Betty Krawczyk, Harriett Nahanee, The Legislature "Raids" Fiasco

Unseen even by some of the sharpest observers, the sad misinformation CanWest and the Globe and Mail purvey is not simply the result of unknowing, of a failure to see the complexity of society - because they see it all too clearly. They see clearly that the sell-out of B.C. wealth and ownership, the betrayal demonstrated by the violation of almost all key promises (except the ones to corporations) in the 2010 Olympic agreements, the enormous, shadowy corruption lurking behind the B.C. Legislature “raids” court activities, the underhanded and devious alienation of B.C. river power, the backroom “trade and labour” deal called TILMA to rob B.C. of power to legislate on behalf of British Columbians – all those things (and more) are slowly and surely getting to the British Columbia people. The B.C. people are beginning to react to a grossly corrupt provincial administration which is doing things the owners of CanWest and the Globe and Mail consider good, generally speaking. CanWest and the Globe and Mail are large private corporations without any fixed and identifiable responsibility to the people they produce material for, their readers. Real democracy gets in the way of the profit of big private corporations. Many, many theorists have pointed that out. CanWest and the Globe and Mail are big private corporations. And so those press/media giants erase much significant news, dilute important news they can’t avoid reporting, and attack any key people resisting the destruction of public ownership in B.C. and/or fighting for genuinely democratic representation and leadership in the province. Strange as it may seem Betty Krawczyk, whom the press barons now call “Eco-granny”, the simple woman who has been fighting for forest and wilderness, is, in fact, a huge symbol for them of what may happen if British Columbians seize hold of the fact that they are being pillaged, cheated, robbed, misinformed, lied to, and – increasingly – stripped of their fundamental freedoms as Canadians. How do the press barons put a lid on the inspiration provided by Betty Krawczyk? With lies and smears and insults and misinformation and ridicule. To start. The very recent concentration on Krawczyk, then, has a particular purpose. How do the press and media bury the death of Harriett Nahanee, get rid of any discussion about who is responsible? How do they gloze over the fact that Madam Justice Lorna Brown almost certainly violated fundamental tenets of fairness and impartiality in sentencing Harriett Nahanee to – in fact – conditions which are said to have brought about her unnecessary death? How do they get Lorna Brown off the hook as a lackey of the big private corporations? How do CanWest and the Globe and Mail convey that Harriett Nahanee got what she deserved, and, in fact – that anyone who messes with the plans of big private corporations deserves death? How do they build a consensus that to fight the pillage by big private corporations is to do the work of fools and crackpots? The recent concentration on Krawczyk is one strategy. If Krawczyk “asked for it”, if Krawczyk is a foolish old woman asking for trouble, then her companion is obviously the same. Forget Harriett Nahanee. She doesn’t matter. The two women, CanWest and the Globe insist, were not punished for fighting for justice. They were not punished for exposing the marriage of the courts and the corporations. They were not punished for exposing the deep, moral corruption of the Gordon Campbell government. They were punished for violating an injunction. They were punished for questioning the absolute right of private corporations to rule in British Columbia. They were punished for breaking the law. And no one must break the law. Simple. If Harriett Nahanee was sent to her death, that is perfectly reasonable. She broke the law, didn’t she? What does she expect? When police officers kill innocent people in strange circumstances, they aren’t breaking the law and no punishment follows. When cabinet members, their servants, and their corporate companions violate election promises and break the law (as is widely alleged) in what is more and more believed to be (in the sale of B.C. Rail) a huge and extensive fraud, the law is buried. When the public trust is violated in massive ways by the calculated theft of B.C. river power and the legislated muzzling of the population, are those things not done by thieves who have gained the power of government? If so, what then is the law? Who, then, is the criminal? How can an injunction be taken out against them? No injunction can be taken out against them, because injunctions are so constructed that they fit and serve private corporations mostly. Questions – like those ones – and related information should be put before the British Columbia people by responsible journalists in the province. They aren’t put before the people. Is it true, then, there are no responsible journalists in the province? There may be one, somewhere. See if you can find it. Anyone who surfaced such questions in columns or stories for the Globe and Mail or the CanWest Monopoly Corporation would very likely have a brief career in journalism. Talk of the nature and use of injunctions could fill many columns. In short, studies have shown they are used by corporations mostly to force groups and individuals to accept what is, in effect, rule by the corporations. They are rarely available to the individuals and groups who are targetted. They are granted by judges, and the judges have a