Sunday 28 October 2018

Are you thrilled by fear? Here is a scary Halloween prophecy, Read on.

Are you thrilled by fear? Here is a scary Halloween prophecy, Read on.
A “caravan” of 7000 unarmed poor families, mostly from the central South American country of Honduras is walking towards the southern border of the USA. The most powerful army of the world is going to be deployed to “protect” US sovereignty and stop this “invasion.” Will they follow the example of their Israeli friends around Gaza and shoot?
An Israeli wrote: We were ordered to get in line into shooting position. Between “them” and us, were two fences and we were on top of a dirt berm with them (Palestinians) climbing the slope towards us. The “terrorists” looked just like people in the Jerusalem market, and they were shouting and running. I scanned through my Tavor scope locating a target and squeezed the trigger. The human body jerked and started sliding down arms stretched towards me. I saw the face for the first time. It was a girl with black braided hair about thirteen. Her fingers clawed at the dirt making little trenches all the way down until she disappeared from my scope. I remembered an old movie where a Nazi soldier was shooting my ancestors in Germany. The tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t look through the scope again. I was battle-hardened now; I made my first kill.
Africa and South America have a lot in common. Both look triangular on the map, have archeological evidence of very advanced pre-historical civilizations, possess great amounts of natural resources and are populated by people with darker skins. Both are warm and have large areas that are very fertile, able to produce grains for food and grasses that support huge herds of cattle. Another triangular shape on the world map is India. Similar in most ways. Those are the places that were most exploited by Colonialism. If they were left unmolested there would not have been a Caravan of thousands walking to the USA today nor would there have been an armada of rickety boats floating, hipped with migrants towards Europe. I could easily prove the point, but it would take a couple of books which you don’t have time to read.
South America is rich, and the people may be uneducated, but they are smart. Look at those who have been assimilated into Canadian society. South America is maintained as a source for North America’s wealth. They often tried to gain some form of independence but failed miserably. Where they did, soon they were beaten back by military coups and by corruption from within. Such is the case now in Venezuela. Recently world attention has been highlighted on the plight of El Salvador by the canonization of the assassinated Archbishop Oscar Romero.
What you see today is only a slight indication of what there is to come, some in the lifetime of young people who are now old enough to read these words. We know how the world was when I was a child, know the rate it has changed and can calculate how much it will change in another fifty years if all stays the same. It's elementary my dear readers. Barring a major shift in human behavior, by the year 2040 we may see, not a few thousand migrants begging admission to the advanced nations, but tens of millions desperate human beings, some very technologically savvy, fighting frantically to find dry land to live on. You can see on the news what one desperate “terrorist” can do, multiply it by many millions.
We may be able to slow the tide a bit with the new short and medium-range nuclear missiles that Trump just ordered, but not for long. Who will be the soldiers ordered to fire those weapons? All soldiers know that the crews who dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki died of insanity.
Today you see political parties building their election platforms on cutting taxes and fighting the hated carbon tax. What a joke that is, a dangerous fib based on the ignorance of TV educated voters. People who are devoting most of their time to study scores of professional sports teams and ratings of popular Reality Shows don’t have time to study world events and elude themselves that if taxes were reduced they could “travel” more or rent storage space for accumulating more junk.
The truth is much different. In order to stem our damaging atmospheric pollution and bring it to manageable levels, we must have a much higher Carbon Tax and not give the money back to the voters. That money is only a small portion of what is needed for paying the price of just rebuilding what is being currently destroyed by the changing climate. Taxes can’t go down while we borrow money to keep our standard of living where most human work is performed by energy extracted from the earth. We must bring back the level of taxation that was normal before Reagan, Mulroney, Fletcher, and the rest of the Right wingers who falsely believed in the hoax of trickle-down economics. Those were the years we refer to now when we say “make America great again.” I remember it and so do all the people who are my age. We had problems but nothing in comparison with what is coming.
The train is going towards the cliff, and it ain’t slowing down………………….

https___www.goodfreephotos.com_albums_holidays_halloween_crow-standing-on-branch-in-front-of-full-moon-scar1 y-halloween-scene[1]
 A Simple Raven's HALOWEEN prediction.

Sunday 21 October 2018

Jobs, jobs, jobs.


