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Contents

A BRAND-NEW STADIUM

A BRAND-NEW STADIUM !?!

 

 Thursday, October 13, developers announced plans to land a stadium on the shore next to Crab Park, on top of the train tracks, and in full view of the DTES, and likely obliterating some of the mountain views.. This stadium idea, either at the originally proposed False Creek flats site or the Waterfront is really bad planning and smacks of major disrespect and worse to our community.

 What's disturbing is that City Councillor Jim Green and all senior staff have been involved in this for some months.

 'Green said the Whitecaps had presented initial designs and a full development application to city planners [in July] for a site on Coal Harbour and the. land and waterfront is being gobbled up. Kenneth Chan (Sun) reported this, and that Greg Kerfoot, Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club owner, had completed the purchase of waterfront property just east of the Seabus terminal & was already tendering the building contract This news came via Intrawest sources, a property management/development firm that handles large scale land transactions and owns the Whistler-Blackcomb and Mont Tremblant ski resorts. '

   How many of you have been officially or quietly informed? Bladerunners, an agency that gets people on-the-job training/apprenticeships at construction

 sites has apparently been quietly included (as a sop to us?), The Public Relations schtick:. "Show your support now and you can reserve Season's Tickets down the road..." They are clearly going over the heads oflocal people. A 15,000 seat stadium BOOM right in our neighbourhood and we squabble for crumbs!

 There are a variety of opinions. If you are dead . against it, then your language would be easy to write If you conclude we may not stop it, then forcing concessions is another thing. Language on this tack w_uld be about welcoming development that respects the local population and includes us in planning. providing employment, facilities, and improving our quality of life. We could ask the Whitecaps and their development partners to consult - engage the community in advance of going too far.

I fear if we are not on this immediately, it will gather such momentum that it is unstoppable.

      Vancouver is being designed as a "resort city" but the question remains, do we retain our community character and control? The precious little waterfront remaining must be planned for the benefit of the majority of local people, with dynamic use which preserves heritage while providing employment, recreation, culture, and housing for all.

 We reject the notion that we must be surrounded by entertainment zones 1ike Plaza of Nations, casinos, Molson Indy, Canada Place, BC Place, GM Place... all sandwiching our neighbourhood into oblivion for the entertainment of middle class audiences from outside our community.

 Our Downtown Eastside neighbourhood is at a critical time with massive gentrification in fullswing, and we require consultation and dialogue about what is in the best interests of local residents.

 Neither CPR, Vancouver Port Corporation, nor land developers will decide our community's future. We stopped a casino and we will stop a stadium.

 

[top]

Hold Your Peace

Hold Your Peace

Ancient cosmic egg

Serenity civilization 

Once in the land of solemn peace.

Earth, bleeding with blood

and tribulations

Wars and rumours of wars

Nations rise against nations

Hypocrisy and iniquity abound

Humanity created hell

and is now crying for

heaven and peace.

People shall only this obtain

When peace reigns like

a mighty stream.

Man is guilty of his own

many inventions,

to annihilate the human race.

Man’s creation is upon himself.

No new tricks for the old dog!

Talking about peace with drunken lies

Hold your peace;

the rest is of man’s fantasies,

till his own wrongful and

dubious decisions

bring him down to damnation.

The time is nigh

so hold onto your peace.

               Ayisha

[top]

24 HOURS of Feminist Solidarity

24 HOURS of Feminist Solidarity

to Overcome Poverty!

  The Canadian Women’s March 2005 Coalition is linking with local and global actions to eliminate poverty & violence against women in Canada and around the world.  On October 17th, 2005 the World March of Women has called for a Vigil: 24 Hours of Feminist Action and Solidarity.  Women in Canada will join women in all time zones around the globe to take to the streets at NOON on October 17 for one hour of action.

  Angela Regnier of the Canadian Federation of Students states that: "In Canada the Vigil is about showing solidarity with women around the world, and at home, on issues of poverty.  We are challenging our Prime Minister to reinvest in the social fabric of Canada and equitably support programs, such as social assistance, and related social services such as housing.” 

The Canadian Women’ March Coalition is also looking for legislation to support pay equity, child care and women’s equality from this federal government. 

Marie Clark Walker of the Canadian Labour Congress says, “It is about reminding him [the Prime Minister] that the cuts to social programs he made in 1995, as finance minister, have resulted in additional economic insecurity and poverty for women”.

