Stephen Harper has gone to great lengths to subdue the province and people of British Columbia in preparation for having his way with us against our will.
It's been methodical and relentless and every aspect of it has been marked by three telltales - they've all been without consultation, without our consent and against our will. It's political rape of an entire province by a brutal despot wielding what he perceives to be unstoppable, superior power.
Harper got the West Coast emergency oil spill centre out of the way. He moved that to Quebec. Without consultation, without our consent, against our will.
Harper gutted fisheries protection regulations that might have interfered with supertanker traffic. Without consultation, without our consent, against our will.
Harper shut down entire departments of Fisheries and Oceans scientists and monitors who served to safeguard our waters, our fisheries and our marine ecology. Without consultation, without our consent, against our will.
Harper shut down all but two of our key Coast Guard stations, slashing the safety and security of our coastal waters. Without consultation, without our consent, against our will.
Harper is now moving to strip navigation protections. Without consultation, without our consent, against our will.
Harper has stripped ("streamlined") environmental assessment procedures to eliminate almost certain hurdles to the Northern Gateway pipeline and Kitimat supertanker port. Without consultation, without our consent, against our will.
Harper has gagged federal researchers and scientists, preventing them from speaking out on the perils he is crafting for British Columbia. Without consultation, without our consent, against our will.
All this, and so much more, Harper has done or has in the works and all of it without consultation, without our consent and against our will. It's a calculated process to subdue and overwhelm British Columbia and the majority of the public that stand in his way. It's the precursor to the rape to follow.
Everyone is entitled to fight off a rapist. No one is obliged to submit to violation. The rest of Canada needs to understand that what Harper has in mind for British Columbia is nothing short of rape. The rest of Canada, especially everybody in Alberta, needs to understand why we have to defend ourselves and our province.
12 comments:
Eloquently stated. We can comfort ourselves knowing that even if the Gateway gets a go-ahead, the citizens of this magnificent province will not let the pipeline be laid. The fight will have only just begun.
Thanks for your support, Jymn. We do have to move to prevent this from ever happening. Once the first Chinese supertanker docks in Kitimat it's probably over for us.
We need something to mobilize the rest of the country to stand behind us. I don't even know if that's possible.
If we are forced to stand alone I think we need to keep all options open, even the worst - separation. Separation, not out of bitterness or resentment, but only as a last resort to establish the essential sovereignty without which it may be impossible to stop this.
The voters in BC elected 21 Conservatives to the federal parliament. If the voters in BC could convince just two thirds of those BC Conservatives to resign from the Conservative caucus, then Harper and his gang would lose their majority and their ability to rape BC without significant opposition.
I understand your point, Anon, but just try to get them to respond. Even during last week's ultra-peaceful demonstrations outside MLA's offices (demonstrations, not protests), our Liberal MLA's refused to meet with their constituents.
I agree with putting pressure on our Tory MPs. I do what I can with e-mails. I've been urging some of the Defend Our Coast organizers to hold actual protests at our Tory MPs offices. Maybe, just maybe, they will at some point.
Well stated, MoS.
And should Harper get his way with BC, he will inflict just as much damage elsewhere. BC is the first line of assault and a brutal one it is.
Hi,BY, and thanks for your support.
Like Jymn, a lot of us out here think this is where Harper petro-corporatism has to be fought and stopped. I don't know if you've ever been lucky enough to experience our central and northern coast. A day or two, however, will convince any Canadian that this has to be blocked. stopped.
And there's an emerging sense that defending the coast isn't enough. If we're to be forced into a battle, not of our choosing, we also ought to seek to inflict as much damage on the Tory brand as possible. Should we be able to clear them out of B.C. for several years it will be an essential lesson to them and an invaluable lesson to the opposition parties that this awful business has to stop.
I'm recently retired and have plenty of time on my hands. I wouldn't think twice about heading to BC from MB to help block this proposed pipeline.Besides, maybe I'll even get to meet Ralf Mair!
"Rafe" damn
I was thinking this morning about the impact of a tsunami on the BC coast.. Much like the one that surged into Port Alberni quite a ways back or the big one in Alaska..
Disastrous in many many ways.. but with the added horror of VLCC tankers loading dilbit-unloading diluent being smashed into extensive petro-bitumen storage, pumping infrastructure connected to double pipelines.. a terrible thought.
Perhaps worse.. after the explosions and catastrophic fires all residues being swept out on receding waters, tides, eddies, storm surges.. and dispersed into every coastal area of the surrounding archipelagos and shorelines.
The recent explosions that took place at the Venezuelan Amuay refinery provide a physical example of this, even without a tsunami. Another took place recently in China.. the Dalian explosions when two pipelines blew up and drained into the sea.