Jobs, jobs, jobs.Doug Ford, Jason Kenney rail against federal carbon tax ...

The phone rang, and it was a recording. The voice told me that I am invited to a rally where our “future” Premier Jason Kenney will host the Premier of Ontario to discuss a united front to stop the job-killing hated Carbon tax. Yeah, I whispered, we badly need jobs.  Every day I see people losing their jobs here and everywhere else, and places like the Crowsnest Pass are shrinking. The cities gain more homeless and others who need Social Assistance. The Carbon Tax is hated by the Koch brothers and the other oil sands owners but will not solve the lack of jobs issues.

I go back in memory, a privilege that is reserved for old people like me. The year was 1970, and I went to the supermarket. The manager stopped for a chat. Our cashiers, he said, are second to none and they are highly paid. You must be pretty smart to know every item in the store, prices, codes and know what is on sale. He went on to describe some more positions, and I came out with a new appreciation for the people who serve me at the store. It was a short time later that barcodes and scanners were introduced. A worker pushed my cart to the parking lot and placed my groceries carefully in the trunk of my car. I stopped at the Gas Station, where a familiar person filled my gas, checked the oil and cleaned my windshield and then I went to the bank.  The bank had four tellers and a supervisor. I came home and checked my mailbox where the Postman left the mail and took the milk that the milkman left in the milkshute to the fridge. Now I watched the news. Every station and each newspaper had reporters in every part of the world.

Later that night I paid an attendant at the hospital parking when I was visiting a friend and stopped at A&W where a young woman brought my order to my car window. The girl took my cash and cleared my tray away. There were no self-serve places. On the way home I passed by a few family grocery stores, laundry mats, and family restaurants. Every second or third corner had a garage with a gas station and the familiar barbershop Barber’s pole red, white and blue twirling. I looked around with satisfaction and confidence. It was easy to start a little business and jobs were everywhere. People worked in manufacturing, others in government jobs and thousands were busily fixing things instead of selling new “made abroad” items that will be thrown away in short order.

There was competition everywhere driving the economy forward. The little family owned businesses competed with each other on providing better service and downtown offered competition between the big stores, Hudsson Bay, Woodwards, Woolco, Woodwards, Kmart, Eatons, Simpsons Sears, and other names I have forgotten. It was Capitalism that we were proud of.

There were a lot of jobs around that were not very productive. I remember people doing personal business on work time, and we all complained about it. The small business owners very often were bitter over the fact that others in big unionized outfits got away with working ideal shifts and not doing much. Adjustments had to be made, and they were. Life is meant to be a struggle, and nothing remains the same for long.

The big crunch came somewhere in the eighties. It was gradual and hard to follow. The obvious fact was that we shifted emphasis from providing jobs and a reasonable standard of living for the majority, and highlighted a need to make everything more efficient. Slowly the little businesses disappeared and were replaced by big corporations. Made in Canada or the USA items became hard to find, and big stores were closing down to be replaced by chain big box stores from other places. Automation took over most of the working class better-paying jobs leaving people with average ability barely able to make ends meet.

Some of us went to upgrade skills, but there were so many who lacked the ability and often fell back on already strained safety nets called social security. We began to have surplus people. Combine this with changes in agriculture, loss of fisheries and newly developed building and manufacturing methods, and we were in trouble. Predatory Capitalism was born.

 

Instead of figuring out solutions we took the easy way out and moved production to places with lower labor costs. No-one was willing to admit that our efficiencies outstripped our needs and that the few people who made it to the top of the food chain no longer needed the billions of people who didn’t. No-one was dealing with the fact that the price we may end up paying for all the advances may be the end of the world as we know it.

Now I see Mr. Doug Ford on a stage proclaiming. My friends, we will beat the job-killing Carbon Tax and get Justin Trudeau's hands out of our pockets. Help is on the way. His one step of pulling Ontario out of the Cap And Trade agreement already costs Ontarians three billion dollars. Now he wants to help me save less than $6 on my energy bill per month to create jobs?

If Mr. Ford wants to help Alberta, I have a better suggestion. Why does he not use his influence down east, get together with the new premier of Quebec, and allow an Energy East pipeline to supply Alberta oil to the rest of Canada. An energy independent Canada could export excess refined in New Brunswick oil to Europe, and we could all be happy.

