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Water, Water

“Water, water everywhere, but . . .” You know the story. You just spent a zillion dollars on a drilled well and came up with “Old Salty”. The water level even goes up and down with the tides. You cap it off in disgust and head to the Coop for a jug that cost more than gasoline and comes from who knows where. You aren’t the only one on Hornby. I hope you didn’t fill in that well. You may be in luck.

A commercial water bottling operation on Hornby should be a very good thing for the community. But not using ground water. I have experience and training in water purification. The standard method of purifying non potable water has for some time been Reverse Osmosis. Yes, poisoning drinking water with chemicals to make it safe to drink is now somewhat stone-age. Read some labels. "R.O." on the label indicates reverse osmosis. Ultra violet ( U.V.) is used to kill bacteria that may remain or be present from the bottling process. Granulated Activated Charcoal (G.A.C.) is a final "polish" that removes the bulk of dissolved gases (sulphur, etc.) that may affect flavor. The objection that R.O. ‘strips’ the water of trace minerals is true but doesn’t hold water. (Go ahead - groan.) They are just what they are called - trace minerals. Water can contain traces of minerals of unknown quantity, quality and type. You will be much further ahead to take a good quality multi vitamin than to trust that what you feel you need is indeed mixed in with the rest of the stuff you know you don’t.

The interesting part is that R.O. was developed in response to the need of ocean going vessels for fresh water. It is the basis of water purification from the Co-op Deli to the massive desalinization plants that supply Saudi Arabia and much of the Middle East. R.O.'s are turning the turgid muck in New Orleans into drinking water at high capacity. There certainly is no shortage of non potable water around. Why bother wasting limited fresh water resources on commercial use when a tidal salt water well would supply any R.O. bottling plant with all the raw material it could use. It could even result in an export product from Hornby.

R.O. equipment is sized from a back packers hand pump to the aforementioned installations overing hundreds of acres and supplying millions of people. Bottling equipment has a similar range of size and is much smaller than you might expect. A set up on Hornby capable of producing 6,000 to 8,000 liters per day could be operated in a structure about the size of a double garage. Maybe a triple if you want to warehouse some. R.O. and bottling equipment on this scale is currently priced in the $25,000.00 to $30,000.00 range. Production costs for bottles, labour, power etc. is estimated at $.10 to $.14 per liter. (That's ten to fourteen cents)

Do the math. Look at that salty well with different eyes. Do your due diligence. Make a buck. Bring some peace to the island.

just a thought

Don Bradley

Hegelian Management of Islanders

by Care Leah FitzGerald

Every day, in lives often lived unexamined, it seems as if some folks tend to give in to a primitive, tribal, warrior urge to dislike differences. This happens every time the average person unthinkingly polarizes himself or herself, willingly, by maintaining and staying inside a certain mindset (they don't call it that for nothing) and by mentally continuing to oppose other types and groups they identify as the "enemy". Every day people dismiss others of different thinking, or location, or colour, or financial means, by calling them "they" versus "we". Think again.

Who is it that actually gains control from this alienation habit of thought and this willingness of individuals and groups to be divided into convenient packages? Is it not far easier for authority figures to divide and rule those who first use categories to separate themselves by choice?

"Left" versus "Right"; "Socialist" versus "Capitalist"; "Radical" versus "Conservative"; "Anarchist versus "Conformist"; "Outsider" versus "Insider"; "Democrat" versus "Republican"; "Alternative" versus "Conventional"; “Rich” versus “Poor; "Renter" versus "Property Owner"; "Year Round Resident" versus "Part Timer"; "Local" versus "Tourist"; "Freedom Nomad" versus "Wage Slave"; "Voluntary Poverty" versus "Capitalist Profiteer"; “Hip” versus “Unhip”; “Cool” versus “Nerd”; "Tenant" versus "Landlord".

Doesn't this feed an inner feeling of growing alienation from our fellow beings? How do most if not all governments use our natural tendency to think in narrow terms and to differentiate and compartmentalize ourselves by style, dress, language, political leanings?

Speaking of being “governed” by decisions randomly made by planners: Did anyone know, just for example, that despite tons of legal guidance by lawyers who advise employees of the Trust, under the terms of the current draft by-law, any land owner of A1 who rents to any tenant who does not actively farm the land and create farm status by sufficient production MUST first buy a $1,000 TUP or temporary use permit before the local by-laws will permit any tenant to inhabit any dwelling on ALR? Or that under the terms of the Local Government Act this tenant permit would expire after four years? Or that the Local Government Act rules that any TUP is by definition "temporary"? Or that every land owner would thereby be forced to raise every tenant's rent to cover this additional Trust cost of having a tenant as well as having to buy a second TUP for themselves? Or that the landlord living on A1 land would have to buy two permits for $2,000, one for themselves if they have an additional dwelling, and one for a tenant in a separate dwelling?

Re-read the definitions. Who or what benefits by such a narrow categorization of what is permitted to islanders? What is to be gained by proscriptive denial of simple choices through such urban model by-law planning? Must we fund revenue generation by government or fee grabs through administration fees and by-laws which may be designed more for the benefit of the Trust and less for the rest of us? Are we and the Trust willing to be on the same page? Are the Trust becoming a "they" instead of a "we"? Is this recent trend to achieve conformity throughout the Trust area even negotiable? Who wants this at all?

Here is an article which examines just how people are willingly divided, ruled and used against themselves to serve the larger need for uniformity and conformity, words used at every meeting lately by efficiency minded governing bodies and planners.

____________________________________

Anthony Sutton on "Left" versus "Right" and the Hegelian dialectic in American politics

*How can there exist a common objective when members [of The Order of Skull and Bones] are apparently acting in opposition to one another? Probably the most difficult task in this work will be to get across to the reader what is really an elementary observation: that the objective of The Order is neither "left" nor "right." "Left" and "right" are artificial devices to bring about change, and the extremes of political left and political right are vital elements in a process of controlled change.

The answer to this seeming political puzzle lies in Hegelian logic. Remember that both Marx and Hitler, the extremes of "left" and "right" presented as textbook enemies, evolved out of the same philosophical system: Hegelianism. That brings screams of intellectual anguish from Marxists and Nazis, but is well known to any student of political systems.

The dialectical process did not originate with Marx as Marxists claim, but with Fichte and Hegel in late 18th and early 19th century Germany. In the dialectical process a clash of opposites brings about a synthesis. For example, a clash of political left and political right brings about another political system, a synthesis of the two, neither left nor right. This conflict of opposites is essential to bring about change. Today this process can be identified in the literature of the Trilateral Commission where "change" is promoted and "conflict management" is termed the means to bring about this change.

In the Hegelian system conflict is essential. Furthermore, for Hegel and systems based on Hegel, the State is absolute. The State requires complete obedience from the individual citizen. An individual does not exist for himself in these so-called organic systems but only to perform a role in the operation of the State. So who or what is the State? Obviously it's a self-appointed elite. It is interesting that Fichte, who developed these ideas before Hegel, was a freemason, almost certainly Illuminati, and certainly was promoted by the Illuminati. For example, Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Abaris in the Illuminati code) pushed Fichte for an appointment at Jena University.

Furthermore, the Illuminati principle that the end justifies the means, a principle that Quigley scores as immoral and used by both The Group [Millner / Rhodes Round Table] and The Order, is rooted in Hegel.

Most of us believe the State exists to serve the individual, not vice versa. The Order believes the opposite to most of us. That is crucial to understanding what they are about. So any discussion between left and right, while essential to promote the change, is never allowed to develop into a discussion along the lines of Jeffersonian democracy, i.e., the best government is least government. The discussion and the funding is always towards more state power, use of state power and away from individual rights. So it doesn't matter from the viewpoint of The Order whether it is termed left, right, Democratic, Republican, secular or religious - so long as the discussion is kept within the framework of the State and the power of the State.

This is the common feature between the seemingly dissimilar positions taken by members - they have a higher common objective in which clash of ideas is essential.

