The most important person alive today

I was asked: who do you think is the most important person alive today?

            For me, it’s His Holiness, the 14^thDalai Lama. And the reason he is the most important is the same reason that you—very likely not a Buddhist nor a Tibetan—know the name of the spiritual leader of a tiny, once-isolated nation at the top of the Himalayas, about as remote a place as there is on Earth. Because this self-effacing man came from absolute obscurity and a tiny country and, at 16 years old, had to grapple with the might of the People’s Republic of China and the evil genius of the legendary Mao Zedong, a world class geopolitical bully.

            Think of any 16 year old you know and you’ll realize immediately how extraordinary was that cloistered youth who had never been out of his tiny country when, at Mao's command, he went to China in 1954 to meet The Great Helmsman……..and then went on to defy Mao and China and has done so—lovingly—for 57 years since, under the most excruciating kind of pressure and terror.

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            My mother went to hear His Holiness speak in about 1972 in Vancouver, and he filled a modest room at the University of British Columbia. Nowadays it’s hard to find a stadium large enough to accommodate all the people who want to hear him, probably 1%  of whom are Buddhists.

            So why is he so important? Because he has demonstrated that he knows how to oppose the absolute worst kind of tyranny without violence. And amazingly—with love.

            An obscure “simple monk” (as he characterizes himself) has shown us how we could, if we chose, do things in peace, with what he calls “loving kindness.”

            The other so-called important men of this age—who has done anything comparable? Barrack Obama? The Georges Bush? Tony Blair or David Cameron? Angela Merkel? Nicholas Sarkozy? the late Ayatollah Khomeini? Donald Trump or Bill Gates?  Pope Benedict XVI or even Queen Elizabeth II?

Who has done as much as The Dalai Lama to give us a living blueprint for how hard it is, but how it is done?

One guy in a wraparound robe and a pair of sandals.  He’s my nominee.

CBC Radio supporting speeders?

Many mornings on CBC Radio’s drive show, I hear warnings to drivers of police having set up radar speed traps.

Every time I hear these warnings, it jars.

Is it even ethical of the peoples’ radio to give these warnings?

I actually want the speeders to get caught. 

Long ago I read that most accidents are caused by sudden, unpredictable actions - the kind of things speeders do when they are pushing you from behind or weaving in and out of traffic trying to go faster and faster.

Now, with the news that some of those people are texting while they’re at it - I want them pulled over and ticketed. 

I want there to be a big huge financial disincentive. I’m sick of people riding my bumper when I’m going at the speed limit or when, for safety reasons, I choose at times to drive a bit below the limit.

CBC Radio, what's your point in helping these dangerous drivers slow down just long enough to not get caught at it? Please, CBC, stop giving the show away.

Why "Don't Buy Gas on [date]" Days are a waste of energy

Every time the price of gas goes over $1.25/L, emails full of exclamation points start circulating:

"DO NOT  BUY GAS ON [...fill in the date...]!!!!"

Let's think about why this is basically a waste of time and why oil company execs probably have a big belly laugh around the water cooler when they start going out. 

Select any date and say "Don't Buy Gas" -- and what are people who participate going to do?  Fill up a couple of days before or the day after.  

Gas companies know this. They know they just have to wait out the day - and it's only a matter of time before we have to guzzle up again. So why would the one-day boycott motivate them to lower prices?

Oil companies don't lose the revenue on these "don't fill up" days. It's just delayed for a day or two,  and they seem to be able to ride that out.

Losing revenue is the only language corporations speak or respond to. So what might work is a "Don't Drive Week."

Imagine a week when we all stayed off the roads.  (Should I add some !!!!!!s here?)

.....A week when the fillings-up simply stopped. 

.....A week when we would make the sacrifice we really need to make to get the attention of both the oil corporations and governments.

And then maybe make it a week every month. And then maybe…..

