Pubdate: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 Source: Creston Valley Advance (CN BC) Copyright: 2005 Sterling Newspapers Ltd. Contact: http://www.crestonvalley.com/advance/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1413 Author: Lorne Eckersley Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mjcn.htm (Cannabis - Canada) SELF-GOVERNING MEANS TAKING A STAND The office dictionary takes a pretty simple approach to define sovereignty: self-governing. While there may be no clear agreement on what exactly is entailed to be a sovereign, or self-governing state, it seems obvious to me that it should involve as much security and self-sufficiency as possible. Canadians are probably in agreement that defense is a great conundrum. We simply could never amass the resources to put up a serious defense against our American neighbors, not only the most heavily armed nation on the planet, but one of the great suppliers of arms to other countries including those that might be defined as enemies. In areas of feed production, legal systems and energy supply, however, there is little reason why we should not act as though we could be under siege tomorrow. In fact, it would be prudent to do so, given that under the current regime the United States is now as dogmatic in its determination to impose its values on the rest of the world as the U.S.S.R ever was. (Witness the recent appointment of an ambassador to the United Nations, in which the president bypassed Congress.) That dogma includes an almost religious adoration of the marketplace; George Bush has been quoted as saying that U.S. energy policy should include encouragement to consume energy - as if Americans and Canadians need a push. The difference of course, is that Canada can be as self-sufficient as it chooses when it comes to energy, and the Americans can't If we had been presented with an announcement 40 years ago that our provincial natural gas supplier was to be sold to an American firm I think there would have been tremendous protest. Forty years later, however, a plan to sell Terasen Gas to a privately-held U.S. corporation is barely creating ripple of dissent. Apparently, we have been so brainwashed by the notion of globalization that we just take it as inevitable that if a foreign country wants secure access to our resources (as opposed to simply paying for the commodity) they can simply buy existing supply and delivery mechanisms. It was a peculiar coincidence that on the day the Terasen sale was announced the news was also dominated by the story of a raid on the BC Marijuana Party Bookstore by Vancouver police. It wasn't the raid the generated the controversy though. Police were acting as agents for the US Drug Enforcement Agency, which takes exception to the export from Canada of marijuana seeds to the U.S. Given that we are a mouse in bed with an elephant, affected by every movement of the behemoth, I wonder if Canadian police could demand the arrest of, say, George W. himself, because we believe that he's broken laws by going to war against, oh say, Afghanistan, without genuine provocation. I don't think Canadians, on the whole, are thrilled that so many of us are unwilling or unable to get through our days without the use of mind-altering drugs. But we are certainly realistic enough to realize that, on a scale of genuine societal problems, marijuana isn't high on the list, pragmatic enough to realize that the vaunted "war on drugs" is unwinnable and intelligent enough to focus our efforts in ways that don't simply throw hundreds of thousands of people in jail for what are essentially victimless crimes. No reasonable person could argue that the export of marijuana seeds to the U.S. is on par, for instance, with the planeloads and shiploads of cocaine and heroin that daily enter the U.S. The actual act of the DEA "request" for Canadian police to do their bidding would seem more like a testing of the waters, just to see whether Canadians are as docile and compliant as we often seem to be. Canadians need to ask some hard questions of themselves. Have we truly benefited from free trade (which, keep in mind, is only really free for businesses, and not for you and I) and globalization, and are any of the perceived benefits worth the inevitable loss of sovereignty that comes from not securing our energy supplies and allowing outside influence on our legal systems? Americans are a fiercely independent lot and the Bush administration is adamant that all relations with other countries be designed so Americans reap the greatest benefits. We could take a lesson. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake