The Dark Side of abandoning the Sternwheeler Logo (2011)

There is grassroots discontent mounting against having a so-called rebranding of our lovely town forced down our throats, especially against losing the sternwheeler symbol.

No convincing case has been made by Mayor Bev Buckway and council as to why Whitehorse would need an identity remake except that there may, perhaps, be a disturbing motivation crossing over from the dark side of politics, intentionally or not.

Not just at the hands of the current city council, Whitehorse already has experienced a sustained period of heritage destruction as well as of economic and ecological sustainability.

Lists of antidemocratic measures and anecdotes tend to be incomplete and just keep getting longer.

Landmarks and characteristics that provided identity to the community have been eradicated, like the old post office or the “Whiskey Flats” flair.

Many local businesses, some with family traditions, have been broken up and good jobs have been destroyed as a result of the city subsidizing and initiating the Walmart operation in collaboration with the Yukon government.

Whitehorse is the historical hub of Yukon River navigation, and the shipyards, where sternwheelers were built or refitted, was one point of interest.

Yukon steam shipping was one of the most demanding and accomplished operations of its kind. The sternwheeler logo represents a sprit of industrial and transportation ingenuity that is crucial to remember with regard to the green energy and green transportation challenge that is on us now.

As a more recent novelty, council is taking the fight to the statutes itself of civic and democratic traditions; violations of the municipalities act have been noted in the Yukon legislature.

There was the stonewalling of the McLean Lake referendum paired with frivolous public litigation expenditures.

In a vote on an improvement project that the city took from Black Street homeowners, nonparticipating parties were considered in favour of the city plans, actually tipping the count by rigging the process in this way.

I wonder what is in store for our city and territory if council gets away with this new fanatical campaign of changing the way we see our community.

Outside of the city’s phony survey activity, it seems impossible to find a single person, not just in Whitehorse but in all of the Yukon, who supports getting rid of the sternwheeler.

Some people may have selfish reasons, like not wanting to see harm to Yukon tourism or other business activities that could come from the so-called rebranding, which is a campaign to disintegrate our image.

Totalitarian governance has often sought this kind of intimidation through psychological identity shock to break resistance. Examples are the display of abstract reductionist features of a leader’s face or other new-age heralding stimuli meant to manipulate the citizens when cynically adding to or removing symbols from flags, coats of arms, and such.

This is why people feel sick about the loss of the sternwheeler in our logo.

We don’t want to keep losing more of our democratic and community roots that a spineless council and city administration is attacking.

about: “The North: use it, or loose it in 2010”

Mr. Streicker, your vision for the North needs work

You correctly point out “use it or loose it” (Star, 8 Jan. 2010), and further that reference to the traditional and ongoing presence of Inuit, First Nations and other Canadians provides more legitimacy than Harper sending gunboats. 
You say our land is not in dispute but some of our water is.
To say "none of Canada’s land is in dispute" and not to transcend this discussion of shorelines is missing the point.
Despite some disagreement Harper says the same thing and no, the statement is not helpful to hold up the integrity of Canada’s territory. Canada consists of land, air and water, rivers, lakes, saltwater zones, wetlands, ice or fluid, winter or summer. Catharine McClellan said it best “Part of the Land Part of the Water”.
It's not semantics John, it's a reflection of who we are below the illusions of old and new empire projections. You missed the defining issue that water joins land together, an indigenous experience inseparably connected to Canadian territories which is as different to European legalities as Canadian Constitutional Conventionality as a whole.
Water bodies are engrained in our evolution as the highways and communication lines of the country, as much focus of the land as arteries are to a living organism. 
One has to take this Northern, this Canadian reality to the international stage more than superficially. Not the Dutch or Russian or Denish tradition of ‘owning land and firing cannon balls over water’ (inspired by J.R. Saul on the law of the sea legacy), which is clearly an understanding of water as fence. One navigates along fences, a view that legitimizes foreign icebreakers, submarines and other vessels to go where they please without asking already. The shoreline discussion doesn't work in Canada or for Canada and it's not a credible or effective direction for us to take. 
However Harper’s and your’s sentimental views lack not just knowledge and effectiveness, but also a genuine will to stop a comeback of colonialism in Canada. Harper pursues the wrongheadedness aggressively and you do it with quiet adherence. Of course one cannot treat Indigenous Canadians as second class citizens by way of class justice, treaty erosion and a race profiled drug prohibition war and hold up credibly the Indigenous Canadian narrative against foreign interests in the Canadian arctic; both at the same time, no way.

Half-cooked TILMA (2007)

The Yukon government wants (wanted) to sign on to the BC/Alberta Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement. I would like to support the ongoing discussion about TILMA in the Yukon with seven observations.

1. There was no participation in the negotiations, no input from the Yukon.
Long lists of items that may harm private and public sectors as well as communities in the Yukon have been cited. The concept of transferring large areas of government authority to TILMA dispute resolution panels, who are not elected, could be illegal.

2. Governments and organizations that deal with professional standards consult, with or without signing on to TILMA, regarding harmonization of job qualifications. TILMA creates more bureaucratic layers that any process of change is then forced to work through and it would not be surprising if it would make the labour shortage worse. 39 pages of terrible reading, a somewhat untypical legal document with a lot of simplistic platitudes that really don't address anything. Its so much easier to break things than to make things. There is no incentive in TILMA to produce anything positive, there are no accountability tools in it. However it is designed to stick like cancer cells. Article 20: Accession and Withdrawal spells out a notice of cancellation period that is twice as long as in NAFTA.
The Conference Board of Canada was a primary lobbyist in favour of TILMA but doesn't have the numbers to prove anything. Away from their TILMA papers they themselves in their own current, economic forecasts for BC and Alberta do not predict the slightest growth based on TILMA, but work along the lines of previous years.

3.  BC and Alberta parliaments have voted on TILMA, there were no community consultations which is unusual for a sweeping legislation. Only after the fact, simultaneously with the implementation phase, which is now, have a range of BC municipalities had the opportunity of passing resolutions against TILMA.
Aspects like improving the labour mobility are elements of a false language that is meant to hide troublesome facts real people are left to struggle with.

4.  Negative effects are and were being felt in BC communities before implementation. School boards already have refrained from removing vending machines with harmful foods fearing future TILMA litigation. These school boards have a very real concern. Different to NAFTA there is no burden of proof to describe the damage one claims to have suffered. TILMA is different in its ability to supersede any civic structures arbitrarily simply through pitching the categories of irrational market fundamentalism versus the common good. TILMA is bound to breed an unheard of level of inflation in the litigation industry. Not only will this negatively effect the bringing up of healthy children in schools, it is clearly introducing many new disadvantages to the typically smaller businesses who produce and manufacture healthy foods. Its an element of a command economy, a government manipulation of the market on behalf of manufacturers for sugar and chemical saturated soft drinks and other useless stuff that cannot compete on its own merit. The agribusiness and food giants run a big part of their "business" out of vast legal departments. These lobbyists have a permanent foot in the door of governments and work against food safety, against meat inspections etc. It doesn't appear to be healthy to further strengthen these shadowy and excessively bureaucratic schemes. This type of market interference has nothing to do with the kind of conventional market regulations for infrastructure and social security purposes, a context in which stable markets evolved since the Great Depression. My concern is that the BC/Alberta trend towards a modern form of aristocratic domination will in the long term weaken the entrepreneurial economy that people rely on to survive.