Above all, we would not purchase oil from terrible places and not create pollution transporting the oil halfway around the world. Come on Mr. Kenney, show your skill and get your friend Doug to help us where we need help. There are lots of jobs in building a pipeline, aren’t there?

Sunday 14 October 2018

The only Constant is Change.


The only Constant is Change.

One of the people I admire for his hard work, volunteer spirit, personal achievements, family relationships and display of smarts is a friend named John. You can trust John and take a good example from him. He is always ready to help others and leads by a good example. John was born to a poor miners family and was brought up to have self-respect, work hard and give his best in every situation. He is a great believer that change is good. Perhaps that is his biggest strength. While most people expand a large amount of energy on resisting change, John says with a smile, why are people scared of change, Avner?

People do resist change, and when a change occurs, they split into two or more camps. Those who want the change, often because they see some benefit from it, and those who had things just the way they wanted them or lost something due to the change. Often people worked hard towards something, and even if the change is good, they suffer the loss of face. My friend, Bob the philosopher, has a favorite saying, “change is the only constant.”

I remember a scene from my childhood. A family of newcomers lived with their kids and grandma in an old house. Their street wasn’t paved, and of course, there were no sidewalks. We lived in a tropical environment where it rained a lot, and the whole place was full of mud. The old grandma, concerned about the kids, used to walk around the neighborhood with a hand-sewn canvas basket and collect pebbles. Buying a load of gravel was not an option yet. She would go every day, collect the rocks and dump them in front of their home until she had a nice pad in front of the whole house. When we kids walked on it, she would watch and tell us to be careful since the “babies” needed a dry place to play. Some of the boys used to run and sort of skid on the gravel while old grandma chased after them with a stick shouting for us to go away. I used to laugh with the rest of the boys, till one day, I saw the tears streaming down her dusty, wrinkled face. It was not a joke, she really suffered. When I noticed her crooked back and arthritic deformed hands I actually walked away with shame.

The town was growing, and the roads were being paved. Soon came the day when a crew showed up to pour a sidewalk. Most of the neighbors waited a long time for that day, and people were even predicting that it won't be long before we get a street light. Construction was happening all over town, and the kids were excited about the colorful pipes that were piled by the school with the promise that there will be a swing set and a slide. The world was changing, and as far as we kids knew, it was changing for the good. A little tractor showed up with a scraper blade in front and was working hard blowing smoke and dust smoothing the ground for the sidewalk when a commotion broke out. I went to look.

The old grandma was sprawled in front of the blade of the tractor, and a police siren was coming closer. A girl, about ten carrying two metal buckets and a dustpan got between the adults and went to the old woman and said. Grandma, can we have your rocks for the new slide, please? It is muddy. For the next hour, there was a line of people carrying buckets full of rocks. A change happened in the right way.

We used to teach a course at my workplace about resisting change. Everyone should take it. I personally resist change and support change depending on the situation.

Globally: I want all the people who are hurt by Climate change to sue and get their money back from all the other people who are causing it by refusing to look at the facts.

Nationally: I want to see Canada become fully independent by being completely self-sufficient even if things will cost more for a duration.

Provincially: I don’t want Alberta to go back to the days when our lives fully depended on oil, and we had no chance of surviving without it. Many countries have no oil, and most of our other resources, and are doing very well.

Locally: So many of us are complaining that the government doesn’t have a new pipeline built yet. I want to see if those people will show us how to get the Coleman Downtown beautification project done so we can start on the next town upgrade.

I am writing this to my friend John and to all the people who support change and believe that one can’t stand in the way of progress. Change is good and unavoidable. This world was created to always change, and it has the capacity to change back if it’s gone too far, but not without a lot of people being hurt.

Every artist knows that at some point the piece of art is finished and shouldn’t change anymore. It is one of the biggest challenges to know when is this point occurring.

A change is usually needed in response to a need or perhaps it became available due to a new discovery. Some will want a change, and new opportunities, while others will protect the old ways which work well for them. After considering the need for change, it is time to figure out how to properly effect change. My friend John and others like him, must not wonder why people are scared of change and consider carefully the “why” and the “how.”

We should never take the easy way and inflict change on others. If we do, we may lose more than we gain.

https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.

Sunday 7 October 2018

The road to happiness is straight ahead.

