Deer me!

Touche!

Caroline's ambulance service has new home

The new ambulance building is officially open - ambulance service founder Andrew Moffat, board president Dwight Oliver, operations  (and building construction) manager Yvonne Evans and board member Vern Graham

Photos and story by Helge Nome

Thirty years after having been incorporated the Caroline and District Volunteer Ambulance Association has a new home, in a recently built and just expanded building next to the post office in Caroline. The event was celebrated at an open house hosted by the association on Friday, October 26 with local early volunteers, municipal representatives and supporters present.

Conducted tours of the new facility were led by operations manager Yvonne Evans, revealing a completely "at home" atmosphere in the residential part of the building used by volunteers covering 24/7 shifts all year round. Caroline's ambulance service is one-of-a-kind in Alberta where Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics from all over Alberta volunteer to keep the service viable and an integral part of the province's emergency medical response infrastructure.

In return the volunteers are credited for the time they cover shifts in Caroline, helping to maintain their certification as medical responders, and now do so in an environment that equals that of their private homes. To boot, it happens in a small rural community in the best part of Alberta. And they are not idle here: Evans estimates that  the call tally for 2012 will be around the 500 mark. This includes patient transportation between hospitals, being part of an ambulance pool.

Service founder, and mover and shaker to get it up and running in the late 1970ies, Andrew Moffat along with wife Daphne, attended and were recognized for their contribution at a presentation in the new facility.

As the demands on the service grew over the years and fewer local volunteers were available to carry the 24/7 workload, Moffat took an innovative approach to maintaining its integrity by recruiting volunteers from other areas of Alberta in return for a very special work environment and credit for time on shift. This system has been continually expanded over the years and Caroline is now a sought after location in which to serve by ambulance service professionals from all over Alberta.

The service was recently accredited after having gone through an extensive review by Accreditation Canada, a fact that was emphasized by manager Yvonne Evans in her presentation. She also expressed her thanks to both the Village of Caroline and Clearwater County who have helped the service financially in times past when things got tight.
For more photos and commentary from the open house, go to http://albertawestphotos.blogspot.ca here

Will Sol, the great sun-god, devour us all?

The corporate war against science

Caroline Seniors Drop In - October update

Born in October. Front: Janice Waite, Connie Holbrook, Edna Pengelly.
Back: Dan Onysyk, Lawrence Pengelly, Gordon Neufeld, Dwight Oliver.

By Helge Nome

The Seniors Drop In host a pot luck supper every third Monday of the month at 6pm at the Drop In Center in Caroline. All welcome.
A meeting and entertainment follow the supper. Don Bouvette played his guitar and sang some of his own compositions on October 15.

Burma signs deal to recover buried WWII Spitfires

Sixty Brand New Spitfires – Still in Their Shipping Crates – Buried in Burma All of These Years

This is a dream come true for old plane rebuilders, to have so many of these with all original parts. Air shows of the future could have squadrons of Spitfires buzzing the field...Jim W. Dean.
Read article here

Obama for President?

Brainwashing 101

Redneck world

Towards a Western Retreat from Syria

Where NATO has failed to make war, the CTSO is preparing to make peace. The Secretary General of the Organization Nikolay Bordyuzha is setting up a peacekeeping force of 50,000 men, ready to be deployed in Syria.

by Thierry Meyssan

 

The Syria war drags on. Continuing it has become too expensive and too dangerous for its neighbors. Russia, which aims to re-establish itself in the Middle East, is trying to show the United States that it is in their best interest to allow Moscow to resolve the conflict.
The military situation in Syria is turning against those in Washington and Brussels who hoped to change the regime there by force. Two successive attempts to take Damascus have failed and it has become clear that that objective cannot be achieved.


On July 18th, an explosion killed the leadership of the Council of National Security, signalling the beginning of a vast offensive during which tens of thousands of mercenaries descended on the Syrian capital from Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. After several days of pitched battles, Damascus was saved when the fraction of the population hostile to the government chose out of patriotism to assist the National Army rather than bid welcome to the forces of the FSA.

On September 26, al-Qaeda jihadists were able to penetrate the interior of the Defense Ministry, disguised as Syrian soldiers and carrying false papers. They intended to detonate their explosive vests in the office of the joint chiefs of the military but did not get close enough to their target and were killed. A second team attempted to take over the national TV station to broadcast an ultimatum to the President but were not able to reach the building as access was blocked moments after the first attack. A third team targeted government headquarters and a fourth was aimed at the airport.

In both cases, NATO coordinated the operations from its Turkish base in Incirlik, seeking to provoke a schism at the core of the Syrian Arab Army and rely on certain generals for the purpose of overthrowing the regime. But the generals in question had long been identified as traitors and marginalized from effective command. In the aftermath of the two failed attacks, Syrian power was reinforced, giving it the internal legitimacy necessary to go on the offensive and crush the FSA.
Read remainder of article here

Battery trick

Madrid protests against new austerity measures

Hmm.....

Hegemony and Propaganda: The Importance of Trivialisation in Cementing Social Control

By Colin Todhunter

 

 Knowledge in modern societies has expanded to the point whereby specialisms and sub-specialisms are the norm. It is just not possible for one person to have in-depth knowledge of every discipline. We must rely on others to convey such knowledge, usually in relatively simplistic terms. Most of us have to take at face value many of the ideas and concepts that we are bombarded with in this age of instant, mass communications and information overload.