5.  "Appendix 1 - Regulatory Bodies with established Dispute Resolution Procedures",
as the only appendix exhausts itself in three lines below the aforementioned headline that states:
"British Columbia Utilities Commission
British Columbia Oil and Gas Commission
Alberta Energy Utilities Board"
That means no business that suffers through the protectionism and subventions by the Alberta or Federal Governments in the tar sands will be allowed to apply for the assembly of a TILMA dispute resolution panel. An extraordinary and solitary exception. This really is aristocratic, class justice, no false language in the straightforward Appendix 1. The tar sands industry is permamently protected within TILMA but not subject to TILMA actions. This is exposing the entire TILMA as very phoney because it is in violation of its own omnipotent definitions. The tar sands conglomerat doesn't want to get mixed up in the expected turmoil caused by the anti democratic TILMA sweep. Different to Wal-Mart and Monsanto, Suncor and the Alberta Energy Utilities Board cannot become more protectionist than they already are. The protection within TILMA might over time increase the precedence weight favouring the tar sands conglomerate in their numerous legal situations outside of TILMA, why should that become the Yukon's dirty business?
The Appendix of the document is most permanent, its set apart from the list of exceptions which are temporary to various degrees.

6. "Article 22: Further Co-operation", in its second paragraph is quoted here complete because it determines the direction of the agreement:
" 2. Parties shall continue to jointly advocate for the removal of any Federal Government measures that operate to restrict, impair or distort trade, investment and labour mobility between the parties."
Article 22 effectively renders every exception temporary, which also means the agreement provides the power to nullify land claims in the Yukon. It might not happen, but unbelievably so, under TILMA it could happen. Remember, different to NAFTA, TILMA does not put a burden of proof on the applicant, whether government entities or other parties. As it once was in the Inquisition trials, it can then be sufficient to project an accusation with the goal of obtaining a final ruling. Canada Council for the Arts, the National film Board, public broadcasters, medicare and public schools could over time be abolished, many things that we hold dear could disappear.

7. I refuse to believe the Yukon Government has the mindset of Gordon Campbell and Ralph Klein who signed TILMA, or shares their intentions in the most destructive areas. Its enough if the YG lawyers don't read the information.
TILMA comes along as a real bastard, no matter how one looks at it there is absolutely nothing on it that says Yukon.

Harper’s Crime Wars generate Crime

Its a tradition of bankrupt politicians to deflect by lashing out against crime, as if this problem was not better taken care off by reason than by impulse.
The US justice has started to retreat from an excessive penal code against young offenders because it damaged trust into police and courts and hurt public safety. Harper wants to make Canada the only G7 country without an effective youth court. There are almost no examples for such a policy in Western countries. One that I could find was the Third Reich which abandoned the youth court during WW2 in 1944.
The bedrock of justice history and 800 years of justice reform is that crime deterrence depends on equality in court and balanced dignity of the court. Contrary to hearsay the severity of sentences has nothing to do with crime deterrence. The crucial respect for the courts is tied to the independence of justice as third pillar of the representative system, keeping government and parliament honest. Its a watchdog function without which democracy cannot stand. A control function that Harper wants to get rid of by diminishing the courts with a radical new way of legislating the court’s sentences. He does this together with corrupting the rules to appoint judges in the novel way of political appointments. Every person in every walk and place of life knows, every woman, man and child knows that the adherence to rules depends on them being equal for everybody. An excessive penal code propels the well to do to negotiate their way out, strike deals, come up with expensive lawyers. Crime deterrence is diminished as a result of a growing inequality in court; its that simple. And its already a problem, since Jean Chretien's times Canada’s young offender legislation is one of the toughest in the world. Lack of legal aid and lack of access of low income people to justice in Canada had caught the attention of the UN. Aboriginal women, to a significant degree teenagers, are locked up 30 times as often as non aboriginal women. Aboriginal and black youth are locked up longer than other Canadians for identical offenses, the stats are obvious. Jail populations in Canada are growing but have some way to go to the seven fold per capita level of incarceration in the US, but also to a US style organized crime culture that is bred in the jails. Harper’s utilization of the vengeance motive represents a shameless exploitation of the suffering of crime victims and a cynical disrespect for the safety of Canadian homes and on Canadian streets.
The Prime Minister’s behaviour is in keeping with his ambition to become an international outlaw and a very lonesome heir of a Bush Doctrine without Bush. Highlights are the breaking of the child soldier convention, violation of the convention against torture by the way of covering up extraordinary rendition flights, accommodation of war crime activities by Afghan authorities, warlords and other war allies (Because of this in the fall of 2007, level headed Canadian officers outright resisted orders and stopped to hand over prisoners to Afghan allies), promotion of capital punishment for Canadians at the hands of the US justice. All of these are violations of government’s obligations that may be dealt with in due time under Canadian law.

Bail Out, the biggest Heist in History (2008)

I tend not to buy into great conspiracies masterminded by James Bond story style ueber villains. Reality produces a lot more mistakes and forgetfulness. Winston Churchill lost his fortune in the 1929 crash, no insider warnings there. Churchill learned another relevant lesson when he was a driving force of the Royal Navy’s conversion from coal to oil before WW1; Oil availability is of strategic significance for navies and for global trade. The underlying oil reserve depletion that became visible with the unprecedented and unexplained oil price run of 2008 caught the globalization dreamers off guard in their financial ivory towers. Prior to the Wall Street crash the speculators lost control, they couldn’t contain themselves any longer with the swelling load of garbled electronic listings and bad debt and consequently they never made it to the post election bathroom. Had the profiteers been able to hold things together just a few short weeks longer they could have received an even more generous pampering especially from neocon governments. The Canadian banks are doing their best right now in damage control to protect Harper’s reputation while quietly stopping and slowing bank to bank lending, which is very bad for business. With sure to come follow up bail outs, the Wall Street crash followed by worldwide bail out action may be worth trillions of dollars.
No help for people who loose their roof, so therefore nice houses are appearing on the market for five thousand dollars as is the case in the Detroit area. Often those houses are stripped of copper wire, plumbing, roofing and fall beyond repair and don’t even make five grant for the property and all. I don’t know how much economic sense that can make, rent or emergency shelter for one family over a year costs more than five thousand dollars. People already have paid dearly with a quarter century of income losses and loss of democratic freedoms. History shows that loans that were installed based on deceptive presentations, partly in violation of consumer protection laws, eventually will be forgiven. The Financial Times in London made it clear last week that the US will have to let the debts go to bring back trust into North American markets.
The question is, how much destruction will happen on that road? Of course it makes no sense to devastate people’s lives for a few hundred bucks. Its the action of drunken criminals who kill for pocket change. This whole political context of bringing back the old European system of a radical class society is madness.
But the sub prime mortgages in the states appear to be only a part of the problem.
At the core is the failure of a politicized financial system which was predicted by the acclaimed author John Ralston Saul in his 1992 international bestseller “Voltaire’s Bastards“.
In the chapter “The Hijacking of Capitalism” he writes on page 362:
“The purpose of a stock market is to provide a regulated forum in which current owners of the means of production may either sell to new owners by putting their own shares on the market or expand their means of production by raising additional financing through the issue of new shares. A rise in the market should be a sign of the rising value of the means of production, thanks to increased sales and new investment. Neither of these things happened between 1982 and 1987 (referring to the 1987 stock market crash).
And yet enormous sums of money were poured into the market (as happens now).
Where did the money go? It seemed to disappear in some sort of paper-printing maze in which speculators and managers chased each other around in a directionless circle with nothing in mind except control of the management levers ... “
Lets be clear, in a market economy watch dog of the management are the business owners and the regulators, not management themselves. In a lawful society a CEO is an employee, not a prince.
It also means what we are observing is not capitalism, it is the revival of financial fraud and pyramid schemes similar to the Great “South Sea Bubbles” of 18th century feudalism.
For a quarter century now much of the rewards of our economy were not going any longer to the generators of wealth, the workers and the owners of production means, the business people, the capitalists, the shareholders. It is taken away by fake capitalists who talk up the “competitive markets”. These CEOs and their overpaid boards usually have never taken so much entrepreneurial risk as running a falafel stand. They are usually business school graduates who despise knowledge from industry specific sources and from the economics departments of the universities. As corporatist anorexics they tend to fire the most qualified people first because abstract management training told them to fear critical thoughts, they sell the production tools and are foolishly proud to boost the quarterly financial statements in this way. Personal income, money that is not part of productivity, in those postmodern executive dimensions is meaningless in economic terms. How many golden toilette bowls and yachts with chopper fleets parked on them can one really enjoy? Where it makes sense is as a representation and as a tool of anti democratic political power.
As far as simplifications go, they proved to be more true than I wanted. During the more isolated economic troubles of the recent past as well as this time around many CEOs still extract one million $ per day while the stockholders and workers are loosing their shirt. And again these executives will have control of huge bail out funds. The crash is no meteor strike, chronic criminal practices, like “Enron Accounting”, like Conrad Black style media empires implementing censorship, were coming to a head. The Wall Street bail out is predominantly a package to finance organized crime. The care and time was not taken to provide safeguards, to protect citizens and investors. As far as I can see all the participants in the “Progressive Democratic Caucus” who don’t see themselves as quasi Republicans as well as in another group, the “Conservative Caucus”, (congress women and men of the Republican Party who don’t see themselves as neocons) voted against the deal both times. They seemed to be the best informed ones because they have talked to economists like Michael Hudson, former advisor of Cleveland congressman Dennis Kucinich. Among the ones who warn are James Galbraith, son of the late Canadian economics giant Kenneth Galbraith and Nouriel Roubini who timed the coming crash precisely two years ago. The US government won’t have any of this, it is already hiring half a dozen so called management asset firms who at least mismanaged investor’s funds prior to the crash. Their job is to create a firewall against any form of accountability or scrutiny of what goes on as the bail out money starts flowing. Bush’s economic disaster plans cut deep into the experience of Americans. For what else might he be remembered? According to New Yorker magazine writer and investigative journalist Seymour Hersh George W. Bush already has the authority from congress and very well might attack Iran to improve his legacy between the US election and leaving office in January.
The concern is that especially the US bail out will deepen a long term recession, because the money that is now lining pockets is lost as incentive for the economy. The Wall Street business plans are beating a dead horse with the idea of wealth creation from compound interest of long dead loans that are build into the bail out. Overseas banks do not believe it, capital has started to flee North America, hyper inflation may set in. Its big lies and fear mongering all over again to confuse people just as their pockets are being lifted. There are no grounds for panic and speed, lack of thought will do us in. It was the same with the Iraq war, another trillion $ deal. Market bail out without intentions to gradually correct the trade deficit, without reducing defence spending, more fiction. Economic optimism because of stock market hysteria following the bail outs, fiction. The job losses, and capital losses are real. US government and pro bail out congress members had the worst of the profiteers, the defence contractors for example, by the scruff of the neck like never before and they did nothing.
The fantasy character of the hand out already has triggered a wave of financial trust loss around the globe as well as hastened bail outs overseas. Carefully observing a variety of analysis it is clear that the guarantees for bank deposits by governments and snap nationalization actions of banks were more so a reaction to the bail out than to the crash. The disappearing of capital in the Bermuda Triangle of the bail out is very bad news for the building of green infrastructures. But also for Asian economies like Japan and China whose leaders know that speculation bubbles cannot replace essential productivity. China never wanted 10% growth rates and one way globalization with a huge US trade deficit; it was forced on the Asian Tigers by Western “free trade” ideologues. The Asian countries don’t want so called free trade and they don’t allow it.
The bail out has been dismissed by governments and economists worldwide because it strengthens the reasons further that created the crash and seemingly forced other countries to jump in with their own measures. Michael Hudson, James Galbraith and other scholars recognize that Keynesian capitalism with meaningful regulations and incentives was able to not only win WW2 but also heal its economic wounds. It never went out of fashion with serious scholars of the economy. In contrast, one way or the other fans of Milton Friedman’s model for disaster capitalism like the former US Republican Tom Flanagan and his personal disciple Stephen Harper will have to face the hard won knowledge.
The investment direction in such an anti capitalist trend is also interesting, it went to debt creating deadbeats. Arms manufacturing is big, so is the agribusiness. A good  example of a false economy that destroys more than it produces is the leader in genetically engineered food crops, Monsanto, who absorbed a lot of phony investment with fraudulent interest expectations based on fictitious claims regarding the characteristics of GM foods. No better is Monsanto’s activity as the lead lobbyist in advocating to impose colonization or globalization rules on the poor countries trying to force them to cheaply export the grains they need to feed hungry bellies. Monsanto advocated for and achieved the implementation of two sets of rules in the WTO. If an African country helps their farmers it is an illegitimate subsidy that is met by severe sanctions, if the US or the EU do the very same its a laudable incentive. That was the reason that a part of the developing world walked out on the 2008 trade talks in Doha and Geneva, for the first time ever. Large regions of rural India are successfully boycotting Monsanto’s claims to own patent rights on all their seeds. Ethical and Green funds are generally doing well because they exclude these robber barons from their portfolios.
The Wall Street crash could become especially expensive to Yukoners. Government leader Dennis Fentie is the butt of jokes in the Yukon now, his gullibility compares to someone who sent 30 million $ to a Nigerian pyramid schemer. No wonder he advised Yukoners to vote for Harper. It was kind of his Coming Out as a “bushed” neocon, in stark contrast to the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Danny Williams, who actually has conservative values. Before the electronic speculation once again will destroy people’s savings and revs up towards another seizure lets remember the Toban Tax proposal which would have introduced some sanity to the inflated speculation game. The Iraq and Afghanistan war profiteers occur expenses and have to work hard in the delivery of death. This trillion $ hand out will be different, its pure cash to the top.
Even a slim one trillion dollar “Give Away” (Dr. Michael Hudson) globally, which equals one million dollars one million times (12 zeros, I approximated that its enough to pave tightly with loonies in a sort of shingled way like fish large fish scales a 60 feet wide highway right around the planet), will easily go down as the biggest heist in history.

PM Harper prorogues the law

In December 2008 the Governor General prorogued the parliament, which is to say on request of Prime Minister Harper she sent the MPs home. This was unprecedented in Canadian history because prorogation was never used before to keep a government in power that had lost majority support in the house. Harper had to go and see the GG for a serious two hour visit.
In 2009 it was a similar situation because his only reason was to be afraid of loosing support in the House and among the people soon. But by exploiting the 2008 precedence he was able to just phone the GG and be done with it.
By now the GG would have realized that she made a huge mistake in 2008 by not using the precise and confined power and duty of the office in checking the illegal executive action. Constitutional convention requires majority support for government at all times.

Harper’s attack on the constitution by steamrolling the GG office had not come entirely unexpected.
Since Harper is in office he chastised the GG several times publicly.
And finally the GG has clearly been sjdelined in her specific procedural duties in safeguarding us against totalitarian danger.
Michaëlle Jean has been a very graceful and aware of her office GG, referring to herself once or twice as head of state very much in the proper context. Which is not just representing the queen on a symbolic level. More so it is a practical reminder for Canadians that responsible, peaceful government has strong common law as well as, uniquely in the Western world, indigenous constitutional traditions. With these interesting components, in the real world more so than in soap opera and other sound bite talk, it had functioned better than the philosophical abstractions of the one dimensional, race and text based European constitutions that Australia, the US, France, Britain and others have.
Canadians know their tradition of constitutional monarchy which included multiple identities, common solidarity, dynamic progress, reciprocity of loyalty and powerful oral conventions since before confederation. We understand the pitfall of a republic, that it's healthy for our democracy to keep the glamour aspect of state representation away from corrupting the political leadership. Harper doesn't know or doesn’t like to accept it.
It is therefor in order that the first prime minister who rejects the constitutional laws of Canada has turned himself officially now into a pompous monstrosity.
Unfortunately the opposition has put themselves in a position were they think they can't call him on that. It was a massive failure of political instinct to let the political language of Canada be taken away from them.
How exactly did the opposition parties loose touch with reality?
Here is what happened:
The opposition parties responded to the 2009 prorogation by making a few lame comments avoiding to mention the violation of our constitution.

Harper calculated correctly ‘in it for a penny in it for a pound’, he knew they would become even more complicit and stepped up his attack on democracy.
In the 2009 prorogation he was cocksure because he had carefully secured the opposition’s complicity different to 2008. Back then he faced resistance at least initially until after December 2008 Ignatieff fell apart like an incoherent, overcooked dumpling. Following Ignatieff’s appearance as Liberal leader the demoralized opposition allowed themselves to be smeared by Harper when they accepted as economic stimulus the 75 billion dollar embezzlement to his friends, the Canadian banks in Jan/feb 2009 (see the finance minister’s website). Harper’s heist is responsible for the entire deficit.
One effect of his gigantic donation to the banks is that the he gets to fool Canadian home owners because the Canadian part in the world real estate market crash is delayed, he hopes until after an election.
Its not fair to blame the ongoing constitutional decay solely on Harper. The bed for Harper was made a long time before he became Prime Minister. It has to stop, people should wake up to danger and re-consider their ivory tower vanities more carefully and more deeply. Harper’s action are not the first nails into the coffin of democracy, remember John Manley who as Chretien’s Deputy Prime Minister promoted a republic, nobody said a word in the House of Commons. 
Denial of danger is cleverly promoted in the media but still, all anti-intellectual nonsense. Supposedly politics are evil but totalitarian danger exists never here, only in history, in China and North Korea or perhaps where our colonial puppet dictators like Uribe and Karzai rule.
It's an illusion to think that only neocon ideas produce radicals like Harper. 
One reason that provokes radicalism is a peculiar elitism which has become like rampant disease in the Canadian Zeitgeist and a serious problem when at times it afflicts even decent people like the CBC’s Michael Enright. I believe him that he can fill out a long gun registry form. Reality is that many who don’t read or write well are just as good or perhaps better than him in safely handling dangerous equipment. It is hazardous to loose sight of our populist democratic roots and invite in this way false populists like Harper who really is a weird kind of 17th century feudalist; a conman dressed up in confused but costly market abstractions. Common people are sidelined by Harper’s clever exploitation of a very blind and widely proliferated neo-liberal class thinking. An intentional cynicism about politics establishes room for creating a mob mentality that serves a strongman game, that floats on a drunken nihilism. In this kind of scenario it is easy for Harper to disguise his power hunger and connect the image of false authority with the force of thought, art and tradition. He tries to slip a brave new sick world view into Canadian living rooms and coffee shops aided by a mesmeric spell the mainstream media have cast over Canada. A view that can be understood as phony survivor, a fascist tumor version of the egalitarian rights vision which informed the confederation of Canada.
There is self defeating lack of awareness by some which translates into unintentional support for Harper’s vision of a new class society.
Just one more indicator for society loosing its centre are the Human Rights Commissions who tend to increasingly cater congenially to the vanities of excessive entitlement thinking. There seems to be always someone who is just short of one more perk in the benefits package, one more promotion to go after with a complaint, which is fine. The Walmart workers who are persecuted as soon as they even think about exercising basic human rights like the one to organize, who wet their pants standing on the shop floor because they are not allowed to go to the washroom have no access to human rights complaints.  That is where the problem is, in the loss of balance, in the loss of equal access to rights and law, in the cutting of legal aid. As first important action in office Harper changed the appointment of judges to a recruitment of judges for the neocon cause, we are years down that road.
Liberals and NDP are not attacking the constitution like Harper, but like him they live without history which is how they have lost confidence in our very dynamic roots and are dangerously toying with other ideas.  

As much as they seem to dislike what he stands for, one of Harper’s ideas they bought into is the neocon principle according to which elitism trumps service. Its OK as long as the tracks are covered with exclamations of a false populist nature. Decisive textbook example is the ‘tough on crime’ legislative fashion which was generating so much crime and high graded drug revenue in Mexico that public safety had collapsed. Mexico backed off from ‘law and order’ and decriminalized possession of Heroin, Marihuana and Cocaine in August 2009.
The Liberals and NDP participate in Harper’s escalation of drug prohibition and crime wars which targets the First Nations with astronomical incarceration levels; and in this way also slyly tries to infiltrate and weaken their communities with criminal, neocon and other corrupt mentalities, and by attempting to roll back the liberty First Nations have achieved against the prison camp character of the indian act history. The growing, radical over policing, the community disruption and the street drug as well as alcohol incentivisation through prohibition excesses against the First Nations will no doubt some day be seen as reminiscent of the British Opium War strategy against China. This crime war is detrimental to respect for law and safety and well being in all our communities. It is a clear and manyfold violation of our constitutional laws to diminish the judiciary independence. This is the deceitful centerpiece of recent crime legislative pieces such as the omnibus crime bill, increased mandatory minimum sentencing, illegal SCAN and Safer Communities legislations etc. A vibrant democracy has no big crime trouble, civilized justice and enforcement doesn’t let the privileged off the hook and everybody understands. There is no need for delivering a pound of meat out of the poor, guilty or not. 

