When I began to ponder the things that I might address in this my last column in this space, I was confronted with many issues and subjects that are both important and timely. After some contemplation, I realized that parting words should be the most important words you can leave behind. They should be the culmination of the articles which impart some kind of insight, as it were, “From Ten Thousand Feet”. Not exactly an easy task, but one, if guided by passion, would emerge as “parting words”.

Over these past years, I have interviewed a number of innovative individuals from our region and learned a great deal from each one about how to succeed in making change, the result of which, has taught me how critical it is for a community to embrace positive change. It doesn’t come easily, but it is essential to the health of our institutions and communities. A parting word: change is necessary; we will die without it – it is not something to fear.

I have written about environmental challenges and have been very concerned about the future of our planet. The direction we are headed doesn’t seem to take into account the consequences of our actions, while the media barrages us with daily doses of climate change press releases. It is hard to take them seriously while we ignore the pillaging of the oceans, the raping of the Amazon basin, the clear cutting of rain forests and the “harvesting” of billions of trees that feed this planet. The dichotomies and the intensity in which one issue gets all the attention at the exclusion of all others raises these questions: “where is this going, who is driving it forward, and why?” Then you read the US carbon tax law(s) the answer becomes evident. They are selling a world-wide carbon tax which is the equivalent of a “Orwellian Coup”. Read the legislation – it will make the US and its allies masters of the planet and will redefine the meaning of democracy and freedom. Only the ignorant and naive see it as a solution to our environmental problems. A parting word: any carbon tax should be opposed at all cost – it is a Trojan horse.

Nothing, seemingly, is within our power to change the world by ourselves. Gandhi’s quote: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” challenges us to be part of the solution knowing that big changes happen little by little and every little bit helps. A parting word: by modeling an alternative set of values and making them known, we influence our surroundings and challenge the things that need to change. Conformity is highly overrated.

The less noticed element in that quote is that it takes many people who, together, affect the desired change. It is through collaboration and collective intention that individuals can create big change. This is a scientific, measurable phenomena, best demonstrated by the power of a team of two horses being able to produce a 25% increase over their best individual efforts simply by working together. A parting word: in a world which strains for efficiencies, this unexplained power of collaboration still doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

My tenure here in this space has indirectly addressed another core concern about the fabric of our “Canadian Community”. In the course of raising many issues, I have more often than not discovered the media to be an integral part of the problem. They have trivialized news into entertainment and polarized and embittered the right against the left for their own benefit. News in North America has become wide, but it isn’t very deep. It depends on (hand-picked) experts to tell us what to think but experts are not dependable. A parting word: you can find an expert to support any point-of-view and they usually do.

Another concern I have raised numerous times in this column has been the consolidation of the ownership of the media in Canada, a problem the writers of the Broadcast Act foresaw and addressed because of the media’s critical role in a true democracy. They, however, could not protect us from the CRTC. Currently, the Commission is reviewing the biggest acquisition in Canadian history – the Bell take-over of Astral Media. A parting word: reducing the choices and the voices hurts Canadians (again), but will make investors and bankers dance in the street – again!

And finally, the Internet has changed the world and has provided unscrupulous people the ability to tilt the buying process in their favour. Truth in advertising doesn’t exist anymore. Bell was fined $10M for deceiving their customers with false advertising. Now, they Roger and Telus are being prosecuted by the Competition Bureau for false advertising. They continue to deny they did anything wrong? It is a travesty that we have a bill of human rights but there is little that protects the consumer from a whole new set of abuses. Parting words: it is only going to get worse and only new laws that protect the consumer will make it better. We need a Consumer Bill of Rights in Canada and an agency to enforce them.

It has been a great learning experience writing for you, and a pleasure serving this community, but now it’s time to start a new chapter…if you ever get to Costa Rica look us up.

From 10,000 feet, you can’t see North Korea but you can see the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), where my wife Margaret and I, through our organization The Forerunner Project, presented with CIGI, Behind Closed Doors – The Human Rights Crisis in North Korea.

How did we get involved in Human Rights in North Korea? It all started when we reviewed a film for the Forerunner Film Festival called “Seoul Train” which documented the underground railroad which had sprung up among Christian groups in China to help North Koreans escape the country. The film followed a small group of defectors as they made their way to the border of North Korea and into China. It also followed 4 adults and two children whose strategy of escape was to storm the Japanese embassy in Pyongyang. The most compelling and life changing scenes for us came as 2 adults made it through the barrier but two women and their children were repelled by the North Korean police. This was not just a failed bid for freedom. Attempting to defect is a crime in North Korea for which the defectors will be tortured and executed. Later in the film, it is revealed that the defectors and their underground railroad ‘connection’ who went into China were arrested. It has been the policy of China to deny North Koreans refugee status and to return them knowing they will be imprisoned and starved to death. Extreme hunger makes going double or nothing on escaping their only hope.

And so, we offered a moment of silence to commemorate the lives of more than 1.5 million North Koreans who were systematically starved to death by their government. It was our way of showing respect and honour for the people of North Korea whose sinister government has disregarded, disrespected and has systematically and intentionally starved millions of their own people.

Behind Closed Doors featured renowned experts on human rights and was aimed at raising awareness of the atrocities taking place in North Korea – a country widely regarded as the worst human rights offender in the world.
“It’s a land where only the very fittest survive. Starvation, horrific living conditions and brainwashing from birth are constant realities; and attempting to escape across the border results in execution if caught,” said Dr. Howard-Hassmann, the Canada Research Chair in International Human Rights Department of Global Studies and Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University.  Other participants in the event included online commentator, Dr. David Hawk (NYC), whose most recent book, “The Hidden Gulag – Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps (Second Edition)”, is regarded as the most comprehensive report on North Korea’s  “slave labour camps”.

Kim Hye Sook is among only 3 people known to have escaped the North Korean prison camps. She was imprisoned at age 13 and spent 28 years in the gulag for a crime of which her grandfather was accused. Her drawings, on display in the CIGI auditorium lobby, depicted the horrors of slave camp life, the most notable of which was her 9 meter by 2 meter (30’ x 6’) map of Bukchang camp.

Mr. Kyung B. Lee, founder of “The Council for Human Rights in North Korea”, advocated for the UN to launch a “Commission of Inquiry” into the human rights abuses in North Korea and to also invoke the “Responsibility to Protect (R2P)” resolution.  R2P requires the international community to intervene when a nation’s government can’t or won’t protect and provide for its citizens. Even though it is the law, no one seems willing to challenge North Korea and its ally, China.

Escapee/defector Young Hee Kim (an assumed name), with her face and head covered to disguise her identity, testified of the horrific trials she endured. North Korea’s policy of “Guilt by Association” punishes the families of defectors and other crimes to the 3rd generation. Young Hee Kim’s gripping story told how 1/3 of her neighbours died of starvation and how she, to her shame, was reduced to stealing food to survive. Young recounted tearfully, how her husband would cross into China to get food and medicine, but was eventually caught, resulting in his imprisonment, torture, starvation and death.