The road to happiness is straight ahead.
I believe that a human is created in the image of God. What is God is a harder question to answer. My good friend who has native blood in his veins said that God is the creator. In that case, let's assume that human is also a creator. Perhaps I can create one miracle. Feeling the responsibility of being a creator upon my shoulders, I went asking people what they see as the most important change we should make to this world. Some answered fast while others took time to think about it, but the same answer came forth. If people had one wish, they would ask for PEACE. Humans are scared most of the other humans. Why?
There are a number of good reasons big and small. Most obvious is the fact that people need a space on earth and need to eat. Breathing and drinking water are also important, but it used to be guaranteed, which it is no more. Next comes the need to be safe from other humans who will kill you to take what you have, followed closely by enterprising folks who will use you and discard you. That is a problem for us all but more pronounced for the 52% humans who are females.
There is a war between the various races of humans. A war between the rich and the poor, between national groups, religious groups, those who feel entitled to more than others, people who have other sexual attractions, various moral codes and of course the gender war. The biggest reason of all is who will control the world.
People fight for control at all levels, and we can see it even in the behavior of toddlers. In history, the conflict was between rulers who managed to build empires and use their populations as great armies, and slowly it shifted to economic control dictated by those who have the most money and want to rule the world at any cost.
A lot of the super-rich people are innocent of this charge. People who worked hard in some given field and are living according to their means are not the problem and often contribute greatly to philanthropic causes. Often their initiative is advancing peace. Others resort to cheating the rules while others abuse whole populations, and even cause wars. You can count in the weapon manufacturers, who must have wars and those who use energy as currency to gain and keep power. It is hard to sift out who is in which camp, so all get blamed.
The small percentage of rich people who have something to do with wars have bought into the Neo-Liberal or Extreme Right theory and are now using their considerable resources in politics, while the unaware masses are buying in simply by following well-crafted marketing campaigns. The ideas are simple. Lower taxes (mostly for corporations), reduce government regulations and keep out people who may water down profits. Big anti-immigration sentiment has been artificially created. Next comes demands to increase regulations on those who hinder business ventures, ( environmental reasons for example,) increase taxes on the lower economic classes or reducing their government services, and often place restrictions on organizing labor, minimum wage opposition and alike.
 “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
[Remarks on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress, 13 March 1962]”
― John F. Kennedy

The people around the world are trying peaceful demonstrations, getting arrested beaten and sometimes killed. Many more suffer financial ruin and ridicule even by the most powerful person in the world. The situation is not improving since a great number of political leaders, as well as many media outlets, are subject to pressure from big money.
Since the argument in favor of a few taking the resources of the many, is so weak, they are pressured to use an old technique called lying. Nothing is new under the sun.
“There is nothing in the record of the past two years when both Houses of Congress have been controlled by the Republican Party which can lead any person to believe that those promises will be fulfilled in the future. They follow the Hitler line - no matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as truth.”
― John F. Kennedy
This is a quote from 1962. Many of us remember the campaign that led the US and not so great, Great Britain to wage war on Iraq. Repeated lies, followed by millions killed and, sorry, sorry, we made a mistake.
I purchased a greeting card. It wishes “Health peace and prosperity” to the recipient. Being made in the image of the creator I want to give health but it is already given. Most ailments are healed by themselves. I wish to give prosperity, but I live in a very prosperous province of a prosperous country. With many years of plenty behind us, every person here should be prosperous if the wealth would have been shared. I want to give peace, but peace is not possible when so many people are continuously abused for reasons they can not change. What I can do, with my power to create is to convince people to use the power they already have and strive for equality.
Two forces fight to subjugate most humans. Communism, which is now defeated and Alt-Right Fascism. Peace will be possible when we get together and insist that both will be securely neutralized by “we the people.”
Women accept pay to be tortured on pornographic movies or to marry into wealth. Kids are starving or trafficked for sex and labor. People from countries where disaster or war strike are forced to beg for their lives and often perish. The solution is out of the hands of the creator since people have free will which they must exercise.
Peace, the most coveted commodity, is possible if most of us instead of complaining will demand that our leaders will create conditions that will allow it. Be not afraid.

A new Human.

  A new Human. Some time ago I was listening to a past American president's campaign speech. He was threatening harm to people who did...