 

 People tend to like simplicity. In many instances, not possessing sufficient expertise on matters, they require it. They require easily manageable packages of knowledge, and these packages become taken for granted stocks of ‘common sense’ knowledge that enable them to cope, however faulty or misrepresented that ‘knowledge’ may be.
Politicians and the media also recognise people’s need for simplicity. And here lies the problem, particularly in an increasingly complex and confusing world. In order to rally the masses around certain ideas and to make things ‘simple’ for them, both politicians and the media have to a large extent taken their cue from Edward Bernays, the father of advertising, propaganda and public relations. This is where simplicity morphs into manipulation.
Bernays knew how to manipulate groups of people and get the masses hooked on the products and messages of modern society. We are now all subjected to this type of manipulation each and every day by the incessant bombardment of commercials.
It was the late US academic Rick Roderick who noted the trend towards the banality, simplification and trivialisation that the ad industry excels in is now prolific throughout society. He referred to a rampant phenomenon of important issues and problems being reduced to a fad of some kind through continuous repetition. For example, political debates that are seemingly in deadlock like gay rights and abortion issues, although important, have become almost a pointless debate. The same few points are being thrown around so often that they’ve almost become a fad. This doesn’t mean that the issues themselves aren’t important; it just means that they’ve been reduced to something resembling sound-bite debates.
Continue reading article here

Multiplying Europe's fiscal suicide

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard


The entire EU austerity plan is based on a false premise. This disastrous error is now clear beyond any reasonable doubt.
The Teuto-Calvinists believe – or profess to believe, since much of their dogma is national self-interest dressed up as theory – that the fiscal multiplier is around 0.5.
That is to say, fiscal retrenchment worth 1pc of GDP will cut output by half as much, or around 0.5pc over two years. There is pain, but at least there is gain.
This is based on the IMF's analysis of fiscal crises over the decades.
Well, it has not worked out like that. Ireland has contracted at nearly seven times the speed, Spain four times, and Greece three times.
Read article here

Cynthia McKinney On Leadership

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

Those who have followed the Republican campaign for the presidential nomination and current contest between Romney and Obama know that the United States has no political leadership in Washington.
Billions of dollars have been spent on political propaganda, but not a single important issue has been addressed. The closest the campaign has come to a political issue is which candidate can grovel the lowest at the feet of Israeli prime minister Netanyahu. Romney won that contest. But for the rest, well, it is like two elementary school children sticking their tongues out at one another.
The question of US political leadership has been on my mind for some time. I can remember when political leadership still existed and when bipartisan cooperation could be mustered on enough issues to keep the country and the government functioning.
But no more. It might have been Newt Gingrich who, as Speaker of the House, destroyed bipartisan cooperation by making war on the Democratic Party, warfare that Karl Rove has taken to a new height.
When a country loses leadership, how does a country get leadership back? This is an important question. Without leadership, there is only violence. Once the Romans lost their republic, there was no one to lead them and they were ruled by violence. Will this be our fate?
These thoughts were in my mind when I happened to hear Cynthia McKinney speak. Here was a leader, a person with sufficient fire, knowledge, and compassion for others. Cynthia McKinney served six terms in the House of Representatives as a Democrat from Georgia. In 2008 she was the Green Party’s candidate for president. As a US Representative, Cynthia McKinney defied the cowardly Nancy Pelosi and introduced articles of impeachment against President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Keep reading article here

Museum fundraiser coming up

Log cabin at the Danish Museum in Dickson

Volunteers at the Royal Danish Museum at Dickson seek to preserve the past on their site set in the woods south of Dickson. This includes both pagan and Christian history from Europe and settlement history in Canada. You can support their cause by attending the upcoming bazaar:

Tables available for our upcoming event, $35 per table. Julestue Christmas Bazaar, Saturday, November 3, 2012 - 10 AM - 4 PM at the Spruce View Hall. Call Joanne-403-227-4917

The shifting sands of gangster land

The good old days: Buddies - French President Sarkozy and Gaddafi

The good old days: Buddies - British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gaddafi

Editor: The following article sheds light on the world of "real politik"

Libya: How Many Dirty Western Hands?

By Felicity Arbuthnot

 

 

Oh what a tangled web they weave

When first they practice to invade

A sovereign nation and deceive

The world about their dark crusade.

 Michael Leunig, Poet, Cartoonist, 1945

This weekend a detailed article (i) suggested that a: “French secret serviceman, acting on the express orders of the then President Sarkozy, is suspected of  ”the murder of Colonel Quaddafi”, on 20^th October last year.
Whilst bearing in mind that the NATO-backed insurgents now in power, who have near destroyed much of Libya, de-stabilised, terrorized and hope to carve up Libya’s resources for their, rather than the country’s benefit, have every reason to wish to disassociate themselves from the butchery of Colonel Quaddafi’s terrible death, the new allegations illuminate interesting points.
The French assassin, it is claimed, infiltrated the mob rabidly manhandling the Colonel, and shot him in the head.
“The motive, according to well placed (Libyan) sources”, was to prevent any chance of interrogation into Sarkozy’s links with Colonel Quaddafi.
Read article here

The Sound of Earthsong