The operational history of The Order can only be understood within a framework of the Hegelian dialectic process. Quite simply this is the notion that conflict creates history. From this axiom it follows that controlled conflict can create a predetermined history. for example: When the Trilateral Commission discusses "managed conflict", as it does extensively in its literature, the Commission implies the managed use of conflict for long run predetermined ends - not for the mere random exercise of manipulative control to solve a problem.

The dialectic takes this Trilateral "managed conflict" process one step further. In Hegelian terms, an existing force (the thesis) generates a counterforce (the antithesis). Conflict between the two forces results in the forming of a synthesis. Then the process starts all over again. Thesis vs. antithesis results in synthesis.

For Hegelians, the State is almighty, and seen as "the march of God on earth." Indeed, a state religion. We trace the extraordinary Skull and Bones influence in a major Hegelian conflict: Naziism vs. Communism. Skull and Bones members were in the dominant decision-making positions -- Bush, Harriman, Stimson, Lovett, and so on -- all Bonesmen, and instrumental in guiding the conflict through use of "right" and "left." They financed and encouraged the growths of both philosophies and controlled the outcome to a significant extent. This was aided by the "reductionist" division in science, the opposite of historical "wholeness." By dividing science and learning into narrower and narrower segments, it became easier to control the whole through the parts.

In education, the Dewey system was initiated and promoted by Skull and Bones members. Dewey was an ardent statist, and a believer in the Hegelian idea that the child exists to be trained to serve the State. This requires suppression of individualist tendencies and a careful spoon-feeding of approved knowledge. This manipulation of "left" and "right" on the domestic front is duplicated in the international field where "left" and "right" political structures are artificially constructed and collapsed in the drive for a one-world synthesis.

College textbooks present war and revolution as more or less accidental results of conflicting forces. The decay of political negotiation into physical conflict comes about, according to these books, after valiant efforts to avoid war. Unfortunately, this is nonsense. War is always a deliberate creative act by individuals.

Western textbooks also have gigantic gaps. For example, after World War II the Tribunals set up to investigate Nazi war criminals were careful to censor any materials recording Western assistance to Hitler. By the same token, Western textbooks on Soviet economic development omit any description of the economic and financial aid given to the 1917 Revolution and subsequent economic development by Western firms and banks.

Revolution is always recorded as a spontaneous event by the politically or economically deprived against an autocratic state. Never in Western textbooks will you find the evidence that revolutions need finance and the source of the finance in many cases traces back to Wall Street. Consequently it can be argued that our Western history is every bit as distorted, censored, and largely useless as that of Hitler's Germany or the Soviet Union or Communist China. No western foundation will award grants to investigate such topics, few Western academics can "survive" by researching such theses and certainly no major publisher will easily accept manuscripts reflecting such arguments.

Anthony Sutton July 9 2003

CHEMTRAILS NOW TAUGHT IN U.S. SCHOOLS

by William Thomas

A is for Apple.
B is for Boy. 
C is for Chemtrails.

At least this is what one American father found while paging through his child's science book. SmT was astonished to find seventh graders being taught about chemtrails. And geoengineeering their home planet.

Anyone with question about the "spray programs" he now says, "should perhaps just ask their kids." 

The chemtrails section is found in the Centre Point Learning Science I Essential Interactions science book. Under "Solutions for Global Warming", section 5.19 features a photo of a big multi-engine jet sporting a familiar orange/red paint scheme. The caption reads: "Figure 1- Jet engines running on richer fuel would add particles to the atmosphere to create a sunscreen". The logo on the plane says: "Particle Air".

"I kid you not," SmT insists. "Why did I spend all of that time doing research when I could have just asked my kids?"

Helping habituate children to a life under lethal sunshine and "protective" spray planes, this trippy textbook urges young readers to "Use Sun Block". But its authors are really referring to a sunscreen spread across the sky.

"Could we deliberately add particles to the atmosphere?" asks the text, before helpfully suggesting that "Burning coal adds soot to the air."

You might be old enough to recoil at such a notion. But in a country where down is up and wrong is right, your kids could be learning that what used to be bad and a bummer is a now good thing!

RUNNING ON EMPTY

"Be real interesting to see the politics of the folks putting this out," SmT suggests.

In the current White House, those politics are as "crude" as invading oil-rich Iraq over a bogus nuclear threat - while permitting Pakistan to export atom bomb materials to terrorist organizations in return for the chance at an election-boosting capture of Osama bin Laden by US forces in the Hindu Kush later this month. [New Yorker Mar1/04]

So why shouldn't the same petty petrol politics produce textbooks for kids inheriting a nightmare? Led by a piggish petroleum president, with most major nations cutting back, US oil consumption is rising as steeply as supplies of cheap crude are collapsing.

The coal connection is this: in order to briefly "stretch the glide" of the fast-looming end of cheap oil that will utterly transform life as we know it, America's unelected oil president recently revoked pollution regulations on more than 2,000 of the nation's biggest polluting coal-fired power plants.

Ironically, this move - like so many others made by an oil-addled White House - will only hasten an Earthwreck as shattering to all onboard as a lurching square-rigger striking a rocky reef. Except our spaceship is surrounded by the cold, irradiated vacuum of deep space.

It turns out that a single 150-megawatt coal-burning power plant produces more emissions than 300,000 cars. Termed an "Extreme Human Health Hazard" by the EPA, microscopic coal particles also rot lungs, stop hearts, kill lakes, choke cities -and stunt the lives of school kids with deadly sulphuric acid rain. [AP Aug27/03; LA Times Aug28/03] 

Airborne soot also blocks sunlight, lowering greenhouse temperatures. Volcanic eruptions like Krakatoa and Pinatubo - and globe-circling soot from 1,000 burning oil wells during Desert Storm - belched enough sulphur into the stratosphere to cause a plunge in world temperatures, temporarily slowing global warming.

World scientists looked at deliberately putting megatons more sulphur into a closed, recirculating atmosphere already smoggy enough to depresses orbiting astronauts. And decided that a sulphur sunscreen is not a swift idea.

But not this Jr. High science text. "Creating either kind of sunscreen would be cheap," it tells young readers. As if "cheap" is the only consideration.

Even this claim is bogus. SmT says he looked, but the section on the downstream costs associated with the health and environmental effects of massive coal pollution - or the 10 million tons of a chemical sunscreen suggested by the late Edward Teller - "seemed to have been left out."

Ditto "the cost to the solar industry". Or cumulative impacts on kids, critters and plants on which our future depends.

Sunlight is already on the way out. Repeatedly expressing shock at how quickly our space colony's life-support systems are failing, scientists are finding levels of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface decreasing by almost 3% a decade.

"Global Dimming" is too small to detect with the eye. "But it has implications for everything from climate change to solar power and even the future sustainability of plant photosynthesis," reports the Guardian. 

All those jet-propelled vacations and car trips to the corner store add up. Since 1960, 10% less sunlight has reached Earth's inhabitants. Levels of solar radiation reaching parts of the former coal-belching Soviet Union are down almost 20%. 

In any greenhouse, the rule of a green thumb is that every 1% decrease in solar radiation results in a 1% drop in plant productivity. 

"It's actually quite a big deal,” says Graham Farquhar, a climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. But get this: Farquhar doesn't think that identified pollutants, "by themselves would be able to produce this amount of global dimming." [Guardian Dec18/03]

The baffled Aussie should check out the role of contrails in turning off sunlight. Since the Jet Age took off in the 1960s, normal condensation trails from five million jet flights every year have been found to block 10% of sunlight across Europe and the USA. Over heavily trafficked Atlantic and American air-routes, artificial cloud cover caused by jet engine pollutants has increased 20%. [Chemtrails Confirmed '04]

Chemtrails are another major sunblock. Measurements taken with a calibrated photometer by Clifford Carnicom in Santa Fe show a rapid reduction in sunlight - from a value of 97% on a “clear day” to around 80% during the early stages of heavy chemtrailing. Using a simple UV radiation meter, this reporter has confirmed similar drops in sunlight beneath artificial "chemcasts" on Canada's west coast.

