Editor, The News:
Re: ‘Desire the right things’ (Letters, Dec. 18).
I’m confused, as often happens when I read The News.
I can cite some examples of commentary I read in our paper that makes my head wobble.
Cherryl Katnich and the ‘far out’ Craig Spiers, I won’t even mention further.
But I will mention Dan Banov because he says things like, ‘People shouldn’t protest if they don’t know all the issues’. Then later in his letter he complains that some people don’t vote “because the issues are too complex.”
So if I’m reading this right, he says people who are uninformed shouldn’t protest, but they should vote?
I would argue too often the uninformed do vote and often even run for office.
Egad.
I guess he was hoping even more uninformed people would have voted for him and his pothead party.
He also says that if you are someone who protests the pipeline or pipelines, you are uninformed and you are being led by people with narrow, vested interests.
I guess he is saying, alternatively, that the people who stand to make stupid amounts of money when these deals go through, wouldn’t mislead you and me, and certainly not to the enlightened Mr. Banov.
In essence, he says if we don’t agree with him, we must be the uninformed.
I wonder if he has ever pondered the possibility that he may be well informed, but his informants are full of Shineola.
I also wonder if he is aware that his informants have so much more to gain than the rest of us. Fortunately, money has never corrupted anyone.
Unfortunately, his informants have him convinced him the one thing that trumps all is money.
Ironically, ‘Dan the Ban’ will see little or none of that.
Coincidently, his informants will make off like the bandits. Has he been informed of that?
Not a chance.
His recent sales pitch attempts to convince us that if the pipelines go through they will supply us with a magic elixir to cure homelessness and cancer. Now that is incredible, and when I say incredible, I mean not credible.
Mr. Banov also tells us that there ‘is the extreme remote chance of a small environmental damage.’
Who told him that? I may not be sharper than a bag of oil, but I’m not buying that one. Especially here on the precarious fault lines of the Cascadia subduction zone, where we are due for a giant mega-thrust earthquake any time now, as well as the northern and southern Cordillera zones that threaten pipelines with their inevitable cataclysms .
Hell, I can’t see why we wouldn’t want to put crude oil and bitumen in fragile pipes and lay them all over our nice clean province. Can you imagine the chaos and numerous large and putrid environmental disasters that could happen all over the province if those pipes bust – gushing that crap all over the land and waterways as we all scramble to save our own backsides in our homes.
Who’s going to be available to manage that mess?
But we don’t have to worry about that because we, the informed, will be so flush with money that we will just drive out to the toxic, wet, black, mess in our Rolls Royces and soak it up with wads of cash. Or with ducks, soil, fresh water and fish. Whichever is less valuable to us.
Grant Baker
Maple Ridge