The public was mislead with a real pick-pocket diversion trick, was shown dishonestly construed public safety concerns while in reality these legislative actions compromise the ability of the judiciary to check the most dangerous kind of crimes. These are the crimes committed by the powerful and especially by an authoritarian government that is out of control. It's just so easy to accelerate this self asserting path of ever more inequality in the courts, ever more anarchy for the rich and powerful and a million rules and rising for little people. Every parent, every teacher knows two sets of rules don’t work, deterrence against crime goes out the window, generations have known that.

After enough betrayal of common solidarity people will not necessarily respond in expected and in Goodie Two Shoe ways. If opportunities, fairness, authenticity and equality in justice in Canada are not renewed but continue to be methodically shut down in front of people’s noses Harper and Rupert Murdoch are not shy to recruit the disenchanted. This is why Harper has a majority in reach.

The misleading of public sentiment with anti crime rhetoric and creating intentional political confusion and disenchantment without making differentiation are classical early warning signs for fledgling police states that push authoritarian leadership. However, history shows that concerns are usually overlooked or belittled. Once the plane has been tilted almost everything and everybody tends to slide towards short circuited escalation of insensible thought and action. The opposition parties behaved admirably innocent about the political purpose through the instigation of the anti crime campaigns, which is to hogtie the fundamental democratic watchdog function of the judiciary by entangling and polluting it with corrupt class justice.

Loss of judiciary independence feeds directly into a lack of accountability where we are stuck with ongoing and illegal prorogations of parliament.
If again Harper gets away with an illegal prorogation (dear reader be a little patient, courts as well as broad discontent bide their time) most likely the next thing we loose after loosing a law abiding executive will be free and fair elections. 
It would be naive to assume that Bush and Harper would not have shared a thing or two regarding how to go about that.

The field of blockages and distortion, of media dilutions surrounding illegal prorogation is not located entirely out there in space. It disallows, it prevents to heal the ideological inflammation and coercion with which the Harper government is attacking the conversation about national and international issues. 
Canadian constitutional democracy is in danger. The conservative Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Danny Williams had it straight already on the 10 Sept 2008 when he spoke to the Newfoundland and Labrador Board of Trade: “Stephen Harper is a fraud”, “Anything but Harper’s Conservative Reform Party”, "A majority government for Stephen Harper would be one of the most negative political events in Canadian history.", “Stephen Harper’s agenda has been cleverly hidden”. Danny Williams failed to mention that with Harper’s buddy John Howard from Australia in retirement he is now the slickest racist leading a country.
What is clear to many patriots of all stripes is that the waters are being tested for a totalitarian democracy. Nobody knows what will happen but the executive dictatorship model could turn out as bad as any other dictatorship. There is a problem to consider with all these dictatorships, they are very much like a jail, easy to get in and hard to come out.
Isolating and voting down the toxic PM Harper, in the house and in elections is priority and from there one can expect a necessary renewal process in the country, involving all parties.

Yukon Green Energy Act, When?

In May 2009 Ontario passed the Ontario Green Energy Act. Yukon used to be a place that needed not others to show us the way. Famously as a response of being overrun and disrespected by the gold rush stampeders, in 1902 chief Jim Boss of the TA'AN KWÄCH'ÄN wrote to Indian Affairs in Ottawa, requiring that his complaint was to be passed on to the King. Chief Boss continued in starting negotiations to secure land for the TA'AN KWÄCH'ÄN in which to some extent he succeeded. The sense of self determination and self reliance that Jim Boss displayed, over time, has become mainstream Yukon culture and it is being frustrated by government blocking fair access to the effective use of solar energies (photo voltaic, solar heat, wind, geothermal).

The people of Ontario felt the Oil Shock of 1973 had happened long enough ago to learn from it, followed by too many years without initiative for energy security, energy sustainability and energy democracy. Ontarians had grown tired of ‘global thinking and local postponing’ in the fashion of Kyoto, Copenhagen, Al Gore etc. Civic action beyond the familiar technocratic self reference was needed, very strong popular support has been polled in Ontario.

In broad strokes the Ontario Green Energy Act follows the German model, introduced in 1999 where solar energies (wind, photovoltaic, geothermal) with over 15 % of total energy production have surpassed the nuclear ‘industry’ in megawatt production.

The four pillars in the Ontario Green Energy Act are:

-  Guaranteed feed in access to the grid together with guaranteed feed in tariffs

- No cap on program size, no cap on project size

- Investment priority for solar/renewable over conventional energies

- Establishment of a fast charge point infrastructure threshold to enable the use of electrical cars, trucks and busses everywhere

Some of the common misconceptions are that first rate wind mapping, high sun light intensity and urban demographics are required for success. Germany has a second rate wind and sun potential and about one quarter of the population lives in cities with a population of over 100 000, three quarters in villages and small towns. All other industrialized countries including Canada have roughly a reversed ratio. The vast North of Ontario which is north and west of Northern Ontario, in landscape, climate and population density has some similarity to Yukon; except that Yukon has more favourable education levels and more cosmopolitan attitudes than the North of Ontario. The truth is effective solar energies are found everywhere, conventional energies come from few and fewer places requiring volatile, aggressive, global logistics that burn up the wealth of nations. With the Ontario Green Energy Act Ontario has found a brilliant answer to the pressing energy crisis, killing six birds with one stone. Ontario is simultaneously improving energy security (1) while reducing the carbon footprint as well as reducing vast hidden or externalized fossil fuel costs generated by health affecting emissions and inflated military spending (2) as well as bringing sound economic development with good jobs back to Ontario (3). A leveling of the playing field on the energy markets (4) as the oil and gas, coal and nuclear industries are heavily subsidized and favored through every regulation and framework possible and ones that are hard to imagine.

These oil, gas and nuclear subsidies are very unhealthy because they don’t nurture a worthwhile fledgling industry in the way China supports infant industries which is equal

to economic development of the West in the 19th century and until post WW2. These subsidies exist on the down leg of the nuclear, oil and gas trajectory. No sustained growth prospects, no perspectives, hardly any new jobs come from there.

The by Harper proposed Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union, possibly to be ratified in 2011, defines legislation that stimulates regional energy independence as an illegitimate investment obstacle for European investors; at this point Ontario has beat CETA to the punch (5).

Well known trade lawyer Steven Shrybman came up with a legal opinion to that end based on a leaked CETA draft. ‘Free’ trade agreement enforcement action with justice asleep against democratic legislation becomes less and less feasible in a scenery of globalization in retreat (In a similar context in the fall of 2007 my Trade Investment Labour Mobility Agreement, TILMA, assessment was proven right. Soon after I published the precise argument that TILMA has no benefits and that it promotes frivolous litigation profiteering the very point was used by the Yukon Party government in the rejection of TILMA).

More and more decentralized green energy generation, especially with a strong tie in to transportation where currently oil based fuels supply over 98% of global transportation energy, takes the pressure out of the speculative Oil Futures exchange (6). Oil Futures derivatives trade had contributed significantly to the global financial melt down by having sold oil that didn’t exist when the cash out crunch came in 2008.

There is a seventh bonus for Yukon over the six Ontario benefits.

The already proven entrepreneurial development stimulus of democratic, not corporatist driven, not conventional energy expert advised, green energy legislation will especially serve Yukon well on a path that will see smaller federal transfers down the road.