In a country whose self-appointed regime routinely censors scientific studies, at least some 7th grade science texts are more focused on indoctrinating kids with risky techno "quick-fixes" than conscious conservation and common sense.

Forget science. SmT gazed in disbelief at another schoolbook picture showing a helicopter seeding the ocean with iron particles. These desperate "IronX" experiments did indeed trigger plankton "blooms" that, in turn, transferred tons of atmospheric C02 underwater as those carbon-inhaling critters eventually died and sank to the seafloor.

But ­ oops! ­ his kid's science book fails to mention that the resulting ocean blooms also sucked all available oxygen from the seawater, suffocating all marine life in massive, spreading "dead zones". [Chemtrails Confirmed '04]

Where are the picture, SmT wonders, "of people planting trees, or turning down thermostats, or bicycling, or any of the other ways not to add to the problem?"

Though his family gave up the idea of home schooling, he says, "it's perhaps time to reconsider."

Perhaps it's also time to reconsider state-sponsored brainwashing. And other escalating consequences of our carbon addiction, as well.

William Thomas is the author of Chemtrails Confirmed (new 2004 edition).

Please post freely.

Tony Law Response to this week's 'Yellow Flyer'

Hi, folks

Below are some comments (in black) on the yellow flyer inserted in this week's Grapevine (flyer text in purple). As you will see, just about all the concerns raised in the flyer are without any foundation.

I am afraid my comments are sometimes lengthy because many of the issues involved are more complex than the flyer suggests.

"A citizens group on Hornby Island is calling for the election of responsible and competent local trustees in the November elections, after a surprising change of direction by the local trustees."

I have talked with Dr Gerald Hodge and with Dr Tim Elkin who are both experts on land use planning and are both Hornby property owners with deep caring for this island and its community. Both affirm that the review process we are engaged in is being carried out in a competent and responsible way.

While Larry 's group is calling for responsibility and competency, they are not demonstrating this themselves. They have not shown the basic competency of diligently checking out their facts, nor the basic responsibility of ensuring that they are providing accurate and balanced information to the public.

There has been no change in direction on the part of the Trust Committee. The Land Use Bylaw review process is continuing. In response to community input, the Local Trust Committee has instructed staff to format the next draft as amendments to the existing Land Use Bylaw to implement policies of the Official Community Plan and reflect the community input so far. This responsiveness to public consultation is democracy at work!

I am surprised that Larry and others are surprised at our decision to format the next draft as amendments to the existing LUB. I sat down in Larry 's living room two or three weeks ago and told him that this is exactly what I was considering! I have also discussed it with other community members over the summer. In fact, I spent much of the summer reviewing community input, discussing it and preparing detailed suggestions to staff of how this input might be reflected in a subsequent draft.

"The group had actively opposed a 77 page draft Land Use Bylaw put forward by the local trustees, Tony Law and Elinore (sic) Kneffel, on the grounds that it was contrary to the Official Community Plan, and would have draconian results for Island residents and landowners."

he Local Trust Committee made available for discussion and input a "Draft for Comment" (in big bold letters on the front of the document!) prepared by staff. The draft consisted of changes to the existing bylaw in order to implement policies of the Official Community Plan, to provide clarity on some matters and to suggest ways to address emerging issues. The "Draft for Comment" suggests that by far the majority of regulations would stay the same.

The local trustees did not necessarily agree with everything in the draft. There were some provisions that I was extremely iffy about and I am sure the same was the case for Eleanor . But we did want the community to have a chance to review this document in the spring and provide us with direction so that a subsequent draft, reflecting this input, could be prepared in the fall for review by the Advisory Planning Commission and the community.

"On the third of September, trustee Tony Law sent an e-mail to residents saying that at the upcoming September 12th Islands Trust meeting (Local Trust Committee meeting, actually) , to be held on Hornby , he would move to proceed no further with the draft bylaw that had consumed many meetings over several months, hours of debate, and untold thousands of dollars in taxpayer money for planners, secretaries, researchers, map makers, trustees' salaries and travel."

There were four Community Information Meetings scheduled over five weeks. Again, this was democracy in process. Every written and oral comment has been documented and is being used in the creation of the next draft. These meetings were not a waste of time. They were an opportunity for community members to spell out what we want and what we don't want in land use regulations. This input has not been abandoned; the process is just being tuned so that it works as well as possible for the community.

"His reversal came just two days after the local paper, "The First Edition", published a 22 step flow chart setting out the local trustee's (sic) plans to write, re-write and re-write again the uncalled for, and unpopular draft land use bylaw."

Again, there is no reversal of the process - just a refinement of the process that would seem to respond to what Larry and his group have been saying. The purpose of the flow-chart was to clearly indicate what, for the most part, is a statutory process defined by the Local Government Act. Larry , for one, had been under the misapprehension that the Local Trust Committee had given First Reading to a proposed bylaw - something we are nowhere close to doing. We wanted to inform him and others similarly confused, about how the process actually works and to indicate that opportunities for community input and revisions to a draft or proposed bylaw continue right through the process.

Most of the members of Larry 's group did not participate in the Community Planning process. It was clearly understood by all involved - and the community in general - that the Land Use Bylaw would be reviewed following the adoption of a new Official Community Plan.

In the early nineteen-nineties, I attended most of the community meetings held when the present Land Use Bylaw was being developed. The meetings, for the most part, were not well attended. The draft bylaw was never referred to the Advisory Planning Commission. When the Public Hearing for Bylaw 86 was eventually held there was quite a bit of controversy about the process and the content.

We wanted to avoid such a final outcome this time around. It is better to have the controversy at the beginning of the process and to hear the input of those who do not normally attend meetings at an early stage so that the issues of concern can be identified and worked on throughout the process rather than coming as surprises at the end.

I believe that the next draft will address issues that have been raised by the community and we intend to finish up with a document that has broad community acceptance.

" Mr Law also stated in his e-mail, that he would request staff to draft amendments to the existing Hornby Island Land Use Bylaws (sic) , but he did not specifically distance himself from the policies expressed in the draft land use bylaw, including......"

Some time ago, I copied Larry and others interested in the Land Use Bylaw process on e-mail memos to staff in which I provided suggestions on these and other matters. For those interested, here is some context and comment that will give a sense of my current thinking  about the particular issues mentioned in the flyer:-

- Regulation of groundwater

The "Draft for Comment" did NOT propose the regulation of groundwater.

- Restriction on the use of groundwater for "commercial purposes".

The "Draft for Comment" affirmed more clearly what is implicit in the existing Land Use Bylaw, that "the use of a well for the extraction of groundwater for commercial purposes " (ie for the sale of groundwater as a commercial commodity) is a commercial use that is not permitted unless through a Temporary Industrial and Commercial Use Permit.

The extraction and sale of groundwater from small lots in residential areas has been a huge concern for quite a number of people. At the same time, quite a number of other people are dependent upon this resource and the purveyor, as far as I understand, has been trying to provide this service in a diligent and responsible way. I believe there needs to be some level of accountability as a future purveyor may not pursue such an operation with such diligence.

Both the person responsible for drafting provincial water legislation and a legal expert in British Columbia municipal law have suggested that this commercial activity can be regulated by local governments in the way that  we are proposing.

In my memo to staff, I suggested that this use continue to be listed under "Uses Prohibited in All Zones", but with wording something like the following: "The use of a well for the extraction of groundwater for the commercial distribution of water off of the lot containing the well, except where specifically permitted in a particular zone or by a Temporary Industrial and Commercial Use Permit."

I arranged for the water purveyor to meet with staff and the Local Trust Committee to explore ways for his operation to be allowed with a degree of accountability through either site-specific zoning or a TOP and I have encouraged him to follow up on this. I believe that such an outcome could provide security to the purveyor, to his neighbours and to his customers.

- Closing accesses to the beaches at Grassey (sic) Point and Little Tribune.