During the Kim dynasty period (1948 – present), approximately 4.7 million people have been imprisoned in North Korea. Currently, there are more than 200,000 political prisoners in the slave camps. The North Korean government denies that these camps exist but satellite pictures prove otherwise. These prisoners face torture and starvation for “defying” their country. They are fed based on the amount of work that they do; the diabolic irony is that they are extremely malnourished and therefore unable to do much work.

It is estimated that the late leader Kim Jung-Il (1994 – 2011), legally declared“Supreme Leader”, was responsible for starving more than a million and a half of his own people, while he spent 6 billion dollars  developing nuclear arms. Though he was portrayed as a god in North Korea, his “Military First” policy has diverted western aid to the elite class leaving more than 6 million people at risk of starvation. Every day, 100-200 people are found dead of starvation on the streets of Pyongyang, the capital. Dr. Howard-Hassmann has called it “state induced famine” something she is working to have classified as genocide in international law.

“Totalitarian regimes are built on lies and can be damaged, even destroyed, when those lies are exposed. The greater and more detailed evidence that can be provided, the more damage the truth can do.” Dr. David Hawk

What Can We Do? We are small and without power, but we know that the truth is very powerful and we intend to spread it and you can, too. Please pass this article along to others. You can also join the common voice of those who insist on change by signing a petition at: www.theforerunnerproject.com

Since the beginning of the Climate Change War, I have attempted to bring to light some of the less reported information to readers in order to provoke a more informed perspective on the matter. I have been criticized for doing so, but I hardly noticed. Some people feel, I suppose, that the status quo should not be challenged and only the information that supports their point of view should be allowed to be published. No descent is allowed, they believe, in the public’s interest. But the media is full of climate change supporters and very little of the new information which challenges the theories of the ‘qualified” (sic) ever hits the mainstream media. I feel, therefore, it is my duty to update you on a couple of significant new developments which you will not see on the evening news.

One very disconcerting problem in climate change theory is that about 1000 years ago an even more extreme variation (than the current one) in the climate was recorded in Europe. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (the Big-shots in climate change from the UN) assumed and asserted that this was an isolated warming trend and not a global climate fluctuation. But they were “outed” last month by the work of a team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University who was able to determine that the Antarctic experienced the same warming trend during the medieval period without (obviously) the help of man-made CO2. This discovery hit to the very heart of the IPCC’s claim that climate change is caused by man-made CO2. Without man-made CO2 being the cause of climate change, there is no basis for a carbon tax.

Two important things to also note about this one event are that first, almost nothing was written about this discovery in the media and second, you would have thought that this would be a “checkmate” for the climate change theory. Apparently the ‘Alarmists’ (as some people call them) were oblivious to this serious setback to their theory. The “discovery” was not much more than static on the screen in the information war for the public’s perception on climate change.

Last week, our publicly funded broadcaster published a poll with the headline, “Only 2% of Canadians deny climate change, suggests poll.” At first glance, one would think that the ‘Alarmists’ are winning the information war, but a more careful look proves just the opposite. The study goes on to reveal that only 32% of Canadians believe that man-made CO2 is the sole cause of climate change. The inverse of this is that 68% don’t believe the Big-shots’ theory as told to them. In spite of the barrage of media spin, average Canadians are thinking for themselves – as they should! That gives me hope!

Al Gore was right when he said: “ There is a lot of money to be made in climate change.” A world-wide carbon tax of 1% would bring in trillions of dollars for  governments, businesses, educators and science researchers. If you are wondering about motive – money, lots of it, is the motive. If you still need more evidence to come to an informed conclusion on climate change, then do a thorough investigation into the Big-shots’ solution to man-made CO2 – the carbon tax. You will find a “slight-of-hand” so obvious it wouldn’t “pass” at a small town midway. The tax would do very little to cut emissions and change our lifestyle of consumption. It has more loop-holes than a button factory. You can see why this approach is so popular in some circles. It’s a big gain, no pain solution.

There are other problems with the man-made climate change campaign. Most alarmists mock and marginalize anyone who questions or challenges the Big-shots’ theories. They want us to accept, without question, the theories of some scientists and disregard those of other scientists – the ones they say we should. Their rationale for this is that those who oppose their theories are not creditable; however, they were credible until they questioned man-made CO2 as the cause of climate change. It appears that very credible scientists lost their credibility when they questioned the “powers that be” in science.

Universities, researchers, and government agencies are all under a great deal of pressure to support the man-caused global warming theory because attached to that support are billions of dollars of grants for research. The scientists and researchers who oppose climate change on the other hand have suffered occupational “consequences” for being a voice in the wilderness crying, “the Emperor has no clothes!” What is alarming is that there is little debate about the real issues in the media. Most people have become polarized and radicalized on the issues with little more than sound-bite level information often manipulated by a biased media. Physicist Dr. Howard Lewis resigned after 68 years in the American Physical Society in protest over the Society’s squelching of serious debate on the climate change issue. He summed up his resignation letter with: “Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life.” Check out the full letter of resignation below. He has a lot more to say about this issue.

Right from the early days, fear, manipulation and intimidation were major parts of the climate change campaign to sell the theory and the carbon tax to the public. In the film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, Al Gore’s most alarming predictions have now been dismissed as “improbable”. The film was light on science and heavy on emotional manipulation. It is fear that pushes us to disengage our perceptions, reason and thoughtful evaluation. Fear is the enemy of truth and freedom and it prevents many people from “seeing” all the evidence and applying “the reasonable doubt” test.

‘Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life’ – Harold Lewis Phd.

This quote is the summation of Dr Harold Lewis resignation (a 67 year member) from the American Physical Society.

This is an important moment in science history. It appears from leaders in the science community that its integrity and reputation are in question. It is entirely reasonable to compare the following letter to Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door.

This letter should not be ignored because it is a sincere plea for justice and integrity. It reveals a corruption in science that calls into question “who” is doing “what” and “why”. There clearly are agendas which far exceed the altruistic pursuit of truth and knowledge. Money once again is at the center of the issue. Why would the American Physical Society suppress intellectual decent and recklessly ignore the council of 200 or more of its senior and regarded members.

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.

The Letter

Dear Curt:

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.<

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

Technologies have given us some new freedoms but they have also created new challenges that without regulation and controls could cause serious harm. The EU is leading the way with controls on the collection of personal information from the Internet. Canada is expected to follow their lead but the “devil is in the details”. The business of tracking Internet users is exceptionally lucrative making deterrents such as fines and prosecutions irrelevant. For information pirates, these are considered just a cost of doing business.

Facebook provides no content – its users do that. Facebook collects the information you provide and sells it to advertisers – that is their business. They have been fined and accused of collecting data even when the user has “opted out” of their collection. They have also been accused of retaining data even when the user has deleted it.

The government of France refused to use Microsoft products because in their words the software was design to make it easy for others to get into their data. Google has an equally dismal record, yet Obama selected Facebook and Google as his advisers on Internet privacy policy. This is like assigning the fox to protect the chicken coup. He is not serious about protecting citizens’ privacy.

Regulation of information collection is expected from the (Canadian) Privacy Commission, but I am prepared to bet that it will have little effect on curtailing the “money junkies” from collecting your personal information. There is just so much money to be “made”. The better way to stop information theft is to charge the companies who use the information. The Information Highway (as it once was called) is the equivalent of the 401 with lots of potential dangers – there may be laws but you have to be aware and protect yourself.