An economic weakness of Yukon, long transportation links, extreme dependence even by Canadian standards to world record levels of conventional energy supplies can be overcome by the economic engine of renewable energies. Nothing works without energy, nowhere more true than here and its cold and remote enough for people to know it. In aviation perhaps for a couple of generations, for some of the heavy equipment needs for many years still, oil based liquid fuels will be indispensable. That means as much of liquid fuels as possible need to be freed up on the road, especially on the road where in China for example electrification brings the cost of doing business down, and in home heating and in diesel generator use. There is heavy industrial lifting involved, it can only be done with years of careful preparation ahead of coming fuel shortages which are already felt in the global crude market, crippling the developing countries. Dirty Tar Sands mining, expensive deep sea drilling without crude shortage? If anybody needs more proof for the tightening of oil supplies, check the OECD’s International Energy Agency data. As a growing trend and by an increasing number of crude exporting countries the U.S. dollar is currently being de-linked from its universal petrodollar status. It started with Iran which by the end of 2007 accepted mainly Euros for crude shipments but no dollars at all anymore, the exclusive petrodollar bonus evaporates quickly now. In extension this also means that Canadian crude buying power is shrinking which affects our mid range ability to continue with existing Canadian crude import levels, namely from Venezuela and the Middle East. Furthermore Canada, different to all other OECD countries including the US, is the only country that has no energy security legislation and energy contingency planning; if in doubt check with the internationally respected energy security experts in the Parkland Institute from the University of Alberta.

Yes, nothing works without energy, energy security responsibility as well as energy ecology concerns have firmly arrived on the territorial/provincial level.

However, in a variety of elections to come, those who have obfuscated and frustrated with inaction and ignorance the energy aware electorate will pay a price.

The upcoming mid-term election thrashing for Obama will deliver a stern warning to the status quo experts among the Neo-Liberals and Neo-Democrats in Canada. They think they can slide through with platforms synchronized to Harper ‘light’ ideas on the ‘lesser evil’ wagon. Are synchronized politics an all party-one party totalitarian trend or just elitist reflex? The lesser evil mobilization plan has finally run its course while its technocratic calculation misses a point of Shakespearean value. Late neuroscience came up with the sobering discovery that an entire third of the human brain is solely dedicated to imagine and handle conflict and aggression. However painful, its enormous capacity can manage or absorb to cede territory to the political ‘foe’. But a slight against human solidarity, the prostitution of values, of reciprocity of integrity towards party memberships and electorate, the awakening to deceit and ultimately to treason against the community is what short-circuits the evolutionary proven mind. After the poison has burned through the veins, averting more pain and more insult, and fleeing more betrayal of commitment trumps even the suffering of open defeat. Its all black grief then, a zero (green) energy no-go to the polls.

That is how the citizen’s participation goes down and neocon dictators are elected by small percentages of votes.

Warning from Norway, neoliberalism, racism and violence

If I was in Norway I would probably bide my time before finding fault with the Norwegian Prime Minister’s statements (partly quoted in Monday's Star under "Another reminder of hatred and intolerance" . Naturally pain and grief are overwhelming right now. But I think I am in an appropriate space and distance to draw back and see an important warning for us.

The ongoing media barrage by many outlets like the CBC and major papers focusses on the perpetrator’s motives and whims certainly giving no pause for careful consideration. Most of what I hear would equally make sense in explaining why somebody would conjure up graffiti statements in the public square. It worries me that there is no proper sense of gravity with the treatment given that is flat in intuition and knowledge, but also assuming premature understanding which prevents learning down the road.

What is suppressed with this trivialization is a depth of context and thought which does not limit itself to the extrovert and militant part of xenophobic sentiment.

From the country where I grew up, I remember well the teachers and shopkeepers, academics and home makers, neighbours, often green partiers and social democrats who gave a friendly face to racism with their subtle ways. A generation ago around the time of the wall coming down it was also a time of growing extremism. Often heard was: ”We are not an immigration country”. Its a clever line; understanding that in this tradition far from being moderates many intellectuals have made hate palatable far more than the extremists ever could I gave a blunt answer to the quote, responding that the opinion flies in the face of any reality that can be observed. Not that it helped much but having had spent some time in Canada by then, I did mention that if the diverse people who live in one’s country are made citizens and when suitable are elected to city councils and parliaments it makes everybody less dumb. To be fair probably some progress has been made since those days in the old country. Also a long time ago I have travelled extensively in Norway and do recognize some problematic European commonalities.

Interestingly hyper-nationalist violence is not going away and there seems to be a very modern component adding onto medieval darkness reaching beyond the European sphere throughout Commonwealth and Western countries.

Its important to understand how the racist cause is constructed. The old fashioned white supremacy garbage is more often recognized than the equally potent modern technocratic component.

What is most inappropriate is this neoliberal prism of supposedly pure economics through which interesting and complicated cultural and society dimensions have been viewed and reduced to trivia and made vulnerable. Through the many builders of our country some of us remember that each aspect is strongest with balance and not by domination, the latter typifying 17th, 18th,19th century Europe.

Not just in that regard is the neoliberal Globalization religion outdated but unfortunately it has invaded much of the space that in Canada, but not only here, once was characterized by a sophisticated, positive and economically very strong nationalism. 

9/11, Bolivarian reforms and emancipation from globalist colonization in Latin America as well the need to deal with the crisis brought on by a de facto anti capitalist financialism and a few other events have reaffirmed the power of states and governments.

I feel sorry for those who have to come up with good answers pretty quick. They have little competence available now after all political parties, administrations and most corporate headquarters have for a generation or longer been cleansed thoroughly of the last bits of Keynesian memory and just about every critic of the neoliberal cult of abstract inevitable and static economic theory. The point of it is that under this sort of romantic authoritarianism a lack of a careful balance and consideration of strengthening of medicare and education towards a productive workforce and innovative/competitive not monopolist economy, standing militarist expenditures, between rural and urban interests, healthy ecological food production vs subsidized agribusiness interests, green energy and oil business, codification of the law and realistic access to the law, uncensored public media and community development has created a dangerous vacuum on the national stage. A hollowed out public space can and will be invaded by nationalist extremists and radicals.

This vulnerability Canada shares even with more typical European stylizations of Nation like the US or France for example. Its an indirect, yes, but powerful structural invitation for the worst of the worst of militarism and jingoism propelled by respected modern crusader intellectuals like Samuel Huntington with his bloodthirsty “Clash of Civilizations”; admired in Stephen Harper's intellectual horizon.

The problem is not limited to ‘coalition of the willing’ members of the criminal Iraq invasion and occupation like Norway and Britain. The neoliberal project is not limited to Thatcher, Kohl and Reagan types. The social democratic governments of Ireland, Spain, Greece are the enablers of disaster, prostituting previously earned good will, de-civilizing their own countries by infusing billions into the rotting corpse of illegal debts, renewed speculation and nepotist privatization; arrogantly ignoring not just the lessons of Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentine but also from Iceland which has audited its debt and written off the illegal parts resulting in a stable investment climate and strong economic growth.

