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Prime Minister Trudeau has enjoined the Great Canadian Petroleum War. Announcing the purchase, and promise of completion, of the contentious Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Extension pipeline project, the federal government effectively sided-up with Alberta’s “blue-eyed sheiks” and their allies in the transnational oil trade against the province of British Columbia, Canada’s gateway to the Pacific, and the entirety of the World’s environmental community.
But, even before Justin “Crudeau” made his Faustian bargain, federal agencies were already deployed at the service of the now outgoing Texans, arresting scores of citizens standing in the way of its pipeline’s progress using “injunctions” granted by BC’s own judiciary.
Betty Krawczyk knows more than most about being arrested. The activist, essayist, Green and Work Less Party candidate, and author renowned in BC as the “Environmental Grandmother”, has proven sand in the machine of social injustice and ecological destruction for more than fifty years.
From the front lines of the anti-segregation movement in her native Louisiana and resisting America’s war against Vietnam, to the forests of Clayoquot Sound and highway expansion through Eagleridge Bluffs, Betty has stood defiant in the face of bad laws and the systems perpetuating them.
Her book titles include: ‘Clayoquot: The Sound of My Heart’, ‘Lock Me Up Or Let Me Go: The Protests, Arrest and Trial of an Environmental Activist’, ‘Open Living Confidential: From Inside the Joint.’, ‘This Dangerous Place: My Journey Between the Passions of the Living and the Dead’, and ‘Betty, Blue Belle and Bitch’, and she blogs from her site, Betty’s Early Edition.Blogspot.com
Betty Krawczyk in the first half.
And; last week Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s controversial, and confrontational, Prime Minister was unceremoniously drubbed from office in a vote of no confidence. The leader of the People’s Party had taken a hard line against separatists in Catalonia, but corruption, more than Rajoy’s ham-handed response to the Catalan constitutional crisis, is responsible for his sudden and dramatic fall from grace.
Dr. Pablo Ouziel is a Post-Doctoral fellow at UVic whose project in progress is, ‘Towards Democratic Responses to the Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Forms of Participatory and Representative Civic Engagement.’
Pablo Ouziel and an upside down Spain in the second segment.
And; Victoria greentrepreneur and horticulturalist extraordinaire, Christina Nikolic will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to get up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Betty Krawczyk and girding our legal loins for B.C.’s Great Pipeline War.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/
