaire who spends his or her energy selling arms to terrorists.

This new life is going to be affected by the stories she or he hears, the varied ways his or her parents nurture whatever shines through in her personality. This new life will be diminished or held in care by the environment.

To think of all that could go right or wrong is overwhelming and brings me back to my own choices.

It's About Whether We Should Care

"Personally, I’m happy to pay an extra 4.3 percent for my fast food burger if it means the person making it for me can afford to feed their own family. If you aren’t willing to fork over an extra 17 cents for a Big Mac, you’re a fundamentally different person than I am.

I’m perfectly content to pay taxes that go toward public schools, even though I’m childless and intend to stay that way, because all children deserve a quality, free education. If this seems unfair or unreasonable to you, we are never going to see eye to eye."  Kayla Chadwick, Huffington Post

What is it that makes some people so riled up about caring for others? Is it that they don't want to pay the extra "17 cents"? Or is it that they fear a fair and just society will remove the privilege they deny they have? 

What is it that makes us spend dollars on gifts we know may be thrown out soon after the wrap beneath the tree that will soon be on the curb waiting for pick up?

I remember a time when I couldn't stand to read the newspaper because the reports of poverty and injustice would make me feel depressed. I didn't want to examine that, so I loved all the diversions - the Christmas catalogues, the brightly coloured mall, the lights on neighbours houses, the tinsel of the season.

Celebrating with friends, special treats and laughter is good, but I had become a mindless consumer of habits and traditions that enabled me to feel normal. 

I had hoped that our "leaders" would be responsible and make the right decisions for me.

Self-interest is a slithery snake. It allowed me to dress myself in the common fantasy - that I worked for everything I had. But in the end my conscience could no longer deny that my happiness depended on living in a free and just community. The duty to care is very closely linked to my own self esteem.

Facts Refute Myths About Homeless People

By understanding more about homelessness we empower ourselves as a community to solve the problem together. Below are a few common misconceptions about people who experience homelessness, along with some facts that refute those myths.

People need to earn their way back into housing.

When we talk about holding people accountable, we may assume that they've had the same chances that we have all had, but done less with them. We assume their parents packed them lunch for school and helped them do their homework. We may assume a lot of things, but we can be way off base. Most people who become homeless come from backgrounds of systemic abuse and neglect. Statistics in America reveal that the odds of someone in the general population becoming homeless is 1 in 194, whereas those same odds for kids coming out of foster care are 1 in 11.

Homeless people are dangerous.

Homeless people are more likely to be victims of violent crimes than to commit those crimes themselves. People without housing are vulnerable and lack the safety that a home provides. While it is true that homeless people often have lengthy arrest records, they are most often arrested for non- violent crimes associated with not having a home, like trespassing or panhandling.

Homeless people come to Vancouver Island because they have heard about our social services. 

Most people stay in the community where they first became homeless. According to data, only 25% of the homeless population is transient. The majority of people accessing homeless services in Nanaimo are from this area originally.

The greatest misconception about homelessness is that the people who experience it somehow deserve it, should be defined by it, and are less valuable because of it. In reality, homeless people are more often victims of trauma.

They have a right to be defined by who they are rather than by their housing status, and are equally as human and equally as valuable as those of us who have homes of our own.

Our first step as a society to end this tragic problem must be a fundamental recognition of the humanity we all share, regardless of where we sleep each night. Unitarians, being a pretty progressive bunch, generally have these core concepts figured out, as demonstrated by the inherent worth and dignity of every person as one of cornerstones of the Unitarian principles.

Opening our doors to those in need in our community and treating them with respect and kindness seems like such a wonderful way to walk that talk.

Unitarian Shelter Advisory Committee, published in the Unitarian Fellowship of Nanaimo newsletter.

Suzuki: humanity's collision course - a warning

What can we do?

1. “We must bring environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth’s systems we depend on.” It specifically mentions reducing greenhouse gas emissions and air and water pollution. It also highlights the need to address deforestation, degradation and loss of agricultural soils and extinction of plant and animal species.
2. “We must manage resources crucial to human welfare more effectively.” This one is obvious. Finite resources must be exploited much more efficiently or we’ll run out.
3. “We must stabilize population. This will be possible only if all nations recognize that it requires improved social and economic conditions, and the adoption of effective, voluntary family planning.”
4. “We must reduce and eventually eliminate poverty.”
5. “We must ensure sexual equality, and guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.”

This comes from the guardian spirit of intelligent self interest and science, thanks to the Suzuki Foundation.

Why Hate is Not a Way Out

Antony Gormley was quoted in an article (by Hannah Ellis-Petersen, printed in the Guardian July 6 ) with a warning - we live in dangerous times. “Yet we are all sleepwalking through it...aware the centre cannot hold, that 250 years of industrial activity has undermined and fundamentally disturbed our world – yet we feel somehow not responsible.” 

