Wisdom is the result of a happy marriage between intelligence and experience.
© Carl Dow, Editor and Publisher, True North Perspective
Friday, April 9, 2010, Vol. 5, No, 18 — 222
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'The flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.... I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.... I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.'
— United States Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, 1935 — 6,603 words.
By Tim Reid
The Times
WASHINGTON — George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by The Times. — 709 words.
Cartoon by Nick Anderson, Comics.com, 8 April 2010.
By Gil Shochat
CBC News
The Conservative government was warned last summer that working with the Afghan secret police would lead to allegations Canada condoned abuse and that Canadians could face legal liability for complicity in torture. — 787 words.
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Editor's Notes
Friday, April 9, 2010
True North Perspective
Vol. 5, No. 18 (222)
By Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair
True North Perspective
I had a sleepless night Easter Sunday. It could have been the two mugs of strong coffee this professed tea drinker had during the Easter brunch, the sinful late afternoon chocolate muffin or the chocolate bunny Logan shared with me ... Or maybe it was the men's conversations! While the women sat on the deck, helping the children count their Easter eggs after the hunt, the men were inside talking politics. When I came in for a second mug of coffee, I was told I better stay outdoors as the debate was hot. I stayed a while and had to exit promptly when my blood pressure started rising. — 1,185 words.
"News is what (certain) people want to keep hidden. Everything else is just publicity."
PBS journalist Bill Moyers.Your support makes it possible for True North to clear the fog of "publicity" and keep you informed on what's really happening in the world today. Please send your donation to:
Carl Dow, True North, Station E, P.O. Box 4814, Ottawa ON Canada K1S 5H9.
Letters to the Editor
Re: "Unforgettable Moments". Wonders never cease, Alberte! Your encounter was certainly an example of the law of attraction at work in the quantum field matrix!
— Mirella Zanetti, Ottawa, Ont.
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Even in 2010, manic-depressive disease is diagnosed more often as a burnout condition but in fact is a lack of serotonin in our brain. Depression is recognized in general by medical practitioners but not well-handled as a disease where they should refer their patients to experts, such as psychiatrists. Instead, they quickly hand out various prescriptions or blame it on menopause or job related stress, etc.
You don't wear anxiety and anguish on your sleeve! There's no outward sign, visible bleeding or bone fractures ... Depression is held inside the mind and the wear and tear of many months or years often leads to suicide. I have battled this disease for many years. I am on lifetime medication, a serotonin drug. Should I fail to take it for a period of time, it brings me down again to depression and anxiety. Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair's article, "Unforgettable Moments", reminded me of how sorry I felt for Mrs. Trudeau and the compassion I had for her as she was mocked and ridiculed because of her manic-depressive episodes by the TV and press media who had no consideration for her torment and anguish.
Count your blessings if you never have to live this day by day, inner anguish caused by a chemical brain imbalance, which today is treated more easily with readily available medications and paid for by our Canadian Health Insurance.
— Bob Beauchemin, Ottawa.
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By Tu Thanh Ha
The Globe and Mail
More than a decade before police got wind that a priest had molested several altar boys in small towns in the Ottawa Valley, Vatican and Canadian church officials knew about the matter and discussed in a letter how to keep it secret. — 1,304 words.
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From the Desk of Dennis Carr, Sustainable Development Editor
By John Calimente
RegardingPlace.com
During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver was transformed. People flooded onto the transit system, particularly the Canada, Expo, and Millennium Lines. Additional SkyTrain cars, buses, West Coast Express trains, and a Seabus were added. Lane closures in and around the downtown core dramatically curtailed traffic. And many more people were out walking and cycling than would be normal in mid-February. — 1,525 words.
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By Alex Binkley
True North Perspective
The Harper government has introduced legislation to add 30 seats to the House of Commons by 2014 to recognize the growing populations in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. While Ontario deservedly will get 18 of the new seats, they will likely go to the major urban areas of the province. Same in Alberta and B.C. — 861 words.
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CBC News
A Canadian graduate student has found the only printed copy of Haiti's Declaration of Independence known to have survived that revolutionary moment in the country's history. Scholars and historians had been searching for 200 years for the now-yellowed eight-page document declaring Haiti's independence from France on Jan. 1, 1804. — 446 words.
