Attack Ads Bite Master

I get the news one way or the other and see, hear and smell precious little other than he sulphurous fumes in the vicinity of my electronic equipment. I am still waiting for Harper to get off his butt and release substantial money bring Canada through this recession.

"When in doubt, the Harper Conservatives reach for attack advertisements, backed by the chorus line of Conservative MPs, constituency mailings and, of course, prime ministerial speeches." - Globe & Mail

"Harper's apparent fixation with personal attack ads outside elections is more evidence of his disregard for democratic norms and limits, the most vivid example of which was last winter's parliamentary crisis." - Winnipeg Free Press

Most Canadians did not want Harper and even fewer now so beware our bite is worse than our bark!

2 Interesting Events

This is a first! I'll let some others express my feelings....

April 17 : Earth alert - raising environmental consciousness

Event Summary: Climate change is with us. A decade ago it was conjecture, now the future is unfolding before our eyes. Now, more than ever, Mother Earth needs us to tread as lightly on her as possible. But, how do we change the deeply embedded lifestyles and habits? Join us for an insightful workshop with him at the Multifaith centre, University of Toronto. Check event details and RSVP at http://www.urbanedgeyoga.com/index.php?d=inSpirit2009&p=earthAlert .



April 18 : Beyond vegetarianism - a mouthful of spirituality

Event Summary : People tend to think that the way we eat is the way it always has been and the way it always will be. But food is in constant flux, traveling all over the world and taking root from one continent to the next. Come join hands with Toronto’s bustling Vegan community and make a wish for a change in Status Quo. Employ the power of sound vibration or Kirtan yoga. Check details and RSVP at http://www.urbanedgeyoga.com/index.php?d=inSpirit2009&p=vegan

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.

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.

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

Just a Transient Thought…

George W. Bush and WMD

Google ‘George Bush assassination’ and compare it to ‘Obama assassination’ and notice the dramatic difference. It occurred to me that ever since Obama was considered a serious contender for the Democratic Party there was always in the background possibilities of assassination attempts. How serious can you take the media's hot selling “skinhead” attempt, and what attempts do we not hear about? After three pages of hits on Bush, about five hits make any serious reference to Bush attempts, three of which is hard to take too seriously and most refer to a movie. Check out Obama attempts and six pages and counting are all serious references.

Who could be surprised? Well what surprises me that over an eight year period that this is all that comes to light on the internet. This is a moment of unprecedented change. Change is scary and drives some people to do some scary things. Bush, for a man so despised, and the neo-cons that he is the icon for, virtually nothing is heard. Probably suppressed by the media but even so during that time there would be leaks, but certainly suppressed by some group.

Now consider this. What if there haven’t been any attempts worth mentioning. Seriously! What enemy of the US could do more damage to America, and bring down the Capitalist-based Western Civilization than Bush himself? He has been the walking, talking Weapon of Mass Destruction! They have used America’s most powerful weapon against themselves, the Economic Weapon, and have ‘bankrupted’ the world’s most powerful economies in one fell swoop. America may have brought down the Berlin Wall, but Bush has brought down the First World (and Second).

And why could they never impeach him?

Acts of his fundamentalist God? One could argue that it was an act of a fundamentalist Allah.

Margaret Wente: "What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true".

LLetter to the Editor:

Controversy is healthy but I can only see very shallow sourcing by Ms. Wente. She needs to clarify her assertions and position in another column to salvage her intelligence (and the Globe's), other than her apparent ignorant, biased, Eurocentric attitude. I hope this is soon forthcoming as I would rather read the leave the Globe off my daily read. Until I hear from the Globe & Mail with reference to this article I sadly not visit the site and if nothing by mid-November I will remove you from my bookmarks.

John Warren

Jay Silverheels (Tonto) to The Lone Ranger - "What? We Whiteman?"

I am debating some of the opinions of the Globe & Mails', Margaret Wente in her article "What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true".

"The kinship groups in which they lived were very small, simply organized and not very productive."

Wente's rantings are still stuck in a recently discredited and imploded economic system - GDP. Western 'Civilization' is about to hit the wall, possibly not neolithic, of being not very productive as a result of the savagery of the Global Mergers and Acquisition mentality, privatization, de-regulation, willing white governmental blindness.