Worse is the seeming efficiency with which movements are able to destroy civil society all across the globe with very little analysis among comrades or from the mainstream media.

So while hatred has been whipped up towards immigrants, or more likely people who are not white, and while hatred has done so much damage to struggling countries everywhere - we seem to have learned nothing.

But there are recurring elements we must remember before we slip into civil wars, terrorism or xenophobic attacks.

1. The white race has for centuries invaded all continents and brutally destroyed the social systems of aboriginal people they encountered.

2. Outrage at the "problems" caused by immigrants usually comes from the white race who felt entitled to invade, rape and pillage wherever they landed without question. The harm done by colonialism has yet to be fully examined by Europeans who now feel threatened by mass migrations. 

3. The military-industrial complex has been very effective in flaming hatred where they stand to profit from the wars that result from it. However we don't remember the interests who help to fund campaigns such as the Nazis in WWII, military coups in Central America, or the Middle East.

4. We don't pay attention to the really powerful lobbies and their ideologies. It's as though we accept their reptilian appetites as business-as-usual without blame.

5. We forget that the front line hooligans, thugs and suicide bombers are often the poorest most desperate groups who have very little choice, and who are hungry for a future that includes dignity and meaning.  We readily turn away from their condition and their despair when it is obvious they are in need, and then are shocked when they become radicalized.

6. We forget that the masses are dismissed until they are exploited and manipulated to cause the conditions for a profitable invasion from a foreign elite so powerful, their presence is rarely reported in the mainstream.

7. We forget that every generation experiences the disregard for humanity, until their suffering becomes a useful means for profit for the very few. 

In spite of all this, we quickly blame without reflection, those who have the least power to change things. There seems to be an inability to see our part in this recurring drama which ultimately harms us all. 

But also we need to realize that it is the system that breeds contempt for life with its surgical strategies that further divide us and make life miserable.

If we don't wake up soon, our beloved will suffer the torture and violence that spreads like a deadly virus as though it is the only solution, when in reality, it simply breeds the trauma that keep us fearful and afraid of one another. And therefore powerless cannon fodder for the strategists planning their next windfall.

Ban Ki-Moon on saving our planet

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth... these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.

Ban Ki-Moon. https://www.brainyquote.com

The Greatest Poverty

The greatest poverty of our age is when you have no control over the room you sleep in, or where the next meal is coming from. Or even worse, when social services assumes you are an unfit mother because you are too poor to give your children what they need, and you fear you will lose them.

The next greatest poverty is when you yourself assume that those living in poverty are there because they failed in some way. Or that people who have addictions are weak willed and have simply given up.

And the next greatest poverty is if you live in a society where these attitudes prevail. Because you will find categories but not the causes of social problems.

Categories really help the ones who organize society - but who are they now? Is the government organizing anything beyond budget, traffic and policing? When police officers, doctors, nurses and social workers keep fixing the wounds, go home, come back to find only more of the same, do they begin to question if they are helping at all?

Who is responsible for taking care of the bigger picture? If our prime minister is unable (or unwilling) to keep the promises he made during elections - who exactly is in charge? And if we don't know who is in charge of the infrastructures of our civilization, aren't we just refugees with debt?

The greatest poverty of our age, as I see it, is when we don't care about the infrastructures in terms of how it impacts our quality of life. It's Bleak House on a grand scale. It's like having plenty of electrical sockets in your house but you don't know which ones will charge your cell or blow you apart.

The emphasis on trade deals are saying to us - we cannot survive without plugging into a system we do not have the vocabulary to understand.

Poverty is not being able to navigate our future because the options are not available to us. Scrolling through Facebook is an inventory of injustices and structural violence from around the world. Nanosecond updates on all that is wrong and all that we (humanity) are failing at, and none of these observations and news items direct us on what we can do about it.

In this way we do not have a society, just overplayed myths about who we are, and who we are better than.

What can we plan without bullying or criticizing others? How can we hold onto a vision if no one else cares? How do we measure what matters if we have been reduced to the Gross Domestic Product?

How can we challenge one another without exploding the rage we all feel just under the skin?

Reflections on the future and elections

One election won't fix the looming crisis. What we need to do is see how the worship of power has got us to this point where people are actually willing to vote for governments that erode our hard earned human rights and democratic sensibilities.

We are organized by centralized power (herein referred to as CP) who have the means to buy media and government and then spin or omit the facts as they please, to their advantage. The strategy used is divide and conquer - set up false enemies or sensationalize distant threats.  Because we feel powerless we love to look for those who have less power - minorities, women, Asians, Africans, gay, lesbian, transgender, those with obvious disabilities and the poor.  These are the pool of punishables, so that whenever the government or big business is pulled up on bad choices and destructive outcomes - they can pull out, quick as a gun, an issue that blames one or two women who want to wear a niqab at a citizenship ceremony.