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By Katie Moisse
Scientific American
The human body's immune system can quickly track down and kill cells that don't belong. Take certain kinds of bacteria: molecules on their surfaces flag them as foreign invaders, alerting the body's defenders to the breach and drawing a full-fledged attack on anything waving that molecular flag. But sometimes the system mistakenly attacks the body's own cells. The result is autoimmune disease, such as type 1 diabetes, in which the insulin-producing beta cells of the pancreas are attacked and destroyed by T cells. — 748 words.
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By Thomas Walkom
Toronto Star
The opposition Liberals want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to clarify what he plans for Afghanistan. But he is clear. He says he's bringing Canada's troops home. — 793 words.
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By Cory Hurley
The Canadian Press
CORNER BROOK, NFLD. — The world can seem such a big place when you are searching for someone missing in your life, but sometimes that person turns out to be right before your eyes. Stephen Goosney, 29, and Tommy Larkin, 30, were born a year and a half apart. Both were adopted and began life, knowing they were missing vital pieces of their personal history. — 584 words.
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Spirit Quest
By The Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan
I am a firm proponent of the Orang-utan Theory of Human Personality : The higher this great arboreal ape climbs in the tree the more he reveals his unpleasant aspects. How applicable to the human dilemma! It has also been said that the higher one climbs the more painful is the fall. Unfortunately this craving to ascend financially, socially or politically has scarcely ever deterred anyone from climbing. — 583 words.
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From the Desk of Alex Binkley, Contributing Editor
By J.L. Granatstein
Globe and Mail
J.L. Granatstein writes on behalf of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.
In the last two weeks there have been rumbles in the Ottawa jungles that the Harper government might be interested in sending troops to take part in the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC). The Chief of the Defence Staff was said to be telling the troops that Canada's next overseas mission was in Africa. The departing Chief of the Land Staff, General Andrew Leslie, was tipped to be the commander of the U.N.'s Congo force. There was even a hot rumour that the Governor General was to visit Kinshasa, the capital, and the media began writing informed stories on all the possibilities. — 889 words.
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TORONTO — There are signs that some of Canada's major house markets have become overheated, although most others have shown a more healthy rate of moderate growth, according to a national real-estate sales organization. — 430 words.
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By Karen Allen
Ottawa Independent Writers
Karen Allen is a senior communications consultant and founder of The Written Edge. She holds a Master of Journalism from Carleton University and has won numerous work and academic awards for her writing, project management and leadership.
If you missed Carl Dow's talk at the Ottawa Independent Writers' March 25 meeting, you missed some very intriguing insights into the history and future of journalism, as well as what it takes to be a journalist and writer. — 1,428 words.
JOIN OTTAWA INDEPENDENT WRITERS
ALBERTE VILLENEUVE-SINCLAIR AND SIGRID MACDONALD
FOR A BOOK SIGNINGWHEN: SATURDAY, APRIL 24 FROM 1 P.M. UNTIL 3 P.M.
WHERE: BOOKS ON BEECHWOOD
35 Beechwood Ave
Ottawa, ON
Phone: 613-742-5030WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
A retired teacher, Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair, has three novels to her credit: Le Jardin Négligé (1990), The Neglected Garden (2005), and Une Prière pour Hélène (2007). An anthology is in the making. Her writing has given her the opportunity to appear on several TV shows and give presentations to women's and writers' groups. Her topics range from women's issues, violence against women, the importance of friendship and mental health issues. She has also given presentations on the art of writing. Presently, she writes for True North Perspective, an electronic newspaper.
Sigrid Macdonald is a book coach, an editor, and the author of three books including Getting Hip: Recovery from a Total Hip Replacement (2004), D'Amour Road (2005), and the newly released Be Your Own Editor (2010). Like Alberte, Sigrid has appeared on radio and TV talking about health and women's issues, and has dedicated D'Amour Road to Louise Ellis, a local woman who was murdered by her partner. Her editing book is a comprehensive writers' guide, covering everything from using proper punctuation to developing strong characters to structuring articles, essays and blog posts.