  The Vigil on Oct. 17th will mark both the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty and the end of the World Relay for the Women's Global Charter for Humanity.  The charter was launched by the World March of Women on International Women’s Day (March 8th, 2005) in Sao Paulo, Brazil and has been passed hand-to-hand by women in 53 countries. Its journey will end Oct. 17th, 2005 in Quagadongou, Burkina Faso. 

  The Charter, created and agreed upon by 6000 women’s organizations worldwide, is based on five core values; equality, freedom, solidarity, justice and peace.  It is a feminist vision of a world free of exploitation, poverty and violence.

  Women and Men in Canada are demonstrating from Coast to Coast on Oct. 17th to end poverty:

v       Vancouver – Women bearing percussion instruments are meeting at noon at the Vancouver Art Gallery for a rally organized by the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centers (CASAC).

v       Ottawa – People gathering for a Public Action to Make Poverty History in front of the eternal flame from 8:00 a.m. - 8:30 a.m.  There will be drummers, street performers and radical cheerleading!

v       Hamilton – People congregating for a Solidarity Lunch hosted by the Daring Hope for Gender Justice Network of the United Church of Canada.

v       Moncton – Women marching down-town at Noon (gathering first at the Delta Beausejour).  The event is hosted by the Moncton Labour Council and the Canadian Labour Congress.

To find out about vigil events happening at noon on Oct. 17th in Canada and around the world, visit: http://www.marchemondiale.org/en/bulletin/05_2005.html, http://mmf.lecarrefour.org, or www.canada.marchofwomen.org

[top]

The truth is always an offence

The truth is always an offence

One thing I know about mankind

The truth is always an offence

I sit on the fence

Watching man disputing

and pulling truth to one side.

Truth, a sacred obligation,

is to deny others.

Organized, man-made

devices to manipulate the truth.

Corruption and propaganda.

Cold-eyed souls,

ignorant heart and mind

deviating the truth from

the needy and the heartthrob

The truth is always an offence

To the wicked and the weak-hearted.

                                   Ayisha

[top]

FAIR and Decent

FAIR and Decent

  I am a volunteer at the Carnegie Community Centre and I would like to say a few things about how some of the volunteers are treated and how the volunteers treat the people that come here to use the facility.

  I volunteer in 3 places:  The computer room,  Second floor reception and The kitchen

  I would like to start with the computer room. From personal experience, I have been treated pretty badly by some of the people who use the computer room. I have been called nasty names, people have yelled at me because they don't like the rules of the room etc.

  If you don't like the rules or how the room is being run, either don't come in and use the facility or take it up with security or an employee of Carnegie. Don't take it out on the volunteers. We are just donating our time to keep the centre open and running.

  I have seen and heard some of the volunteers be rude and nasty to the people that use the room; some of the people who come and use the computers are the same way but two wrongs don't make a right. Be nicer to the people It just makes you and the centre look foolish.

  When I am serving or doing the cash at the concession, I have had some customers be extremely rude and nasty to me and others. One time I was serving and this gentleman came up and ordered a lunch, I served it up and handed to him, he took his meal and sat down to eat it. He came back 20 minutes later and yelled at me by saying "DON'T EVER SERVE ME HARD, DRY RICE WITH MY MEAL AGAIN, BITCH". So I said, “Well I’m sorry but it sometimes can't be helped. If you have a complaint or problem, please take it up with the cook or whoever is in charge of the kitchen. We are just volunteers, we don't get paid to do this job, and we're donating our time to help. “

  We don't have to do this but some of us like to volunteer and we do not need the crap some of you hand us. I want to volunteer my time and do not need the crap that some of these people give. Listen People, Please be nice to us volunteers, we make the centre run and if it was not for us, the centre would not basically be running,. GIVE US SOME SLACK. What in the world give you the right to treat the volunteers like crap, even though we are here to make things work so you all can have a place to come and eat, socialize, use the library, the computer room, have dances and karaoke nights etc.

  Some of you are just grumpy and may be having a crappy day, but don't take it out on us volunteers. I am asking you, please stop.

                                Thank you,

                                                     Ally L

[top]

School D a z e

School D a  z   e

It was a week ago on a sunny, cloudy, breezy Sunday morn. We were to meet at Victory Square and go on a guided tour of parts of downtown Vancouver. We were to look at some of the older buildings in the business section of our fair city. “We” is my classmates, some tutors, an instructor and other Humanities 101 personnel.