The "Draft for Comment" does NOT suggest closing access to the beaches at Grassy Point or Little Tribune Bay.

The Grassy Point beach access is zoned as "park" under the existing Land Use Bylaw. Both Grassy Point and Little Tribune Bay beach accesses are designated as "Park" in the Official Community Plan (OCP). The OCP supports these areas being managed as "undeveloped parks" by the Regional District.  This reflects expressed community interest (through the HI Residents and Ratepayers Association, for example). An OCP policy for parks states that "motorized vehicles shall not be allowed outside designated parking areas in any park.....".

The "Draft for Comment" suggests that Grassy Point and Tribune Bay (and other beach accesses) be zoned as "undeveloped parks" in accordance with the OCP and with the site-specific community consultations carried out by the Regional District. The suggested permitted uses for "undeveloped parks" are "low impact recreation and education" plus accessory uses. The definition of "low impact recreation" includes the words "specifically excluding the use of motorized vehicles".

In my memo to staff, I have suggested that this definition be clarified as follows: "specifically excluding the use of motorized vehicles (apart from wheelchairs) other than on designated roads or parking lots".

It should be noted that local zoning does not apply to these areas at present because they come under provincial jurisdiction (Ministry of Transportation). Zoning regulations would apply if they were transferred to another agency.

- Rezoning substantial portions of residential areas.

The only residential areas that have been suggested for rezoning in the "Draft for Comment" are where this is required to reflect Land Use designations in the Official Community Plan.

Essentially, these are:

a) small lots in the Whaling Station Bay / Anderson Drive Area to reflect the COP designation of "Small Lot / Water Resource Protection Area" (which is based upon the classification of the aquifer in this area as highly developed and highly vulnerable, one of only two aquifers in the Province with this designation; regulations in this zone would only be slightly different from those of other small lots);

b) lots in the Rural Residential zone which have designated in the OCP as "Large Lots" (the essential difference would be in sub-division as affirmed through the community plan process).

In my memo to staff, I have suggested that all residential zones stay as they are in the existing Land Use Bylaw with sub-zones created for the lots in the Small Lot / Water Resource Protection Area and for the "large lots" indicating those regulations that differ from the overall regulations for the whole zone.

- Requiring full surveys of lots for siting and use permits for small structures.

The "Draft for Comment" does NOT suggest that full surveys be required for permitting small structures. The Hornby Island Trust Committee Siting and Use Bylaw No 52 specifically states that Siting and Use Permit applications are NOT required for small structures.

Hornby Island is one of the few settled jurisdictions were only a Siting and Use Permit is required and not a Building Permit. Where Building Permits are required surveys are usually required - at least for significant construction or for buildings that are close to set back areas. Many of the Siting and Use applications provide a very poor quality of information - often sketch maps - and this has resulted in permits being issued for buildings that have ended up being constructed in set back areas, on property lines or on top of septic fields. Staff has suggested that they need better information to ensure that permits address issues that might end up causing difficult problems for landowners and their neighbours, so we thought it worthwhile to have that recommendation aired in the community.

In my own input to staff I suggested that a survey plan only be required where "provision of such a plan is reasonably necessary to establish whether the proposed buildings, structures and sewage absorption fields comply with the siting requirements" rather than with every application.

- Prohibiting the use of travel trailers, motorhomes and RVs as temporary homes

The "Draft for Comment" does NOT propose any new prohibition on the use of travel trailers; in fact it clarifies that they CAN be used as temporary homes while a house is being constructed.

Since 1971, Hornby Island Land Use Bylaws have defined travel trailers etc as"dwelling units" and the "Draft for Comment" proposed NO changes to this.

In other words, it has always been the case - and continues to be the case - that if you are permitted one dwelling unit on a lot,  that dwelling unit can either be a house or a travel trailer, etc. If you are permitted two dwelling units on a lot, one can be a house and one can be a travel trailer (or you can have two houses or two travel trailers).

Nothing has changed - or is proposed for change!

In my own input to staff, I have suggested that the section around using travel trailers while a house is under construction be dropped as it is redundant (the house does not become a dwelling unit until it is ready for occupation, at which point use of the travel trailer should discontinue).

I have also suggested that a trailer (caravan, cabin etc) of limited size and without a kitchen be considered as a sleeping unit which would be considered a detached component of a permitted dwelling unit. This is a radical idea that may or may not fly in the community, but I think it is worthy of discussion as it would provide some flexibility in living arrangements (egg for a teenager or guest).

- Placing new restrictions on the creation of Elder Housing

The "Draft for Comment" was not intended to place any new restrictions on Elder Housing.

The present Land Use Bylaw allows five residential elder dwelling units per 2.5 acres to a maximum of 20 such units. The Elder Housing property is 5 acres which would mean they could have 10 units.

The "Draft for Comment" continues to allow 10 units.

I recently set up a meeting with the Elder Housing Society and staff to clearly hear their future anticipated needs so that these can be reflected in the next draft. It is my understanding that the representative of Elder Housing is comfortable that he has been heard and with how the needs can be accommodated in the next draft.

All part of the on-going drafting and revision process to get to a final document that works for most.

Mr. Law did, say, however, that his unpopular policy of regulating vacation rentals would proceed, even though a recent survey of Islanders revealed little interest in regulating vacation rentals, while those at public meetings made it clear that noise by residents and visitors alike was the real problem.

It is NOT true that "a recent survey of islanders revealed little interest in regulating vacation rentals". With respect to small lots, most respondents (59%) said that vacation rentals should either be prohibited (18%) or subject to Temporary Use Permits (41%). Only 38% said that they should be allowed as an outright permitted use with limited regulation.

Nevertheless, the Hornby Island Local Trust Committee is the only government in the whole Trust Area that is proposing to allow stand-alone vacation rentals as a permitted residential use. On other islands they are either prohibited or are being considered for permitting through a Temporary Use Permit  process only.

The regulations being suggested would have minimal if any impact upon those who are conducting rentals responsibly. Sensible and broadly supported limits on the level of occupancy and the minimum length of stay will help keep the use compatible with the ambience of residential neighbourhoods.

"Although the group acknowledged the work the local trustees had put into the community, it was clear that the efforts on the bylaws had not produced a satisfactory result."

Thanks for the acknowledgement!

I don't think anyone expected a satisfactory final result on the first round! I didn't! (Though I had hoped for more constructive engagement in this opportunity to help shape the end result).

What HAS been satisfactory from my point of view is that we have heard, at the beginning of the process,  from a lot of community members who tend not to come out to meetings until the end of the process. this has given the Committee some clear and valued input to use for the next stage in the process - which was the whole point of the first stage. I hope some people get that!

"The group is calling for more local democracy, such as next-day reporting of Trust meeting minutes, and modification of the voting structure at the Trust to prevent trustees holding executive positions from voting on matters concerning their own island, which the group called a conflict of interest.'

I am confused that the group is, on the one hand, complaining about the number of meetings and the number of drafts but on the other hand wants more democracy. The whole point of the process is to provide for broad on-going participation.

Such opportunities do not occur to the same degree elsewhere. Look at Union Bay, where only two public meetings were held with respect to a massive development proposal. If we were not in the Islands Trust, land use planning decisions would be made by the Regional Board voting in Courtenay. Hornby Island would only have 1 person voting (and that person is elected by both Denman and Hornby ).

With respect to minutes, these cannot be made public until reviewed and adopted by the Committee at its next meeting - this is standard practice.

With respect to conflict of interest, this only arises where an elected official has potential distinct personal benefit from an issue under consideration. As a Hornby Island Local trustee I am elected to the Local Trust Committee to participate in local land use decisions and to the Trust Council (along with 25 other trustees) to address area wide issues. It so happens that fellow council members elected me as vice chair. However, the Local Trust Committee and Trust Council are distinct corporate entities in law. While I am sitting on the Local Trust Committee I am a sitting as a member of that Committee, not as a member of the Executive Committee. So there is no conflict. (I can explain this further to anyone who is interested.)