"in a world where native spirituality and "traditional knowledge" are held to be just as valid as Western science."

Has Wente not heard of "Western Science's" progress in search of the "God Particle"? Quantum and Particle physics have many parallels to Eastern Philosophy and Buddhism. Einstein is quoted from Wikipedia as "In his book "The World as I See It", he wrote: "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man."

I don't think I would be far wrong by seeing Native Spirituality in this.

"Did the Iroquois Confederacy really influence the Declaration of Independence? Sorry, no"

From Wikipedia one reads that to one degree or another the Confederacy did have some influence not as Wente says "no". Here is an interesting and suggestive quote, "In 2004 the U.S. Government acknowledged the influence of the Iroquois Constitution on the U.S. Framers.The Smithsonian Institution also noted the similarities between the two documents, as well as the differences. One significant difference noted was the inclusion of women in the Iroquois Constitution, one group among many that the framers of the U.S. Constitution did not include."

Strikes me as more democratic.


"They deserve to interact with the modern world like everyone else."

The Modern World is going to Hell in a handbasket and it will be inevitable that if we don't make a massive cutback in our lifestyles we will be worse than neolithic.


Oh Canada
Our home on native land
We lost our way
For India was our plan

With fire sticks
And quill pens
The treaties we did make.
As the years passed by
We changed our minds
The treaties we did break.

Don’t whine to me.
The ride is never free.
Just keep in mind
We’ve done this thing before.
Just keep in mind
We’ll do this once more.

Happy Halloween

Interview with Greener Toronto & RCO Awards!!

Alter Eco (darthcricket's alter ego) has much to celebrate this past week! And many to thank for your interest and support throughout the year. So we are going to treat you, finally, to the long-awaited video interview we did, Episode one of season two of A GREENER TORONTO, host Candice Batista, , where we reveal the secret of our success!

And as much as we like to be modest and humble, the past week was highlighted by the Recycling Council of Ontario’s 2008 Ontario Waste Minimization Awards. Just a little bragging here as we were again honoured in front of the Industry and Minister with the Gold award in the Arts category.



Fortunately our bragging was tolerable as it was slightly offset with a little humility in that the Platinum award went to an amazing group of sculptors who have been contributing to Canada’s International image for 40 years, Hosleton Aluminum Sculptures. It was our pleasure to have spent a very interesting evening with them.

I would like to take this opportunity to especially thank Diane Blackburn of the RCO for all her encouragement and Rhonda Nolan for connecting Alter Eco with the RCO several years ago and Marie Van Schie for her jewellery and display help And Candace Batista producer of A Greener Toronto, for bringing out the best in me.

Future Events

CBC Craft Sale-2008:
Please join us at the Canadian Broadcasting Centre (Front & John Streets) for this year’s sale on Wed December 3rd 2008 10am-5pm
Christmas in the Heart of the Entertainment District
Hope to see you there!
http://cbccraftsale.googlepages.com

Happy Halloween to you all!
John

A Green Star is Hatched

Oct 13 - 17/08: A wonderful episode of A Greener Toronto on Rogers Toronto TV!:
- Behind the scenes with Planet in Focus. Toronto premiere environmental film festival.
Candice talks to Tonya Surman about the Centre for Social Innovation.
- We're cooking up organic pizza at Magic Oven
- Greenpeace answer questions on: The arctic ice melt.
- In ECO TIPS, picking the right wrap, whats the better option, Plastic or paper? Tune in to find out.
- And finally, a look at Alter-Eco environmental folk art.

This episode is a piece of art in itself. Well thought out and presented, amazing resources of clips to illuminate the subject. I was extremely happy with the take on Alter Eco. It is a strange experience to see one's self from the outside, old home movies and near-death experiences excepted. As much as it was pretty intense the editor managed to catch one smile! lol. Just kidding it was a trip. Soon as we getan online link I will post it.

Vote for the Environment

The Environment needs some strategic support in the Oct. 14th Election.

Vote for the Environment has an interesting website that can help you decide where your VOTE MATTERS.

