By Rick Balfour, VPO

Plan B Questions are mandatory for all civic, provincial and federal politiicans.

Poor answers or no answers deserve no votes; we need leaders with both guts and vision.

We need action, not more talk. We have little time to change.

1. How high is your own concsciousness, relative to Global run away impacts on our communities, about Peak Oil, Global Warming and the inevitable shift in job markets and mass migration from difficult areas to highly preferred areas. Is it higher than most, are you ahead enough in the issues to lead and be proactive?

Take a page or ten minutes. No excuses, no glib answers.
Read the complete Post.

From economist Mike Nickerson:

A Better Path for Progress

The surest way out of difficulty is to set sight
on a goal beyond the trouble, and to move in that
direction.

As many wonder about the present financial
crisis, the time is ripe to suggest a new goal that will
serve us better than the one that caused the
problems. The election doubles the opportunity.

Steps you can take to help pave the way for a
Canadian Genuine Progress Index (GPI) are posted
at: http://www.superaje.com/~sustain5

The short story is that we want to find out
which candidates in the present election would
support a GPI if they are elected. Read the complete Post.

Will PEAK OIL devour Vancouver’s Politicians?
Or, will our politicians battle INERTIA and defeat the monstrous status quo?

Wed. Oct. 15, 2008, 7 - 9:30 PM
BCIT Downtown Campus
555 Seymour St., Vancouver

WATCH WITH FASCINATION as our panelists reveal their plans for addressing these critical issues!

• Is the Lower Mainland ready for a LOW-ENERGY FUTURE?

• Is GATEWAY a solution to our future transportation needs, and – if not – what is?

• Is there a plan to make sure we’ll all have enough FOOD to eat next year and 20 years from now?

• How do we reshape our pattern of community for a world with less and LESS OIL?

• How do we ensure an adequate ENERGY SUPPLY for the Lower Mainland?

Before you cast a vote in the next city election…
FIND OUT what these candidates plan to do.

Introducing Mayoral Candidates:
Gregor ROBERTSON - candidate Mayor Vision Party
Councillor Peter LADNER - candidate Mayor NPA
Betty KRAWCZYK - candidate Mayor Work Less Party

With:
Councillor Suzanne ANTON - candidate Vancouver City Council
Mayor Derek CORRIGAN - candidate Mayor Burnaby
Council Candidate Andrea REIMER – candidate Vancouver City Council

JOIN US for a rousing panel discussion and SEE FOR YOURSELF how some of the Lower Mainland’s top politicians PERSONALLY plan to address the many problems posed by PEAK OIL.

YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS THIS.

Wednesday October 15, 2008
7 - 9:30 PM
BCIT Downtown Campus
555 Seymour St., Vancouver
(a few blocks up from Waterfront station)
Tickets $7 in advance, $10 at the door.

Advanced Tickets:

http://vancouverpeakoil.org
Brought to you by Vancouver Peak Oil and The Great Bear Pub, and sponsored by:
The Cooperative Auto Network

by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, March 13, 2008

VPO NOTE: Companion article to the one below.

On February 14th, Canada and the US signed an agreement which allows for the deployment of US troops inside Canada.

There was no official announcement nor was there a formal decision at the governmental level.

In fact the agreement was barely mentioned by the Canadian media.

The agreement, which raises farreaching issues of national sovereignty, was not between the two governments. It was signed by military commanding officers.

U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) released a statement confirming that the agreement had been signed between US NORTHCOM and Canada Command, namely between the military commands of each country. Canada Command was established in February 2006. Read the complete Post.

by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, September 26, 2008
Original article

VPO NOTE: this article is posted both to raise the possibility that the US government may be anticipating social unrest from an imminent resource shock, and also because the Carter Doctrine designates resources like the tar sands as “American assets” even if they’re inconvenently located outside the United States.”

The Army Times reports that the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is returning from Iraq to defend the Homeland, as “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” The BCT unit has been attached to US Army North, the Army’s component of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). (See Gina Cavallaro, Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1, Army Times, September 8, 2008).

“Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. …

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. Read the complete Post.

Opposition to the provincial government’s Gateway Project is heating up. But it may be too late.

Michael McCarthy
Vancouver Courier
Original article
Friday, September 26, 2008

From Anthony Perl’s condo in Coal Harbour you can see small commuter planes, cruise ships, freighters loaded with containers and the Seabus trundling towards North Vancouver. At writer Richard Gilbert’s Gastown apartment, you can view the CPR yards, the West Coast Express, a helipad, tourist buses, a car rental company and heavy trucks working the port. What they all have in common is their dependence on fossil fuels, a resource rapidly escalating in price as it diminishes in supply. It’s also a resource that the B.C. government has picked as the backbone of its multi-billion dollar Gateway Project.

Perl, professor of political science and director of the urban studies program at Simon Fraser University, predicts the days of fossil-fuelled transportation are coming to an end. In his new book Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil, co-authored with Gilbert, Perl says that any urban planning centred around the use of fossil fuels is extremely shortsighted and bound to fail. Many other local urban planners, neighbourhood groups and activists also see Gateway as a politically motivated quick fix that is bound to have negative ramifications on the Lower Mainland in the future.

“I’m not suggesting any sort of conspiracy,” says Perl, “or that selected people are getting together in back rooms to plan this, but obviously some people stand to make an awful lot of money from building low-density, unclustered, single-family developments throughout the Fraser Valley.” Read the complete Post.

The financial mess in the U.S. will negatively affect Canada.

It turns out the real hurricane blew through Wall Street last week, not Galveston. This morning, Manhattan is strewn chest-deep with the debris of banking and at this hour (seven a.m.) nobody knows how far, deep, and wide the damage will spread. The fear, of course, is that we are witnessing a classic “house-of-cards” or “dominos-in-a-row,” situation, and that the death of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch will cascade into a generalized collapse of the entire consensus of value that supports mediums of exchange.
At least one thing ought to be clear: this has happened due to the negligence and misfeasance of the regulating authorities, namely the Republican Party, and that now all the hoopla surrounding Sarah Palin can be swept away revealing that group to be what they actually are: the party that wrecked America. I hope one or two Barack Obama campaign officials are reading this blog. You must commence the re-branding of the opposition right now. The Republicans must be clearly identified as, the party that wrecked America. Read the complete Post.