"Further, the group wants notice to be given to all Hornby Islanders, no matter where they live, of Trust business, and call for improvements to the e-mail system on the Trust's website."

If you go to the Islands Trust web site ( www.islandstrust.bc.ca )  you will see that you can request to be automatically notified of any upcoming meetings. If you have specific suggestions of how the system can be provided, there is a way to provide input (or you can provide this to Eleanor or me and we will pass it on).

I maintain an informal personal e-mail list, including many part-time residents, and use this to keep interested folks in the loop. In addition, many part-time residents subscribe to First Edition which helps them keep in touch. Mail-outs are expensive, but are used for important notices. People that cannot attend meetings are encouraged to provide written input - which many do.

"The group is determined to break down the artificial distinctions that have arisen on the Island which create a "them and us" mindset. We are all Hornby Islanders."

It has been my experience on Hornby that, despite the diversity of people and groups, we have managed to maintain a strong sense of inclusiveness - more so than most communities (and I have spent my adult life in small communities).

A particular challenge is that quite a number of people live in other communities most of the year which makes it hard for them to participate in the on-going informal and formal discourse that inevitably takes place year-round in this community.

I have done what I can to address this challenge both by e-mail (as noted above) and by being the first trustee to organize July and August meetings specifically for part time residents which I and my co-trustee have done for each of the past nine years that I have been a trustee. (This has not been done by the other entities involved in local governance - the Regional District or the Residents' and Ratepayers' association.)

This has been appreciated by participants who are able to become updated on issues, provide their input and to raise issues (which have always been followed up).

With respect to the Island as a whole, I have always made an effort to ensure inclusiveness.

"The group intends to review the qualifications, backgrounds and records of all candidates in the November election, and will support the two candidates for local trustee that will best serve Islanders' desires for responsible and competent government."

The ad hoc Advisory Planning Committee, a committee of the group, is available to consider any needed amendments to the existing land Use Bylaw, provided they conform to the Official Community Plan."

It is not helpful to the community that this group has decided to call itself the Advisory Planning Committee when that name can be so easily confused with that of the Advisory Planning Commission, a statutory body that is appointed to provide detailed and accountable community-based advice on planning issues. The APC has been selected from applicants to advertisements and appointees have been carefully chosen to ensure broad representation of community demographics and perspectives. (There is a current vacancy and, under the APC bylaw, the APC has been asked to provide advice on the selection of a replacement member to ensure continuing broad community representation).

It should be noted that all the issues that this group raised in their yellow flyer involve suggestions that do comply with the OCP and thus with the group's own criteria.

Chemtrails Coming Out Of The Closet?

By William Thomas

8-31-05

Nearly seven years after extensive "lay downs" of lingering and spreading white plumes were first reported smearing skies over across North America, Europe is in an uproar and Washington could be close to coming clean about chemtrails.

At least the Bush White house will soon have a legitimate weather control agency to finally "launder" one of the biggest cons ever perpetrated.

Introduced in the US Senate on March 1, 2005 , Bill S517 calls for a US "Weather Modification Advisory and Research Board" to officially commence operations in October 2005. When passed as expected, this law will make large-scale chemical alteration of the atmosphere legal across a formerly free and beautiful land called America .

It's already happening. Less than two weeks before the bill was introduced, Linda wrote from "up here in the mountains of northeast Georgia " of the worst spray day she had ever seen. "Not one day in the past two months have we had a blue sky with normal clouds," Linda wrote. Even normal clouds "are 'laced' with whatever the hell is coming out of those white planes that have no engine sounds, even when they fly low enough to see there is no printing anywhere on the planes."

Several years ago the US Air Force stated that it was repainting its silver aircraft white, and retrofitting its jet tanker fleet with "hush kits" to silence their engines.

DOING SOMETHING ABOUT THE WEATHER

Whatever fresh environmental disaster Bill S517 accomplishes, this bill will ease the way for admission of a project suspected by many and confirmed by air traffic controllers at America's biggest airports. When and if the US public demands that their government "do something" about the extreme weather pummeling their neighborhoods, Washington will be able to officially reply, "We are."

Intended to "develop and implement a comprehensive and coordinated national weather modification policy," the board is tasked with coordinating state and federal weather modification efforts. It's direct mandate is stepped-up research and development aimed at developing experimental "models, devices, equipment, materials, and processes" to change or control, "by artificial methods" the development of clouds and/or precipitation in the troposphere. This weather-forming region of the atmosphere lies between Earth's surface and the stratosphere, starting around 35,000 feet.

The federal weather modifiers will now directly oversee the cloud-seeding operations currently being carried out over dozens of states to increase rain and snowfall for irrigation, electrical power and winter recreation purposes. As droughts intensify under an onslaught of moisture-absorbing chemicals dispensed behind ozone-destroying jet tankers, and future towns wash away in sudden flash floods triggered by rain-inducing atmospheric tinkering, these unnatural disasters and other "inadvertent" effects of weather modification will be closely "studied" by the newly created board.

But no studies have been released on the implications of wide-scale alteration of regional atmospheric heat balances.

Large-scale weather modification is banned under the United Nations Environmental Modification Convention signed by Washington in 1970.

CHEMTRAILS 2005

Meanwhile, recent heavy "Chemtrail" spraying over Portland , Oregon and Canada 's west coast has eased off once again. Another long-time Chemtrail "hot zone", Santa Cruz , California continues reporting clear blue skies unmarked by the chemplanes' ugly scrawl.

As recently as May 2005, a Swiss resident sent photographs to Meria Heller's website, reporting: "Today was one of the heaviest Sprayings in Switzerland ever."

CHEMTRAILS CLOSE-UP

Some Canadians also have their eyes wide open. in June 2005, large graffiti spray-painted on a major overpass in West Vancouver advised motorists: WAKE UP, LOOK UP, CHEMTRAILS ARE EVERYWHERE.

AIR FORCE INSIDER DESCRIBES WEATHER MOD MISSIONS

An active duty air force crew chief has described environmental combat missions already being flown by specially-outfitted C-130 Hercules transports, which can be reloaded, refueled and relaunched in just 10 minutes to continue their assault on violent storms afflicting US communities. Flown by regular air force pilots, these "science flights" include onboard meteorologists, who painstakingly log the results of each mission.

Big storm fronts and hurricanes require a vast amount of absorbent chemicals to reduce their destructive power. To achieve the fast turn-around times needed to complete their missions, flights of returning C-130s taxi to a stop and immediately commence refueling as the empty onboard spray canister is removed. as soon as the empty canister is clear of the aircraft, a waiting truck wheels a semi-trailer-size container of sky-seeding chemicals to the plane's lowered rear ramp, where it is slid inside on rails like a gigantic "soda dispenser".

The crew chief added that other spray missions spread (barium) chemtrails to facilitate 3D radar mapping of the entire continental United States . He also said that the air force has been spraying storm fronts "for a long time". The military's main interest, he added, is experimentation aimed at gaining control of the weather for military use.

Did the air force spray this year's first Caribbean hurricane, in which the western quadrant disintegrated just before making its Texas landfall? "There's no reason they wouldn't," the crew chief replied.

But C-130 turboprops would not necessarily be used to try to influence hurricanes that typically release more energy than all atomic arsenals combined. Referring to the 757s recently modified for aerial spraying, the crew chief told willthomas.net, "We've got them, but I can't talk about them."

He added that many people in the air force "are aware of William Thomas " and his reporting on chemtrails. The crew chief confirmed that this reporter "has it mostly right" concerning the application and purposes behind chemtrails. But would not elaborate on my reporting.

EUROPEAN CHEMTRAIL UPROAR

Meanwhile, the chemtrails controversy has taken Europe by storm following a series of articles by Swiss freelance journalist Gabriel Stetter in the German popular science magazine Raum+Zeit (Space and Time), circulation circa 50,000.

Stetter's first article, "White Skies" created a public relations nightmare for Greenpeace when it informed readers in January 2004 how "Thousands of people were thoroughly shocked when they realised, and were informed by Greenpeace in Germany, Switzerland and Austria that-for some reason or other-Greenpeace has no interest in the Chemtrail question whatsoever."