The endgame of globalization becomes increasingly dangerous because it opposes internationalist cooperation that came easy to the positive nationalism of the post war era for example. Whereas even the genocidal ethnic violence in Rwanda which far exceeded the horrifying massacre in Norway did not easily register on the radar screen of the one dimensional and neoliberal abstract theory and was barely responded to.

I am becoming increasingly concerned with oncoming dangers of moralistic assertions oblivious to the need of cautious structural reforms and focussed shaping of initiative.

Transcanada Pipelines - Exxon Mobile deal could be a Problem

At the height of the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act, (AGIA) application process in 2008 Alaska governor Palin became concerned about obstacles for the Alaska Gas Pipeline project in Canada and hired a Canadian law firm for advice. Not adequately meeting the demands of 40 or more First Nations in the Canadian, mostly Yukon right of way portion could be ”fatal to the project” was the answer that she received; her own lawyers advised her that the TransCanada Pipelines timeline is unrealistic (all according to the Anchorage Daily News). All of a sudden in June 2009 its clear sailing; how come?
In December 2008 TransCanada Pipelines did receive the one and only AGIA licence over several competitors. ExxonMobil was not among them but entered the picture in 2009.
Prior to ExxonMobile and TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. forming the TransCanada Alaska Co. on June 12, on June 10, 2009 Sarah Palin had concluded talks with ExxonMobil in Dallas, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The reasons for and structure of this corporate partnership remain in the dark. The only financial contribution of Exxon that both partners admit to is something in the range between pocket change and zero, it could be an undisclosed portion of $ 150 million (major media reported that Exxon contributes 150 million; there are no corporate or government statements which support any figure that describes Exxon's portion) which would be nominally a contribution of both 'partners' towards initial  costs of an Open Season process (major planning and deal making phase between gas producers on the North slope and the pipeline owner which starts 2010, proposed construction 2013 - 2018). According to information Alaska State House Representative Mike Hawker has access to ExxonMobil will in reality not be a pipeline project partner but just a subcontractor down the road with a financial up front expense for some work on the gas treatment plant which will be charged back to TransCanada. TransCanada does not need Exxon to finance the pipeline. The loan guarantee of the Alaska government for TC Pipelines stands now at 30 billion dollars not 26 as the CBC had reported. In the business relationship beyond construction the gas producer Exxon will be like other gas producers a future customer to TransCanada which remains for the time being the sole AGIA licence holder (Exxon like ConocoPhilipps and BP could propose to build themselves but TransCanada has the foot in the door with the crucial Canadian right of way). So the partnership doesn't have enough business substance to warrant changes or updating duties under AGIA which provides a 50 % refund out of Alaska state coffers for the Open Season costs. It is partly because of this public money that AGIA involves accountability requirements towards the Alaskan people. The Alaskan government has seen the details of the deal and obviously sees no Exxon involvement at this point that concerns Alaskans. Is Exxon's involvement directed at Canada and shouldn't we keep an eye on it as do the Alaskans?

The 'partnership' talk is unusual and it makes no sense, the producer always wants the line use to be cheap and the pipe owner wants big pipeline fees. Its natural for each to play their cards close to the chest and to compete for a bigger piece of the total profit. 

For example the ConocoPhillips partnership with BP, known as Denali, doesn't need phony PR. They are both international as well as Northslope gas producers (as is ExxonMobil), who jointly can reduce competition and have more price control as well as leverage for negotiating tax breaks with the Alaska government. Exxon has a reputation for being extremely adversarial in negotiations. OK, they may or may not share gas treatment plant or other expertise with TransCanada but what are they partnering in? In the AGIA progress press conference from June 11, where the partnership was announced, journalists pried for almost one hour after business deal details but couldn’t get one sentence with contextual cohesion out of the two strange bed fellows whose pillow talk might concern something quite different.

One anecdote we know from Exxon is that together with Murphy Oil Inc. in 2007 they launched a challenge under NAFTA chapter 11 investment to overrule NewFoundland and Labrador legislation. Exxon does not recognize a provincial law which requires oil and gas businesses to make a financial contribution to education and research in the province. A wave of similar corporate NAFTA chapter 11 challenges including against environmental legislation, which attempt across the country to overrule provincial legislation by the use of off shore arbitration panels, is a recent development. The Yukon land claims legislation recognizes the original Foothills Pipelines (still part of TransCanada Pipelines) right of way in the Yukon but does not limit rewards, also the White River and Kaska First Nations don’t have agreements.
The Yukon First Nations deserve assurance that their rights have not been undermined by negotiations of the Fentie government with the Alaska government and that land claims will not be overruled by a NAFTA chapter 11 challenge or the threat thereof. The possibility of this scenario has been predicted by Tony Pennikett in his book “Reconciliation”. So concerned was he about his findings that he wrote a letter to then Prime Minister Jean Chretien about this concern; the letter is quoted in the book. Pennikett is a former NDP Yukon Premier who is now a leading land claims consultant for indigenous peoples worldwide.
This is potentially the meaning of the TransCanada Exxon partnership. The business alignment of TransCanada and Exxon is phony at this point but a formal partnership has been created from which a NAFTA arbitration panel can be assembled,
A chapter 11 challenge can only be launched across a border, TransCanada Pipelines needs a powerful American partner like ExxonMobil to be the hired hitman.
There are people who can find out which is not easy as nothing is published on the early stages of a NAFTA arbitration case. What about the trade lawyer Stephen Shrybman? He was most effective in his investigation of the so called Trade Investment Labour Mobility agreement, which led several provincial governments to reject it. TILMA had been designed as inter provincial implementation of NAFTA chapter 11 with strong anti-democratic aspects.

Treasonous and illegal arrangements to attack the land claims legislation would be an insult to all Yukoners. On the other hand broken treaties are not exactly a historic novelty. The First Nations Agreements are already threatened. Where for example does Fentie's arrogance come from when he constantly provokes court action in simply pushing government's obligations from the agreements into the courts? The rest of Canada is certainly watching.
The Yukon First Nations agreements represent the continuation of a 400 hundred year old conversation with serious ups and downs between immigrants and aboriginal people. If the agreements are cut, Canadian democracy, the oldest unbroken constitutional tradition on the planet, which is further unique in its oral characteristic of a continuous adaptation process, will give up territory to creeping totalitarian trends. If the agreements hold out against chapter 11 it may be because chapter 11 can actually be cancelled in six months notice with much less trouble than keeping it. I think the well being of the land claims matters a lot also to the White River and Kaska First Nations. The Canadian Common Law tradition has created a precedence that gives them a position that is stronger than that of the other Yukon First Nations before their Final Agreements.
Everybody should be interested in clarification, the YG, the legislature, the First Nations, all the other citizens, even the Yes men and Yes women from the CBC who live in Harper’s LaLa free trade land and who shout “protectionism, protectionism” these days more often than they used to. They do this if somebody wants to investigate the possibly unlawful doing based on a specifically problematic NAFTA provision (That is what they did when Obama mentioned human rights and ecological problems in NAFTA).
If there is no problem, fine. But if there is and we don’t look it will hurt a lot.