We don't need designated days when we stop filling up. We need periods when we stop driving altogether.  When we simply stop consuming the over-priced petrol. And it needs to be long enough that it has an impact on their cash-flow and their just-in-time inventory process. So their tanker farms start backing up, and the ships are sitting in harbours, full of product.

One day they can manage. But seven?

That would send a meaningful message. It would also help us rehearse how we absolutely have to lower our consumption of petroleum products and find other ways of getting there.

My Tribute to Palden Gyatso, amazing human being

Tribute to Palden Gyatso

by Margo Lamont

To Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan Buddhist monk, incarcerated in 1959 and tortured for 33  years by the Government of the Peoples’ Republic of China.
Released from prison in 1992, he escaped Tibet to Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan Government-in-exile and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

Nineteen Fifty-nine Lhasa, the top of the world Tibet, a country of peace       monks, nuns, lamas, nomads;       the gentle people of Tibet       their country occupied nine years       by the Peoples’ Liberation Army of China: rapes, re-education, torture, interrogation, thramzing; slave labour, humiliation, degradation, chaos, crime; Tibetan land—redistributed; Han Chinese— moved in; pawns themselves. Tibetans second-class citizens in their own country: An anti-communist occupation uprising ensues.
You were only 26 the year the Tibetan people rose up, an ill-fated rebellion against ten years of tyranny. You were arrested and imprisoned just for participating in a protest over the annexation of your country by a country three hundred times its size. That same year, 1959, HH The Dalai Lama escaped Tibet to exile in India.
We bopped in bobby sox on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand ...while you were enduring  the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution... And what you called Tibet’s “deepest hell,”    We rocked around the clock with Bill Halley & the Comets   ...while Buddhist sacred texts  were used as toilet paper, while you were woken  in the middle of the night, slapped and kicked by guards, while you endured the sick cold of leg irons in Tibetan winters, the blisters on your shins, the chafe and cruel pain. And all over the planet streams still danced downhill over river-rounded rocks We gorged on years of Christmas groaning boards, our tables laden with turkey and stuffing, vegetables, mashed and roasted potatoes, gravy, cranberry jelly, and four desserts, ... while you used your coveted spoon on the bowl of watery soup you were fed only twice a day;  …while you lay bruised and bleeding on the flat bare board that was your bed... And the ocean tides  rolled over undulating kelp beds, the waves  talking the rocks as they hit the shore We swooned over Elvis Presley, jived in crinolines and penny loafers ...while you were imprisoned and tortured for thirty-three years: hand cuffs, thumb cuffs, serrated knives, hooked knives, electric cattle prods, Electric shock guns (70,000 volts); scalding tea emptied on your arm by sadist guards. And all the while the tides went in and out relentlessly while we lived our tiny lives and you endured yours	Richard Nixon & Nikita Kruschev have their famous “kitchen debate.”  Mao Zedong declares himself  China’s “Great Helmsman.”  Che Guevara and Fidel Castro take over Cuba. Charles De Gaulle is president in France.  Vatican II is announced.  Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is released, the 16th animated film ever. Two monkeys return from space.    Canadian Government cancels the CF105 Arrow program. Hawaii becomes the 50th U.S. state. First picture of Earth from space. The brand new St. Lawrence Seaway opens. First Americans are killed in action in Vietnam. Bonanza and The Twilight Zone begin. Ben-Hur, the first “Technicolor” movie opens. First known HIV death (in the Congo). The Caspian Tiger goes extinct in Iran. Pantyhose is introduced. Magic Johnson, Kevin Spacey, and the Barbie Doll are born; Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper died. My parents got divorced.
1969:    You are 36. You have been in Chinese prison for 10 years. A third of your life:
Woodstock:  we bought bangles and bracelets, sang about freedom, gave the Fish Cheer, felt free, and unbound      ...while you were tied     with your hands     behind your back,     and suspended     from the ceiling;     interrogated I went to Cape Breton; A new sun rose over the Rawdin Hills and the Moon shone down on the sea, slicing a silver path through modest waves. Rain fell on the misty lakes  of Bras D’Or.	Woodstock. The Beatles give their last public performance. The final episode of Star Trek the original series. First Gap store opens. The Boeing 747 makes its maiden flight. UNIX is invented. John Lennon records Give Peace a Chance. He does a Bed-In in Montreal.  In Prague’s Wenceslas Square, a student, Jan Palach, sets himself on fire to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In the same year, Neil Armstrong walks on the Moon – the Mai Lai Massacre – Chappaquiddick -- the Chicago 8 trial. The first Battlestar Galactica series concludes. Diddy is born and Ho Chi Minh dies.  Sharon Tate is murdered and Dwight Eisenhower and an era pass away.