SO, IF YOU'RE A READER OR A WRITER, BE SURE TO JOIN ALBERTE AND SIGRID AT THEIR SIGNING.
By Tom Blackwell
National Post
A tough-talking Ontario government set off a new war with the province's pharmacies yesterday that could spread across Canada, unveiling details of major reforms to the way generic medicines are marketed and sold. — 746 words.
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Health Watch
By Roberta Cruger
TreeHugger.com
The Organic Center, a research institute focused on the science of organic food and farming, recently revealed concerns for the state of the food industry and agriculture. Despite the symbolism of an organic garden at the White House, last year ended with little progress on changing policies. Though Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) claims the Senate will pass a Food Safety bill this year, there are bigger issues than ensuring importers meet US standards, the apparent holdup in the Senate. How about cleaning up our fields first? Otherwise, here is the ominous outlook: — 668 words.
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By Kent Sepkowitz
Slate.com
Few perishable items have had as unlikely a second act as the humble condom. For decades, it lurked in the shadows with girlie magazines, aphrodisiac powders, and oddball sex devices. Then in the 1980s, AIDS hit and condoms suddenly entered the fast lane. In 1987 alone, right after Surgeon General C. Everett Koop started the pitch for condom use, sales rose 20 percent in the United States and have increased steadily ever since. The key to our HIV global control strategy rests not on vaccines, pills, or saltpeter but rather on the surprisingly broad shoulders of our old friend the rubber. — 1,084 words.
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By Nic Fleming
The Guardian (UK)
Even Chris Morris might have had trouble making it up. In 1997, the celebrated satirist tricked public figures including Rolf Harris, Noel Edmonds and David Amess MP into warning Britain's teenagers of the dangers of taking "cake", a new "made-up pyschoactive compound" also known as Basildon puke plates and loony toad quack. Bernard Manning told how one girl had thrown up her own pelvis. Amess later tabled a parliamentary question asking the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to look into banning cake. — 754 words.
In case you missed it ... and always worth repeating
Let's say that news throughout human time has been free. Take that time when Ugh Wayne went over to the cave of Mugh Payne with news that the chief of his group had broken a leg while chasing his laughing wife around the fire. That news was given freely and received as such with much knowing smiles and smirks to say nothing of grunts of approval or disapproval. — 688 words.
Independent On Line News
SOUTH AFRICA — A horrific video showing American soldiers shooting dead civilians in Iraq before laughing at their bodies has been leaked online. The footage — which emerged on website WikiLeaks — shows US forces firing repeatedly on a group of men, most of whom are unarmed. — 626 words.
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By Andrew McLemore
RawStory.com
President Obama's ban on waterboarding hasn't hampered US intelligence efforts "at all," one of the CIA's top officials said to an audience of students last week. — 383 words
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By Alex Leff
GlobalPost.com
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — In Costa Rica, one woman will soon be president. Another is training to summit Mt. Everest. Meet the new Ticas.
They are increasingly taking jobs out of the home and putting their careers first. Many are opting out of motherhood altogether. They are slowly rising up the corporate ladder and climbing the echelons of government. — 1,069 words.
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By Frank Rich
The New York Times
Not since Clark Kent changed in a phone booth has there been an instant image makeover to match Barack Obama's in the aftermath of his health care victory. "He went from Jimmy Carter to F.D.R. in just a fortnight," said one of the "Game Change" authors, Mark Halperin, on MSNBC. "Look at the steam in the man's stride!" exclaimed Chris Matthews. "Is it just me, or does Barack Obama seem different since health care passed?" wrote Peter Beinart in The Daily Beast, which, like The Financial Times, ran an illustration portraying the gangly president as a newly bulked-up Superman. — 1,617 words.
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The Copenhagen Post
Warehouse workers at Danish brewing giant Carlsberg are striking because management has decided that the employees may no longer have their customary three free bottled beers a day at the workplace, reports Business.dk. — 471 words.
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Interview: Joshua Rubenstein, Amnesty International
By Andrew Meldrum
GlobalPost.com
BOSTON — Amnesty International released its annual survey on the use of the death penalty. The report found 18 countries executed people in 2009. China is estimated to have executed the most people, but refused to release an official figure. In the 17 other countries 714 people were executed.