The CP keep giving us scape goats but not for our own good - to deflect their abuse of power. We do not need scape goats. We have evolved beyond that time when our sins were laid upon the rear of a sheep and sent off into the wilderness carrying all our fears.

According to scholars and scientists we have the capacity to turn our economy on renewable clean energy, the knowledge to create a just society, to house the homeless, to feed the hungry - but the reason we haven't is not because we can't.

Imagine that it goes deeper, right to the core of what we call our civilization and that no one outside of ourselves can effect real change, that our civilization, our governments are sick and that we are mentally ill and spiritually dead and that all our issues and crises are symptoms of this deeper sickness…. Charles Bowden 1945-2014.

Imagine that the majority of voters know better than to vote for the handmaidens of unregulated industry and they know their future depends on a minority who vote for a manipulative system, because they are afraid to look too close to the way it works.

Imagine that the resistance to CP causes that majority to re-create their own communities based on action, justice and peace, and that they are imprisoned, tortured and murdered, yet the guilty are not brought to trial.

Imagine that business goes on as usual and the masses become more afraid and more desperate to avoid seeing the world as it is, and that more of the innocent are harmed, starved and murdered, and that we lose our capacity to discuss ideas, to challenge injustice. Imagine that we forget what equality, freedom and democracy was, and we forget our culture.

Imagine that the world is so unsafe we lock ourselves up in our living rooms and watch the world from a 27 inch screen for that is the only way we dare participate in our society.

Imagine that this is not just a future possibility but what is happening and has happened all over the world. That the CP has manufactured false societies with false issues and false threats.  Then you get a picture of what is to blame for the conditions of war, poverty, domestic violence, climate change.

Imagine that you have learned there is no point to beheading the aristocracy, the ruling elite - as in the French Revolution - because you know that whoever takes over from them will institute the same system. Imagine that you and I finally get it!  The work and struggle of creating social justice is not just a matter of fairness it is a matter of mental health which is basic to the survival of our species.

Then we'll understand what the price of freedom really means, and what it is for us to do.

Poverty coming to a family near you!

"Economic insecurity is endemic. Working-class whites who used to be cushioned against the vagaries of the market are now fully exposed to them. Trade unions that once bargained on behalf of employees and protected their contractual rights have withered. Informal expectations of lifelong employment with a single company are gone. Company loyalty has become a bad joke."  Bill Moyers


"One of the promises of NAFTA was that it would reduce the wage gap between American and Mexican workers. In fact, Mexicans earn less than they did in 1994 when NAFTA was first enacted." Truthdig


"In March 2013, 833,098 people turned to a food bank in Canada, down from 872,379 the previous March. Underlying this small drop is a concern of enormous proportions: food bank use remains higher than it was before the recession began five years ago. During a time of apparent economic recovery, far too many Canadians still struggle to put food on the table. HungerCount 2013 bears witness to the need for food banks across Canada and moves beyond this, to seek solutions that address the root causes. Our five recommendations are simple but significant action items that would move our country towards real progress."
Food Banks Canada.

The Power of People for a Healthy Community

The bulleted information below is lifted directly from the 2011 Report from People for a Healthy Community, of Gabriola Island, BC, to make note of and to promote how much can be achieved when people come together out of compassion.

While individuals may feel disconnected from the big national and global issues, those who work for healthy communities everywhere are making change where it counts.  For example, People for a Healthy Community in the last year:

• provided more than 4,000 lunches to hungry Gabriolans
• distributed 3,940 bags of food, 25% of which went to feed children on the island
• provided a holiday feast for nearly 125 people  December 25, 2010
• distributed Christmas Bureau vouchers to 98 Gabriola families
• nurtured community gardens that provided fresh, nutritious food for hungry people as well as gardening opportunities for children, seniors, and PHC clients
• expanded storage capabilities of their food bank so that efficient food purchases can be made
• launched a monthly lunch and social event for over 30 seniors in our community
• created a weekly social evening for Youth at Risk
• provided employment and job-skill training for unemployed Gabriolans
• developed a Circle of Care, connecting skilled Gabriolans with people who have multiple needs, while offering support services such as financial training, income tax returns, rent and job-readiness support, haircuts, massage acupuncture, and more.

If you add up provisions in numerical units here you would come up with the number of eight thousand, seven hundred and nineteen (lunches plus bags of food plus holiday dinner, etc.), not including the unknowns such as how many people were helped by mentoring and teaching of skills.

Imagine all the towns and cities in all of the provinces of this country (there are 308 Federal Government ridings in Canada) who may be providing a similar number of needs. You get a picture of social activity that is not often recognized.  Sadly the needs outweigh accomplishments, but we dismiss or overlook them at our peril.