Some easy ways to protect your information include using multiple browsers rather than one, thus limiting access to parts of your profile. You can buy a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service for about $5/month. You can shut off cookies in your browser and turn them on only when visiting known and trusted sites; and you can write the Privacy Commissioner when you feel your freedoms have been violated. They only get involved in prosecutions when someone complains.

Personal profiling on the Internet is dangerous because we don’t know what information is being trapped or by whom. We also don’t know who will use it and for what purpose. It can be moved anywhere in the world in an instant and it may be kept forever. That concerns me and it should concern you, as well. The information belongs to you because it is part of who you are. It is being taken from you without your knowledge and permission in most cases, and although it is not a tangible, it is of significant value. We have laws about stealing your physical property. Your personal preferences, interests and desires, though intangible, are still your property and need to be protected with the same intention and determination as your money.

One of the really nice things about Canadian summers are the long days. Our beautiful, pleasantly warm evenings are unequaled in most places on earth. I was enjoying one of those evenings recently with a small group of friends and wondered out loud which star was Mars and which was Venus – two of the first to appear after sunset. To my delight, my friend took out his Smartphone, pointed it at the sky, and within seconds, the software had created a map with the names of all the stars above us. To say I was impressed was an understatement. As a sailor, I had used a chartplotter to establish the position of the boat on a map but it is a $3000 item and this was a $500 phone. If a phone could do this with ease, what else could it do – I wanted one.

It didn’t take long to realize that there were 3 types of phones – Blackberry, Android and Apple iPhone. Even as an alien in the smart phone world I had built up some “impressions” of what each of these systems could deliver. iPhone had been presented in the media as the leader in innovation and product development and the choice of those “in the know”. My ‘media-created impression’ of the Blackberry was that RIM was a “dying company and a brand with an inferior product”. The only reason they were in the business at all was because they started it; and Google’s Android phones were for those who couldn’t afford an iPhone. Amazing how these impressions were formed in me by the media. More amazing was that after some research I discovered that these impressions were far from reality.

I discovered that when comparing iPhone to Android or Blackberry, Apple rarely, if ever, was the leader in new features. This was completely contrary to what I expected. If it is innovation and leading technology that appeals, then Androids are the feature-rich leaders – oddly, that’s not what the media had told me about Android. I had run into this same phenomena during the computer revolution. In the late 80′s, it was common to hear zealots proclaim that Macintosh PageMaker was leading-edge and by far the best publishing program in the world, which was clearly untrue. When they stopped making PageMaker, it still didn’t have many of the important features of Ventura Publisher of almost a decade earlier. I was astounded at how effective Apple was at convincing people they were ‘the best’ when they clearly were not. They were able to so alter perceptions that perceptions were becoming reality -Ventura Publisher eventually went out of business. I likened the Apple/Macintosh “evangelists” to a cult in which its members were on a bi-polar high about the product with little regard for reality. There connection to the brand inspired “la vie en rose” induced bliss. In a recent interview, author and social commentator Malcom Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink) came out against the “Apple factoids” (untruths repeated in the media as facts) and Steve Jobs. Gladwell says that Jobs was not the genius creator the media made him out to be. The record shows that all of Apple’s contributions were improvements made to existing products. Jobs and Apple became very good at “prettying up stuff” and developing their elitist brand with the help of smoke and mirrors and an impressionable media.

Personally, I don’t like “wanabes”, even if they do it really well; and I don’t like how I feel when I know I have been “zoomed” by a media campaign designed to create a reality that doesn’t exist. I stroked iPhone off my list with authority.

The Google-owned Android platform would be the answer, I hoped. There’s a lot of fancy stuff you can do with an Android phone but the real test is how well it would integrate with my computer system which I still use extensively. In spite of all I had read, I discovered some gaping (Mack truck sized) holes in the Android’s system to flawlessly and easily synchronize the files I was using on my computer with my phone. Furthermore, the solutions which were being offered were also expensive. To get a mobile version of MS Office with reduced features was $59.00. Adding up all the apps I needed, I would have to spend another $200 above the cost of the phone. I decided to wait and see.

The Blackberry seemed less out-of-date than I expected. It had the email thing down to an art, but more importantly, I discovered that Blackberry’s network is proprietary. People who prefer to protect their communication from those who would spy on them, be it for personal, business, or political/government security, choose Blackberry. In countries where governments routinely spy on their citizens, Blackberry is the one island in the virtual sky. It has attracted criticism from a number of governments, including one that would not be expected – Britain. They have strongly objected to RIM founders’ refusal to open their networks to monitoring. I believe that for this and other reasons, the founders are no longer running the company.

Like the phone, I like the keyboard, the company was far less deserving of the criticism than Apple or a host of other businesses in the high tech field, but for some reason, they became the target of a systematic war to destroy the company. Shockingly, shareholders didn’t object to the media systematically destroying the brand of RIM. When I looked at the important stuff in a phone, privacy seemed paramount and integration a close second. I started to wonder “why” the unrelenting criticism of RIM. There may be some substance, but when compared it to the “media-darling” Apple, it was more than unfair – it was malicious, concerted, and unmerited. Shamefully, Canadian media and even local writers got caught up in the feeding frenzy. They forgot what RIM means to Canada and Waterloo Region economically and what it would be like without them. They forgot that when strongly advised to move their headquarters to the US, RIM executives refused, which could be another reason why the company is in this media war. There’s a lot more to this story than you can read in the headlines but the facts have only confirmed my suspicions – this is an unjustified war, what is new. There is a strategic and organized group of people who are trying to destroy RIM for malicious or economic reasons – who are they?

I started looking for a phone and ultimately got a lesson in business wars and media manipulation and how living next to a ruthless, media driven and self-centric nation can demonstrate how manipulating perceptions can shape peoples’ reality.

Amongst the din of hundreds of offbeat stories with sizzling headlines, there occasionally comes one that totally captures your attention. The headline was a simple, but seemingly impossible idea – “ The Man Who Quit Money”.

I wondered if this could be a real story of a rational, sane person who had found a way to live without money? If so, I wanted to know how he did it.

For most people in our society, money seems to be the biggest problem they have – there is never enough. The odd thing is that it doesn’t matter how much you have or make, there usually is more demand than there is supply. At a time of exceptional prosperity, Canadians are increasing their personal debt at an alarming rate. Why is there never enough? Money has a way of controlling us, and at best, influencing our decisions based on how much of it is involved and in which direction it is flowing – in or out. For the poor, it is oppressive; for the middle class, it is comfort; for the rich it is privilege; for the ultra rich, it is power and identity. In all cases, money is a hard master – it is hard to get and even harder to keep.

An even bigger problem that exists with money is the fluctuation in its value. Governments print money to offset budget shortfalls rather than taking on debt. The increased supply makes money worth less causing prices to increase;  a more accurate description would be that prices don’t go up, the value of money goes down. We call that inflation. For people who have worked a long time and who have accumulated some money, it is as if the government went into your bank account and helped themselves.