The scale of what I am describing, and could happen in BC makes those massive incidents and the Exxon Valdez seem trifling.
It will be good to get a concrete expert opinion on record re the risks here.. from Stephen Harper, Joe Oliver, Christy Clark et al.. not the usual evasive, 'good for the economy', bland, deniable pap. I'd want them all on record for why they might think wiping out an entire coastline, ecosystems, cultures is an acceptable downside. They seem to think its A-OK to secretly give China a 31 year long carte blanche window to experiment at this level of risk.
We're hoping, DN, for just that kind of support if the CPC3 (Calgary Petroleum Club, Conservative Party of Canada, Communist Party of China) move to push this through.
You'll know when you're needed. It'll be when the evening news airs video of we Geezers'n Grannies being bused off to Harper's jails. It's bound to be a pretty comical sight, the Grey Hair & Blue Rinse crowd standing against Big Oil and Ottawa.
I was greatly impressed at a recent "Defend Our Coast" demonstration in my little town at the size of the turnout and the clear commitment of all these lifelong law-abiding oldsters to see this blocked.
Hi, Sal. The earthquake was indeed a reminder to how seismically active the province of British Columbia is and our vulnerability to the "Big One" expected sometime between this afternoon and a hundred years from now.
A major subduction quake in the 9+ range, perhaps a bit stronger than Fukushima. It's no small irony that Harper has decreed closed the one Coast Guard station that's deemed least vulnerable to Tsunami damage, the one that sits right alongside our one and only Air Force base, the site of our Search & Rescue air fleet. And, did I mention, it was done without consultation, without our consent and against our will?
I haven't looked into the Tsunami risks to Douglas Channel and Kitimat but the topography does seem to resemble the funnel-shape that builds Tsunami waves.
We don't have nuclear reactors out here and there's a very good reason for that.
The thing is, when these concerns are raised, Harper, Oliver, Kent & company fall mute and utterly unresponsive.
If you want to see a floating Potemkin Village, look at the oil spill response fleet massed along the Vancouver Island coast. Lots of ships but two problems. One, they have admitted they can't operate in rough conditions. Two, the technology they carry is limited to floating oil, conventional oil, not bitumen that quickly separates from its dilutents and sinks to the bottom. The whole thing is an elaborate deception.
Well said Mound.. I have been to school (research) re impact of seismic events in the straits, archipelago, channels and Kitimaat itself.. not to mention all the small related communities. Its actually worse than I thought.
First, to your point re topography.. invert your thinking.. look at the hydraulics of tsunami or surge via bathymetry.. the underwater topography if you will.. and keep in mind that the onrushing volume of water must go somewhere then dissipate, or reflect backwards off something.. So, water volume and the underwater topography dictate wave height.. and then topography shape and steer or confine as well. As we know from Fukashima, the displaced water volume must go forward or upward or through.
Now to bring even more bad news regarding the projection I made.. even at lower magnitudes than the 9.2 scale you suggest, which was the 1964 Alaska event. Epicentered in Prince William Sound, (75 miles east of Anchorage, 56 miles west of Valdez) it radiated tsunami waves at over 400 miles per hour towards Port Alberni and Hawaii and California. Locally it sent a 200 foot wave into Shoup Bay, a 43 foot wave into Whittier and an 89 footer into Chenega.
In Seward, The fuel tanker Alaska Standard was being loaded when the shore slumped. The fuel tank farm exploded.. over 30 storage tanks.. and the docks were on fire. The tanker dropped 20 to 30 feet and after hitting the harbor bottom, bounced back up and onto the dock. Imagine a Chinese VLCC tanker, 1500 feet long doing that.. full of diluted bitumen, diluent for the tar sands.. it doesn't really matter.
So we have to consider other aspects even at magnitudes near 8.0 or less. Ground shaking, liquefaction of underlying rock, surface rupture, landslide, and submarine slumps and landslides.
These present different disaster scenarios than an offshore seismic event and related tsunami. Instead we see an onshore local seismic event that could drop Kitimaat or just its dockside into the Douglas Channel.. with a resulting tsunami that rushes westward down the channel. And what if.... an underwater event of sufficient intensity and magnitude near Haida Gwaii radiated tsunami as well as triggering submarine slumps and/or onshore coastal landslides.
Eyewitness accounts and the facts of the Alaska event, especially what occurred in the sheltered industrial seaports.. are well described in 'Tsunami' by Walter C. Dudley and Min Lee, University of Hawaii Press, 1988. Those accounts are not 'projections' such as I have suggested.
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