  It had all started back about a month ago. Late August was when we first met this older gentleman. He had been introduced as our architecture instructor. (Say that fast five times.) He wanted us to take a good look at the buildings and see things which are normally ignored as we trudge thru our daily lives.

  He was to teach us for two evenings in early October and had wanted us to take a little tour before he sat us down to learn something. And he was right, there is a lot to see if you just take the time to stop and look.

 There are all sorts of fancy designs on the buildings, especially the older ones in the ‘hood. I think the best one is the Ice-cream building at the corner of Burrard and Hastings. It’s better known as the Marine Building. The huge brown building with light brown (or is it yellow) topping. It has Poseidon, the god of the sea on it, some of his tritons, fish, birds, and assorted other paraphernalia. The doors are a masterpiece of craftsmanship.

  Arthur said the inside was also very unique but because it was Sunday we wouldn’t get a chance to see it today. Another fine building is the Royal Bank on Hastings. Actually we saw quite a few memorable buildings that day. It would take a whole lotta paper to describe each and every one of them but I just want to give you an idea of what’s around if you take a look. This brings me to what I had originally decided to write about.

  It’s early on a Sunday afternoon and I have an assignment to go out and draw some of the stuff I had seen the prior Sunday. Now I’m not any thing close to what you might want to call an artist but I thought I’d give it the old college try. So, armed with paper and pencil and something to draw on, I ventured forth to do my duty.

  Draw a building. Doesn’t seem like much of a task until you try it. People come up and talk to you and want to see what you are doing. When you are as bad at drawing as I am you don’t really want to show anybody but you don’t like to be rude so you let people look. You should see some of the expressions people give. But I did get a compliment or two. Maybe it was just my imagination but people sure are friendly.

   I ended up having a sort of satisfying time for a murky rainy Sunday afternoon. I went home laughing because of my artistic ability or actually the lack of it. I guess best of all is I learned something that day. If you’re feeling sad or down, take a piece of paper and a pencil and go out and draw a building. People are naturally curious and in no time you will have someone talking to you. All you have to do is act like an artist and people will be attracted to you. It’ll make you smile if not downright laugh.

 I guess this is where I thank Arthur Allen for showing me some of the attraction of architecture.    Thanks Mr. Allen.

                                                                     -hal

[top]

QUEEN (for Reena Virk)

           QUEEN

    (for Reena Virk)

Reena, Queen of Sorrows

Star of that November night

when a falling Russian satellite

flooded the Victoria sky

illuminating the tragedy

of your violent baptism

under Craigflower Bridge.

In your agonal breath

You inhaled eighteen tiny pebbles.

You exhaled and a flood of

bubbling red roses grew

out of your mouth

to encircle your tormentors,

your captors, your frends;

the murderers standing above you

holding your head under water.

Reena, Queen of the Sea of Sorrows

You hold up a mirror

We gaze into it and see

the savagery of our children

and our society

and the dignity

of your family

and yourself.

                              By mary duffy

[top]

True Story of the Murder of Reena Verk

A review of

UNDER THE BRIDGE: THE TRUE STORY OF THE MURDER OF REENA VIRK By Rebecca

Godftey / HarperCollins Canada. 

  Eight years ago on November 14, 1997, 14 year-old Reena Virk was brutally beaten up by 8 other teenagers - 7 girls and 1 boy - under Craigflower Bridge in Victoria before being murdered. It has taken 8 years and three trials to convict her killer. Kelly Ellard. or Killer Kelly as she has come to be known was finally convicted of 2nd degree murder this April.

  Rosemary Godftey took over six years to research this non-fiction novel - attending the trials, going through police transcripts and interviewing many of the young people involved. She has a real gift for reaching and portraying the mercurial world of troubled youth. She skilfully recreates the story and the "players" in this tragedy. Her writing is evocative, even poetic as she tells this horrific story.

  It ends with Kelly, the unrepentant psychopath as remorseless as she has been at the beginning. But it is not really Kelly's story that Godftey tells us; neither is it Reena's, despite her name being emblazoned on the cover. It is mainly the story of many teenagers who surrounded Reena on her last night, the night they all remember as "The Night of the Russian Satellite.”