The same is true when commodity speculators actually do raise prices in the process of extracting profits for themselves. They, too, have taken some of the value of your savings out of your account without you ever seeing them. With the financial instruments available today which leverage capital 100 times, even small “players” can influence a commodity market. I suppose that’s why Warren Buffet has called it the ‘Wall Street Casino’.

The problem with money is that its value is changing every day as the “essentials of life” and exchange rates rise or fall in price. Yet we all strive to get more of the thing that has us lashed to an oar and caused us to live a life few would choose if we didn’t believe it was all about the money.

So I was curious. Is it possible to live without this medium of exchange that for most people is the “water” of life? Furthermore, for most of us who know no other system and who already have built our lives on this shifting sand, will it matter?

The Story:

April 18, 2012 BBC News Magazine

Daniel Suelo, a former cook from Moab Utah, left his remaining $30.00 in a phone booth in 2000 and has lived free of money for the last eleven years. He has survived on wild plants and berries, road kill and gifts of food freely given. He has not taken any government assistance but has lived in the caves in the deserts of Utah. His philosophy is to “freely give and to freely receive”. He believes that money is an illusion and that it will disappear from our society eventually.

As interesting as the story sounded, in all honesty, it fell way short of what I had hoped for. Living in the desert on road kill and the land isn’t exactly a universal solution to the problem with money. Yet I was still intrigued with the idea of quitting money – what an outlandish thought. Daniel’s story however triggered some deductions about how he approached solving the money problem. He reduced spending to zero and found freedom in a simplified lifestyle that put value on non-material things. In our consumer culture, we think that increasing income to meet spending is the solution rather than the other way around.

Daniel also found a way to be independent of the established system, others or the government. He took care of himself, albeit not to the standard most would choose; however, it is possible to find alternative house construction systems, electricity generation and other ways which are inexpensive to live completely “off the grid”, and in that way, achieve a similar independence.

I concluded that Daniel’s solution to a world in financial crisis is not for everyone, but everybody can have their own way of quitting money. There is no simple or universal solution. The essence of Daniel’s story is that he became free of money and there are many ways of doing that. When money no longer influences your decisions or guides your choices, you are free and that freedom comes in many ways.  By decreasing your dependence on money, you get control of your life. It is the pursuit of the illusion that creates the “rat race”.

I don’t imagine that Daniel got up one day and quit money. It was a process which he grew into and designed uniquely for himself. I imagine he thought about it often, maybe even for years, before he realized he had to quit living in the money system. Now that you have heard about “The Man Who Quit Money”, you can start to think about it, too.

I have been producing this radio program for a  year and I have learned a lot. One of the things I have learned about “change” is that some things have to be modeled before they gain enough credibility to get wide acceptance. Many people need to “see” something before they “get it”. In other words, a good idea is just an idea until someone invests in it and proves that it will work. For the innovator, pioneer or forerunner, this is their greatest frustration.

During the past 5 months, my wife and I have been working in Costa Rica. It is a country which has become one of the top vacation locations because of its lush beauty and amazing beaches. It has also been selected as AARP’s top locations to retire, with Atenas (the location we were near) considered by National Geographic as having the ‘best climate in the world’. Canadians have been flocking here to spend either part or all of their retirement days in one of the most beautiful countries in the world. I could fill a book with descriptions about the beautiful flowers and the unusual and abundant wildlife that are just outside our door. The culture is as rich and diverse as the land and the people have been rated by a recent study by Jeffrey David Sachs as having the highest “Average Life Satisfaction”. In short, they are a very happy people, and with only a few exceptions in my experience, they live up to their reputation.

Costa Rica has so many outstanding aspects that make it attractive that most people overlook one of its most important qualities. In 1948, Costa Rica disbanded its army, choosing instead to spend its limited resources on providing universal education and health care to its citizens. This did not happen without a great deal of debate and struggle – but it happened. At the time, disarming was unthinkable! Other nations of Central America were arming and in El Salvador, civil war was already smoldering. Visionary leader, José Figueres Ferrer, decided to choose a more difficult road because he believed it was best for his country. It proved to be a turning point for his nation and the world.

60 years later, Costa Rica is the richest and most progressive country in Central America. It is also recognized as one of the earlier democracies in the world. In 1941, they started what would become universal healthcare, a system which has been rated for quality by the UN as superior to the US. Costa Rica is also rated by the UN as the leading Latin American country in their Human Development Index, and in a nation of 4 million people and with a very small GNP, they have been able to achieve many positive goals, much of which have been possible because they haven’t wasted money on arms and armies. They have modeled what can be achieved through disarming. They are a forerunner nation to all the nations of the earth.

The benefits of peace and no military spending have over the years proven to be of enormous advantage to Costa Ricans. Therein lies the dilemma. Military spending doesn’t benefit people. Not one country in the world can demonstrate in its history an example where military spending has produced benefits for its citizens. Yet, Costa Rica’s stellar performance as an unarmed nation is quietly ignored.

Buying arms leads to war and/or enormous unproductive costs that never benefit anyone but the arms’ manufacturers. These manufacturers believe it is their job to promote the sale of weapons through fear. It is fear which prevents the world from taking the most obvious step toward total disarmament. The military budget of the US alone, if used for humanitarian purposes would end hunger, poverty, most illnesses, and change the economic base of the whole world. If we could end fear, wars and armies, the world would have the resources to fight its real enemies. Furthermore, “War doesn’t determine who’s right – only who is left.” (Bertrand Russell)

Disarming is the right idea, it is worth fighting for and there IS a way to accomplish it! Using Costa Rica as a model for change, we, the people, need a visionary leader to champion the wisdom and efficiency of a world without armies. They need to “sell it” to others less willing to try something new, with irrefutable arguments. We need more nations to opt out of the power struggle-arms race and set even more examples of what can be achieved through disarmament.

In a time of economic world crisis, complete disarmament would change every nation’s financial future and will benefit every person on the earth. It costs 1.5 Trillion dollars annually just to support the 80 million people who are in armies world-wide and that doesn’t include the purchase of arms. Miliart spending in the US is at the highest since World War II

Who has the courage to fight for this kind of change? Could Canada, UK, Germany, France become a forerunner nation like Costa Rica and do the unthinkable and disarm? Can we, the people of the World, challenge our leaders to a higher level of leadership? We are the peacekeepers. Who else should lead and do what must be done? Who has the courage and tenacity to make world history?

The problem with being a forerunner is that we don’t accept most of what we are told. We have to see for ourselves. This may arise from having experienced fraudulent authority in the past or from realizing that most of what is wrong with the world is their doing.

In the past 50 years, science has been promoted to the status of being “above question”. In fact, most scientists get rather annoyed that you would even think of questioning their theories. I don’t understand why, when you look at their history.

Over those same 50 years, science has produced some of the most toxic chemicals on earth, all the while assuring the public that there was nothing to worry about. If the world is in an environmental, military, or ethical crisis, science has played a huge part in creating that crisis, while claiming it is they who have the answers to all the world’s current problems.

