Category Archives: Editorial

Obama, Israel, Palestine and Peace

If the wealthy of this world really want peace, they should help negotiate and finance Israel’s purchase of the lands Israel deems necessary to its security and continued existence. Anything less is futile.

A political “solution” will not last. Land ownership is the answer. Ownership is clear cut, with no waffling and posturing and broken promises brought on by current affairs, oil prices, and elections.

Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Bernard Arnault, Larry Ellison, the Sultan of Brunei and his peers–the Royal Families of the Muslim world–and the all the world’s religions must negotiate on Israel’s behalf and put money on the table. read more

Canada Should Get it Right for Its Own Good

When Canadian politicians encounter budgetary shortfalls and overruns, they often propose privatizing public services (such as public transportation). In other words, they sell their publicly owned transportation facilities and energy producing facilities to private for-profit corporations. For example, in 1998, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario passed the Energy Competition Act, which privatized and broke up the taxpayer-owned crown corporation Ontario Hydro.

The problem in Canada is that compared to the United States, there is NO competition, and that lack of competition in Canada invariably means that prices rise when public taxpayer-owned corporations are sold off. (A few people get rich while the average taxpayer becomes poorer.) read more

British Columbia Should Get it Right For It’s Own Good

I have always thought that if British Columbia really had it on the ball, it would make itself over as a fisheries, forestry, and wildlife management park. In other words, British Columbia would get itself designated as a special provincial or national park, a park in which planners, ethicists, scientists, and economists would test ecological and business management plans, models, and techniques, over both the short and long term, and often side by side. For example, various runs of salmon on various sections of the coast would experience alternative management regimes. read more

The Fisheries Turnoff

I was watching David Suzuki’s “One Ocean” on CBC Television last night, and I was again struck by one fisheries biologist’s arrogance–his choice of words, his tone of voice, his meaning. When he spoke of forcing a smile onto his face at public meetings and inquiries, he was not only insulting his audience, he was admitting insincerity. And why would anyone want to cooperate with an arrogant, insincere fisheries biologist?

Fisheries biology is an interesting field of study, but it often attracts (and subsequently recruits) autocratic individuals who as teenagers and young adults failed to muster enough smarts to succeed at jobs requiring higher levels of creativity, originality, and diplomacy. read more

The Grand Canyon State: Arizona Set to Close and Sell State Parks?

The world flies in and takes a long look at Arizona, the Grand Canyon State (see our Photo Gallery, our Arizona Gallery, and our Grand Canyon Trails Page). And soon after arriving in Phoenix, they fall in love with all the other gems Arizona has to offer: preserved yet accessible desert wilderness areas and wildlife refuges, such as the Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction.

But now Arizona’s lawmakers are preparing to vote on budget cuts that could shut down the entire state parks system by July 1. And that vote in January 2010 might result in the sale of state parks to the highest bidders. That’s right: I’m hearing that once an Arizona state park is closed, it must be sold: Land speculators and developers will mutilate our public gems, our community wilderness. They will restrict access, and Lost Dutchman State Park will become a gated community or a private suburb, with lot and house prices starting at $700,000 or more. read more

Rupert Sheldrake and the Presence of the Past

In his book, The Presence of the Past. Morphic Resonance & the Habits of Nature, Rupert Sheldrake presents a valuable review of the science, religion, and philosophy of origins and change, and he gives us a promising twist on the theory of evolution. He makes field theory and the all-pervading power of habit come alive in our minds and in our views of nature. But his repetitiveness and his repeated lists of examples and possibilities makes reading his book similar to watching someone beat a senseless dog. read more

Harvard’s Dreams

Is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s book My Stroke of Insight Harvard’s new “Opiate of the Masses”? On her web page http://drjilltaylor.com/book.html, she says, “I believe the more time we spend running our deep inner peace circuitry, then the more peace we will project into the world, and ultimately the more peace we will have on the planet.”

But since when is the “here and now” fair? I imagine that many sociopaths live in the “present moment” and feel inner peace after a “kill.” And if everyone on Earth drank themselves into a very prolonged stupor, fewer endangered species would go extinct in the near future. read more

Quit Sit-on-your-bottom Activities

Quit spending money sitting down. Everybody wants your dollars and cents, and they want you to spend it in a chair–at concerts, movies, restaurants, ballets, musicals, coffee shops, meditation groups . . .

Stay on your feet. Go for a walk or a hike. Lift weights while you watch the news. Find a good deal at a gym (the best deals usually appear when a gym first opens for business and offers a contract that stipulates that they can only raise your fees by, lets say, 1 percent every 3 years).