 She tells the story of Warren Glowatski, Kelly's accessory who was taken in by police a week after the crime and convicted of second degree murder almost immediately. It is the story of Syreeta , his first love and loyal confidante. It is the story of Kelly's best friend, the almost equally psychopathic Josephine (not her real name).Josephine's key role in instigating and orchestrating the beating is fully revealed. She tells their and the other teenagers’ stories without judgement and with a great deal of insight and compassion.

  Warren has a "soft beauty". Syreeta has a "beauty too rich for us, for earth too dear". And Josephine: "Her features were as classic and delicate as those of a new doll". This is the "dainty" Josephine who first plotted with Kelly to bury Reena alive. Sure, it’s true “even the devil is beautiful” at 18.. . or 14.

But what about Reena!?

  Her brand of beauty is not the kind valued by this current time and culture. Is Godftey buying into that beauty myth or is she just trying to drive home the fact that these "beautiful" young people might have felt a sense of entitlement in unleashing their furies on someone society would consider not as lovely?

  Despite the title this is not Reena's story. Yes, there are chapters on her and her family and the author praises their incredible dignity and remarkable ability to demonstrate stamina, courage and forgiveness through so many trials over so many years. But, in an early chapter on Reena's Grandfather, Godftey repeats a parable he had written in his copybook and even ends the chapter on him with the phrase echoing: "it takes two to make a quarrel" I hope I am wrong in feeling that somehow, subtly and subliminally, Reena is being set up here.

 Stealing another girl's phone book and making a few crank calls was the trivial reason these young people had to justify their savagery. Maybe it’s because WE subtly and not so subtly every day with our media, our computer games and our wars give our children the message, the permission to let their furies reign.

  Rosemary Godfrey writes that the name Reena means Queen or mirror. In this book she holds up a very polished mirror to show us the brutality of our children and ourselves.

                                            By Mary Duffy

 

[top]

Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving.

Teeter totters and catholicks

I'm teetering on a stone

That's too small for my chair

While children try to talk to God

In those little phone booths

With priests as the middle man

Who talks to God?

Who takes a cut?

She must be disgusted, no dignity

When holy water is in the streams

Not for sale

In a collection plate

The Holy Ghost died of exhaustion

From too many stations

To cover

Ghosts haunt the confessed

As they sin again

And again, 'til Sunday

When priests cut them off

Sentenced to repetition

                     Beth Buchanan

[top]

Long Way Down, Prince

Long Way Down, Prince

Knew a man who lost his faith

Blamed everyone around him but his own sweet self

gave up trying to get better, gave up on himself, just

let the drowning waters rise up to wash his life away

got so lost in the crack cocaine   what a shame

he didn’t see his family and friends turn away

got so bad they couldn’t stand to watch

him slowly tumble and turn into dust

he gave up on himself and on those who loved him

couldn’t see that you have to love yourself

before anyone can love you and, without the love,

all you got is the dope, the one thing that fills in the cracks the fissures and breaks        it takes

more than dope to make life worth living

he got so lost, deluded in his self-pity

couldn’t see the ghost in front of him

when he looked in the mirror

                                                       Al Loewen

[top]

. . . on what poor all means

. . . on what poor all means - can we differentiate?

My children and I are poor - financially poor, that is, since we live well below the legislated poverty line!

However, I consider ourselves rich and wealthy when it comes to ethics, values, friends, emotional and spiritual interests, quests and findings. I think in a society such as ours where we know that we need to shift our material thinking, it is imperative that we start by looking at qualifying terms like rich and poor, and whether the world of material goods is the end-all-be-all!! 

                           Thanks!

Maria Walther, Administrator

100 Mile House & District Women's Centre Society

[top]

Who owns knowledge?

News from the Library

Still Missing Sarah

In 2003, Maggie de Vries published Missing Sarah : A Vancouver Woman Remembers Her Vanished Sister, the story of Sarah de Vries, one of the missing women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. But so much has happened in the past couple of years. Join Maggie as she reads from Missing Sarah and talks about the impact of the book on her personal and writing life, and about developments in Sarah’s story since Missing Sarah was published.

Carnegie Centre, Third Floor Gallery

Friday, October 21, 7.30pm

Writers’ Interviews at the Carnegie Centre

On Friday, October 28, Maggie de Vries, Vancouver Public Library’s writer-in-residence, will be at the Carnegie Centre to meet with emerging writers.

We are going to schedule 4 hour-long interviews. Maggie may also be available for drop-in questions from 5pm onwards.  Maggie de Vries’ main areas of expertise are: writing for children & teens, creative non-fiction, and fiction.

If you’d like Maggie to take a look at your work, please contact Beth or Mary at the library by Friday, October 21. If you are selected, you’ll need to submit some writing (maximum 50 pages) typed, double-spaced and in hard copy in advance of your interview. This can be a finished work or works-in

progress.

New Books for October:

More books to help you with your writing have just arrived in the library. These include Oxford Dictionary of Slang (427.09 AYT), The Book of Eulogies (808.88 THE), and How to Write About Yourself by Alison Chisholm & Brenda Courtie (808.07 CHI).

Or maybe you want to go a step further and become a bookseller yourself? A great place to start is Andrew Laties’ Rebel Bookseller: How to Improvise Your Own Indie Store and Beat Back the Chains (070.5 LAT). The book aims at nothing less than to spark a grassroots revival of community bookselling, challenging book-lovers to improvise the wildly imaginative indie stores of tomorrow.

 

Your librarian recently went on a shopping trip to Banyen Books and picked up some great books. The Naturally Clean Home: Over 100 Safe and Easy Herbal Formulas for Nontoxic Cleaners by Karyn Siegel-Maier (640.3 SHE) has recipes for cleaning products that are good for the environment, good for your health and help to save you money! BC The Organic Way by Marya Skrypiczajko (641.31 SKR) has basic information about organic food, including how to “stretch your organic dollar”, and a list of stores, markets, dairies, restaurants, festivals, and farms across BC. Laura Josephson’s A Homeopathic Handbook of Natural Remedies (615.53 JOS) is a good introduction to homeopathy. The book covers a variety of ailments and remedies, and includes common-sense measures (don’t lift anything heavy if you’ve hurt your back!) and tips on when to consult a professional. Finally, The Moosewood Restaurant Kitchen Garden (635 HIR) is a fabulous guide to growing, harvesting and cooking with more than 75 vegetables, herbs and edible flowers. It’s simple enough to appeal to those of us who can kill a plant just by looking at it, but interesting enough for

green-thumbed experts, too.

Once you’ve polished up your writing, maybe you want to publish your own work? Check out Dan Poynter’s The Self-Publishing Manual (808 POY), available in large print, and Self Publishing in Ca

ada by Suzanne Anderson (808.02 AND).

Beth, your librarian

  Speak Up:  Who Owns Knowledge?

                     October 24 - 29, 2005

Vancouver Public Library's Speak Up series encourages public dialogue on important issues.  A forum that brings together many voices, perspectives,

and experiences, Speak Up draws participants from the community and provides an opportunity for you to share your point of view, to listen to others, and to

develop solutions to community concerns.

 

Who owns knowledge?

We live in a time of unmatched scientific achievement and growth of knowledge, but who benefits?

 Who owns knowledge is one of the most important questions of the century. Should the essence of life, our genetic structure, be owned by anyone?  What drives the drug industry?  Do corporate sponsorships influence the development of new knowledge?  These issues seriously affect the cost and quality of your health care, access to information, education, and your future.

 

Who Owns Your Genes?

Tuesday October 25, Central Library at 7:30 p.m.

Thursday October 27, Oakridge Branch at 7:30 p.m.

Explore the ethics and the future of biotechnology and discuss what it means to you.

  Gene research and therapy offers the promise of better health. Public dollars are invested in research grants to develop new ideas and to discover new genes.  But who owns these important discoveries?  What is the future of genetic engineering?   Should businesses or individuals have the right to patent your unique genetic structure and own patents on

traditional seeds, genetic codes, or new life forms?

Featured panelists:  Dr. Patrick Rebstein,  Dr. Ed Levy, Brewster Kneen

 

Drugs for Profit or Health?

Thursday October 27, Central Library at 7:30 p.m.

Friday October 28, Oakridge Branch at 7:30 p.m.

Your money or your life? Patents and profits before patients can be a bitter pill to take.Join us for a powerful discussion about the impact of the drug industry on the cost and effectiveness of your healthcare.