There is more. Not only may lawful government be in danger, Yukon businesses and trades people who want pipeline construction and maintenance contracts can loose their shirt if the project planning is bungled. It may get get bogged down under Shakespeare like plots and under political pressure of US energy security expectations to rush the planning.
The 1985 completed Norman Wells oil pipeline can teach a lesson, it has problems with unstable permafrost situations.
TransCanada’s AGIA application in its public part with two or three sentences refers to their standard expertise in this regard.
Major climate research bodies predict an unprecedented, ongoing reduction of permafrost over the projected construction and operating period reaching well into the second half of the century. The permafrost aspect has always been a sensitive detail, both for above and underground pipeline design. And here we have massive changes coming and they are not being addressed. The potential is there for emergencies, for economic failure, which are further aggravated by the dangers of sour gas content.

This too needs clarification, not just by experienced but by independent experts. They can be found, but so far that has not happened.

Uranium Exploration/Mining in the Peel Watershed is about Bombs not Energy

A lot of the Yukon uranium mining claims are in the Peel watershed, thousands of them. In his letter to the Yukon News from June 24 "Uranium Moratorium Now" Lewis Riffkind laid out what some of the unavoidable consequences of uranium ming are, radioactive tailings from where dust travels and ground water is contaminated. Because of that British Columbia has a uranium mining moratorium in place. The danger of uranium mining alone warrants the protection of the Peel watershed, at least 50 % of it. The ecological reasons have been explained but its also the responsible thing to do to preserve peace, to prevent a waste of public money for useless and harmful nuclear installations. I am going to discuss a concern that the nuclear industry, of which uranium mining is part of, has managed to play down very well. In fact so well that even critics usually buy into it. Its all about the idea that the purpose of the nuclear industry is to produce energy. Its a carefully crafted fiction that we need to leave behind in order to touch reality. Its an industry that is almost entirely funded by taxes. The profiteers in the business have a few front operations like medical isotopes or power plants that deliver electricity into the grid.

Now that the Chalk River hell hole is finished because its so scary, medical isotopes seem not so very important and irreplaceable any longer. The US Department of Energy has wind power listed as about 50 % more expensive than coal which makes it cheaper than nuclear power. Nuclear energy never had and never will have a market, there is no real business accounting, many costs are hidden in military and other expense accounts. Some of the data are hard to come by but independent researchers suspect that the energy balance is negative. That would mean that nuclear energy facilities use more energy in fossil fuel, hydro power and other energy forms than what is ever put out in the life time of the nuclear power plants of a given country’s program. Aside to diminishing oil and gas and money reserves huge quantities of metals as well natural space, ecology and brain power are tied up in the hubris. Another commodity that the nuclear industry eats up is democracy, for reasons like impossible security and truth management problems. So why is it there? The answer is bombs. French nuclear power is an often cited and often misunderstood example. France needed its own uranium enrichment program for weapons because it bailed out of NATO in 1958. There too the energy business is the perfect front for the bomb business. People everywhere wouldnt stand for such overkill in the bomb business and knowingly being taxed so much for universal holocaust proliferation. It just makes sense, nothing seems ever too expensive in order to have bigger and better guns than somebody else. You see, its not just radioactive contamination that leaks out, the cause is so purely corrupt and so entirely false that proportional to the industry size of a country, corruption tends to spill over into other spheres of life. Imagine the potential for criminal activities in the current Yukon Party government if it was overseeing a uranium producing mining sector in the Yukon.

Nuclear weapons are not an ugly sideline of the 'industry', they are its origin, its core and its foundation. Lets be clear about this, there is no peaceful use of the atom, other than perhaps some really small scale research and medical installations. How could there be in a market economy when nuclear power generation costs are outclassed by every other large scale form of power generation and are not even long term competitive to solar panels? The misunderstanding of weapons-grade materials as possible but not desirable extension of power generating plants is the big lie of the nuclear industry. It is the other way around, the reactors with their fuel cycles are a necessary part of manufacturing weapons-grade materials. For example the Iranian nuclear industry is completely within the general framework of the nuclear industry which has no credible separation between peaceful and military uses. Of course its hard to call the bluff when its the leading industrial nations own bluff. The mechanisms that are described in Robert Jungk's "Nuclear State" (1979) have undermined democracy and have recruited the media to produce a lot of professional journalism. One of the scholars and independent experts who early on pointed out that the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty by way of promoting nuclear 'energy' in reality facilitates the proliferation of nuclear weapons was the late nuclear physicist Jens Scheer.

He expressed this decades before the Pakistani physicist A Q Khan took crucial bomb making expertise from a Dutch power plant to Pakistan. It was the fertile foundation for that countrys weapons program and a globe spanning weapons proliferation program that was necessary to pay for Pakistans nuclear missiles. Because this fundamental distortion has been lapped by the public it is difficult to penetrate the diverse outflow of truth manufacturing by the nuclear mafia comprised of government, military and industry bodies. We can see this now in a lack of opposition against the unfolding expansion by the nuclear 'energy' industry which is riding the wave of global warming concerns and lobbying hard for a come back. Radiation and nuclear winter from a nuclear conflict, or an inevitable big accident made possible by the nuclear 'industry', potentially represents the ultimate ecological disaster and it can come a lot sooner than the equally avoidable greenhouse gas catastrophe. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons deserves support from green politics and all responsible human beings alike. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates that the phase of relative stability regarding the danger of nuclear war in a long post WW2 era will come to an end. Within 10 or less years the nuclear club of currently about 7 or 8 members will grow to roughly 30 powers with an arsenal of nuclear weapons. To say we dont want a nuclear holocaust but we can have uranium mining and exploration in the Peel watershed is like saying we are against slavery but we deliver the shackles and the coffin ships; or in todays terms support investment into so called Free Trade Zones with concentration camp inspired sweat shops. This is what is going on in the border area between South and North Korea where North Koreans are kept as forced labour by Western corporations. North Korea's pariah status as rogue nuclear power with its measly five bombs or so is good for the free trade business even though they don't have quite enough of a nuclear arsenal to have a credible deterrence by Western standards. Constant threats and invasions against countries outside the Western sphere of neocolonial powers and institutions send the apocalyptic message to the world: "Get nuclear bombs and get enough of them, then you will be respected. But please, buy CANDU reactors as entry ticket into the weapons grade enrichment cycle. The Canadian tax payers are financing for free as in Chretien's CANDU sale to China". A few days ago the Ontario government put an end to government funding for future reactors because they make no economic sense. The answer of the CANDU reactor people was interesting: ‘OK, OK despite solid nuclear propaganda from the CBC and other media we’ve been found out having wasted the wealth of nations while still brazenly marketing garbage to the Canadian people. But we still need Canadians to keep buying the CANDU junk in order to stay in business to cheat even more countries out of billions and billions.’ Nuclear free trade, financial fantasy and ideological obsession, this is the stuff the global crisis is made of.

Moral and intellectual cohesion was understood in the abolition of slavery and we need to be as good as our ancestors who stood up for humanism on those fronts, when it comes to the ultimate abuse instrument of our time, thousands of nuclear weapons ready to murder and starve billions. Voices of citizens that fit hardly anybody's idea of managing their right or left agendas are too easily ignored just as were those weird peace activists in the twilight years before WW1. Do we want to push insanity with no doubt high quality uranium ore from the Yukon? Bruce Cockburn said it best in one of his songs: "Politician, you are a real big liar, burning us in Neutron Fire".