The Swiss government also came under public pressure to explain the checkerboards being painted in its skies. On March 5, 2004 the Environment Department in Berne, Switzerland responded to an inquiry by Rudolf Rechsteiner, Social Democratic member of parliament, admitting that "A number of ideas exist that show how it would be possible to reduce global warming by technical means, at least in the short term."

But these ideas, the government office hastened to add, "are no more than theoretical. We are not aware of any practical application of these methods, either at home or abroad."

Ten days later, Greenpeace Switzerland climate and transport expert Cyrill Studer wrote an internal memo assuring colleagues that while he had "heard of the chemtrails phenomenon," for the present, Greenpeace "will not be following up the theme of chemtrails."

Two reasons for inaction by Greenpeace climate change activists were given. First, Studer explained, "There is not a sufficiently solid scientific basis" for Greenpeace to risk its budget and reputation verifying this "supposed phenomenon". To do so, he added in his memo to Greenpeace staff, "would overstretch our capacities.Important elements of our climate campaign would suffer, particularly the promotion of energy efficiency and of renewable energies, or our active influence in present-day politics."

Outside Greenpeace's corporate offices, the controversy continued. On June 11 German Greenpeace spokeswoman Kristine Läger told concerned constituents:

The idea of reducing global warming by putting chemicals in the atmosphere has been around a long time. There are various proposals in this direction, suggesting the chemicals should be independently sprayed and that they should be mixed with the fuel of ordinary passenger aircraft. Whether in Germany such proposals have reached the point of actual realization is highly questionable. So far as we are aware there are no indications from research and observation of weather and climate that these so-called chemtrails exist. Nor are we aware of any project that has been realized in practice.. in all probability this is not happening.

But Gabriel Stetter believes that the Greenpeace "Rainbow Warriors" know all about the rainbows in the sky. They probably also know of geoengineering studies to reduce incoming sunlight and slow global warming issued by the National Academy of Sciences. "And they may even have taken a look at the Welsbach Patent," he writes. "But they have no idea what conclusions to draw from the chessboard pattern suspended in the Hamburg sky or the aluminium-enriched 'rainbows'.

"Supposing the word 'chemtrails' appeared in print in the Greenpeace Magazine," Stetter speculates. "How many tens of thousands of people more would look up into the sky and recognize that the supposedly Utopian "proposal" has long moved on via "spraying trials" to a systematic, long-term spreading of cloud cover over the whole of Europe ?"

Back in Basel , Gabriel Stetter quoted unsourced opinion polls showing that in this "stronghold" of chemtrails believers, one in ten people "have already heard of them despite the media blackout. Several thousand people in the prosperous town at the bend in the Rhine know that the chemtrails phenomenon suggests that something is seriously wrong."

Among these Swiss chemtrails activists, he explained, "are well-to-do people, who because of their environmental awareness have been for a long time, in some cases for decades, members of Greenpeace."

Not any more.

"Veteran anti-nuclear activists, campaigners for animal welfare or against electrosmog-in their alarm they had all turned to Greenpeace because of the chemtrails, which are visible everywhere in the skies above Basel . But a painful experience awaited all of them. They were palmed off with the same unsatisfactory answers that we have by now grown tired of hearing. The consequence drawn by these elderly, well-to-do activists from Greenpeace's lack of interest was the immediate cancellation of membership of many years, the withdrawal of legacies, and the withholding of payments to Greenpeace until further notice."

As Brian Holmes notes on his website, www.holmestead.ca, the October 2004 issue #131 of the Raum + Zeit contained many pages of letters from readers responding positively to Stetter's first article in issue #127. "Many of these letters are illustrated with color photographs supplied by the readers themselves."

Former six-year a board member of Greenpeace Germany , Monika Griefahn chaired the Committee for Culture and Media of the Federal German Parliament when she replied to a letter from two chemtrails dissenters in July 2004, stating, "I am in basic agreement with your concerns. Instead of making a concerted and determined effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the world, experiments of various kinds are being carried out in the earth's atmosphere in order to cure the symptoms."

GERMAN PARLIMENTARIAN "ADMITS" CHEMTRAIL

Former six-year a board member of Greenpeace Germany, Monika Griefahn chaired the Committee for Culture and Media of the Federal German Parliament when she replied to a letter from two chemtrails dissenters in July 2004, stating, "I am in basic agreement with your concerns. Instead of making a concerted and determined effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the world, experiments of various kinds are being carried out in the earth's atmosphere in order to cure the symptoms."

After assuring her correspondents, "I share your concern over the use of aluminium or barium compounds which have a considerable toxic potential," the parliamentarian went on to say, "however, so far as I am aware the extent of their use is so far minimal."

"At last!" Stetter announced in the German science magazine. "There we have it. In the skies of Germany , so Social Democratic member of Parliament Monika Griefahn tells us, aluminium and barium compounds are being spread just as tens of thousands of concerned citizens have observed, documented and bitterly deplored."

Thanking the Honorable Griefahn her for her courage, Stetter suggested, "Maybe one day statues of politicians like Monika Griefahn or the equally plucky US Congressman Dennis Kucinich will adorn in marble splendor the squares of newly verdant German or American cities."

That would be nice.

But the public outcry in Europe will have to spread to North America if we are to stop this massive, illegal and continuing air and atmospheric pollution.

Excerpted from Convergence Weekly.

Short-Term Rentals: Not A Simple Issue

by Care Leah FitzGerald

One finds it rather frightening to witness the recent ease with which some on Hornby seem to choose, without any foundation of logic or fairness, to slip into what I see as the first stage of potential to develop into hate thoughts or worse. Let me explain, using just one example (of many) of what I see as a tendency toward narrow, or lazy, or self serving or unexamined thinking.

Take, for example, one target group, those conducting or renting STRs, or short term rentals, which has recently been singled out as the identified enemy of our island peace and security on Hornby . The rapidity with which the issue of STRs has so easily, so readily and so conveniently become the place from whence all our troubles are rumoured to originate seems very telling about the state of our community's division and penchant for alienation from one another.

Aldous Huxley postulated that the mind narrows to tunnel vision at best, in order for the ego and body to survive, the opposite of the state it is in when under the influence of LSD. If we were always that high, we would never eat and we would starve. But what about when the mind, designed to function primarily for the "lower self", then narrows so much that we might as well be eating one another?

Just for instance, ask yourself how long term renters would like to be viewed in such a way as STRs are, as the "enemy within", as the serpent, but inside paradise, instead of originating from without. Seems like, when it comes to small islands, there is a fine line between Paradise and Alcatraz . And humans are clearly the ones who create hell on earth for themselves and one another.

A community has the power to define which state we live in, a witch burning atmosphere or one of acceptance and tolerance. Are owners inherently despicable because they make what non owners see as unacceptable choices about how they use or own property? Why are some people who own property so easily identified as the cause of other people's woes & forcible dispossession, when there are so many different kinds of responsible and irresponsible people, those who rent, who own, who visit?

LTRs or long term renters are also just ordinary people, and not necessarily ones with any greater or lesser commitment to Hornby than have some long time visitors or annual return renters. As with anyone else, clearly LTRs, the people and the activity, covers the spectrum of human behaviour. The people can be long term while renting in one place or while renting in many places in sequence, all on Hornby . Like STR renters, LTR renters can be quiet or noisy, considerate or neglectful, willfully damaging or envious or hateful or simple outright cons... or wannabe owners, longing for a permanent home.

Long term and short term renters and owners can be all of the above as well as friendly or wonderful. Or, on the other hand, either group can, and do, wreck the place, bounce checks, party all night just as easily as can owners, relatives and non paying visitors, who do not pay to stay at all. Some renters return every year to the same place, often as not a place which is owned by someone who bought land, perhaps before it was unaffordable, someone with a mortgage who needs the real value of seasonal rent rates just to cover property taxes, repairs, advertising, etc..