For more than 30 years, scientists became the main source of disinformation about the harmful effects of smoking. Did these scientists know that they were a pone in a grander scheme by the tobacco companies to mislead the public? If they had done the science, they would have known, yet they asserted that they were reliable, unbiased and ethical in their pursuit of the facts, which was a complete lie. The science and tobacco story is not an isolated one; there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of similar stories of chemicals and drugs which would later become known as dangerous, but which scientists assured us were safe. Most new drugs are approved by studies done by the companies that make the product, yet they claim the science is unbiased. They hire scientists to discredit independent studies which might refute their original findings. That is not science – it’s propaganda!

Science and academia have pointed to their achievements in order to hide their checkered past, but it is checkered, none-the-less. Six months before the banks in Ireland collapsed, a Harvard professor of economics assured investors that the banks were stable and solvent. He never declared that he was paid $100,000 to produce the report that led thousands of investors “down the garden path”. Did he commit a crime? Most people would say, “yes!”, but he was never charged for his obvious failure to do the research. Was he the reliable, unbiased, knowledgeable authority that people assumed they could trust – no? That’s not science.

Considering the state of science and its moral failure, nothing is above scrutiny; in particular, those who become incensed when asked to prove their claims. Their assertions that “peer review” raises their theories to being above question is in itself is not in the spirit of good science. Secondly, when asked “off the record” how well the peer review system works, most scientists say they don’t have the time to review papers (for which they don’t get paid). Some ask their students to determine the quality of science that is being presented in peer (not student) reviewed publications. The system has deteriorated to the point that it is unreliable in a “business” that “sells” reliability and that is not real science.

Science and Fraud

One of the best examples of failure to prove its assertions is the “climate change” fiasco. There has been an incredible amount of manipulation of the facts to present a story of “half truths”. An article about the summer ice in the Arctic (2007) claimed that the ice covered the smallest area in 30 years. The article asserted that this proved the theories of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The equally important but almost unreported facts are that while the Arctic had the smallest summer ice in 2007 for 30 years, the Antarctic had the largest summer ice in 30 years. The fact that this was never revealed in the article and dismissed by the press is damning evidence, which raises the question “why?”  Furthermore, this is not an isolated “indiscretion”.

While the majority of scientists are falling into line with the IPCC’s claims that the earth is warming at a dangerous pace, the more dependable satellite climate data defies their claims. Since 2001, the warming trend of the past 20 years has leveled off in what some scientists believe is part of a natural cycle. With no warming in almost 10 years, the question begs answering: why is the IPCC and its people continuing to “sound the alarm”? Is it science?

As Al Gore said to a group of Latin American businessmen in 2011, “There is a lot of money to be made in climate change”. He was speaking about private companies (like his own) who will trade carbon credits for huge profits. The proposed carbon tax will start at 1% of the world’s GNP. The main promoters of the climate change crisis is government (IPCC). What’s not to love about a new tax which will bring in trillions of dollars, some of which will be directed to creating thousands of new jobs in science? What scientist wouldn’t love that?

Science and academia are not above being corrupted. Their past has proved it. Research grants are distributed to those who do the science that supports the preferred point of view. Results which contradict the IPCC’s platform are scorned, dismissed, buried, or punished – that’s not how science is supposed to work. It doesn’t take long for the mainstream body of scientists to fall into line – their jobs and careers are on the line. It’s only the rebels (forerunners) who shout “foul”.

Business, government, and science are all on the climate change “gravy train” with thousands of jobs already connected to the political campaign disguised as science. This number could increase 100 fold if they can get us all to submit to a world-wide carbon tax. As usual, it’s all about the money. If you don’t think this could happen, then consider that a relatively small group of financial pirates manipulated information, systems and perceptions to plunder the US and most of the world of trillions of dollars. The biggest scam in history and they all got away with it. It was only possible with the compliance and/or support of academics, government, and scientists who had to have known. Trust is, and should be, at an all time low. Nothing is above personal scrutiny, including academia and science. The truth is hard to find sometimes but it is out there.

A few days ago I had lunch with a dear friend from Costa Rica. He was born and raised in Central American culture and of course loved Futbol (soccer). As the conversation developed, I couldn’t help make the comparison between Latin America’s love for their game and Canadians’ love for hockey. To my surprise, he was very familiar with the game and pointed out some of the finer points of what makes hockey great. My pride for our national sport grew and then without warning, he added that he couldn’t understand “why we let the players fight”, a flaw in the game that he felt disqualified it from being a great sport – one he could love.

In one sentence, Fernando brought me from a warm glow of pride for our nation to a knowing shame for the way Canadians and our national sport are perceived around the world. It was an honest question…..but one I could not answer.

I couldn’t stop thinking about Fernando’s question: Why DO WE allow the players to fight? I was familiar with the sacraments Don Cherry preaches to Canadians every Saturday night about how violence is necessary in the game; but I realized that trying to explain Don Cherry to a Costa Rican, or to anyone for that matter, would only make me sound ridiculous. Is it credible to blame a TV “personality” for the state of our national sport – I think not. Cherry may be the most vocal, but he could not be the reason fighting is allowed in hockey.

There is a reason that fighting is allowed in hockey and it isn’t about altruistic ideals – it’s about money. For the broadcasters who buy and sell hockey, it is only the space between the advertising. Hockey is about delivering to advertisers a certain group of people. Broadcasters sell the eyes and ears of the audience who watches hockey to other people who make and sell stuff. The system has become very sophisticated with ongoing studies conducted about the age, sex, income, and values of the people who tune into hockey. Currently, the largest group of viewers are young males age 19-32 which is very different from the early days of televised hockey which attracted families. Somewhere between then and now, the game changed and so did the audience. For many Canadians (then and now), watching hockey is like passing a car wreck – you want to look, but you don’t want to see. What we loved about hockey, the skill and the speed, became overshadowed by the intimidation tactics, stick work and bullying of untalented players. Hockey substituted violence and brutality for skill and talent and even exported it to Europe.

Hockey is the way it is, because advertisers don’t want change. They believe there is only one audience for hockey – the one that they currently have. They don’t know that 100s of thousands of viewers would come back to hockey IF it got rid of the violence that blemishes the sport and diminishes talent and skill. Concussions threaten to end the careers of some of the best players currently playing the game. The owners, the commissioner, the players’ union and a lot of Canadians are being held hostage by the broadcasters and their advertisers. That is the current state of the game of hockey and the answer I could not give Fernando.

For those of us who love hockey and Canada’s association with it, hockey must change. The game that we love has deteriorated into something unappealing to most Canadians. Some very good changes have been made proving that change is possible. Though change is what we all need, it is the one thing we seem to dread the most. Change happens when we see the future (what we want) and act as if it already is; that means watching hockey and changing its demographics and continuing to believe that Hockey can be great again….

Winston Churchill is purported to have said: “Capitalism is not the best system, but it is the best so far.” The quote seemed out of character for someone who was openly critical of a system so given to greed and corruption. Fact is, he actually said this about democracy, not capitalism – the capitalists “borrowed” Churchill’s “political capital” to support their cause.

As I searched quotes about capitalism, I soon realized that there were significantly more quotes against capitalism than for it. They came from renowned politicians (including Churchill), economists, business leaders, gangsters (Al Capone) and even US founding father, Thomas Jefferson. Yet, we are told all the time in the media that there is no better system than capitalism. In fact, you may be branded a communist and or even a threat to a successful, progressive society simply by questioning the fairness of capitalism. In light of the melt-down of capitalism in 2008 and the world-wide repercussions which we are all still feeling today, it is appropriate, maybe even prophetic, that 2012 is the United Nation’s International Year of Cooperatives.

Cooperatives are an alternative to the idea that capital (money) is the most important ingredient in an enterprise and therefore deserves the majority of the rewards (profits). Alternatively, cooperatives are founded on the premise of people working together for their mutual benefit. They are unofficially defined as “an organization owned by its members who use its services”. Cooperatives first appeared in the UK in the mid 1800s. They differ from other organizations in that they benefit the members based on the amount they use the services of the organization rather than on the basis of their capital input. This frees the organization to serve members’ needs rather than focusing on returns for investors.

There are many examples of large scale cooperatives in Canada and around the world: ACE Hardware, Mutual of Omaha Insurance, State Farm Insurance, True Value, Piggly Wiggly (USA), Mountain Equipment Coop, Co-operators Insurance, Gay Lee Foods, Desjardins Group, United Farmers of Alberta, and Coop Atlantic (Canada). There are over 9000 cooperatives in Canada employing 155,000 people with more than 18 million members. In most regions, you can buy general insurance, life insurance, and banking and financial services from credit unions. Cooperatives provide energy services, food production, housing, and mutual purchasing, to name just a few. Almost any service can be acquired through a cooperative  in most cities. Cooperatives are an alternative that is based on the principle that there is a synergistic effect which benefits all the participants when they work together.

When the banking system collapsed in Argentina and owners deserted their businesses and their workers, they were taken over by cooperatives (groups of workers) and run very successfully – even to this day. After the economic storms subsided, the owners and managers tried unsuccessfully to regain control.

Families are the simplest form of a cooperative, and when any group works together, large or small, and the parties mutually benefit, it’s a cooperative. Cooperatives place value on all the components that make an enterprise successful, not just capital. Most corporations’ sole objective is to make as much money as possible, any way they can. Corporations have no conscience and rarely are they prosecuted for their crimes the way individuals are. Every day in the news, we see the consequences of unconscionable greed by multi-national corporations. Could cooperatives be an effective alternative to the unbridled self-interest that threatens to destroy the planet and our financial systems?

Capitalism’s greed is considered “tolerable” in part because we don’t believe there is another alternative. Its values and objectives are in direct conflict with the environment, the public, and governments whose mandate it is to serve the common good. Cooperatives offer an alternative and a model for people to accomplish almost anything. They are the way of the future and the past. They benefit the 100% rather than the 1% and they are capable of stimulating innovation, creativity, and efficiency without overly exploiting the planet or its workers.

One of the most pleasant tasks I perform for the Forerunner Film Festival is to review new films. I am not sure how I was introduced to the film “Crossing”, but it was a docu-drama which challenged and stirred more emotion that any of the hundreds of films I had reviewed.

The setting is North Korea. The central character is a husband desperately seeking medicine for his very ill wife. We learn that the only solution to his problem is to pass illegally through the border into China to get the medicine. For many Christians in North Korean, life is very difficult – they face persecution, diminished human rights, and many are refused work. The only way to escape is to illegally enter China and then travel overland to South Korea with the help of an underground railroad. The desperate
husband reckons that if he is going to risk years of jail to get the medicine, he may as well escape to freedom.

Few people understand this man’s life, but the film powerfully reveals the desperation, fear, and courage people face when they risk their lives and futures for freedom. The most moving footage shows a group of refugees attempting to force their way through a wall of North Korean police into the safety and freedom of the Japanese consulate. Some escape, others are captured – it is heart wrenching.

I promised myself after the film I would do something to raise awareness of these people who want only a chance to work and live with some dignity. My research into the subject revealed complications and, as usual, corruption in the handling and treatment of refugees coming from North Korea. It muddied the water somewhat for me.

This week Kim Jung II “Beloved Leader” died suddenly of a heart attack – his death offers North Koreans hope for the future. His 3rd son was named as successor, although for millions of Christian North Koreans, it is unknown how and if things will change. Those who have escaped the North took the opportunity to demonstrate in Seoul.

For many of us here in Canada, this story is just another blip on the daily news screen, with little background understanding or significance to us. It is difficult to keep up with all the issues that are going on in the world. There are so many problems that need our support and engagement, we may wonder how WE can do something to contribute to positive change?

In a recent interview for Wisdom-radio with Dale and Linda Bolton from Organics 4 Orphans, Dale described how this revolutionary organization was birthed. On seeing literally millions of orphans (victims of the AIDS epidemic) they committed themselves to do something. They somehow got over the fact that they were two people facing a 40 million person problem. They began with the premise that even if they could help only a few hundred children, it would be worth their effort. They, however, grew in understanding of the culture and the problems and discovered better solutions. It has been a journey of amazing revelation and innovation. The key was their commitment to do something. After that, all the rest came together.

As 2011 comes to a close with one of the great celebrations of family and caring, we should evaluate what we have done for others and how we can do our part to make a positive impact on our world. All around us we are challenged with needs. We may think we can’t do much to solve the world’s problems, but over and over again, people of modest means and expertise make enormous changes for good. Their key is commitment and endurance. 2012 will be filled with opportunities to become engaged in your community and to find a place to serve. You can’t do everything and you can’t do ‘nothing’. The world, our country, and our community need you and what you have to give no matter how small you believe your impact will be. Find an issue to affect for good. Find someone or something that needs what you have to give and 2012 will be the beginning of the best years of your life.

Inventors always want to protect their ideas so that only they can capitalize on them; however, that may be misguided. In the history of recent technology, being the “first in” has proven to be of no advantage – possibly even a disadvantage.

At one time, there was a very good operating system called CPM that was crushed by a late arriver MS DOS. Commodore once had a future in personal computing until it went head-to-head with the PC (IBM Personal Computer). Atari had a superior computer for a long time but was eliminated in an “early round” by the fashionably late PC clone. Xerox produced the feature-rich, Venture Publisher, that was “marketed” out of the business by Adobe Page Maker for Macintosh – a far inferior product.

Almost none of the original players are around today to enjoy the fruit of their ground breaking labour. The forerunners who dream and challenge new horizons don’t always make the best managers. Steve Jobs may appear to be an exception – he stayed close to his function as “Head-Dreamer” of the company and it worked for him and Apple.

Being second or third into a big market has proven to have its advantages. Research In Motion conceived and birthed an idea which required a tremendous amount of creative and technological resources, only to have others build on and innovate the idea. It is much easier to refine a good idea than it is to make it a reality. RIM’s competitors have made a place for themselves “frilling up” a monumental technology with a user friendly interface (Iphone) and a fortune of supplementary applications which appeal to anyone and everyone’s personal interests. Some of these apps are “software froth” and some are well conceived and designed add-on functions to the main and original idea of mobile e-mail, internet and phone service.

