Rafe Mair Online

There are two mining stories out of last week in Lotusland.

For openers, let’s deal with “Prosperity” Lake which, before the corporate flacks got involved, was called Fish Lake.

The short story is that this is a mine prospect held by Taseko Mines. While the Provincial government approved it, it was turned down by the feds who then gave the company time to put in a new proposal, which they did. With the speed of light the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency received the new application last February and hasn’t yet decided anything. This delay brought a fire and brimstone editorial from the Fraser Institute’s house paper, the Vancouver Sun, which threw unsourced “facts” at us, including a promise of 71,000 jobs with 5,400 new residents for the nearby town of Williams Lake. We’re not told where those figures come from but clearly they’re from the large sack of extravagant statements the Fraser Institute keeps on hand for whenever their definition of capitalism is called to account. Continue Reading »

There are two stories about pipelines this week – the first was a Vancouver Sun article October 25. Here it is, in part:

Sixteen business and labour leaders have signed an open letter to British Columbians urging their support for natural gas and oil pipeline proposals across the northern half of the province which they say are needed to link Canada’s energy resources and B.C.’s economic future more closely to Asian economies.

The letter marks the first public relations campaign aimed at swaying opinion province wide towards energy projects in the North. Up until now, only regional support groups have been formed, such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway Alliance, which is actively supporting Enbridge’s $5.5-billion Alberta-to-Kitimat pipeline project in communities along the pipeline route. Continue Reading »

Citizens speak truth to corporate and government power at Occupy Vancouver on October 15 (photo by Damien Gillis)

See those two dots – one says corporate decency (underneath it says “good corporate citizen”).

The other dot says democracy, the rule of law and responsive government.

These two dots are joined to make up the dot that says “what a pile of bullshit!”

We have to get used to the truth: no company gives a rat’s ass about corporate decency – in fact it’s naïve for us think there might be. The corporation owes allegiance to just one thing: the bottom line – profits and dividends. In fact, corporations are only as decent as the law and enforcement of the law makes them be. They are like most motorists – they obey the laws because if they don’t and are caught, there are consequences. Continue Reading »

Here is the story from salmon biologist Alexandra Morton:

Infectious Salmon Anemia virus has been found in two young sockeye salmon. Sheer reckless, negligent behaviour has loosed a highly infectious fish farm influenza virus into the North Pacific. I have been told over and over by industry and government that this could not happen, but they were wrong. No one has any idea what Infectious Salmon Anemia Virus (ISAV) will do in the North Pacific. We were told that it could not infect Pacific salmon, that enough tests had been done to assure us that it was not here and would not get here. Well here it is in two young sockeye. Are they the only 2 salmon in the North Pacific with ISA virus, or are they among 100s, or millions? No one knows yet. Government and the salmon farming industry are at best dangerously incompetent. Humanity is well aware that moving viruses around has caused enormous misery and death. We make horror movies about this, and yet there is no sign of a learning curve here. We have put a highly infectious marine influenza virus into the ocean we depend on. So incredibly foolish.

Just so we know what we’re dealing with here, Infectious Salmon Anemia Virus (ISAV) is endemic to Atlantic salmon and the only Atlantic Salmon on the west coast of the Americas reside in fish farms who have denied vigorously that any of their salmon, or the eggs they import, have any ISAV and, alternatively, if they did have this pernicious disease it could not spread to any species of Pacific salmon. Continue Reading »

“Although Communism may be dead in fact if not name, the conditions that spawned and nurtured it are very much with us today. Large corporations have replaced the noblemen, the dwindling middle class is no buffer between the haves and the have-nots, and the rich get richer. Not much different than 1917… Change, unpredictable change, is coming to your home and sooner than you think!”

This was part of an article I did for Strategic Culture Foundation which is an online paper; it was dated April 10, 2010.

Now we have Occupy Wall Street in Vancouver and I have no doubt that it will spread like wildfire. The question is: Will it be like a grass fire and quickly burn out or get some roots? Moreover, if takes hold, what does it mean for the environmental struggle, in BC especially?

At present, there doesn’t appear any structure let alone leader but I think we can assume that this will change. The more important question is not if it takes on an organizational set up, who will be the major “bosses”, for want of a better word? Continue Reading »

Will wonders never cease? Was that a mild reproof of Premier Photo-op in Mike Smyth’s column the other day?

Was that a mild criticism of the Liberals in Vaughn Palmer’s column last Wednesday?

Then was that an out and out criticism by Mr. Palmer in this Thursday’s paper over her half-baked idea to have the trial of those accused of the Stanley Cup riots before the TV cameras? (This bright idea was to televise the trials of the rioters, overlooking the little rule we have in this country of presumption of innocence – a concept that doesn’t seem to phase the government that gave the police the right to investigate, charge, try and convict a suspected impaired driver on the spot, then sentence him and enforce the sentence. The reason that process hasn’t been tested in court is that the accused is deprived of his right to go to court.) Continue Reading »