  Each year hundreds of millions of dollars support the development and testing of drugs. There’s a lot of controversy about the costs of new drugs, drug safety, the openness of testing, and profiteering by drug companies that want to keep control of drug sales. How can we encourage drug research while ensuring the greatest benefit for the public?

Featured panellists:  Dr. Tom Perry, Colleen Fuller, Dr. Garry McCarron

 

Selling Universities

Wednesday October 26, Kitsilano Branch 7:30pm

Friday October 28, Central Library at 7:30 p.m.

  Speak Up on the pros and cons of corporate sponsorship at our universities.

  Universities are widely viewed as a sanctuary for independent thought and objective research and teaching. However, some fear that corporate donations for buildings and research allow businesses to have too much influence on our universities. How do we ensure a vibrant university that serves the whole community?

Featured panellists: Dr. Claire Polster (Monday only), Dr. Bill Bruneau, Dr. Charles (Chuck) Williams, Robert Clift (Wednesday only), Angus

Livingstone

 

When Is There Too Much Copyright?

Monday October 24, Renfrew Branch at 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday October 26, Central Library at 7:30 p.m.

  Examine and discuss the burning issues of intellectual property laws and who owns your ideas.

  Changes and challenges to copyright laws in Canada and around the world have been a hot topic of discussion among artists, writers, musicians, inventors, the public, and the businesses that profit from their work. Copyright was intended to balance the rights of creators and users, but who really benefits from copyright?  What barriers do copyright create?

What will be the impact of new copyright legislation and what effect will it have on what you can read, write, listen to, and download on your computer?

Featured panellists:  Dr. Rowly Lorimer, Paul Whitney, Andreas Schroeder

 

Open or Closed: Software and Information

Monday October 24, Central Library at 7:30 p.m.

Tuesday October 25, Hastings Branch at 7:30 p.m.

  Join us as Speak Up explores the options available for creating and sharing technology and information.

 Some say that collaboration is the answer to making better (and less expensive) technology and information available to the public. Currently, information technology is controlled by a small number of companies that use software to dominate the marketplace, but Open Source Software is changing the way we compute.  Publishing research information

is also controlled by a limited group of publishers. With purchasing costs skyrocketing, can Open Access to Information offer faster and more equitable distribution of research?

Featured panellists:  John Willinsky, David Porter, Brian Owen

 

Who Owns Knowledge?  A Final Discussion

Saturday, Oct 29, Central Library, 9:30am - 4:30pm

 

Now it's your turn to Speak Up!

VPL's Speak Up:  Who Owns Knowledge? series has raised a number of questions about the ownership of genes, copyright, cost of drugs, selling

universities, and the value of open source and open access information technology.  Join us for a final, full-day program to discover and discuss what you think about these issues

 

Go to www.vpl.ca/speakup  for more information.

[top]

KATRINA

KATRINA

Like a pirouetting ballerina, you arrived Katrina,

To show up that mighty power.

Oh how you toppled its tower

Like great Babylon their image is gone.

The world, Katrina, you let see then glower

Their poor in vast numbers for all the world to see.

In a country that spouts the attributes of Democracy

How the poor and their poverty prevail

And how the best their society could offer is jail.

How opportunity is never open for the poor

No chance to flee to a place of security.

Let the buses sit idle instead.

Let the buses drown in water filled with the dead.

But don’t move the poor to higher ground.

Look around; look around.

Let the poor sit for five days with no water or food

Let the media show their desperation to the nation,

See them ‘looting’ for water&food, for salvation,

See the police trying to mute their survival mode,

Coming down hard with the criminal code.

When you catch them lootin’ orders are shoot ‘em.

The world stands by to silently watch the collapse

This once great nation is no longer.

In their desire to make corporations stronger

They have turned their backs on the population,

They have turned their backs on mother earth

They scatter the cream of their youth to global war

Even when their people cried out WHAT FOR?

They have turned their backs on their people,

especially the poor,

Katrina, you showed us, this is no longer a great

nation.

President Bush refused to sign Kyoto

“The American way of life can’t go for Kyoto

Corporate scientists: ‘It’s a myth the globe’s warming

There is no need to heed any warning.’

‘It’s only mother nature having woman problems,’ they implored,

‘Her hot flashes are to be ignored.’

To this Mother Nature answered swift and hard

Katrina she aimed at this patriarchal nation

She showed the world how well off greed left the majority of its people –

She toppled their church steeple

She hit oil refineries hard, stopping the flow of gas

Only then did corporations take time to pause ‘n ask

Who Rules?