A renewed Harper government for 4 years will be a major setback for several major global issues. The Environment is one that is here to stay whether Harper likes it or not. Economics come and go, they work in short-term cycles but NOT Environmental issues.

An even better process to vote your conscience is to "Vote Pair". If you are in a solid non-Harper riding sign up to pair your vote with a riding that can defeat the Harper candidate.

A vote for the future is NOT A VOTE for Harper.

Vote Strategic! Vote for the Future!

The Great Canadian Merger & Acquisition Election

From Mulroney's NAFTA in 1992 until Harper's Super NAFTA in 2008 Canada is quietly being merged and acquired by the U.S. and their global corporate supporters. This is not to excuse Chretien and Martin Liberals for opening the door with the SPP.

For years most Canadians were unaware of the regulations being “harmonized” with the U.S. and Mexico and any stories being done on it were debunked as conspiratory theories and even then they were relatively unacknowledged by the mainstream media.

But for the attention of vigilant and determined alternative media journalists facts emerged of the changes being secretly agreed to and picked up on the leaks. Our governments could no longer deny the meetings, the 'selected' stakeholders and negotiations but the topics were downplayed.

A pro-America and pro-corporate Harper is accelerating the process and if he succeeds in being voted a majority, or even a minority, he will let nothing stop his legislation. (“My concern is that obviously, going forward, that we have a government that's going to be sabotaged by a bunch of parties who don't want our economy to be successful.”)

Canada became a Nation in 1867 with one of its major purposes to fend off American takeover under similar circumstances (between 1854 and 1865 the United States followed a policy of free trade, the Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty). The Americans have always had a continental ambition from the founding of the first colonies and comprehensively in the “Manifest Destiny”.

In business terms, these takeovers have always been hostile, overtly or covertly. Harper is facilitating a covert 'M&A'.

For the first time in Canadian and Pre-Confederation history, Harper has agreed to allow American troops on our soil to aid any “civil emergency” – to help shovel snow or maybe control civil disturbances – anything “civil” at this point because it has been left undefined for now.

What will the “civil” definition be after Harper gets elected?

What will Canada be 4 years (?) from now on the next election?

Can you possibly imagine?

Solution?

Vote strategically! Vote for the candidate most likely to defeat the Harper candidate. Swallow your principals or get swallowed by the 'Big Boys'. A vote for Canada is a vote against Harper.

Harper and Leadership

Harper is running his campaign on leadership. We have seen 2 ½ years of his leadership. He has controlled the direction of Canada based on advice from very few elected elite Conservative members and a number of unelected advisers in and outside the PMO.

The main part of the CPC have little or no input and little or no output other than a controlled Harper script. It would seem that Harper can't trust the majority of his party with his agenda. How much do they even know the workings of the PMO except for what he dictates?

--”Harper said he always held "strong opinions about how the government should be run."

"I enjoy running government. It's sometimes stressful but I enjoy making decisions. That's the essence of it for me. It's not the celebrity thing which, when this is all over, I assure you I will not miss for one minute," he said.”

What really can we make of his agenda so far as he appears to exhibit a smug confidence despite the unease of mainstream Canadians?

As for the rank and file of the CPC they should be embarrassed or ashamed to represent their constituency. It is also an insult to their constituency and all Canadians that this is allowed to happen. Besides, the CPC constituency comprises a minority of Canadians.

Harper is ruthless, deceiving, brutal and sadistic and operates just short of the principle, “the ends justify the means” and courting power at any cost to reform Canada to a country that was brought together in Confederation to prevent our assimilation by the US after the American Civil War. It has always been the intention even long before American Independence to govern all Continental North America.

Mulroney violated Canada's confederation and allowed America to penetrate our sovereignty while singing “When Irish Eyes are Smiling”. This was furthered by Chretien and Martin. Harper is accelerating the original Liberal SPP with the US with the pedal to the floorboards in the most inconspicuous way possible by quietly legislating as much as he possibly can and rarely surfacing intentions in the public view only when called out.

For all Harper's efforts he still can't shake the suspicion of a “hidden agenda”. A Harper majority will at best put the suspicion to rest and at worst dissolve Canada and be assimilated 'lock, stock and barrel' by the US.