The percentages in STRs are rarely about great profits. Most keep their heads above water; some even rent in the city to keep their jobs to keep their mortgages to hopefully buy on Hornby so they can move to Hornby and live here full time. There are exceptions, of course, but then these are usually high-end houses which command a huge price to build and to rent out.

Research reveals that approximately two and a half times the number of Hornby property owners, compared to the number of renters, are nevertheless in core housing need on Hornby , according to Census Canada 's own stats. So, then, who is the victim here, in this seemingly foolish victim competition? We are all in this together, even if some act as if they are going it alone.

Bad tenants have a rep that spreads like wildfire but never gets much coverage in the public square. Many who scraped and saved to own would not risk either their homes or their wallets on those odds. Then, too, reality bites. STRs pay at least four times as much in the same time frame, which may be precisely why they can also be far more desirable than some subsidized renters who in turn may bounce checks or cost $2,500 or more in lawyer's or sheriff's fees just to get them out.

The truth of the matter is that renters and owners of every stripe behave in so many different ways, with some of them being the ones who are responsible for giving the others a bad rep and increasing every renter's risk of being feared as a tenant. So isn't this inconsideration also a failing which proves equally true
- for LTRs as it does for STR renters,
- for some owners,
- for some visitors,
- for some relatives or friends of some owners,
- for some Courtenay day trippers,
- for some teens,
- for some lesbians, blacks, Jews or Islamics?

And aren't there even those who stir things up while at the same time they hide their money under the floorboards & play at being a poor intellectual, musing while detachedly stirring up animosity for amusement? If one so desperately needs to hate a group, wouldn't it be equally easy to target some campground owners, or campers, those "outsiders" who visit and overcrowd our campgrounds as the cause of all our ills?

Hornby has a separate reputation beyond its beauty or desirability, one which also goes off island every year. How many are aware that many visitors know within days and all too well that Hornby dislikes visitors, loves to think trouble comes from elsewhere and insists that its own "s--- don't stink".

However, as is equally true with renters, with full or part time owners, and with relatives and non paying visitors, the convenient target group of STRs does not fit into a nice tidy demographic of outsider trouble makers, noise generators, and polluters. Further, while it is a weakness of being human to give in to targeting one group while painting another as long term saints, and while it is clearly tempting to exercise a drawbridge mentality while closing one's eyes to the slippery slope inherent in such narrow reasoning, it is this is dangerously xenophobic way of failing to reason the issues through which can lead to targeting, rapidly becoming indistinguishable from outright bigotry.

To name or identify any one group, be it renters or any of the others mentioned above and to then patently disown or reject that abstract demographic group is dangerous, not just a case of lazy thinking. To attribute whatever else is wrong with our lives to any group by rejecting all the people in that group as being something to be loathed en masse is actually the worst form of "we/they" divisive logic of all, the most temptingly irresponsible kind of exclusivity of those who long too much to "belong" by exclusion rather than inclusion. Such flawed logic is nothing more than an exercise in plain old garden variety prejudice.

Like tenants, short or long term owners, too, can be either kind or nasty, fair or rip off artists, or they can be long term and steady. Both owners and tenants can act like short term investors or scammers. Still, in the end, one must accept that in the priority of this "first world complaints" department a house that is rented out, be it for ten days or ten years, is still the owner's property. It is not the renter's mortgage, not the owner's future that is owned by a bank. It is not any renter who is directly faced with huge rises in property taxes, for which the failure to pay on time and in full can and does render some properties forfeit, lost for good. It is not the tenant who must pay for their broken windows or the owner's broken hot water tank or the involved upkeep and maintenance and damage repair.

It is those who walk the line on any investment who get to keep both a long list of risks and hassles and the shifting markets that go both up and down for their investment. And it is many an owner who views their Hornby home as the one they long to one day be able to afford to live in full time, that is, if they ever get the banks off their backs.

No matter how much I, as a long term renter, thought I had a personal stake in the many, many places I rented for over two decades, the truth was that the property owner, whether good, bad or indifferent, was still the owner, and I was not a shareholder or, in most cases, any kind of victim. I took my chances on whether or not my references, my always on time payments, desirability & past or present "good tenant record" served as a worthwhile trading commodity on my security.

I am a recovering tenant with a VERY keen memory. The difference here seems to be that I believe that I did not want to indulge in the emotional righteousness of thinking that anyone but myself was responsible for my situation. Nor did I decide that it was the owners of properties I rented year after year who owed me continuity, security and commitment whether or not I returned the favour through reliability, respectability, integrity, or consideration.

Renters can be wonderful, considerate, quiet, peaceful, non smoking, attentive to detail, environmentally conscientiously, and can and do pay rent on time every month. Renters can and do sometimes exceed the basic contract and plant roses outside the building, paint walls and pay for it, even fix plumbing and improve the value of an owner's property, even if only for their own enjoyment. Sometimes, or sometimes not, tenants do so in return for their own assured ongoing desirability. Sometimes they are still given notice anyway, because a lease contract is just that. Sometimes they even start a fire in the middle of the living room floor or leave rotting fruit to ruin the wooden counters. In many beach areas in B.C., many, if not most, tenants have rented for ten months a year for decades on end.

I should know. I myself lived in 22 different rental apartments and suites, though never anything as pricey as a rental house, during in excess of 22 years of renting. In all that time, only twice, in two slum city dives, was it my idea to be the one to give notice and leave. Otherwise, it was the landlord who had their own reasons every time, abstract and usually financial ones that I ill understood back then and understand all too well now.

I grieved the loss of charm and comfort I myself often created and wept for the loss of the illusion of controlling my own security, each time I was given notice, over and over again in multiple circumstances, each time it was random and completely unrelated to anything undesirable I ever did as a tenant. I was given notice because of sales, renovations, owner repossession, demolitions, you name it. Each new situation, but not the owner per se, since I was well liked as a tenant, would nevertheless force me to pack up what I eventually came to think of as a stage set being struck before my own personal play moved on. As in a divorce, I would put away my own few possessions once again, take pictures of my cozy and clearly well loved nests, and then I would move on.

When the housing market skyrocketed and went absolutely crazy in the early eighties, and when rents went crazy along with it, as they usually do, I took my 20 years of carefully saved down payment and I invested it in Canada Savings Bonds, which also went sky high. I did so even while, at the same time I had pretty much begun to give up hope of EVER owning land or home. To this day I cannot believe that a little creativity & a ton of hard work coupled with market timing still allowed the purchase, at long last, of a small house, almost a "tear down" fixer upper first home, which I fixed up and sold later for a lot more money, then did this again. Even if this only happened after I was 40, it still took eleven years to pay off the mortgage, even after seriously downsizing on a second home's price.

Conversely some long term renters were very different from one another. Renters, too, like slum landlords, can be awful, can neglect or damage, can overtax water or poison septic fields that others must repair and pump. Or they can be respectful, reliable, and enviro-aware. Both owners and short and long term renters can and do neglect, pollute, party, exceed the carrying capacity of the land, make war against their own or other people's tenants or neighbours or both.

There are no easy answers here. People insist on being people. Diversity is just that and requires a two way street of tolerance and understanding. And conveniently reductionist thinking which feeds impotent anger, if only by allowing the categorizing of others into pigeon holes, is still bigotry and prejudice at the end of the day.

Instead, I have a suggestion. Let's go back to the drawing board and do better work on the issue of the social harm done by the misuse of our own minds, damage done by giving in to the politics of envy (not a nice emotion at the best of times), harm done by encouraging "we/they" resentment, or conflict created by the inaccurate targeting of conveniently identifiable subgroups we decide to resent or hate, be they ad hoc committee members, grass roots revisionists, people we have never even met or demonized long term renters we are afraid to rent to.

Let's try a wonderful experiment in open mindedness and do our own personal work on avoiding allowing our fellow beings from everywhere, let alone islanders, to become the object of our own frustration or hatred. Wouldn't it be more emotionally practical and far more empowering to do so, instead of dividing into convenient factions and viewing one another as "the enemy"? Let's be a bit less anarchistic and a bit more creative, shall we? Might we all benefit collectively if we all try just a little harder to get along and to "Let Hornby Be"?

