World Class Humour

It's good to have a mayor of the world class city of Toronto who has a sense of humour and can appreciate that most Torontonians have one too and can laugh at him.

He thought it would be fun to invite Don Cherry, the one in pink, to do the honours and not much thought to his short investiture speech. It was a riot!! I hope that it was intended to be a schoolyard prank.

But seriously folks, the first kudo was his excellency Stever (The Cleaver) Harper.

The Tea Party has nothin' on us! Watch out Americay we're a comin again!! (humour {and to humour the Yanks, humor})

HA

Cartoon via Gigi Bowman

A reply to an article by Kevin Libin: Connecting the dots in the National Post

The Tea Party is a group of angry, disaffected Americans who have just been set up by the power behind Wall Street who for some reason Obama had to bring on board in his administration. Perhaps his thought was that those who broke it could fix it and also best to have your enemies in view.

Also just look at some of the founders of the Tea Party, The Koch brothers for example, with a $35 billion tar sands refining opertion to run. Wall Street now have unwitting pawns on the political game board of disintegrating "Western democracy". This isn't a recent phenomena but had its claws in the economy with the end of the Keynes Philosophy and superceeded by the Milton Friedman School of thought, the Market is infallible and exercised his economics thanks to Thatcher & Reagan.

- “They’ve looked at their situation and decided in the last two years, Obama made the drift of recent decades explicit, and a lot of Americans woke up to that and decided they didn’t like where they were drifting to,”

Obama got his majority as people were looking for a different kind of leadershp not like the Bushs' & Clinton's which were only two sides of the Wall Street coin and just two years doesn't make up for the last thirty. Americans don't wake up that fast. No country does.

As for fundamentalism of any kind be it free market, Christian, Muslim, Judaism, it has always succeeded in creating extremely divisive conflicts and is exploited by a group who have the power, or think they have the power or want more power, to justify the destruction of those who oppose them. If you can tap into their emotions (9/11, Wall Street Crash of 2008) and combine it with additional fears you will have control of dedicated willing extremists.

Steyn's assertion that "United States as the only liberal power properly equipped, both demographically and psychologically, to withstand the undermining of its values by the growing global influence of Islamic fundamentalism." is that it was violently born in 1776 and developed a pathological nationalism for whom the Tea Party was an iconic symbol of David defeating the English Goliath.

Steyn is using Khadr to support his anti-immigration thesis "Khadr family as the poster boys for all that’s virtuous in Canada, it’s not an assimilation issue, it’s a societal issue.” It could be argued that one society's "poster boy" is another society's "poster boy" (intended) such that it could also be argued that one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter. Khader is just a symbol, an icon, a pawn with an Islamic fundamentalist angle.

Where could this lead? "The Clash of Civilizations" is more than just a euphemism it today it is intended to become reality. The bible, like H.G. Well's Journey to the Moon, is written by man and was most likely inpsired by events and thoughts, some divine/creative, of the time. But what ever man can envision he can create a serious illusion of reality. Some realities are pathological particularly those who look in the skies for Armageddon. As the rich become richer and resources, rational society, and climate dissappear by their hands, we are left with the last man standing. He will die too Mr. Steyn.

Thanks4Giving 10/10/10

The internet has given us reason to give thanks in these times of corporate media throttling of diverse thought. It has given us grassroots, collective capability to stand against the distorted power of the few who are throwing our society and environment into the greyzone of confusion, doubt and fear.

We give thanks for the ability to mobilize instantly, to share common values, to open our minds, to develop opportunities to create & debate and to understand others as you would like them to understand you.

It gives us feelings of gratitude that, as individuals, we can express our thanks knowing that to our own selves we are true.

On Monday this week I went with a friend to make an "Urban Garden". She is the chief steward with LEAF (Local Enhancement & Appreciation of Forests) for this project in partnership with the TTC. This is a 10/10/10 work party event a worldwide initiative of 350.org





This is the St Clair Subway Stn before the 'micro forest' is planted.

(photo courtesy of Marie Van Schie)












This is the Leafy crew ready to start reducing Global Warming.

Go Leafs Go!!

















This is part of the Leafy crew putting the fine touches in the dark and light drizzle.















I can smell the fresher air already! The new Urban Forest in the heart of mid-town Toronto doing its part (per million).


(photo courtesy of Marie Van Schie)

Wishing you all a special Canadian Thanksgiving and give thanks to all that hear you!