Iran had one of the highest uses of the death penalty in 2009, which is described in a dispatch by Iason Athanasidis.
GlobalPost asked Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International, about the report on the use of the death penalty worldwide. — 865 words.
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Agence France-Presse
Lest we forget: Karzai knows (unlike the people of those countries that followed George W. Bush into war in the ‘Graveyard of Empires’) that pulling out of Afghanistan is not simply the political decision that naïve pundits make it out to be. Big oil prompted their Washington puppet (and his innocent foreign dupes, including Canada) because they want a pipeline from the Caspian basin and Karzai knows that without him it ain’t going through. Hence he tweeks the nose of the Americans with impunity. — 414 words.
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By Nirmala George
HuffingtonPost.com
NEW DELHI — For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island's gone. — 386 words.
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By Taniel Tencer
RawStory.com
In what is being hailed as a major victory for workers in the biotech and nanotech fields, a former scientist with pharmaceutical firm Pfizer has been awarded $1.37 million for being fired after raising the alarm over researchers being infected with a genetically engineered "AIDS-like" virus. — 527 words.
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Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Science
By Ed Yong
NewScientist.com
Our tale begins two decades ago, when a group of Dutch women set out to find an explanation for the antisocial behaviour of the males in their family. As well as having learning difficulties, these men and boys were prone to outbursts of aggression and were racking up a list of serious offences, including arson, attempted rape and murder. Suspecting that the behaviour might be hereditary, the women approached geneticist Hans Brunner at the University Hospital in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Eventually, in 1993, he tracked down the culprit: a defunct variant of a gene called monoamine oxidase A, or MAOA, located on the X chromosome. — 2,374 words.
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By Jia-Rui C. Cook
NASA
PASADENA, Calif. — For the first time, scientists have detected clear signs of recent lava flows on the surface of Venus. The observations reveal that volcanoes on Venus appeared to erupt between a few hundred years to 2.5 million years ago. This suggests the planet may still be geologically active, making Venus one of the few worlds in our solar system that has been volcanically active within the last 3 million years. — 670 words.
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By James Owen
National Geographic News
It has a double penis, is as long as a tall human, and lives in a heavily populated area of the Philippines. Yet somehow the giant lizard Varanus bitatawa has gone undetected by science until now. — 449 words.
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By Patrick Jackson
BBC News
Scientists have found the first animals that can survive and reproduce entirely without oxygen, deep on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. — 501 words.
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From the Desk of Elizabeth Hill, Contributing Editor, Toronto
By James Suggett
Venezuelanalysis.com
MERIDA — The Venezuela-led trade bloc, ALBA, pledged $2.42 billion in reconstruction aid to earthquake-torn Haiti between the years 2010-2016 during a United Nations conference on Wednesday. Also, Venezuela called for Haiti's foreign debt to be forgiven and advocated direct aid and services, not loans, for the Caribbean country. — 911 words.
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By Jean-Guy Allard
Granma
MIAMI — Luis Posada Carriles, one of the masterminds behind the mid-flight destruction of a Cuban civilian aircraft, a torturer in the Venezuelan DISIP, and a drug trafficker who was part of the Iran-Contra scandal, participated in a march on Thursday, March 25 organized by musician Gloria Estefan in favor of dissidents in Havana on the payroll of the U.S. Department of State. — 373 words.
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By Bob Narmer
InDepthNews.net
GENEVA — New sad record for the U.S. and NATO occupied Afghanistan: in addition to being the largest opium producer on Earth and hosting the world's biggest 'secret' detention centre practicing torture — Baghram — it now leads global hashish production.— 970 words.
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By Ho Manli
ChinaDaily.com.cn
The ancient Chinese said, "A tree may grow to be a thousand zhang (10,000 feet) high, but its leaves fall back to its roots". So it was with my father. In 2007, 10 years after his death, I brought his and my mother's ashes back from the United States for burial in China, fulfilling my father's wish to be laid to rest in his native soil. — 924 words.
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By Kiraz Janicke
Venezuelanalysis.com
CARACAS — Eight Colombian citizens have been arrested in Venezuela on suspicion of carrying out espionage against the country's national electricity system Venezuelan Interior Minister Tarek El Aissaimi announced on Tuesday. — 583 words.
