Dear Friend and Reader:

I AM BACK .....WITH A VENGEANCE!

Many moons have passed since I last accosted you with my Spirit Quest.

Some of you have enquired whether I have dropped your address from the

roster of my correspondents. Others have suggested that I have decamped

to a warmer clime, not a bad suggestion for this winter. Neither is the

reason for my truancy, rather, I confess that I have been dealing with a

health issue that has deprived me of some of my writing energy and ideas.

Nine years ago on a sunny spring day I stood by the banks of the Ottawa

River and observed the water running over the stones. It was very soothing

and pleasant, however, there was something else sitting on my mind. In an

hour or so I would have to present myself at the hospital to hear the result

of the urologist’s investigation of my prostate gland.

“ We have discovered cancer cells on both sides of the gland.” It wasn’t

quite the blow that I had imagined, there seemed no indication that the

cancer had spread beyond the gland itself. I was recommended to an

oncologist for further investigation and treatment.

Nevertheless, as I left the office I was conscious that I was hosting an inner

battle. Over the next months and years I would always be aware of this

malaise. I comforted myself that I had no pains or discomforts, that my

symptoms were all statistical.

Since then I have undergone radiation and hormone therapy and more

lately with a rising PSA rate had to undertake what I had vowed to myself I

would never accept: chemotherapy. It was in reaction to this invasive

therapy that I recently spent two weeks in hospital. The therapy had worked

wonders, my PSA had come tumbling down to below the normal level but

there was a price to be paid. My immunology had suffered. My white blood

cell count had dropped dramatically and I felt unwell. Cancer in all its forms

is the body attacking itself. My natural defences had in fact turned against

me.

The McMurtrys are a well known Toronto family. Among the four sons is

Robert a medical researcher and John a professor of philosophy at the

University of Guelph. Some years ago when their mother came down with a

form of cancer these sons spent much time thinking about her condition

and the nature of her disease.

Robert with his clinical knowledge was of course concentrating on the

human body and its vagaries but John became aware that what held true

for the physical body had parallels for the body politic. In other words there

was much evidence that the very forces that ought to assure a just and

equitable society had a way of being turned against itself. He compared the

behaviour of corporations in the economy to the conduct of biological

cancer cells. He tells about it in a book called “The Cancer Stage of

Capitalism.” Ed Finn, editor of the CCPA Monitor recently wrote the

following about it:

“To invade and multiply in the human body, a cancer virus has to overcome

the body’s natural defences. A strong immune system has a good chance

of beating back the virus invaders, but someone with an immune system

weakened by poor nutrition and environmental carcinogens can’t stop the

cancer from spreading .

The unchecked cancer doesn’t win, of course . This is battle in which both

sides ultimately lose, because soon after the cancer kills the host, it also

dies. But that’s the only way it can function.

Its the same with corporations . Their CEOs are also programmed to

maximize profits, which means spreading and growing by any means - by

cutting jobs, battering unions , evading taxes , corrupting politicians ,

exploiting sweatshop labour , clearcutting forests , pillaging natural

resources, increasing poverty and contaminating the environment.

The corporate cancer is doing what comes naturally to all cancers : it is

growing; it is feeding on its hosts.”

Austerity, privatization,, cut backs in social programs, education and health

care have been very much in vogue as a means of restoring an economy to

profitability by means of structural adjustments, which have done great

damage to economies. They affect the non wealthy class while enhancing

the status of the rich and corporations whose incomes have vaulted beyond

recognition. The public is assured that its the only way

Our own country is a case in point where the petroleum industry with

promises of jobs and wealth have released a cancer that has all but

destroyed the ecology of northern Alberta. No warnings have been

sufficient to deter further extraction and shipments of petro products. Like a

cancer it spreads exponentially bringing about climate change.

Our government who ought to be in the forefront of protecting our country

and its natural resources are way out ahead in propagating more assault

on the natural environment. Few are allowed to stand in its way that are not

denounced as foreign interference.

Cancer is writ large not only on the bodies of our aboriginal people who live

in close proximity to the tar pits and the rivers polluted by them. Seeing the

photoography of Edward Burtynsky is a shattering exeperience.

Can cancer in all its forms be beaten? The motto of the Canadian Cancer

Society assures that it can and indeed there are many cancer survivors, but

the disease in all its various forms is almost of epidemic proportions.

Similarly the corporate attack on the body politic is devastating particularly

to the middle and lower classes and indeed the economic heath of nations.

Finn concludes : “Some environmentalists envision our planet as a giant

living organism . They call her Gaia, and they lament all the wounds

inflicted on her seas, forests, ecosystems and diverse living creatures.

They are still confident that Gaia will survive the corporate cancer

onslaught but fear that many of its life forms - including humankind itself -

will not. The battle for survival is on!

Hanns F Skoutajan

SPIRIT QUEST : March 29, 2014