Gaza - The Lesser Guilt

While Harper was hardening his commitment to Netanyahu, I doubt that he knew he was shaking hands with the devil and that piracy was unleashed on the Gaza Flotilla early that morning. Not that it really matters as Harper has no aversion to devils and has little compassion for much of the consequences as long as he believes creating a world of his imagination.

Netanyahu has a more directly violent lack of compassion and will push his contempt for the world beyond Israel’s border. Many have commented on a people who have faced psychopathic lack of compassion during the “Final Solution” so he has taken the role of the Hebrew’s avenging God.

And now I’m beginning to wonder if Ignatieff’s feeble whines of dismay aren’t carefully hiding a lack of conscience and he still has invisible ties to the Rove machine. This would account for the pandering to Harper as the Liberals become less and less of a threat year after year.

As for the guilt? Netanyahu is true to his soul and therefore has no guilt. Harper has little soul and his agenda has been fully exposed now for a few years and as a Canadian we must burden him at the polls with a fair proportion of guilt as he is incapable of doing it himself. Ignatieff? Who would have imagined? I can see nothing but guilt now behind those aristocratic eyebrows.

The Hypocracy of Harpercracy

Stephen Harper never really was a good actor, nor is he a hip fashionista. Whenever his dresser tries to pry him out of his suit you know that something is up. If he thinks Canadians are dumb then he's sure that the rest of the world are dumber. After all who ever paid attention to Canada at all. Not even really Afghanistan. Maybe he pricked Copenhagen's attention with his smarmy faux pas and dirty oil.

Probably true that the rest of the world has no idea of his fundamentalist misogynism amongst other global deceptions underscored by our near perfect financial survival which was more luck than planning.

You have to give him credit for his gall to call the G8 meeting in Muskoka. Does this show his empathy for aboriginal women? Will they have the conference in wigwams and longhouses? Certainly not! This is the playground for Canada's very, very rich - no Indians here. Maybe hypocracy but nice views. Nice to paint rosy pictures of hankies ringing out crocodile tears for all the Women and Kiddies who have conveniently become the flavour of the year in the Harpercrats eyes.

"On Wednesday, Liberal Status of Women critic Anita Neville told me, "Mr. Harper is not looking at these issues in Canada. Take a look at the aboriginal population. Look at maternal health care here. He's got a lot of work to do here. "

or

Undermining CIDA and cutting funding to NGOs like Kairos leave Stephen Harper with a sizable credibility gap on maternal health

Demand Proportional Representation

To the Honourable Leaders of the Opposition

Dear Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Layton,



I beseech you to introduce Proportional Representation for fair elections. We would not ever have a Stephen Harper in power long enough to abuse the wishes of the majority of Canadians and besides you would get a stronger turnout at election-time when people know that their vote is effective and feel themselves to be part of a real democratic process.

You don’t need polls to read the true will of the people who, without any leadership, managed to become a major force in showing Harper their disapproval of his proroguing and are not fooled by him. We have called his bluff it’s time for you to do the same.

This is the best opportunity in a long time to call to your popular base and you may never get another one like it if you don’t. Harper can call on his base but his financial clout is weakened by his illusion of Canadian apathy and intelligence. Don’t forsake your disillusioned base!

No election plans? Just watch him

No election plans? Just watch him



Absolutely on target! Harper tries reverse psychology one more time while boasting Canada's economic position is the envy of the western world and is relying on superficial diversions to buy him political capital, Iggy's wandering in the woods and the always effective 'blame it on the opposition' to precipitate an election before the economy/debt/interest rate/bubbles hit the fan and secure his desperate "Grail" of a majority.

A Question for the Right Honourable Prime Minister Stephen Harper

A Question for the Right Honourable Prime Minister Stephen Harper:

Before you were elected for your first minority term, there was a fear that you had a agenda. When you promised "accountability" and we were presented with the satisfaction of punishing a dishonest government we voted in hopes that you were the lesser of two evils. You have given no evidence in the past four years that you have kept this promise for all the reasons mentioned in these other comments, and that after your first proroguing you promised Ignatieff and all Canadians that you would do better upon threat of the dreaded "report card".

Now after your second proroguing in a year, my question to you is if you have not given us "accountability" and lack of vision, then what is your agenda?

Harper Prorogues Again

Comments to the CBC.

Your Question Period: What would you ask our politicians?

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.