 

1979:  You’ve been in jail for 20 years for your religious beliefs.   You’re 46, it’s been almost half your life:

We drank B52s and boogied the night away in stiletos at Studio 54 and Régine’s,     ...while you wore shackles     all day as you toiled     then slept in them      all night. The mountains bore their snowstorms  and avalanches...the Sun eclipsed; ; hurricanes blew; Summers passed, Leaves fell. Autumns came, And winters: snow fell softly on the Drepung Monastery near Lhasa, your home before you were incarcerated We went to spas, cruised on ships, were pampered and overstuffed, lay luxuriously in hot tubs and jacuzzis ...while you were squatting on a plastic bucket for a latrine,  your legs in shackles. You needed people to help you walk to the bucket; you were unable to wipe yourself after defecation I drove back home to BC Water fell over Niagara Falls in a thundering cacophony  Horses galloped over the grassy plains of Saskatchewan Loons called out over pristine Canadian lakes, skies electric blue; Bears dipped into mountain streams for salmon feasts

Jimmy Carter is president of the U.S. The Iranian revolution occurs. Voyager 1 passes Jupiter.  Three Mile Island melts down. Margaret Thatcher rules Britannia.  The Unabomber. Smallpox is declared eradicated. The USSR invades Afghanistan. The McDonald’s “Happy Meal” is launched … Nobel Peace Prize to Mother Theresa. Snow falls for 30 minutes in the Sahara Desert. Heath Ledger is born; Nelson Rockefeller; Josef Mengele and “Mr. Ed” the talking horse all die.

1989:   You are 56 years old. You’ve been in prison for 30 years —  more than half your life.
We went on shopping trips. We shopped in Paris, London and L.A. We bought and bought and bought -- at Holt Renfrew, Tiffany’s and Harrod’s, Wal*Mart, PriceClub, SuperStore & SaveOn…. ...while you spent these years shivering in one outfit of rags:  locked away,  interrogated with electric prods, …while you were forced to attend thamzings after a full day’s work— twelve hour berating sessions where you and your fellow prisoners had to denounce and beat each other or be denounced and beaten yourselves – and always, always facing the prospect of execution Killer whales migrated up the BC coast, sounding and spouting; Lazy days in the Strait of Georgia	George Bush Sr. is president in the U.S. The Tiananmen Square massacre occurs – and the Eastern Bloc revolutions of ’89.  Ted Bundy is fried in Florida. Seinfeld premiers. Sim City is released. Motorola’s cell phone and GameBoy are introduced. The Exxon Valdez; An Iranian iman declares a fatwa against Salmon Rushdie.  Solidarity wins Poland. Burmese dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, placed under house arrest. Voyager 2 passes Neptune and apartheid is being dismantled. Taylor Swift is born. Emperor Hirohito, Ayatollah Khomeini and Bette Davis die. Nicolae Ceausescu is executed in Romania, Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, is murdered in Oakland.
1992:   The year you were released after 33 years at the mercy of the Chinese  Government.  You were 59 years old.
While you were imprisoned the sun rose, resplendent , ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty times And it fell into the sea deliriously as many times; and then once more again	George Bush Jr. is president of the U.S. Boris Yeltsin in the USSR. The Soviet Union falls …   Charles & Di separate. Japan apologizes for forcing Korean women into sexual slavery in WW2. The Bosnian War. The Rodney King riots.  X-Files’ pilot episode. Jay Leno takes over the Tonight Show. Dr Dre invents gangsta rap. Dan Quayle misspells potato. Albert Pierrepoint, who hung 608 people as Britain’s Chief Executioner, himself expires.
Palden Gyatso, you went to prison and torture for three decades Because you stood up for your beliefs.     Yet fifty years later     sixty per cent of us     cannot be bothered to vote. While your life was brutality and torture, ours went on; While horror was visited upon a trapped and powerless you, we went about our lives, asleep and unaware.
And what if we had known -- would we have done anything? Was it ignorant Dark Ages behaviour? Was it the communists, the Chinese? Could it ever happen here? Is that the price of revolution or reform? And now, half a century later - is that kind of confinement and torture of our fellow man a thing of the past?   Has anything changed? -- Have we evolved? Is it over? Is democracy and dissidence alive and well?
2002:      Maher Arar, Canadian citizen 2009:      Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi arrested once again,                  imprisoned under “house arrest”
And what are we doing now       …are we asleep or unaware,    …or still too busy shopping and dancing?
2009:    Canada’s Afghanistan torture scandal
Is this the Canada we want us to be? We can’t say it’s somewhere else anymore We know it’s going on…  But. what are we to do?  And what can we be expected to do? What happens after the knowing?
2010:             Aung San Suu Kyi finally released after house                         arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years                         from July 1989 until  November 2010

