Wednesday, January 28, 2009

CEAP, a Wallpaper Budget.



For the week leading up to Flaherty’s Budget the Harper government has been ‘officially’ leaking on a daily basis one major drop at a time of what’s generally in store for us in the CEAP (“Canada’s Economic Action Plan”) 2009 Budget. Whether this is legal or not is debatable, something that Harper always does and does very well as there isn’t enough time these days for people to speak let alone think and to hold peoples’ attention long enough to realize that this buys him more than enough time to hold on to power. He is the master at inflicting ADD syndrome on a national level.

Once again he strives to impress us of being a strong leader in times of crisis; a bold undertaking of historic proportions as Flaherty says in the final sentence, I invite and urge the honourable members to support it, for the good of the country. “

But the general consensus of the punditry was that this was far more a political budget than an economic budget that is what truly is needed and that it is one that gives (depending on the fine print) a little bit of something to pretty much everyone. This is a wallpaper budget only covering the cracks at our peril and precious little that other First World countries are doing with respect to their stimulus programs as a percentage of their GDP and some of them are very bold with Obama showing the greatest leadership.

In this case the Emperor has almost no clothes but only the traditional boots that they bought on Monday the 26th.

But what does Harper care as he succeeded in painting the whole country into a corner again? If Ignatieff votes against the budget Harper has the war chest to fight another election and will paint Iggy out to be irresponsible and not keeping in the spirit of Flaherty’s closing budget line, “for the good of the country “. I think that the GG can be convinced again. So unless Iggy can convince Harper of some big amendments he will have to share the boot with Harper but beware the cracks.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Call for Environmental Artists

I-Park Environmental Art Residency Program

Environmental artists, landscape/garden designers, other visual and performance-based artists are invited to submit proposals for site-specific works on the grounds of the 450-acre I-Park artists’ community in rural East Haddam, Connecticut (U.S.). Twelve artists/designers will be selected by a three-person independent panel for two, two-week residency sessions (August 17 – 31 and September 2 – 16, 2009), with a grant of $1,200 per invited artist plus up to an additional $1,000 for reimbursement of travel costs and/or materials. Lodging and meals will be provided for the term of the residency. A public event on September 19, 2009 will showcase the work. Refer to the I-Park website for additional details and application materials.

Application deadline: February 23, 2009.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Lincoln’s Vision, King’s Dream




The expectations of billions are focused on one man on January 20, 2009. It does not matter if it is Washington, D.C., Gaza City or the shelters for the homeless, we have heard a message through him that rings of great intentions. Intentions that were Lincoln’s vision of equality and freedom and Martin Luther King’s courage to “Dream” the same. Now we have standing before not only America but the world, these intentions manifested in the person of Barack Obama.

Is he the man for the times? The times when major crises of public confidence in leaders everywhere, governments, corporate and religious; crisis of the earth’s growing inability to sustain itself; crisis in the systems that we have become enslaved to and feel more powerless to escape. Many have been waiting for such a time to serve their own purposes to profit from divisive strategies, creating catastrophes and by their greed, fueling inequality, hatred and injustice.

It is these types of people that criticize Obama as giving us meaningless rhetoric and little else. But these people also know the power of the “word” as they have been using it themselves very insidiously to make us believe that life is just another vacation on credit and become even more dumbed down and numbed brained – “one day older and deeper in dept” to them.

The power of the word is powerless unless it can be communicated clearly as has been the gift of people like Moses, Zarathushtra, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Deganawidah, Lincoln, Ghandi, Mandela, King, Bobby Kennedy and countless others who have opened people to new realities.

Obama has the potential of this degree of communication when people are inspired to say, "Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run; Obama is running so our children can fly.”

This moment is another opportunity to recognize that the fabric of Time and Space has opened to allow us to glimpse the infinite greatness of all Creation and Man’s part in it. This is another chance to choose our destiny to heal the wound that was inflicted by the wasted opportunity of the Bush Administration’s reaction to the violence of 9/11 which sadly and perversely was used to profit from the confusion.