What we can see from the pattern of his leadership is that he is aligning himself with American far-right and Corporate interests at the astonishment and disappointment of the rest of the world.

Green Enterprise Toronto

We are really excited to find a group that represents our 'journey' for many years now. GET, Green Enterprise Toronto. Green Enterprise Toronto is a local network of BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies). To find out more about the principles and benefits of a local living economy visit the BALLE web site. This growing movement is part of a philosophy that to avoid immanent global destruction, democracy and human aspirations operate from the ground up, community, rather than from the top down, hierarchy, as has been the disastrous case for the last 5000 years with very few exceptions.

I have just finished reading "The Great Turning, From Empire to Earth Community" by David C. Korten; a perspective that is positive, doable by everyone now and infuriatingly irrefutable!! I can't recommend this book highly enough. To order a copy go to our bookstore and and the Amazon links will take you to it - and yes I do make a few sustainable dollars. ;-) Check out some of our other books as well.

Bloodletting - Kill or Cure?

At times power politics seem to render the whole electoral process fruitless. At times as well the disturbing spectre of pseudo-democracy is only too apparent that its participants are only too desperate to protect their long-standing turf and prerogatives that they no longer appreciate what the voters gave them and take it as their due.



I refer once again to the Liberal Party in Saskatchewan and the Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill blood-letting nomination process. Preference is been given to Joan Beatty’s nomination over David Orchard. The last nomination incident, to use a very mild word, resulted in a Harper outcome! As much as the party bosses wanted to put an Aboriginal face on it, Orchard represents the Aboriginal plurality with a white face as opposed to an Aboriginal ‘face’, to be blunt and meaning no disrespect, with the blessings of Goodale.

“While Joan Beatty's campaign mostly signed up members on her own home reserve, Peter Ballantyne First Nation, on the east side of the riding, and has a mere sprinkling elsewhere in the riding, David, on the other hand, campaigned all around the riding and has members and supporters in the east, west, south and north, in preparation for an actual election campaign. Interestingly enough, the Liberal Party in Saskatchewan was prepared to offer Beatty not one, but TWO voting locations on her reserve — and none on the 24 other reserves! This would have meant that 95% of her supporters would be able to walk to the polling stations in their two communities, whereas less than 30% of David's would have the same opportunity — and the rest of his supporters would have to drive from 1/2 hour to 3 hours, ONE WAY, to wherever the location was, a real deterrent to people's participation, as distances are great and the cost of gas is prohibitive.”
(David Orchard Campaign newsletter)

“After weeks of (exhausting) negotiating we got ten locations, but were denied one very important one, previously promised, of Ile a la Crosse in the north western part of the riding and a centre for the Metis population. (Local leaders immediately started to mobilize to get that location which they are fully entitled to.) With ten polling locations, the percentages of "easy access" are now still 95% for Beatty and less than 50% for David's supporters, "progress" of sorts, but definitely not fair. (When at one point we were offered nine locations, we presented a counter proposal of 17 which would have accommodated a large majority of Liberal members in the riding. This would have been eminently doable, as almost all communities could have provided facilities free or at low cost, and election officials, DROs, were available for all polling stations, we believe.)”
(David Orchard Campaign newsletter)


Blood-letting this is not. Self destruction this is and coming at the most crucial point in the existence of Homo Sapiens and more shamefully, all nature as we know it. Trudeau was a watershed in some semblance of a democracy and all after was downhill with the rise of Corporate, Military/Industrial power. Our governments beginning with Mulroney in Canada sacrificed on the alter of Milton Freidman their unwilling or unknowing voters. Liberals followed a more graceful path with Turner’s Bay Street, Chretien’s Power Corporation, Paul Martin’s ingratiating and dithering demise to out-and-out self-annihilation. And now we have Canadian suicidal Harper potential if you let him off his minority leash, and even still he is undermining the word of Democracy.

True democratic, egalitarian diversity is alive and well in hundreds and thousands of communities. Find them, listen to them, connect them. The only other avenue of change that’s really needed is from the ground up as the top down structure has proved itself a total failure after 5000 years.

Empire is over one way or the other.