And 2010...2011...  Lest We Forget:

Claudina Velásquez … Guatemala Johan Teterissa … Idonesia Ronak Safarzaden... Islamic Republic of Iran The Deep Sea Settlement people … Kenya Thongpaseuth Keuakoun, Sen-Aloun Phengpanh, Bouavanh Chanmanivong, Keochay & Khampouvieng Sisaath … Laos The Me’phaa Indigenous People’s Organization … Mexico Chekib El-Khiari … Morocco The Women’s Rehabilitation Centre … Nepal Patrick Okoroafor … Nigeria MasoodJanjua and Faisal Faraz … Pakistan Comunidad Indigena Yakye Axa and Communidad Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous People … Paraguay Ibragim Gazdiev …  Ingushetia Frances-Xavier Byuma … Rwanda Petrija Piljević … Serbia Park Rae-gun … Republic of Korea Maher Ibrahim and Tarek Ghorani … Syria Ferhat Gerçek … Turkey Aleksandr Rafalsky … Ukraine Troy Anthony Davis … USA Isroil Kholdorov …Uzbekistan Le Thi Cong Xhan … Viet Nam WOZA, Women of Zimbabwe Arise … Zimbabwe Djameleddine Fahassi … Algeria Eynulla Fatullayev … Azerbaijan Khu Bedu, Khun Kawrio and Khun Dee De … Myanmar Huseyin Celil …People’s Republic of China Nurmemet Yasin … People’s Republic of China The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó … Colombia Mohamed El Sharkawi … Egypt Ernestia & Erlinda Serrano Cruz …El Salvador The beat goes on. ................................................................................................. Book:   Palden Gyatso's account of those 33 years:  Fire Under the Snow (Random House, 1998). Film:  http://www.fireunderthesnow.com/site2009/

Jesus would approve

Yesterday - two days before Christmas - as I went around to a couple of stores food-shopping, I couldn't help but notice how desperately unhappy everybody looked.

At Safeway, for example, the parking lot was absolutely chokker, so you had to go around & around waiting for someone to leave. Inside: relentless fluorescence; aisles of way-too-much and-way-too-many-choices; high prices on everything; masses of "Xmasy" stuff - all the extra decos and elements one is supposed to have to make the family Christmas dinner the Dinner of All Dinners. Masses of people pushing carts, trying to get down an aisle and all looking so stressed and pressed and miserable.

But everyone was pushing away.