This is the time to look into that Infinity and see it as looking into our own Soul and given the messages from the past will be a start to bringing a new respect for all that is, was and ever shall be…

John Warren
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Inauguration of Barak Obama



Satan’s Folly
09/11/01


And Satan commanded his captain, bin Laden
To crawl on his belly and come down before him.
"My servant you've failed me, the time has not come
To show them your arrogance and hatred for them.

You've denied me my weapons of ignorance and pride,
And the lies and deceit that I carefully hide,
The demons of fear and prejudice have made
The Mideast my target and now that may fade!

You allowed the fracture of infinite grace
To come between me and my rightful place!
With Hitler I succeeded in twisting his mind
But failed in the end to destroy his own kind.

But I thought, you my son, whom I had so much faith,
Had the cunning of evil and knew how to wait
While the devils of greed did their work on rich
And the resentment of the poor burned like hot pitch.

Begone to your lair until I call you again
When your flesh and your blood, Death will reclaim.
And know in your heart, and your mind, and your soul
That you will be my standard impaled on my pole!

September eleventh, two thousand and one,
New York was alive another day had begun,
And so indestructible yet they were not forewarned
That the membrane of time and space would be torn!

In a matter of hours the world had been stunned
By a handful of men that the nations had shunned.
Three monuments to wealth and power were dust
To whom do they turn, to whom would they trust?

The leaders cry vengeance, an eye for an eye.
We will hunt down these 'cowards' and see that they die.
We'll do this in the name of those innocent slain
And we'll come back with bombs again and again!

But louder and louder the voices will cry
Of the spirits of loved ones, "Is this why I died?
Will we be your sacrifice to the demons of hate?
Understand what this is before it's too late!"

A power was set loose through that crack in the sky.
A power so profound it cannot be described,
But this is our last chance to open our minds
To recognise the folly that has plagued mankind.

Sept. 30/01

Satan’s Fortune
9/11/02 - one year later


A year to this day, and Satan is pleased,
Before him, in fear, bin Laden on knees.
"My Captain, you slut, you have bought yourself time,
Events are unfolding, the cards dealt are mine."

"It has been just too easy to slam shut the door
That God had opened to show there is more
Than ignorance, hatred, greed, and mistrust,
But I played you well, and now we have Bush!"

"It is he who's my pawn, the silly proud fool,
Who can be lead by his vanity, a most deceiving tool.
Spoiled pup of his Pappy's, who lusts after power,
And was planning his ascension when you struck the tower."

"Now isn't it too just, that he's Commander-in-Chief?
And it is the sweetest of ironies that he won his seat
In Jeb's state of Florida, 'The Terrorist State',
And Cheney, and Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz his mates!"

"But we must not rely solely on him,
Another desperate soul, I use at my whim,
Who has delusions of empire, Britain's Tony Blair,
That was kindled by Thatcher in the Argentinean War."

"With Bush, he was first at Kuwait and Afghan
And is begging for Iraq, and then for Iran.
This has never been so simple since long ago,
When Duke Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo!"

"But these victories are cheap, and I have my misgivings,
That I rely on cowards and their transparent deceivings,
Who bankrupt their people before war is won,
And Allah can set back, or avoid Armageddon."

September eleventh, two thousand and two,
The armies are marching, Christian, Moslem, and Jew.
New York is a spectacle of bagpipe and drum.
Will they still cry "Vengeance!" from mansion and slum?

Or can you still hear the voices demanding inside,
Of the spirits of loved ones, "Is this why I died?
Will we be your sacrifice to the demons of hate?
Understand what this is before it's too late!"

Satan is not perfect, and knows this well,
And plays the 'endgame' from his throne in Hell,
And there is still a chance God will call
"Aces and deuces, the winner takes all."

Sept. 11/02