personal interest in having them obeyed. The judges, very often, are not impartial, do not look into the circumstances of the injunction fully, do not take on a serious mediating role. For instance, the federal government, the provincial government, and the city of Vancouver all signed the Olympic agreement for 2010. That agreement sets out a requirement for a “green” Olympics with serious responsibility to the environment. The protesters at Eagle Ridge in West Vancouver were claiming that the contract signed by the three governments was, in fact, being broken. That is a very, very serious argument. Madam Justice Lorna Brown, I insist, was under full obligation – without motions or demands from people being acted against under the injunction – to examine that contract. She had, I insist, a role as Supreme Court judge responsible to all Canadians to act on behalf of justice even when and if she had not been directly and formally called to do so by participants in the dispute. She should have publicly examined the Olympic contract and she should, very likely, have had reason to call into question Olympic officials, cabinet members, and the U.S. corporation which tore apart Eagle Ridge. The outcome of that behaviour on the part of the Supreme Court judge – whatever her findings – would have been a B.C. public with much greater respect for the court than exists as I write. The courts – contrary to what CanWest and the Globe try to argue – do not have a right to respect. They only have a right to EARN the respect of Canadians. If they don’t earn the respect of Canadians, they fail in one of the most important obligations that falls to them. A Supreme Court judge is not a robot reading a rule-book. He or she is someone especially elevated in society to serve it with justice and impartiality, to lead it in matters of fairness and equity, to honour and uphold the constitution and the law, AND to assure that the best values of the society, expressed in its history, culture, and social aspirations are respected, considered, and weighed in decisions taken. When that does not happen – as a very large portion of British Columbians believe is the case with Harriett Nahanee and Betty Krawczyk– those British Columbians cannot get an injunction forcing, say, Madam Justice Lorna Brown to consider all relevant matters in making Eagle Ridge decisions. British Columbians have no access to legal instruments to force just behaviour on the courts. They look at the violations of the Olympic contract. They look at the Legislature “Raids” scandal involving (and perhaps implicating) high Gordon Campbell government officials. They look at the scandals in the ministry of Children and Families in which almost certain, criminal actions are papered over and papered over, and in which special investigators and Special Prosecutors appear and in which criminal wrong-doing is never discovered. They look at the secret and undemocratic manufacture of “treaties” like TILMA to rob British Columbians of democratic freedoms. They look at the theft of the power of B.C. rivers, carried out by secrecy, by repressive legislation, by contracts which are kept from British Columbians as much as possible, and by soiled and ugly attempted agreement that has to be blocked by the B.C. Utilities Commission. They look at the disgraceful and irresponsible and time-serving and greedy and profit-seeking and fawning and falsifying journalism they are served. They look at all the above and they make decisions. They conclude that power in their society is devoted to looting, pillage, and moral disintegration through the actions of the corporate world in cooperation with the government in power. As an example, on CBC radio, March 9, 2007, the solicitor general of B.C. was interviewed about the tragic deaths of agricultural workers in Abbotsford a few days ago. He knows nothing about the details (he said). He explained the reasons the Province lifted all supervision and surveillance (that worked well) in order – he said - to improve conditions. The expert interviewed immediately after him declared the minister falsified the situation very, very seriously, and reported incorrectly. Harriett Nahanee and Betty Krawczyk acted in relation to a part of that whole collection of apparent violations of human decency, and – in fact – to test the conclusion that power in our society is devoted to looting, pillage, and moral disintegration through the actions of the corporate world in cooperation with the government in power. To their satisfaction and to the satisfaction of a great many British Columbians they demonstrated that the conclusion is a just one. Harriett Nahanee was erased. Betty Krawczyk is incarcerated to teach her humility. A movie is made about the rape of the Vancouver area in support of the looters exploiting the 2010 Olympics – it is called The Five Ring Circus. “Activists” go to Vancouver City Hall and take down the expensive Olympic flag hanging there and remove it – in protest, they say, against the treatment of Harriett Nahanee. Is that the beginning of a war? Are British Columbians going to resist – with increasingly effective actions – the elements of our society devoted to looting, pillage, and moral disintegration through the actions of the corporate world (supported by the private corporate press) in cooperation with the government in power? We shall have to wait and see, won’t we. [Editor's note, name 'Nahanee' corrected in title and body. 2007 03 12 DrC] [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on March 12, 2007]