Pushing through traffic. Pushing to get a parking spot. Pushing around the carts. Standing in long lineups to pay and finally get out of there. All the while, "I'll Be Home For Christmas" is grinding away in the background sound track.

Lugging stuff to the car. More pushing in traffic to get to the next place, and the next.  Need this, need that, gotta have it all. Christmas has to be perfect or........

You read articles during December on "how to manage stress at Christmas" - TV shows on ways to pace yourself so you can "get through it." Lots of serious talk about how awful Christmas is for many people,  how to manage your budget around gifting, and how to navigate the family dynamics, oy. So much stress around this holiday of "love."


People were putting so much energy into getting all this stuff done and so much money into it. Millions of people worldwide pushing and shopping to create this one-day event. The day when all your love is on the line with everyone you care about - plus gifting the postman, your hair stylist, the kids' teachers, the cleaning lady, your building manager.

No pressure there........

As I saw all these grim-faced people, so determined, and pushing themselves to get through their To Do list and for the best of intentions ... I thought, wow, if only the money spent on "Xmas" and the collective energy that goes into trying to create that perfect day for individual families could be re-directed towards world peace, what a different world this would be.

It would indeed be Good News, a joy to the world, and I'm sure Jesus would approve.

Carole, we never knew ye

Can't say I saw the Carole James resignation coming. 

But now that she's done it, I'm not totally surprised.  I think we're seeing a woman of principle in action. This is her pulling the pound-of-flesh number and saving the baby.

I've been intrigued for a long time about how opinions are formed -- and widely held -- about leaders like Carole James, how they're held resolutely by people who have never met her and often haven't seen more than a 30 second clip or two. But they know they don’t like her. Hmn………

Joe Clark suffered under the same phenomenon. He was basically rejected nationwide as being a geek (in a time when being a geek was definitely not cool) because he lost his luggage on an international trip. 

The negative branding of Joe-Who? was so well done that even though the airlines lost the luggage and everyone knows that, Joe took the fall. 

In the campaign and for years afterwards, he was unable to recover from the media branding of him as a goof.  Then, years later (after he'd stitched the PC Party back together and especially after he  had served a term or two as Minister of Foreign Affairs--and represented us so credibly abroad) people began to see his merits and murmured nationally that maybe he would have made a good prime minister. As I recall that was around year six of the Reign of Ol' Jawbone.

Stéphane Dion is another recent example of how absolutely impossible it is to undo initial negative branding. He simply wasn't able to counter that initial K.O. punch no matter what he did. He could have walked on the surface of the  Rideau Canal in July and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Similarly, I can see Carole James being appointed to head up this or that public inquiry or commission and people over time coming to see that, wow, she was a woman of substance--how come we didn't see that in 2010? (By then, the media will be able to give her some good press because she won’t be a threat anymore.)

So how does this happen? How does a good person, perhaps even a really good leader, just never get the chance? 

Is it some kind of media bullying?  

I saw her recently talking with Vaughn Palmer and he seemed to think she was okay, so we can't blame him. Michael Smythe? The Sun or Province? CKNW? CBC?

What I fear is that it's none of the above, but rather the untrained, ill-informed quasi-pundits who are looking for glam & telegenics in our leaders, not substance.

That makes me wonder about how much power leader any leader has a political party.

The NDP, like all the parties, has committees and riding associations that feed ideas into vehicles like policy conventions - big huge affairs where people spend a weekend wrangling over policy. And voting it in or out. So how much policy can a leader actually set on their own then? 

I was really shocked at the news that the BC Federation of Labour paid of $72,000 of Moe Sihota's salary as president of the Party. I love listening to Moe take on Erin Chutter on the CBC Radio's Early Edition’s political panel every week, so this was disappointing news to learn about Moe too. Naturally, I don't know all the circumstances around that whole deal, but I’m unable to conjure up any instance in which that situation would not feel very, very icky. Did Carole countenance that?