She attacked with thunder and tore down their mast

Their ship, hell-bent on destruction, arrested at last.

Just to make sure the message was complete

She sent in Rita for one more good blast.

The moral of my story is this, my friend,

No matter how great you think you are

Be you a person or a nation

You are always under Mother Nature’s subjugation

Mess with her and you’re bound to meet your end.

                                         Colleen Carroll

[top]

Eating Without OIL

Eating Without OIL (crude that is)

How do you eat?

Pray tell me my sweet,

Is it with blood, sweat and toil?

No, Dude, I eat with crude!

Tractors in the field, powered by oil.

Chemicals for fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides,

Irrigation systems – run on oil.

From the field to the factory processor,

the packaging and delivery – all it takes is oil.

It is oil my friend

Good old fashioned sweet crude, Dude

That keeps you and me well supplied with food.

How will you eat my friend,

when oil comes to an end?

Do you have a plan, man?

A plan ‘B’ that will feed you and me?

Or is that oil stuff all you’ve got?

Need a plan ‘B’?! What a lot of rot

Oil and gas forever is what we’ve got.

Then why are gas prices going up day by day?

How much more need we all pay

Before realizing oil can’t be the only way?

It may not be years

Before we must again get food with blood, sweat and tears.

                                   Colleen Carroll

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Genocide as Religious Philosophy

Genocide as Religious Philosophy

 When our September guest, Kevin Annett, suggested that Christianity can be so intolerant that it becomes genocidal, he spoke with considerable personal insight.  Annett was raised a Christian, studied theology, and was for several years an ordained United Church Minister.  Over the last ten years, however, Annett's unauthorized search into his church's past left him highly critical.

 

Many of us know of the dark spot in Canadian history that are the residential schools for aboriginal people.  To Annett, these institutions represented nothing less than an instrument of genocide.  The original definition proposed in the wake of the Holocaust defined genocide as any act that leads to the eradication of a people and the imposition of the ruling culture.  This included killing, creating conditions of extermination, physical and mental violence, stopping births, and the mass transference of children.  Although the politics of the early United Nations initially limited the definition to physical acts of violence only, the original, broader definition describes what happened in residential schools across the United States and Canada.  To Annett, the world's largest genocide occurred in North America during the twentieth century.

 

Annett understands this atrocity and the role of churches in them as a sort of modern crusade.  Ever since early Christianity joined forces with the fading Roman Empire, European kingdoms and states have found a willing ally in the Christian church as the pacifist teachings of Christ yielded to support aggressive imperialism.  Annett suggested many historical examples that supported his claim, adding that separation of church and state was and remains largely a myth in the West, with the possible exception of France.

 

Annett provided us with a little history.  When Indian agents in the late nineteenth century questioned the need for dedicated "Indian schools," Canadian missionaries were quick to argue in their support, and were able to persuade government officials to agree.  Steve Newcombe, a Cherokee scholar, refers to a "Christian Superior Dominion" that gives higher status and rights to Christians, providing a moral and legal right conquer other people.  Such a perspective has a long history in Christianity, dating back at least to 1095 when Pope Urban II offered indulgences – spiritual cleansing – to crusaders with blood on their hands.  A divine sanction absolves one of moral responsibility.  Such an attitude allowed modern "crusaders" to force North American aboriginal people to abandon their identities and their cultures to become Christian Canadians. 

 

Much of Annett's presentation is supported by current scholarship into the abuses of the residential schools, but he goes further than others by insisting that this history should be taken as genocide and brought to the attention of the World Court if necessary.  In our attempt to heal relations between native and non-native people, we have not, Annett contends, fairly faced our own history.  Not surprisingly, the United Church, the RCMP, and even some First Nation groups have strongly denied Annett's claims.  Such a response was not unexpected, and Annett suggests that people read his books "Hidden From History: The Canadian Holocaust" and "Love and Death in the Valley" to see his evidence.  For more information, see http://canadiangenocide.nativeweb.org; www.hiddenfromhistory.org; www.1stbooks.com/bookview/11639.  Or phone into Annett's show on Co-op Radio Monday afternoons: 604-684-7561.  Better still, drop in for a visit!

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F.A.Q.

October 15, 2005


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