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Advocate.com
To avoid Constance McMillen bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a "fake prom" while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents. — 341 words.
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Rear-view Mirror
By Sarah Boesveld
Globe and Mail
Fifty years ago, people laughed when a sprightly 26-year-old Jane Goodall went to the wilds of Africa to study chimps. There was no money for what she remembers her doubters calling a “crazy” expedition to learn from the human-like creatures in the Tanzanian parks. But her breakthrough observation that they could make and use tools just like chimps in captivity was an epiphany that would change the way scientists studied hot-blooded animals. — 1,179 words.
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Money and Markets
By Robert Reich
ReaderSupportedNews.comI'm in the "green room" at ABC News, waiting to join a roundtable panel discussion on ABC's weekly Sunday news program, This Week. Alan Greenspan is now being interviewed. He says he bore no responsibility for the housing bubble that catapulted the nation into a financial crisis in 2008 because no one could have known about the bubble when he chaired the Fed in the years before it burst. Larry Summers was interviewed just before Greenspan. He said the economy is expanding, that the Administration is doing everything it can to bring jobs back, and that the regulatory reform bills moving on the Hill will prevent another financial crisis. — 697 words.
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Obituary
By Neda Ulaby
National Public Radio
He was known as the British Andy Warhol, the P.T. Barnum of punk and Dick Clark from hell. Malcolm McLaren died Thursday in a Swiss sanitarium after a long struggle with cancer. He was 64. — 508 words.
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The Glass Teat
By Geoffrey Dow
Managing Editor, True North Perspective
Originally published in a slightly different form Edifice Rex Online
My girlfriend fell asleep. Steven Moffat's maiden voyage as the 'show-runner' the world's most venerable science fiction television franchise was no disaster, but neither was it a triumph; fans should be reasonably pleased with the 31st season's debut, but casual viewers are unlikely to jump on-board. — 760 words.
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In The Begining was The Word — now it's poetry
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece of straw
blown off into emptiness.
These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.
The short story, The Old Man's Last Sauna, a groundbreaking love story, in the Friday, April 24 edition of True North Perspective, concludes the collection titled The Old Man's Last Sauna, written by Carl Dow. On Friday, April 17, you'll find O Ernie! ... What Have They Done To You! The series began Friday, February 20, with Deo Volente (God Willing). The second, The Quintessence of Mr. Flynn, Friday, February 27. The third, Sharing Lies, Friday, March 6. The fourth, Flying High, Friday, March 13. The fifth, The Richest Bitch in the Country or Ginny I Hardly Knows Ya, Friday, March 20. On Friday, March 27, One Lift Too Many, followed by The Model A Ford, Friday, April 3. The out-of-body chiller, Room For One Only, Friday, April 10. The series closed Friday, April 24, with the collection's namesake The Old Man's Last Sauna, a groundbreaking love story. All stories may also be found in the True North Perspective Archives.
Prolific best-selling Ottawa author and publicist Randy Ray has developed a website to promote his publicity services, which he offers to authors, publishers and companies. Mr. Ray has helped many clients get their message out across Canada on CTV, CBC Radio, CH-TV, A-Channel and Global TV, and in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa Sun, Halifax Herald and many Ottawa-area weekly newspapers. Mr. Ray's web site is: www.randyray.ca. He can be contacted at: (613) 731-3873 or rocket@intranet.ca.
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Archives
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Carl Dow, Editor and Publisher
Geoffrey Dow, Managing Editor
Yvette Pigeon, Associate Editor
Dennis Carr, Sustainable Development Editor
Benoit Jolicoeur, Art Director
Ian Covey, Director of Photography
Carl Hall, Technical Analyst and Web Editor
Randy Ray, Publicity
Contributing Editors
Anita Chan, Australia
Canada
Alex Binkley, Ottawa
Dennis Carr, Vancouver
Rosaleen Dickson, Ottawa
Tom Dow, Sudbury
Bob Kay, Montréal
Randy Ray, Ottawa
Alberte Villeneuve-Sinclair, Ottawa
David Ward, Ottawa
Harold Wright, Ottawa
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