Recent comments

Where was this?

Man, the arena is one thing this city SHOULD be spending money on! That is one seriously pathetic building, and as a member of the curling club, I can tell you that that roof is a nightmare! I think this is a good investment on the part of the city and way, WAY overdue. The arena is a community facility; people gather there all year as a community. That's kind of important when you're trying to develop...you know...community.

Quick note to correct some misinformation I provided the Telegraph- the Olympic Store at Pro Hardware actually closed on the 28th. All successful bidders on silent auction items have been called (or a message left with a school age child- so be sure to ask!). Please come to Prohardware to pick up your goodies and a HUGE thank you to John and Kate Greene who donated the space for the store AND organized the GT Racer draw. Fantastic community spirit!

Great write-up! I even laughed out loud when I read "an oversized flaming plastic doobie" - that is classic! And now that I think of it, that's kinda what it looked like! Well, these are supposed to be the most environmentally friendly games ever, but I fail to see how that could possibly be after that ridiculous cavalcade of vehicles...

all the Canadian movies not yet art...last month after my mcts exams i was free from a tired routine when i saw this Bon COP its superb creation with alot of entertainment.

Having to limit our education due to money is a capitalists dream.. Line up the pigs the government it wasting money in huge amounts. Just look at the escort for the torch. Think that was cheap? Gord Campbell's neighborhood schools are another of his lies. How blind do we need to be not to see that he is ruining BC.. Everything from forests to wildlife. Schools to hospitals... Nothing is sacred when the wolves come to eat. Not even the children. Anyone who argues that we need to limit health care and education due to $ should move to a country where they do that. YOU ARE NOT CANADIAN... We live in the most resource rich places on earth... Where does all that go??????????

There are some, for example, art. 73 of the Swiss Constitution states: "The Confederation and the Cantons shall endeavour to achieve a balanced and sustainable relationship between nature and its capacity to renew itself and the demands placed on it by the population." The following six articles deal specifically with water, forests, etc. But your point is well taken. I go back to Polanyi's "Great Transformation" I mentioned earlier. Polanyi writes about the transformation of the mercantile system in place prior to industrialization, a system which was politically controlled, and the free market economic system which functions outside politics. The transformation Polanyi writes about began prior to the American Revolution. The steam engine, driver of the industrial revoltuion, cranked up production to levels beyond imagination prior to its invention and was "accompanied by a catastrophic dislocation of the lives of the common people." Polanyi examines a number of questions in this regard: "What 'satanic mill' ground men into masses? How much was caused by the new physical conditions? How much by the economic dependencies, operating under the new conditions? And what was the mechanism through which the old social tissue was destroyed and a new integration of man and nature so unsuccessfully attempted?" The revolutions that brought about the constitions we know today were caused to a large degree by the miserable living conditions created for people by the industrial revolution. The self-regulating free market system was invented because mass production required mass consumption for that equation to be balanced. The damage all of this would cause nature went unrecognized for centuries because, as Polanyi put it, land, labour, and money were treated as commodities for the system to work. In fact they are not, they are what he calls "fictitious" commodities. Labour is but another word for human beings, and the attempt to treat human beings as commodities resulted in horrendous misery and the development of new political theories by people such as Marx and Engels. Land is but another word for nature, and we are only now beginning to see that nature does not respond to market forces in the way commodities do. As for money, well, we have just gone through yet another little episode concerned with that fictitious commodity, haven't we. If you want a constitution that will protect the environment, that consitution will have to re-embed the economy in politics and be part of society and not operating according to principles separate from society. Such a the constitution would have to come up with a new economic system. Back to the mercantile system? Not likely, humanity does not have a reverse gear. It will have to be something else. When I look at the way we - not just Canada - are being governed today, I don't think that we are quite at the point yet where we are prepared to give up on the self-regulating free market economy. Many more glaciers will melt, many more animal species will go extinct, and many more fish stocks will go the Atlantic cod way before we will finally have sufficient incentive to consider plan 'B'.

I'll take issue with one statement in your article: you wrote, "States come and go; people and the land remain." Rather, I suggest that states and people come and go; the land, and whatever it will still support after we have ravaged it, remains. The point has been made elsewhere that we don't need to save the planet; that it, and whatever life forms we have left the resources to support, will probably get along better without us. What we need to worry about is saving our own species -- and it looks as if the best way to do that is to save as many others as possible, of all types. I agree with your point. Canada's constitution needs to be amended to include not just rights, but also obligations -- especially obligations to the land: to live in such a way as to preserve the ability of the planet to support in good health all species; to preserve the "life-support systems" such as soil, clean water, unpolluted oceans, and clean air; and to regulate human resource extraction to ensure that it is, in fact, sustainable (without doing further harm) over the very long term.

This is just another public service that is soon to be squeezed out by the wild spending on Health Care. The Olympics have certainly squeezed their share as well. We have been continuously lectured about the miracles that technology can produce. The brain washing has made us so dependant on technology for everything. People are getting lost when using a GPS, new scanners tell you to stop smoking or lose weight, radar and satellite images tell you the weather outside. No more common sense is used. It’s become a last resort option because it's not profitable. Common sense can’t be patented and sold. Although, I have read about lawsuits involving people using common sense in combination with patents. The corporate propaganda used in combination with law makers and public servants that have no public minded goals.Their goals of increasing their personal assets and self perceived power is destroying us. Who do we blame? The general public is partially to blame. The self-serving delusions of the privileged few has become the standard for everyone. Hey, the State of the Union address by Obama was bumped by the season premiere of the show “Lost”. So many people believe the politicians, private banks and corporations that tell them they are entitled to live a worry-free lifestyle of luxury and they can afford it. Of course, the typical fraudulent model for payment is to identify your calculated assets on paper while not actually having the money. The public servants, regardless of the party, continue to forget who they are representing. They get caught up in the corporate propaganda and make exaggerated promises to everyone just to get into power. Once they get elected, their public promises are determined unrealistic and get modified to suit the corporate influences. How can the general public trust anyone in a major government position? No wonder we get such poor voter turnouts at the polls. I wouldn’t doubt for moment that Brian Mulroney lied about the amount of cash he accepted from Karlheinz Schreiber. That’s how our ‘transparent’ system has operated. This system will continue to operate this way until all age groups are more educated and become accountable. We see health warning labels on packaging that only a small percentile of people can fully understand and some just plain ignore. We see legal and financial documents that only lawyers and accountants are able to understand. We continuously see increases in pharmaceutical drugs promoted with a single purpose; treat the symptoms of poor health. The middle class citizen is getting smaller and smaller each day as we see the costs of an extreme capitalist approach on life. Why would the government invest in public education knowing there is no short term profit?