RIM still has a unique market advantage in spite of the press that is determined to destroy them. Their networks are secure because they operate them. That one advantage for an intelligent and informed consumer is worth trading all the “frills” any marketing manager on steroids can come up with. It seems that RIM’s superior security has irritated more than one government. Saudi Arabia wanted a “backdoor” into the Blackberry system in order to spy on their people. Somehow, Blackberry was “responsible” for the riots in London in August. Their networks were secure and for that reason rioters used them to organize. The British didn’t like that and called in the Blackberry folks to give an account for themselves. The social unrest and religious persecution of Christians in countries such as Egypt have made RIM the secure and obvious choice of many. For that reason, RIM has gone from being heros to zeros, at least in the press. It would appear for being just too darn good. There are a lot of people who would like them to give up their secure networks so they can  “trap data” and spy on whomever they please. In some cases, that is good and in others it is bad, but who gets to decide which is which?
RIM has a lot of enemies, but the founders are used to fighting for what they believe. They were around long before Blackberry and learned their “tuffs” over years of struggling in order to arrive where they are today. They may have made some mistakes and become mesmerized by their tremendous success for a season, but the next battle is for the survival of the company. My money is on RIM. They have the leadership to make the adjustments that need to be made. They are “forerunners” who can lead the industry again. They have been there and know what it takes to create and pioneer. They just need to remember who they are! As with most forerunners, they don’t mind taking some heat for doing things their way.

I am optimistic about RIM’s future in spite of the media’s intentional attacks and pessimistic predictions. As a team, they are more than what the “barking dogs” (the press) say they are. They have proven their character and good will in the market place and to our community whenever there was a need. This battle is not primarily about stock prices, or shareholder value, or marketing, or PR. It is about control and who is going to get it.

The first line of defense in this battle is character….“character” that says: “I will not let ‘them’ destroy me or this company.” This attitude must start at the top and trickle down through the ranks and infect those not intimidated by a good fight with courage and determination. I’ve seen that from the senior RIM team in the midst of a volley of personal attacks. They stood firm when their leadership was challenged and when “analysts” wanted to break up the company. Their courage and strength tell me they are not finished fighting, and it gives me courage and the conviction that RIM will not only survive, but will flourish.

Recently a friend of mine retired from his job as an editor at the CBC. He had worked there for more than 30 years dodging layoffs and cutbacks to complete a full tenure at the Corporation. In fact, Mark worked for an additional 3 years beyond the required service even though he was ready in many ways to end the routine he had become so comfortable in. I detected when we talked about his “new life” that there still was a great deal of uncertainty about what the future would hold. He didn’t know what he would do, and the more he was told to “enjoy life”, the more uncomfortable be became.

Mark’s work was his purpose and without purpose he knew life would be missing something important. He came to one of our seminars and was able to turn his feelings into a focused objective. He discovered that he was better suited to a new purpose and was needed more now than ever before.

Statistics show that people with purpose live an additional 10 years. That could be attributed to the satisfaction and intentionality they develop when they are engaged in something that is important and significant. It really doesn’t matter if you are retiring or if you are in mid-life or if you are just graduating and starting a career, keeping a place in your life for giving to others pays many rewards. Giving “yourself” to others is a gift that benefits the giver as much or more than the receiver.

You may have thought about purpose and giving before and wondered how you could add another activity to your list of things to do. Other people may respond with: “I don’t have anything to give”. I have heard all the reasons “why not”, but there are far more reasons to find a way to make it work, than to declare it impossible.

People of all ages have talents and strengths which others don’t have. They have wisdom and character which will help a person in a dark moment find some light. You, by your very existence, are valuable to those around you – they need you. Parents need parenting, too. Fathers need fathering and mothers need mothering at any age. Young people just starting out have problems that others have never faced, yet knowing someone is with them helps a lot.
Everyone needs a purpose. They need a place to give what they are, and have, and have learned in life to someone else.

Finding a place to connect with others isn’t hard – there are needs everywhere. All you have to do it start looking for them. There are also some really amazing things that are being done by new groups with great visions and who really need help. The smaller the group, the bigger the role you can play. It is very satisfying to use and give away the wisdom that you paid so high a price to gain.

Winston Churchill said these wise words about giving: “You make a living by what you get, but a life by what you give”. Everyone needs a vision and purpose for making this community and the world better. We can’t really “live” without purpose. If you’re not giving, then you’re not living. The purposed life is one of pleasure, significance and happiness. Find a place to give the most precious thing you have – you! It will make you, others, and the world a better place.

I had to publish this since it was so well said…..

“Never before has the global financial system been so interlinked and integrated, which means that problems in one part of the world are capable of causing severe stress almost everywhere else. ”

That’s globalism for you, folks. That’s what the globalists have forced upon us during the course of the last fifty years. That’s what they insisted would be good for us.

If ever you feel like blaming someone, blame them. And then, when you’re all done blaming the international financiers, the multinational corporation owners, the media barons and their bought politicians, blame yourselves as well.

Blame yourselves for ever having been foolish enough to believe the lies that the most greedy, self-serving, power-mad and brutish among us told you.

“The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall.” Cicero  – 55 BC

Recently a friend from San Diego sent me a similar quote about the state of Rome in the era of Cicero. A little research revealed that the original quote (as shown above) had been altered significantly to suit the political views of the plagiarist and his/her view of the solutions to the problems in America. In pointing out the flaws of the “system” and the failing lack of integrity on the part of many of our public officials, the author didn’t see the irony of using deception to get his point across.

The Internet has enabled a new level of everyday “slight of hand”. No one will ever know who altered the quote and the “good” is better than the “evil”, or so they believe. In some ways, big cities, big business, and politics, provide the same anonymity for people. In this state of “disconnect” from the people they serve, those who lead can only feign caring and sincerity.

With the election coming in a few days, politicians are touting campaign promises which will win votes for them. Most of those promises are not so subtle attempts to buy our votes with ‘our’ money. The promises and strategies of all the campaigns are extremely vague. It is political campaign strategy to NOT tell the public what they intend to do in the future because that would divide the voters for-and-against, which does not accomplish their end. That is why there is so much deception, avoidance, and outright lying in most of the campaigns. All of that in the name of “caring, visionary leadership”.

The classic quote from the movie “A Few Good Men” may be the politicians’ self-justification: “You can’t handle the truth!” In the film, the court-marshaled soldier eloquently defends his right to break the law for the greater good because he knows things that others don’t know. That theory may be acceptable in the military, but not in a true democracy. But the problem may not only be that we, the voter, can’t handle or know the truth, but that we just don’t care enough to listen to it. Ontarians, like the rest of the western world, are living at twice the pace of their fore-fathers. We don’t have time to think about things that we don’t have to think about. When we have a moment to consider things beyond our personal lives, we choose to take a much needed break rather than ponder the collective good.

As the ancient philosopher said, “The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled….”. 2066 years later, humanity is faced with the same problems, requiring the same solutions. The founders of democracy quickly realized that the freedom and the responsibility to make our leaders work for us reside with us. We get the government we deserve.

The advertisement falls on closed minds: “On October 6th vote!”. Citizen cynicism is a symptom of a process which neither includes them, informs them or provides accountability. Our election campaigns have the hard content of an hour with the “National Enquirer”. For that reason, “officialdom” has become arrogant – they rarely have to give an account for their actions.

If democracy is going to work for “us”, it is not enough just to participate in the process by voting. The very nature of our freedom is to be informed, to vote, and to then hold our “officialdom” to account for their responsibilities, promises, and actions. That is the only way democracy will work for the common good. On October 6th be an informed voter and an active participant in making our politicians work for us.

Recently, I inquired about posting a film screening notice at the Stanley Park Community Centre. The attendant aggressively questioned if the film was religious (I gave her no reason to believe it was). I almost had to “swear an oath” that there was no religious content in the film before she would post the flyer on the bulletin board. I was told that religious content of any kind was forbidden. Ironically, this person appeared to be of a group which enjoyed protection from injustice by our Charter of Rights.

One of the best things about Canada is that we honour a person’s culture and native language. We have two official languages and hundreds of unofficial languages. We have proven with our actions, laws, and financial support that we value and even celebrate traditions of every country and people group. This is to our credit and benefit. We also have created laws and rights which focus on preventing discrimination against sexual orientation, colour of skin, race, creed and culture – all in the name of protecting a person from injustice and abuse. We not only protect these rights, we actually bring them into the public square and celebrate them in a variety of ways. All levels of governments have funded gay pride parades, cultural events, and every imaginable form of celebration of Canadians’ ethnic origins.

Canadians have recognized that a significant part of a human being is connected to his/her past culture and background. Another equally important part of a person’s world-view, values, and objectives is formed in their perceptions of the origin of humanity and the planet. This perception is at the core of the person’s views about what it means to be human and to live a meaningful and “successful” life. In other words, these beliefs are every bit as important to a person as their sexual orientation, race, language, culture, or gender, yet they are being treated quite differently.

More than 90% of the world’s population believe in a superior being who has created humanity and the earth. Yet the few remaining people who have chosen to believe otherwise have pushed all of the people of faith into a corner and required them to be silent in public about one of the most important parts of who they are. People of faith are regularly mocked by arrogant atheists claiming the higher intellectual ground. Science has not, nor ever will be able to prove the origin of the species – it is impossible to do so – it still is only a theory. Therefore, belief in evolution is acquired by faith. We teach evolution as if were a fact when it has no more substance than a religion. The “some” have claimed, by the slight of intellectual hand, control over the “many” because no one is fighting for justice.

If we define freedom and equality for some of our rights in a certain way but exclude a person’s “origin orientation” (faith), it clearly constitutes an inequality. Our government doesn’t fund religious events; furthermore, because of a very vocal few who are hostile to faith, faith has been attacked with attempts to banish it completely from having any public expression. A person may bring their culture, race, sexual orientation, or gender etc., etc. freely into the public square but not their faith – and that is religious bigotry. Faith is the only protected right that is openly and publicly being treated with indignation by a small group of people who believe, in their misguided ignorance, that forbidding any expression of faith in our public intuitions is required by law.

I am always dismayed by those who ignorantly cite “separation of church and state” as justification for bigotry. First of all, that is part of the American Constitution and it does not exist in Canadian law. Furthermore, the founding fathers of the United States were not intending to restrict faith in any way, but rather to create equality for all faiths by prohibiting the institutionalizing of one denomination as the official religion of the nation. They were particularly sensitive to this issue since they were people of faith who had come to America to escape this inequality. It’s rather ironic that the profoundly ignorant justify religious bigotry using a law intended to prevent it.

I can expect that for writing this article in defence of all people of faith that I will be belittled, mocked, and marginalised. People of faith regularly endure attacks on the internet and in print that if directed at homosexuals, Jews, blacks, or East Indians, for example, it would create social outrage. Attack a person of faith, or faith in general, and there is silence. If we believe in equality it must be for everyone.

Is there religious freedom in Canada? An inquiry would reveal that there are vast inequalities for people of faith when compared with the other rights and freedoms protected by our Charter of Rights and that faith is ridiculed and marginalised in ways that others who also are protected by the Charter are not. That is the sad truth even though it is not what most Canadians believe or want for Canada.

June will be the first month of parliament for a government which is eager to get things done. Although I am pleased that we now have a functioning government, I am cautious about the Conservative’s position on Cap and Trade. Prior to the federal election, the Canadian Science Advisory Board advised the Conservative government to implement Cap and Trade as the solution to climate change. They also advised them to act quickly, even though there seemed to be little support for raising taxes and particularly, for this C&T scheme throughout 2nd and 3rd world countries. What I find “amazing” is that scientists from across the country and from every discipline and every background all agree on just one solution – a tax that would cost consumers billions just when we are getting back on our financial feet after the biggest financial scam in history; however, the hundreds of billions of dollars to be harvested from Cap and Trade for scientific research may have something to do with it.

Cap and Trade is not a new idea. It is based on a cap for emissions and the ability to trade any unused portion of that cap amount to someone who may be over the cap – hence the term Cap and Trade. The problems with the system are not in the overall concept but in its execution. The US version of the scheme is so flawed it begs the question, “You’ve got to be kidding?” There are so many loop holes and potential money making “backdoors”, any rational person would see the scheme for what it is – another huge scam! (For more information Google: cap and trade)

The questions we should ask in this situation are:  “How did such a flawed scheme get as far as it has, and who is promoting it?” As one famous investigator said, “Follow the money and you’ll find the answers.” We know who is promoting Cap and Trade – Al Gore. He showed up in Costa Rica early this year and used local flooding as proof of climate change and as a reason for implementing C&T. He revealed his true colours, however, when he said to the Costa Rican business community that they may discover that there is a lot of money to be made in climate change and that they should “put a price on carbon”.

Gore has already made millions from the proposed scheme through his Generation Investment Management company but he is not alone in his support for the C&T tax. Goldman Sachs has been a pillar of support for the plan. You may remember their role in the housing scandal and that their former CEO, Hank Paulson (then Secretary of the Treasury) was at the helm when the US financial system hit the mountain – many people think it was a deliberate act to get the bailout funds (see the film, “Inside Job”).

I believe the planet is in desperate need of  an ecological revolution and that we must change our way of living. I am not, however, about to empower or enrich a bunch of socio-psychopaths in a misguided attempt to do so. Nor am I going to be manipulated into supporting their self-enriching plans as a panacea for real change. We have seen through all of this that greed knows no bounds. This week it was revealed that a hedge fund has been purchasing land in Africa in an effort to make food production their next big “score”. The size of the land is larger than France. If that doesn’t scare you then you don’t understand that there actually are people in this world who are prepared to starve millions of people to make huge profits.

We have become immune to the greed and inhumanity all around us and in so doing have failed to discern the times. These are perilous times that require bold, determined and radical action. In the past, we have seen the resources of the planet squandered while others starved. Today however,  95% of the wealth is in the hands of 5% of the people. Centralized industrial mass food production has the potential for propagating epidemics and famines of mass proportion. Greed empowers a system that is unsustainable and prone to famine and epidemics. Self-indulgence ignores the lives of the weak and the poor. The discerning and wise person looks at the situation and prepares himself.

If you have been frightened by the “climate change story” you need to ask: “Where will that take ME?” If you have been scared by some of the stories that appear in the everyday news, you have to ask; “What does that mean for me?”.  All of these signs of the times, whether far away, or nearby, beg of us to answer the question “What am I going to do about it!”