Calgary skies are being occupied by surveillance military choppers. Every day they fly low over empty streets, shaking homes with the sound of war. They peruse the public at low altitudes without call or cause. It’s as if we are under martial law.

Meanwhile, CBC and CTC report that Occupy Calgary protesters have gotten the boot and TransCanada will continue getting the loot. A few social justice awakeners down at city hall have to go to court and yet the dirty pipelines of oil are presented as viable and necessary business deals.

In the heart of the knowing at the belly of the beast, Nicole Running Rabbit reports that, “Damages to Olympic Plaza have been paid back to the ‘city of Calgary’ in advance, to the tune of billions of dollars in oil royalties & other non-renewable resources that are scraped out of our mother earth & off the backs of Siksika/Kainai/Peigan/TsuuTina/Nakoda People, while some of us have no clean water to drink in our homes, if we are lucky to even have homes on reservation”

A quarter of Albertans work for under $15 an hour and a third live in poverty. Plus, 73,000 children were living in poverty in 2009 — an increase of 40 per cent compared to 2008. The average income has gone down while the cost of living goes up. Rent and utility costs are incredibly high. Half of the homeless have jobs and can’t afford rent. While city council is increasing property taxes to pay for even more police, who already receive a quarter of the budget. Walmart doesn’t pay GST here because they are considered a valued contributor to the community. We are told we are wealthy, when we really are just kept, working hard for the oil sands to put more CO2 in the air than anywhere else in the world.

University of Alberta professor Gordon Laxer notes that we could easily become another Detroit. The pollution and waste of water is so severe that Calgary could become a wasted desert. The fracking alone is destroying rural wells and drinking water. This practice of horizontally ripping the earth is banned in some States. It’s odd to live in a place where even the U.S. considers Alberta to be a dirty polluter. Our new premier recently went to Washington and vehemently opposed the decision to postpone the Keystone pipeline. A TransCanada venture that could have endangered the drinking water of 14 States. Even Alberta co-op radio CKUA (that is mostly funded by listeners) plays positive commercials for TransCanada.

Ironically the wisdom of the indigenous will lead the ways of science and commerce in the future. When animals were killed it was with the intention to keep the rest of the species abundant. When water was taken it was with respect to its ongoing purity. When trees were felled and vegetables grown, ecology was respected and left to grow beyond our greed.