Was Carole James just one vote on that BC Council that said yes to the BC Fed fund-infusion to Sihota -- or does the leader carry more than one vote on the Council? 

Because if the Council can overrule the leader or the leader is just one vote in many -- then why do we fuss so much about who is the leader of a political party? If it’s truly democratic that should not matter as much should it?

The amount of time we spend in BC (and in national politics) on leadership politics would be amusing if it wasn’t so annoying and essentially shallow.  

Don't the parties and all the party members and all the MLAs or MPs - count for anything? Aren’t the councils and the caucuses the major influence on the directions the party takes? 

IS a leader like Carole James able to abrogate all the work of riding associations, policy conventions, caucuses?  Really?--how?

It's unfortunate that the BC-NDP appeared to be shooting themselves in the foot at a time when they were riding so high in the polls, although polls are a very fickle measurement of anything at all.

I have admired Jenny Kwan since she and Joy McPhail rose in the Legislature and talked nonstop through the night to try and stop a Bill from passing that would send hospital workers back to work during their 2004 job action. 

Jenny seems to be woman of principle as well. I'm disheartened , though, that these two women of principle, and their followers, were not able to get together, iron it out, and work together: it would have been the proverbial test of the pudding wouldn't it? 

And this is one pudding that's kind of fallen in the middle.

 

Chronic chemical pollution & your liver......

I’ve just moved into place and when I  first replaced the toilet paper roll, I discovered an unusual toilet roll holder.  It isn’t solid like most of them. It made a noise like a rattle when I removed it and when I examined it I saw it has a little ‘cage' full of plastic-y beads. 

Long story short, these beads turn out to be some kind of fragrance. I can’t find the original toilet roll holder so I’m temporarily stuck with this beady fragrance dispenser.

I don’t know how to say this prosaically enough not to offend the sensibilities of people who buy fragrance-emitting toilet roll holders so, Gentle Reader, if that’s you, skip the next sentence.  But I don’t want chemicals going into the delicate membranes of my ass through chemically-scented toilet paper. It’s bad enough the toilet paper is white and probably full of dioxins. 

Is it any wonder there's so much rectal cancer when people are artificially smelling-up their toilet paper? Why do we even need to scent-up toilet paper before it has been, uh, deployed?  Think about it: what is actually being fragranced here?

Don’t people realize yet that when they spray chemical air freshener products (a misnomer if there ever was one) all over their house, they’ll be breathing the chemicals in or having chronic skin contact with it? Rug rats are especially vulnerable to upholstery and carpet sprays and cleaners; they spend half their life on the floor. Pets too.

Think about your clothing imbued with fabric softeners. How strong they smell. What are they made of? Gynecologists are actually advising women not to use scented fabric softeners with their underpants in the dryer. (But don't think the 'unscented' types are necessarily chemical-free either).  Also they say it takes several sessions with a wet towel going around in the dryer just to remove fabric softener residues from the dryer. Imagine how sticky that might be inside the body once it's gone in thru your pores.

When folks libate their bodies with chemically-fragranced body washes, again they are sending chemicals into the pores all over their body. On a daily basis.  And then there’s the daily shampooing and conditioning. Do any of us know what's in those products we get off the drug store shelf? (I believe industry has gone to some lengths to resist labeling these products and I've been told there are some pretty scary ingredients).

Imagine the chronic build-up of these chemicals inside your body over time.

Same with chemical perfumes, powders, body butters - and those things you hang in the car with chemically-induced  smells: you're locked in a car breathing that stuff in - what is it exactly? And those other ghastly things people inflict on you - air 'fresheners' that plug in an electrical outlet. Certain stores now 'condition' their air and imagine how much of that is organic or natural scent in the dog-eat-dog retail climate. But you're getting a snoot-full of it the whole time you're shopping in those windowless caverns.

It’s all chemicals, and we’re breathing it in or absorbing it trans-dermally.

Can the average liver actually manage the daily absorption of that much chemical?

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