Twenty Nutty Conspiracy Theories About 9/11

Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will usually be at least one, often several, wild conspiracy theories which spring up around it. "The CIA killed Hendrix", "The Pope had John Lennon murdered", " Hitler was half Werewolf", "Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone", etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.

So it's hardly surprising that the events of Sept 11, 2001 have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is sadly a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.

One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs, is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they "hate our freedoms."

Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the internet and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell. Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy theories.

These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them, and actually would have stopped them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring the stand-down of the US Air Force, the insider trading on airline stocks linked to the CIA, the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer 4 planes simultaneously and fly them around US airspace for nearly 2 hours, crashing them into important buildings, without the US intelligence services having any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do.

The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even more preposturous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions. It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly change their so-called evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply invent another to replace it, and deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly changing fantasy fog , they then re-invent the original delusion and deny that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more. This technique is known as "the fruit loop" and saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical conclusions.

According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the 4 planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns, knives, box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only for the hard-core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip over the awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs on the planes. If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed by any of the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger lists.

"Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?" "A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get." "Very strange", thinks the security officer. "That's the fourth Arab man without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time one of these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess..."

Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and cars they had rented. So if they used credit cards that identified them, how does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to the plane? But by this time the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational analysis. They will allege that the hijackers' passports were found at the crash scenes. "So there!" they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just a revelation of questionable sanity. Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely circumnavigated, and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, "Who said anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their presence is well documented!" And so the whole loop starts again. "Well, why aren't they on the passenger lists?" "You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!" And so on...

Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative delusion, the rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop, in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story. "Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely incinerated the planes and all the passengers?" The answer of course is that it's just one of those strange co-incidences, those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but these things do happen...

This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The "improbability drive", in which they decide upon a conclusion without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable co-incidences to support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world). There is a principle called "Occam's Razor" which suggests that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct.

Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor. Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with with the silly story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are supposed to have taken over the planes. Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot being able to alert ground control is nearly impossible. The pilot has only to punch in a four-digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking. Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives, and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the services of the improbability drive.

So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes, all four pilots fly them with breath-taking skill and certainty to their fiery end, all four pilots unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift meeting with Allah. Apart from their psychotic hatred of "our freedoms", it was their fanatical devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this.

Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the bar, really impeccable Islamic behavior, and then got up at 5 am the next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in history. This also requires us to believe that they were even clear-headed enough to learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the airport. We know this because they supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find.

It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to their doom. If they are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools, which would be available just about anywhere in the world, it's not clear why they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to US intelligence services by doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even semi-believable.

Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question of why there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has seen the endlessly-replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash.

Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and manage to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane? This is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that it's easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion rolling along.

There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable! Sluggishly combustible jet fuel which is basically kerosine, and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800°C has suddenly taken on the qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of kerosine, let alone the boiling point, which is what would be required to vapourize a plane. And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium to be accounted for. In excess of 15 lbs of metal for each gallon of kerosine.

For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed as "mumbo jumbo". This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of kerosine, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just discovered by them, this very minute. Blissfully ignoring the fact that never before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are always larger than life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins. "Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact," they state with pompous certainty. "Watch any Bruce Willis movie." Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well-known fact, then presumably this well-known fact springs from some kind of documentation other than Bruce Willis movies? At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.

"Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way of telling," they counter with a sly grin. Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before and since, and not vapourized into nothing.

"But not big planes, with that much fuel ", they shriek in hysterical denial. Or that much metal to vapourize.

"Yes but not hijacked planes!" Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental affects the combustion qualities of the fuel? "Now you're just being silly".

Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground, or have bombs planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. "Its a well-documented fact that planes explode into nothing on impact."

Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that it's a "well-known fact" and that "it's never happened before, so we have nothing to compare it to", the conspiracy theorist has now convinced himself (if not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round the fruit loop...

But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly-discovered shockingly destructive qualities of kerosine. They have to explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant vertical collapse of both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning kerosene.

For this, it's necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and propose kerosine which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of energy. You see, the kerosine not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball, vapourizing a 65 ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go, burning at 2000° C for another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper's steel like butter.

And while it was doing all this it also poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building. When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn't make it to junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosine is enough to completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft, have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the impact point to melt steel (melting point about double the maximum combustion temperature of the fuel), and still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start similarly destructive fires all through the building.

This kerosine really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those kerosine heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been vapourized. And never again will I take kerosine lamps out camping.

One moment you're there innocently holding the lamp, the next, kapow! vapourized into nothing along with with the rest of the camp site, and still leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.

These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosine melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an oxygen-starved fire, therefore not particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged temperature in the building of 2000 °C, without a shred of evidence to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics.

Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting and falling sideways.

Since they've already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel, violated the second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined the structural properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in the way? The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free-falling object dropped from that height, meaning that it's physically impossible for it to have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower floors. But according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended on the morning of Sept 11. It appears that the evil psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind as well as the impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.

Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school, but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why.

"Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir." "No miss, the kerosine heater blew up and vapourized everything in the street, except for my passport." "You see sir, the schoolbus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework because they hate our freedoms."

Or perhaps they misunderstood the term "creative science" and mistakenly thought that coming up with such rubbish was, in fact, their science homework. The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosine was, according to the conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can't be identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000° C isn't really required, 100° C will generally do the job.) This is quite remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a different city. That's right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in New York , your DNA will be destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in Washington DC , your DNA will be so robust that it can survive temperatures which completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft.

You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA testing, even though nothing remains of the plane. The plane was vapourized by the fuel tank explosion, maintain these space loonies, but the people inside it were, all but one, identified by DNA testing.

So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon which city you're in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you're trying to sell at any particular time.

This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it consists of 5 rings of building, each with a space in between. Each ring of building is about 30 to 35 ft deep, with a similar amount of open space between it and the next ring.

The object which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45-degree angle, punching a neat circular hole of about a 12-foot diameter through three rings (six walls). A little later a section of wall about 65 ft wide collapsed in the outer ring. Since the plane which the conspiracy theorists claim to be responsible for the impact had a wing span of 125 ft and a length of 155 ft, and there was no wreckage of the plane, either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were still smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly physically impossible.

But hey, we've already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the laws of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell, why not throw in a little spatial impossibility as well? I would have thought that the observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is "mumbo jumbo". It conflicts with the delusion that they're hooked on, so it "must be wrong" although trying to get them to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile endeavour.

Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile is mentioned. They nervously maintain that the plane was vapourized by its exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior. (That's a wonderful fruit loop.) Like an insect which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its last mad death throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so small is that plane never entered the wall, having blown up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 ft deep missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the building shows no sign of such damage).

As for what happened to the wings, here's where they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the fuselage which then carried them into the building, which then closed up behind the plane like a piece of meat. When it suits them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly (ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from an "irrecoverable angle." How they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study in stupidity.

Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy stuff will make an appearance. The Arabs are in league with the Martians. Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were seen were seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks.

As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual oil war, it's not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which do nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.

At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was perpetrated on Sept 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in "retaliation", are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self-indulgence to go unchallenged.

Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more appropriate outlet for their paranoia. It's time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11

note: if anybody knows who wrote this piece, please let me know so I can give it proper attribution

- phee

To All My Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it feel?

How does it feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows?

That's right. Horse shows.

I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton. Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us in case of an emergency or catastrophe.

I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call America.

Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have zero experience in emergency preparedness, do you think we are safer?

When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure?

When men who never served in the military and have never seen young men die in battle send our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never there?

Do you really believe that turning over important government services to private corporations has resulted in better services for the people?

Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for America? GOOD OR BAD?

With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home?

Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake.

That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer gave him. All this while New Orleans sank under water.

It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat" to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck o