In order to add to the wall, select the appropriate option from the pull-down menu above.
Soul Kitchen fourpiece Blue-Jam-Rock outta Springfield, IL -- SWEET!
- Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 17:28:22 (PDT)
http://www.myspace.com/soulkitchenrocks .....ya know ........jus incayse anyonez fergot me ......S
- Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 16:06:30 (PDT)
THE HOBBIT.
The Hobbit movies will be made with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh as producers! New Line and Jackson have reached agreement, the dispute between New Line boss Shaye and Jackson seems to be settled. Jackson and Walsh will produce two Hobbit movies, a director isn't named yet. Both movies will be shot simultaneously, like The Lord of the Rings movies were. Production will start in 2009, the movies are scheduled to come to our cinemas in 2010 and 2011.
Big news Tuesday for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and "Lord of the Rings."
New Line Cinema has patched up its differences with director Peter Jackson. The result is a two-picture deal for "The Hobbit," plus a sequel. Jackson will executive produce the films with partner Fran Walsh, just as he did on the gazillion-dollar Oscar-winning "Rings" trilogy.
Getting "The Hobbit" to this point was a huge effort, because Jackson and New Line were really at loggerheads over "Lord of the Rings" money.
New Line co-chief Bob Shaye told me Tuesday morning he conceded a lot of the trouble had to do with his "personal rancor" over Jackson's comments.
But he also said, "When there's a lot of money involved, there are a lot of intermediaries who say things. We had to be responsible to the millions of [Tolkien] fans."
So will Jackson direct? So far Shaye and Michael Lynne are sticking to the story that Jackson will be executive producer. But the Oscar-winning director of the "Rings" trilogy has creative control over all of "The Hobbit."
"We're going to sit down in January and talk about possible writers and directors," Shaye told me. "He's not going to hire just anyone. This way Peter can oversee this and all his other projects," such as "Tin Tin" and "The Lovely Bones," which he's shooting.
But my guess is that Jackson and Walsh will wind up writing and directing. The stakes are too high, and the legacy after the "Rings" is too important. Shaye and Lynn didn't deny it when I asked, they just diplomatically skirted the issue.
By the way, why is MGM involved? It turns out its United Artists division had the rights to "The Hobbit" following Saul Zaentz's 1978 animated Ralph Bakshi feature.
"Once we resolved our issues with MGM, and then Peter, we were set to go," Lynne told me.
- Monday, August 18, 2008 at 02:03:12 (PDT)
THE HOBBIT.
The Hobbit movies will be made with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh as producers! New Line and Jackson have reached agreement, the dispute between New Line boss Shaye and Jackson seems to be settled. Jackson and Walsh will produce two Hobbit movies, a director isn't named yet. Both movies will be shot simultaneously, like The Lord of the Rings movies were. Production will start in 2009, the movies are scheduled to come to our cinemas in 2010 and 2011.
Big news Tuesday for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and "Lord of the Rings."
New Line Cinema has patched up its differences with director Peter Jackson. The result is a two-picture deal for "The Hobbit," plus a sequel. Jackson will executive produce the films with partner Fran Walsh, just as he did on the gazillion-dollar Oscar-winning "Rings" trilogy.
Getting "The Hobbit" to this point was a huge effort, because Jackson and New Line were really at loggerheads over "Lord of the Rings" money.
New Line co-chief Bob Shaye told me Tuesday morning he conceded a lot of the trouble had to do with his "personal rancor" over Jackson's comments.
But he also said, "When there's a lot of money involved, there are a lot of intermediaries who say things. We had to be responsible to the millions of [Tolkien] fans."
So will Jackson direct? So far Shaye and Michael Lynne are sticking to the story that Jackson will be executive produce. But the Oscar-winning director of the "Rings" trilogy has creative control over all of "The Hobbit."
"We're going to sit down in January and talk about possible writers and directors," Shaye told me. "He's not going to hire just anyone. This way Peter can oversee this and all his other projects," such as "Tin Tin" and "The Lovely Bones," which he's shooting.
But my guess is that Jackson and Walsh will wind up writing and directing. The stakes are too high, and the legacy after the "Rings" is too important. Shaye and Lynn didn't deny it when I asked, they just diplomatically skirted the issue.
By the way, why is MGM involved? It turns out its United Artists division had the rights to "The Hobbit" following Saul Zaentz's 1978 animated Ralph Bakshi feature.
"Once we resolved our issues with MGM, and then Peter, we were set to go," Lynne told me.
- Monday, August 18, 2008 at 02:01:49 (PDT)
DeGeneres and de Rossi wed in Calif.
Aug 17, 2008.
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- There was much dancing: Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi are married, according to reports.
In the biggest celebrity union since California legalized same-sex marriage, DeGeneres, 50, and de Rossi, 35, wed Saturday night in an intimate ceremony at their Beverly Hills home, People and Us Magazine reported.
A publicist for DeGeneres didn't immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press on Saturday.
After the California Supreme Court's ruling in May, the talk-show host announced that she and de Rossi would wed after four years together.
The ceremony was attended by 19 guests, including DeGeneres's mom Betty and de Rossi's mother Margaret Rogers, who flew in from Australia for the occasion, People.com reported Saturday night.
DeGeneres said after winning her fourth consecutive Daytime Emmy for talk show host in June that a date had not been set, and that she would show "a tiny bit" of the nuptials on her show.
While opponents in California have gathered signatures to put a measure on the November ballot for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, Hollywood was throwing it support behind the newlyweds.
"One of my favorite people of all time is Ms. Ellen DeGeneres," Katherine Heigel told AP Television at a Hollywood charity event on Saturday night. "So I wish all the best, all the happiness, all the joy that comes with that certificate ... just the joy of being able to stand up and say that. In front of everyone you love and care about in front of each other and to walk away legal is huge."
Tila Tequila, whose dating reality show fame is built somewhat upon her affinity for both men and women, passed along her good wishes -- with only one small complaint.
"I love Ellen (DeGeneres) I watch her show all the time," Tequila told AP Television. "I just want to say congratulations and I am really sorry you didn't invite me to your wedding."
- Sunday, August 17, 2008 at 17:27:56 (PDT)
"Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit." Baltasar Gracian.
- Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 19:28:33 (PDT)
Lament for Confederation. Chief Dan George.
"How long have I known you, Oh Canada? A hundred years? Yes, a hundred years. And many, many seelanum more. And today, when you celebrate your hundred years, Oh Canada, I am sad for all the Indian people throughout the land.
For I have known you when your forests were mine; when they gave me my meat and my clothing. I have known you in your streams and rivers where your fish flashed and danced in the sun, where the waters said 'come, come and eat of my abundance.' I have known you in the freedom of the winds. And my spirit, like the winds, once roamed your good lands.
But in the long hundred years since the white man came, I have seen my freedom disappear like the salmon going mysteriously out to sea. The white man's strange customs, which I could not understand, pressed down upon me until I could no longer breathe.
When I fought to protect my land and my home, I was called a savage. When I neither understood nor welcomed his way of life, I was called lazy. When I tried to rule my people, I was stripped of my authority.
My nation was ignored in your history textbooks - they were little more important in the history of Canada than the buffalo that ranged the plains. I was ridiculed in your plays and motion pictures, and when I drank your fire-water, I got drunk - very, very drunk. And I forgot.
Oh Canada, how can I celebrate with you this Centenary, this hundred years? Shall I thank you for the reserves that are left to me of my beautiful forests? For the canned fish of my rivers? For the loss of my pride and authority, even among my own people? For the lack of my will to fight back? No! I must forget what's past and gone.
Oh God in heaven! Give me back the courage of the olden chiefs. Let me wrestle with my surroundings. Let me again, as in the days of old, dominate my environment. Let me humbly accept this new culture and through it rise up and go on.
Oh God! Like the thunderbird of old I shall rise again out of the sea; I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success-his education, his skills- and with these new tools I shall build my race into the proudest segment of your society.
Before I follow the great chiefs who have gone before us, Oh Canada, I shall see these things come to pass. I shall see our young braves and our chiefs sitting in the houses of law and government, ruling and being ruled by the knowledge and freedoms of our great land.
So shall we shatter the barriers of our isolation. So shall the next hundred years be the greatest in the proud history of our tribes and nations. "
- Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 16:16:30 (PDT)
The Media a mutual coercion that is mutually agreed upon.
- Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 15:40:25 (PDT)
The Media mutual coercion that is mutually agreed upon.
Ooh my kingdom for a poet or a wordman -- a Birdman? Soulful rueful?
- Friday, August 15, 2008 at 03:09:17 (PDT)
Crystal?
- Friday, August 15, 2008 at 03:08:18 (PDT)
Janey Bird?
- Friday, August 15, 2008 at 03:07:58 (PDT)
This place used to be so jumpin'?
- Friday, August 15, 2008 at 03:07:31 (PDT)
Hmmm, I wonder where the old crew got to????
- Friday, August 15, 2008 at 03:06:47 (PDT)
? Purple Ronnie ?
- Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 23:58:21 (PDT)
The best days are not planned by common sense, but by lack of time, and you just happening to be where everything feels fine within the moment, just because.
- Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 20:31:27 (PDT)
The best days are not planned by by common sense, but by lack of time, and you just happen to be where everything feels fine withi the moment.
- Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 20:27:27 (PDT)
Inflatable dog turd sculpture escapes Swiss museum, wreaks havoc.
A powerful gust of wind recently swept a house-sized sculpture of dog feces from its display outside a Swiss museum, an art official in Berne said Monday.
The incident took place on the night of July 31, but details of the artwork's escape — and the havoc it caused before its eventual landing — emerged just this week.
The massive inflatable sculpture, created by U.S. contemporary artist Paul McCarthy and titled Complex Shit, is part of the Paul Klee Centre's exhibit East of Eden: A Garden Show.
McCarthy's piece was displayed outdoors, among "weird and wonderful objects [forming] an animated kind of front garden," according to the museum website.
The sculpture is usually contained by a safety system that deflates it during instances of bad weather. However, the system failed on this occasion and the work escaped from the Klee Centre's garden, museum director Juri Steiner told Agence France-Presse.
The wind carried the work away, knocking down a power line and breaking a window at a nearby orphanage before falling to the ground about 200 metres from the centre.
The museum had yet to contact McCarthy about the incident, Steiner said. Officials are also contemplating whether to return the piece to display.
.... Hmmmmmm I know that art is supposed to be subjective and in the eye of the beholder but an inflatable house sized sculpture of dog feces floating free wreaking havoc sounds like George W Bush running for a thrid term or he is trying to take over the UN or Canada yet again.
- Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 08:50:21 (PDT)
Invisibility cloak one step closer, scientists say.
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists have created two new types of materials that can bend light the wrong way, creating the first step toward an invisibility cloaking device. One approach uses a type of fishnet of metal layers to reverse the direction of light, while another uses tiny silver wires, both at the nanoscale level. Both are so-called metamaterials -- artificially engineered structures that have properties not seen in nature, such as negative refractive index.
The two teams were working separately under the direction of Xiang Zhang of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley with U.S. government funding. One team reported its findings in the journal Science and the other in the journal Nature.
Each new material works to reverse light in limited wavelengths, so no one will be using them to hide buildings from satellites, said Jason Valentine, who worked on one of the projects.
"We are not actually cloaking anything," Valentine said in a telephone interview. "I don't think we have to worry about invisible people walking around any time soon. To be honest, we are just at the beginning of doing anything like that."
Valentine's team made a material that affects light near the visible spectrum, in a region used in fiber optics.
"In naturally occurring material, the index of refraction, a measure of how light bends in a medium, is positive," he said.
"When you see a fish in the water, the fish will appear to be in front of the position it really is. Or if you put a stick in the water, the stick seems to bend away from you."
These are illusions caused by the light bending when it moves between water and air.
NEGATIVE REFRACTION
The negative refraction achieved by the teams at Berkeley would be different.
"Instead of the fish appearing to be slightly ahead of where it is in the water, it would actually appear to be above the water's surface," Valentine said. "It's kind of weird." For a metamaterial to produce negative refraction, it must have a structural array smaller than the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation being used. This was done using microwaves in 2006 by David Smith of Duke University in North Carolina and John Pendry of Imperial College London.
Visible light is harder. Some groups managed it with very thin layers, virtually only one atom thick, but these materials were not practical to work with and absorbed a great deal of the light directed at it.
"What we have done is taken that material and made it much thicker," Valentine said.
His team, whose work is reported in Nature, used stacked silver and metal dielectric layers stacked on top of each other and then punched through with holes. "We call it a fishnet," Valentine said.
The other team, reporting in Science, used an oxide template and grew silver nanowires inside porous aluminum oxide at tiny distances apart, smaller than the wavelength of visible light. This material refracts visible light.
Immediate applications might be superior optical devices, Valentine said -- perhaps a microscope that could see a living virus.
"However, cloaking may be something that this material could be used for in the future," he said. "You'd have to wrap whatever you wanted to cloak in the material. It would just send light around. By sending light around the object that is to be cloaked, you don't see it."
Jack
- Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 01:35:24 (PDT)
Yoko Ono Fights Mark Chapman's Release.
Yoko Ono believes it would be safer if her husband's murderer stays in jail.
John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, advised prison officials not to free the murderer, Mark Chapman, and insisted that he would be killed if he were to be released, reports Starpulse.com.
Ono believes that Chapman could be pursued and killed by Lennon's loyal fans if he were to leave prison.
She pleaded with parole officers to not give Chapman freedom when his court hearing takes place later this week. The late musician's wife stated, "It's dangerous for him to come out. Not only for us, but for himself. There are so many people out there who dislike him. It's safer for him to stay in jail."
Chapman shot John Lennon outside his New York home in December 1980.
- Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 12:12:05 (PDT)
Sexualities, Cultures and Identities: New Directions in Gay, Lesbian and Queer Studies
(17th January 2003). The theme of the conference
marked the publication of "Handbook of Lesbian and Gay Studies" by Diane Richardson and Steven Seidman (Sage). Its a good read.
Johanne Flurstrom.
- Monday, August 11, 2008 at 21:20:15 (PDT)
Well-preserved 2.5 million-year-old mastodon skeleton found in Romania.
Well-preserved 2.5 million-year-old mastodon skeleton found in Romania BUCHAREST, Romania - Miners in Romania have unearthed the skeleton of a 2.5 million-year-old mastodon, believed to be one of the best preserved in Europe, a local official said Friday.
They stumbled on the remains of the mammoth-like animal during excavations in June at a coal mine in the village of Racosul de Sus, around 170 kilometres northwest of Bucharest, according to Laszlo Demeter, a historian and local councillor.
"This is one of the most spectacular finds in Europe," paleontologist Vlad Codrea, who examined the skeleton, told The Associated Press. "For Romania it is unique."
The mastodon became extinct in Europe two to three million years ago. Codrea, of Babes Bolyai University in Cluj, said 90 per cent of the skeleton's bones were intact, with damage to the skull and tusks.
He also said that he hoped the find would help paleontologists to form a better image of the animals and vegetation present in the area 2.5 million years ago.
"(This find) will open up an area of (paleontological) research in the area," said Alexandru Andresanu, a professor at the Bucharest Geology Faculty in a telephone interview.
"It is sensational. To discover a near complete skeleton (like this) is unique in Romania and a rarity in the world," said Marton Wentzel, a researcher of vertebrates at the Three Rivers Land museum in Oradea, western Romania. "It is important because it can give us complete information about the flora and fauna or the era."
The animal - three metres high and seven metres long - was a forefather of today's elephants. It is related to the mammoth, but fed on leaves instead of grazing and had straight tusks, instead of curved ones. The reason it died out was probably due to climate change, said Codrea.
The skeleton will be fully dug out in two months, Demeter said. Research will be conducted on the bones and the skeleton will then be displayed in the nearby museum of Baraolt.
Funny’s funny, right? Well, when you’re shooting a comedy about the making of a Vietnam war movie that includes an actor in blackface, one with drug problems, one who plays a “retard” in another movie – all based on real actors with indeterminate abilities to laugh at themselves – “funny” may be the only thing standing between you and an angry mob.
The actors involved in ‘Tropic Thunder’ – and that includes director Ben Stiller and his cowriter/executive producer, ‘Mulholland Drive’ star Justin Theroux – seemed confident they won’t seriously offend anyone when interviewed last weekend in Los Angeles.
“It was never really a worry for me,” says Theroux. “Keeping the joke on the actors was paramount, so as long as we were doing that, I was happy. There are no jokes on retarded people, no jokes on black people.”
But just the word “retard” has already offended groups representing individuals with mental challenges, and the movie hasn’t even opened yet. Earlier this week, the Special Olympics and Down Syndrome Association persuaded Dreamworks to shut down a website promoting ‘Simple Jack’ -- the fake movie in ‘Tropic Thunder’ that Stiller’s aging action hero character stars in -- because of its tagline, “Once upon a time … there was a retard.”
Steve Coogan, who plays the director of the film-within-the-film, thinks that joke was misunderstood. “The fact that [Stiller] plays the guy with learning disabilities – some people will see it as [in bad taste] but he’s not laughing at the disability; he’s laughing at the propensity for Hollywood actors to want to play people who are damaged in the hope of winning awards. That was the point of that.”
Coogan doesn’t believe that “there’s anything off limits in comedy.” “It’s the way you do it,” he says. “Sometimes, you can have someone disapproving of the joke within the scene. That can legitimize it because you register that this is not something that is supposed to be acceptable.” Ironically, Coogan’s theory explains why the “retard” humour in ‘Tropic Thunder’ remains vaguely offensive. There’s nothing in the film to suggest that calling people retards is wrong.
It also explains why Robert Downey Jr. wearing blackface in the movie shouldn’t get him in too much trouble. He plays an acclaimed Australian actor who dyes his skin black to play an African American. Stiller and co. wisely include a real black actor in the troupe, played by Brandon T. Jackson, to provide an hilariously miffed counterpoint.
Alberta – B.C. Deal Makes a MASH of Local Democracy.
Edmonton - Using the acronym MASH to represent numerous sectors in a simple word, the Alberta government announced last Friday that under the controversial Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) with British Columbia, restrictions will be made on how municipalities, academic institutions, school boards and the health sector engage in contracts for their organizational requirements. The provincial government stated that when TILMA comes into full effect on April 1, 2009, any MASH contracts beginning at $75,000 for goods and services tenders and $200,000 for construction projects must be opened up for outside contract bids.
"Under TILMA, if any of the 'MASH' organizations chooses to privilege a local Albertan provider for a contract over the amount outlined, an outside organization from B.C. would be able to sue from the provincial tax base for compensation of up to $5 million," says Sheila Muxlow, prairie regional organizer for the Council of Canadians. "This is a direct assault on small businesses within Alberta and threatens local industries from developing sustainable local economies."
"The B.C. government seems unwilling to warn its citizens about the dangers of TILMA and unable to recognize why a growing number of municipalities are opposed to this anti-democratic agreement," says Carleen Pickard, B.C. regional organizer with the Council of Canadians.
Pickard notes that TILMA entrenches a dispute settlement mechanism within a private court system, similar to the Chapter 11 of NAFTA that enables big business and powerful individuals to sue the provincial government if a MASH sector organization does not comply with the requirements of the agreement.
"Although TILMA is consistently heralded by the B.C. and Alberta governments as a beneficial agreement, the deal poses a clear and present danger to local policies that protect the health, well being and unique interests of their constituents," says Muxlow. "TILMA will create a chill effect on communities and municipalities taking policy leadership on issues like pesticide bans and healthy school initiatives, because of the possibility of lawsuits."
The B.C. government seems to be aware of these dangers and, in its latest announcement, said it would consult with municipalities.
"Nevertheless, the B.C. government is pressing ahead with a deal that offers no real benefits and a good many dangers to local communities," says Pickard.
- Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 16:39:15 (PDT)
Oui, an overzealous Joker is so classic.
- Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 02:15:11 (PDT)
LOL The JOKER seems not so good a criminal.
- Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 11:35:37 (PDT)
*LMAO*
Three Rivers police apprehend 'The Joker' at local cinema
THREE RIVERS -- An overzealous Joker fan was taken into custody Sunday morning after attempting to steal movie posters and other items, police said.
Spencer Taylor, 20, of Three Rivers, was arrested on felony larceny and malicious destruction of property charges after trying to steal memorabilia of the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight" at the Three Rivers 6 theater.
Taylor was dressed in a full costume and makeup resembling the "Joker" character from the movie.
He was trying to pull the posters off the walls and take other items when he was restrained by theater staff until police arrived, Three Rivers Detective Mike Mohney said.
- Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at 00:35:20 (PDT)
Kakisimowin
- Monday, July 28, 2008 at 14:36:04 (PDT)
---
------- __@
----- _(\<;_
--- (*)/ (*)
- ------------- Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with Me....!
Jack Bike Courier.
- Monday, July 28, 2008 at 14:28:34 (PDT)
The Pope, *LOL* I wonder if he eats McCain's French Fries.
Pope Decries Materialism During a visit to Australia, Pope Benedict XVI spoke out against the "sense of despair" that accompanies material prosperity. Onion News went out and asked Americans what they thought. Here are three all American voices that support the Pope's findings. David Okupniak,Unemployed: "Yeah, I remember when I had a job. I was miserable." Nataile Eis, Air Traffic Controller: "I agree with the pope's remarks about an 'interior emptiness' and a 'sense of despair,' which is why I stopped going to Mass." And so too Kevin Sidorov, Night Watchman: "Then the Pope must be the saddest person in the world." Thank you and Good Nite, this has been Onion News The 6 O'clock Edition.
- Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 15:59:37 (PDT)
John McCain's Disaster Economics.
By Frank Rich, The New York Times.
July 22nd 2008.
If voters got a fair presentation of John McCain's economic plan, the idea of him winning the White House would cause mass panic.
The best thing to happen to John McCain was for the three network anchors to leave him in the dust this week while they chase Barack Obama on his global Lollapalooza tour. Were voters forced to actually focus on Mr. McCain's response to our spiraling economic crisis at home, the prospect of his ascension to the Oval Office could set off a panic that would make the IndyMac Bank bust in Pasadena look as merry as the Rose Bowl.
"In a time of war," Mr. McCain said last week, "the commander in chief doesn't get a learning curve." Fair enough, but he imparted this wisdom in a speech that was almost a year behind Mr. Obama in recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. Given that it took the deadliest Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul since 9/11 to get Mr. McCain's attention, you have to wonder if even General Custer's learning curve was faster than his.
Mr. McCain still doesn't understand that we can't send troops to Afghanistan unless they're shifted from Iraq. But simple math, to put it charitably, has never been his forte. When it comes to the central front of American anxiety -- the economy -- his learning curve has flat-lined.
In 2000, he told an interviewer that he would make up for his lack of attention to "those issues." As he entered the 2008 campaign, Mr. McCain was still saying the same, vowing to read "Greenspan's book" as a tutorial. Last weekend, the resolutely analog candidate told The New York Times he is at last starting to learn how "to get online myself." Perhaps he'll retire his abacus by Election Day.
Mr. McCain's fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated on video by whining about "a nation of whiners." The McCain-Gramm bond, dating back 15 years, is more scandalous than Mr. Obama's connection with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. McCain has been so dependent on Mr. Gramm for economic policy that he sent him to newspaper editorial board meetings, no doubt to correct the candidate's numbers much as Joe Lieberman cleans up after his confusions of Sunni and Shia.
Just two weeks before publicly sharing his thoughts about America's "mental recession," Mr. Gramm laid out equally incendiary views in a Wall Street Journal profile that portrayed him as "almost certainly" the McCain choice for Treasury secretary. Mr. Gramm said that the former chief executive of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, was "probably the most exploited worker in American history" since he received only a $158 million pay package rather than the "billions" he deserved for his success in growing Southwestern Bell.
But no one in the news media seemed to notice Mr. Gramm's naked expression of the mind-set he'd bring to a McCain White House. And few journalists have vetted the presumptive Treasury secretary's post-Senate history as an executive at UBS. The stock of that banking giant has lost 70 percent of its value in a year after its reckless adventures in the subprime lending market. It's now fending off federal investigation for helping the megarich avoid taxes.
Mr. McCain made a big show of banishing Mr. Gramm after his whining "gaffe," but it's surely at most a temporary suspension. When the candidate said back in January that there's nobody he knows who is stronger on economic issues than his old Senate pal, he was telling the truth. Left to his own devices -- or those of his new No. 1 economic surrogate, Carly Fiorina -- Mr. McCain is clueless. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, a supporter, said that Mr. McCain's latest panacea for high gas prices, offshore drilling, is snake oil -- and then announced his availability to serve as energy czar in an Obama administration.
The term flip-flopping doesn't do justice to Mr. McCain's self-contradictory economic pronouncements because that implies there's some rational, if hypocritical, logic at work. What he serves up instead is plain old incoherence, as if he were compulsively consulting one of those old Magic 8 Balls. In a single 24-hour period in April, Mr. McCain went from saying there's been "great economic progress" during the Bush presidency to saying "Americans are not better off than they were eight years ago." He reversed his initial condemnation of mortgage bailouts in just two weeks.
In February Mr. McCain said he would balance the federal budget by the end of his first term even while extending the gargantuan Bush tax cuts. In April he said he'd accomplish this by the end of his second term. In July he's again saying he'll do it in his first term. Why not just say he'll do it on Inauguration Day? It really doesn't matter since he's never supplied real numbers that would give this promise even a patina of credibility.
Mr. McCain's plan for Social Security reform is "along the lines that President Bush proposed." Or so he said in March. He came out against such "privatization" in June (though his policy descriptions still support it). Last week he indicated he isn't completely clear on what Social Security does. He called the program's premise -- young taxpayers foot the bill for their elders (including him) -- an "absolute disgrace."
Given that Mr. McCain's sole private-sector job was a fleeting stint in public relations at his father-in-law's beer distributorship, he comes by his economic ignorance honestly. But there's no A team aboard the Straight Talk Express to fill him in. His campaign economist, the former Bush adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, could be found in the June 5 issue of American Banker suggesting even at that late date that we still don't know "the depth of the housing crisis" and proposing that "monitoring is the right thing to do in these circumstances."
Ms. Fiorina, the ubiquitous new public face of McCain economic policy, adds nothing to the mix beyond her incessant display of corporate jargon, from "trend lines" to "start-ups." Before she was fired at Hewlett-Packard, its stock had declined 50 percent during her five-plus years in charge. She missed earning projections -- by 23 percent in one quarter -- much as she now misrepresents both the Obama and McCain records. This month she said Mr. McCain wanted to require insurance plans to cover birth control medications along with Viagra, when in fact he had voted against it.
Ms. Fiorina received a $42 million payout (half in cash) from H.P., according to a shareholders' subsequent lawsuit. With this inspiring rsum, she now aspires to be Mr. McCain's running mate. So does the irrepressible Mitt Romney, who actually was a business whiz before serving as Massachusetts's governor. Beltway wisdom has it that the addition of such a corporate star will remedy Mr. McCain's fiscal flatulence.
But Mr. Romney, while more plausible than Ms. Fiorina, is hardly what America wants at this desperate time. His leveraged buyout dealings as co-founder of Bain Capital induced plant closings, mass layoffs and outsourcing. If Mr. McCain truly intends to "put our country's interests" above politics and reach across the aisle to move the nation forward, as he constantly tells us, why not go for a vice president who's the very best fit for the huge challenges at hand?
The obvious choice would be Michael Bloomberg -- who, as a former Republican turned independent, would necessitate that Mr. McCain reach only halfway across the aisle, and to someone who is his friend rather than a vanquished rival he is learning to tolerate. Romney vs. Bloomberg is not a close contest. Bloomberg L.P. has roughly three times the revenues and employees of Bain & Company, where Mr. Romney ultimately served as chief executive. Mr. Romney rescued the Salt Lake City Olympics while running it in 2002, but Mayor Bloomberg revitalized New York, the nation's largest metropolis, after the most devastating attack in our history. The city he manages has more than twice the budget of Mr. Romney's state.
Yes, Mr. Bloomberg is a closet Democrat and an alpha dog who doesn't want to be a second banana. And his views on gay civil rights and abortion would roil the G.O.P. base. But Mr. Romney shared some of those same views before he flip-flopped, and besides, these are not ordinary times. Millions of Americans are losing their homes and jobs. Whole industries are going belly up. The national crisis at hand, not yesterday's culture wars, should drive the vice-presidential pick.
Mr. McCain reminds us every day how principled he is. That presumably means he'd risk a revolt by his party's dwindling agents of intolerance and do everything in his power to persuade Mr. Bloomberg to join his ticket in the spirit of patriotic sacrifice. The politics could be advantageous too. A Bloomberg surprise could impress independents and keep the television audience tuned in to a G.O.P. convention that will unfold in the shadow of Mr. Obama's address to 75,000 screaming fans in Denver. But this is fantasy political baseball, not reality. Mr. McCain, sad to say, hung up his old maverick's spurs the day he embraced the Bush tax cuts he had once opposed as "too tilted to the wealthy.”
- Saturday, July 26, 2008 at 10:58:38 (PDT)
Octopus Books. Octopus Books is a cool place to hang out.
Jakob McEvoy.
Sounds like a family spatt that is more Press-based gossip than substance. The Press in the UK behave more like a pack of rabid Truffle-Pigs than civilized creatures that one might name -- Pitty.
Charlie Carr.
- Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 15:15:12 (PDT)
Holy batguano, Batman!
Bale arrested and released; denies assault
July 22, 2008, 2:52 PM EST
LONDON (AP) -- Christian Bale has denied allegations of assault made by his mother and sister, hours after he was arrested, questioned by London police and released.
The 34-year-old star of "The Dark Knight" spent four hours at a police station, but was not charged. British media had reported that Bale's mother and sister complained he had assaulted them at the Dorchester Hotel in London on Sunday night.
Representatives for Bale released a statement today denying that an assault took place.
- Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 13:01:42 (PDT)
ImaginAction is a traveling theater arts company that dazzles the heart and awakens the spirit through the performance of ancient folk tales and original works. We offer storytelling, full length plays, theatre of the oppressed workshops and intercultural ceremonies that are based in respect for personal stories and traditional ways. We delight in cultivating empathy among youth and elders, the human family of cultures, nations and religions by forging a dynamic arena where people listen to and tell stories that can transform fear into friendship, despair into hope, doubt into understanding.
Hallo, Annette ici est en train de lire vous m'avez demandé de partager avec vous en ce qui concerne l'esprit de la communauté conférence sur le développement de Juin à Montréal. Il est très profonde et agréable rencontre. J'espère que Kim Klein le discours serviront à inspirer vous et vos amis à la bibliothèque. Et aussi, j'ai beaucoup apprécié le festival Blues musik avec vous. Le Doors Tribute bande était génial, trop!
À bientôt et bonsoir, Phillipe Cassel.
- Friday, July 18, 2008 at 13:57:00 (PDT)
Hallo, Annette ici est en train de lire vous m'avez demandé de partager avec vous en ce qui concerne l'esprit de la communauté conférence sur le développement de Juin à Montréal. Il est très profonde et agréable rencontre. J'espère que Kim Kline le discours serviront à inspirer vous et vos amis à la bibliothèque. Et aussi, j'ai beaucoup apprécié le festival Blues musik avec vous. Le Doors Tribute bande était génial, trop!
À bientôt et bonsoir, Phillipe Cassel.
- Friday, July 18, 2008 at 13:55:23 (PDT)
why so serious?
the JOKER
- Friday, July 18, 2008 at 00:38:20 (PDT)
Citizen Engagement and Movement Building as a Force for Social Transformation (Keynote Address), for Open University, June, 2008.
By Kim Klein Resident Resource Person,
Institute in Management and Community Development.
I am very grateful to have this chance to share some of the thoughts I have been developing over the six months of my residency on this topic of citizen engagement and movement building as a force for social transformation. I want to look at this topic from the point of view of the nonprofit sector. And in the beginning I want to say that I believe keynotes are supposed to be provocative—to provoke conversation over the next several days. So I don’t expect you to agree with me on every point—disagreement is healthy.
Let me start by telling you a little bit about how I came to be here as the Resident Resource Person at the Institute. I first came to Montreal and to the Summer Program about 14 years ago and have come almost every year primarily to teach fundraising. I have been in fundraising for 32 years, and so almost half of that time I have been influenced by what I have learned here every summer. During these past fourteen years, when I wasn’t in Montreal, I was teaching, consulting and writing about fundraising. During most of those years, and for most of the years before I started coming here, I was completely confident that if the small nonprofits I worked with did what I said they would raise money. I had ample evidence that this was the case.
But starting in the mid-90’s, I began to see organizations that were running their fundraising programs almost flawlessly, yet they were not able to raise the money they needed. Plus the chances of running a program flawlessly were slim. So those organizations that had any internal conflict, or tried something creative which failed, were really not able to raise money. The devolution of government is of course much further along in the USA than here in Canada, and it is fascinating to come here and experience what it is like to be with people who expect their government to do its job, and who have a fairly well developed sense of what that job is. But even here, we seen cutbacks and changes in government policy that are threatening to swamp social service agencies or take much of strength out of existing arts and culture programs. I worked with a large number and variety of social change nonprofits while I was here, and all were experiencing cutbacks or no increases in funding from both the government and private sources. Yet they were expected to handle more and requests for service, to pay higher and higher rent and other costs. Being asked to do more and more with less and less is an all too familiar feeling.
So this led me, a fundraiser, to be very interested in taxes. What is the role of taxes? What should be taxed? Who or what should pay taxes and how much should they pay? One summer here I tried out the idea that taxes should be a part of fundraising and those of us in fundraising must take this seriously. This went well, and so I went back to the USA and began developing workshops to help people understand taxes, and to help people think taxes were interesting. Those who favor lower taxes always maintain that the private sector—corporations, foundations and individuals, will make up for these cuts. But it is abundantly clear and has been demonstrated over and over that the cutbacks in government spending cannot, and should not, be made up by the private sector.
But thinking about public money and private money inevitably leads to thinking about an even bigger concept, which is that the most important assets we own are collective and social in nature. Out most valuable wealth we must hold in common. Water, oceans and wildlife as well as libraries, parks, museums, access to high quality educations are community resources which must be actively protected and managed for the good of all. They must be treasured and passed on, undiminished, to future generations. These things are variously called our common wealth, the commons, the common good.
Learning to see and understand the dozens of commons in our midst is one of the preeminent challenges of our time, as David Bollier notes. And it was my experience here in Montreal that the culture of this city, this province, was one that inherently valued the commons, and where people would go to some lengths to protect and enhance the public good. So I wanted to come here for a longer time and experience all of this in more depth, and have some time to expand these ideas, read more and reflect more.
I’d like to return to the title of the speech and look at some definitions.
Citizen Engagement and Movement Building as a Force for Social Transformation
I resisted the word ‘citizen’ when we were first giving the speech a title. In the USA, the racist and anti-immigration forces have seized this word and use it to define an “us and them” reality. “Us” who belong in the United States because we were born there, and “them” who do not belong and are not wanted except as a source of cheap and exploited labor. Many nonprofit organizations which had the word citizen in their name (Citizens for Justice, Citizens for a Better Environment) have changed it to “community” or “people.” But my colleagues here helped me realize that you really should not give away good words to the other side. And citizen is such a word. So when I say “citizen engagement” I mean in the sense of a “citizen” of the world. I don’t know if I will be able to bring the word ‘citizen’ back from the slimy toxic mud it has been dragged into south of the Canadian border, but I will try.
What does it mean to be an engaged citizen? Paolo Friere, the great Brazilian educator, said that we have a vocation, a calling, to be fully human. I think this is a good summary of engagement. I am citizen of the world—I have rights and responsibilities to myself and others.
Let’s look at social transformation. Someone said to me, on reading the title of my speech, that what else would be a force for social transformation besides citizen engagement? I wish what this person said was true, but as we see all around us, society is transforming constantly and mostly without involvement of citizens. In fact a good deal is done to dis-involve people. Social transformation is not automatically positive or progressive.
Friere puts in front of us a very important question. He says, “What if we discover that our present way of life is irreconcilable with our vocation to be fully human?” Can we live easily, for example, knowing that 3 billion people in the world live on less than $2 per day? Or that if we don’t act dramatically and immediately, by 2011 it may well be too late to save our planet from the ravages of human created climate change? For those of us who are American, how many minutes of the day can we ignore the fact that 40 cents out of every tax dollar supports our military and that we are the most militarized nation in the world, with a military capacity that exceeds the next nine most militarized nations put together? Can you who are Canadians live easily with the increasing numbers of statistics coming out of every province showing that poverty in not only increasing quite dramatically, but that is also increasingly racialized?
That a United Way study showed that poverty in communities of color across Canada increased by 360% from 1981 to 2000, while among the general population poverty decreased by 28% in the same time period? Our two countries are transforming into places that are irreconcilable with the values that truly engaged citizens would espouse.
And what is most puzzling is the role of nonprofits in any of this. So pausing there, let’s look at the nonprofit sector in the world in Canada.
-Canada has the largest nonprofit workforce in the world, with 12% of Canadians working for nonprofits (compared to 10% in the USA).
-Canada has the second largest nonprofit sector, with the Netherlands being the largest, and Belgium, Ireland and the USA coming in third, fourth and fifth respectively.
-The nonprofit sector in Canada is 7% of the Gross Domestic Product
--There are 161,000 nonprofits in Canada; 56% are registered charities.
--28% of all nonprofits are in Ontario
--29% of all nonprofits are in Quebec
Canadians as Givers
About 30% of all the income of all nonprofits is provided by various levels of government, about 50% of the income is what is called “earned income”—fees for service, products for sale, small businesses that support non profit work, etc. The remaining 20% of the money comes from foundations, corporations and individuals.
In the most recent study to come out of Statistics Canada, which can be found on the Imagine Canada website:
--85% of Canadians made a financial donation in 2006.
--This totaled almost $9 billion.
--Although higher income households gave more money in absolute amounts than lower income households, donors with household incomes of $20,000 gave a greater percentage of their income than any others.
--the 18% of Canadians who are landed immigrants gave 20% of the total value of all donations.
--93%, more than 9 out of 10 people living in Newfoundland, Labrador and Prince Edward Island gave away money.
So we have an interesting problem to solve here. If you think of giving money as one element of citizen engagement, Canadians are very engaged, far more than Americans, where about 70% of Americans give money. Canadians are more likely to give money than to vote, or to volunteer (45%) or to attend any house of worship (19%). In fact, if you were to say what is one thing Canadians have in common, giving away money would be in the running. Canadians also volunteer in huge numbers: 45% of adult population, but when you consider how many people could not volunteer because they are too old or disabled or working several jobs to make ends meet, a very high percentage of people who can volunteer actually do.
The sector is huge, the engagement of people is huge. The sector grows every year, giving grows every year, and what else grows every year? Social problems, environmental degradation, racism, gap between rich and poor. And all of this is just as true and more so in the US. There is something very wrong in that picture. A thriving growing nonprofit sector should be correlated to a decrease in problems and an increase in the quality of life. And the fact that it is not is a question that has bothered me for quite some time.
Not all of them are in our control and new problems arise all the time. But I want to explore just a few of these reasons.
The first is in the notion of social transformation. We want a better, a more just society, but we rarely take the time to articulate a clear and detailed vision of what that means. And when someone does suggest a plan, the first response will be, “can we get it funded?” So often fundraising has been portrayed as the reason why something didn’t happen. “We would have ended sex trafficking but we couldn’t raise the money.” That notion has to be abandoned. When the question of funding is the first one raised, we are already not headed in the right direction. We must be willing to set big goals. We need much bigger goals.
In fundraising people love big goals. People are more likely to give to something big than something small. I see over and over organizations set fundraising goals, and then fall short of them. Their board doesn’t rise to the challenge, their development efforts don’t yield enough, the Executive Director is pulled in a million directions and can’t make the time to raise the money. So the next year they set the same goal, or possibly a lower goal. And you know what happens? They have the same experience. But what is the problem? The problem is that meeting the goal, raising the money they said they needed would only give them the organization they have now—overworked, underpaid, poor infrastructure, old computers, too much to do and too few people to do it. Small victories, large losses. What is the incentive to meet a goal like that? We must think much bigger.
Because it not money that stops us from transforming our society—it is time. So I took the time here to think about this. I was given this time by my residency, which turns out, on reflection, to be a very radical gift. Meg Wheatley says, “If we want our world to be different, our first act needs to be reclaiming time to think. No one will give us this time because thinking is dangerous to the status quo. Those benefiting from the current system have no interest in new ideas. We can’t expect those few who are well served by the current reality to give us the time to think. If we want anything to change, we are the ones who have to reclaim time.”
Or as the Buddha said, “We have so little time, we must proceed very slowly.”
Over the last 30 years, we have been worn down, and our ability to think big has been effected. For example, I started my fundraising career in domestic violence. I worked at a shelter for battered women in San Francisco. At that time, many of us believed that domestic violence would end in our lifetime. Now we see domestic violence programs that start endowments and plan to exist forever. Homeless shelters, which should exist, if they exist at all, as a temporary solution to a temporary problem, now implement planned giving programs. I saw a brochure the other day, “Your bequest will insure that homeless people will always have shelter.” But I want my bequest to insure that their will no longer be homeless people.
Our first task is to create a vision of the kind of society in which we wish to live and pursue that vision. The social activist Dorothy Day, who started the Catholic Worker Movement quoted her teacher, Peter Maurin, as saying that our job is to create a society in which it is not that hard to be good. What would make it not that hard to be good? I am not going to answer that now—those of us participating in the rest of this program will have a chance to work with questions like that for the next three days.
The important thing here is that we each have time to reflect and create a vision, and then to share with each other, to develop perhaps a collective vision. The prophet Joel said, “Without vision, the people perish.” Those of us who look closely at Bible verses note that Joel deliberately makes this plural. “the people perish”—not a person. Progressive social change requires people. And how do we each share our vision? This is the engagement part. We need space and time. Individual people can take time, but we also need to create time in our organizations-collective time. Can we have a staff meeting every couple of months that doesn’t have a dozen things on the agenda? Can reflection be one of the items at our board meetings or Annual General Meetings?
At one time, and perhaps in some places still, this would have been the job of religious institutions. Sometimes, this happens in a family, but that is too scattershot to count on.
The place where it should happen, and when it does, is most successful, is in the university. Holding open space and time for people to think together, to read and reflect, to research and to come back and talk some more.
The space must be peopled with engaged citizens. And this kind of space can be easily privatized. David Bollier, who writes a great deal about the “commons” says in his book, “Silent Theft: Private Plunder of our Common Wealth:, “Any sort of creative endeavor—which is to say progress—requires an open “white space” in which experimentation and new construction can take place. There must be the freedom to try new things. There must be an unregimented work space in which to imagine, tinker and execute new ideas.” When all the space must be funded in order to exist, with imposed quantitative indices and pressure for outcomes, creativity is bureaucratized into narrow paths.
So the first reason non profits don’t live up to their promise is lack of vision. And the second reason is lack of reflective physical and mental space. The Summer Program here at the Institute has been that space. And those of us who have been coming over all these years have been blessed to find it. Looking at time and money, I reaffirmed that time is so NOT money.
But on reflection ourselves, we at the Institute decided to go one step further in creating the space that is needed. The Open University that we are experimenting with this week, is such a space. There has been a lot of discussion and some controversy about not charging fees for this Open University. And it is important to bring this controversy into this talk, and to this week because it is an example of another reason why nonprofits don’t live up to our promise, and that is that we are privatized ourselves. We are monetized everywhere. So that even the notion of “free” comes to mean only that an event will be accessible to people who cannot pay.
Sometimes it is very important to monetize the value of the people who can’t pay so highly that we decide not to charge in order that they can come. But this cannot be the limit of the word free, or it all becomes part of a bottom line—did we make money, did we break even, did we lose money? I am in the money business so these are important questions. But sometimes it is important to refuse bottom line considerations altogether. We claim here at the Open University, a space that is not monetized at all, money is not present here—either present by its presence or present by its absence. This is an open free space, limited only by time. This space is a commons. And those who want a nonprofit sector that will be a force for progressive social transformation must support this kind and this definition of free space.
Finally, I come to movement building. One of the most pernicious and damaging myths that accompany societies that place a lot of emphasis on individual achievement is that idea that one person can make a difference. This is simply not true. Individual people can do amazing things and can be extraordinary leaders, but true change is always brought about by a group. Even individual choices are not what they seem. For example, people who don’t vote will often say, “One vote cannot make a difference.” But if you don’t vote, you are not one person not voting. You are part of the group that doesn’t vote. If you shop at a store where you know the products are produced using sweatshop labor, you may think, “My one t-shirt doesn’t make a difference.” But you have joined the group that shops at that store and you have joined the group that makes the store profitable. One of the most famous stories of the American Civil Rights Movement is that of Rosa Parks.
The story, as is often told, is that Rosa Parks, a seamstress in Montgomery, AL on Dec 1,1955, suddenly got fed up with the racially segregated bus system in Montgomery and sat down in the front of the bus, in the white section. She was arrested and suddenly people mobilized to create bus boycott that led the desegregation of buses and started a whole new phase of the civil rights movement. An amazing person. And she was. But the real story is that Rosa Parks had been a civil rights activist for many years by 1955. She was active in the NAACP, and she had recently been at the Highlander Center in Tennessee for a two week training in community organizing. She was there with Myles Horton, the founder, Martin Luther King and a number of other leaders. They were looking for an opportunity to challenge the segregation of the busses because it was one of most galling aspects of segregation. Blacks had to buy a token at the front of the bus, then get off the bus and re-enter through the back door. Sometimes the bus would leave before everyone had a chance to get back on. When the busses were crowded white people could ask blacks to give up their seats in the black section of the bus.
King, Parks and others prepared themselves to be ready to seize an opportunity to boycott the busses. Many people, including dozens of white women, were ready to drive black people to work, fliers were designed waiting for the moment to be printed. Rosa Parks returned to Montgomery and sat actually in the front of the so-called “colored” section of the bus. She was asked to give up her seat by a white person, which she refused. She was arrested. The next day the boycott started. 52,000 fliers were distributed in 24 hours calling for a boycott, which ultimately lasted 381 days.
The real story is much more exciting than the myth. It is a story of movement building, and when the story is revised to make the action of a heroic individual, spontaneous and unsupported, devoid of context, it serves to obscure the power of collective action and it makes all of us feel bad that we don’t think of such amazing actions or that we are not brave enough to act alone. Plus, nonprofits are all over this story— they made it happen. And we need to be much more conscientious about teaching each other our many stories—famous and not so famous, and not let those stories get re-told in ways that undermine our collective engagement.
When we look at nonprofits through the lens of movement building we ask ourselves what is the government is doing while we are doing our work. As Eric Schragge, who is a professor here at Concordia, notes, “As government devolves more and more responsibility to nonprofits, government itself becomes more and more a vehicle for suppression of dissent.” This comes about through anti-terrorism laws, which I spoke about several years ago in this very place, and by making government funding increasingly difficult to manage because of strings attached and reporting requirements, but in much more subtle ways by nonprofits having too much to do to even pay attention to suppression, by increasing competition for funding, and by nonprofits fear of losing funding or tax status. I will start with the last one on that list. Getting charitable status here in Canada is not easy, and so nonprofits go to some lengths to protect it.
But the problem is that we are fetishizing our status to the point where I have had many Executive Directors here in Canada tell me that they cannot speak out on this or that issue for fear of losing their charitable status. Their charitable status becomes more important than telling the truth. This fear abounds with no evidence for its basis. When you look at Revenue Canada and you ask experts what you are and are not allowed to do and say when you have charitable status, you could drive a truck through the law. IT is very broad. Nonprofits cannot endorse a candidate for office. But we absolutely can speak out in favor of some policies and against others, we can condemn or praise actions of officials in the government, we have far more flexibility than we are using. This enclosure is self-made and has no basis in fact.
And, worst case scenario, supposing Revenue Canada were to crack down on a nonprofit for something they said or did that they felt was related to their mission. Who will win in the war of public opinion on that? But our fear is partly of Revenue Canada, but also because of increasing competition for funds, increasing reporting requirements and bureaucracy and lack of time to discuss what all this means, nonprofits here do not have any confidence that if one of us were to be picked off by a hostile government action, that the rest of us would stand up for them. We are too busy protecting and building our organizations and we are not in the movement building business. What would it take for us to guarantee each other that we will stand up for each other?
As government devolves, the tendency of many nonprofits on both sides of the border is to turn to foundations. Because of the rising gap between rich and poor, there are an increasing number of very large foundations. Canada has only a handful at this point. In the USA, we have quite a few. I hear groups here all the time wishing there were more of the really large foundations like the Gates Foundation or the Open Society Institute which is funded by George Soros. In both countries, the very large foundations are influential in setting public policy by what they fund. If the Gates Foundation were a country, what it gives away would put it ahead of the gross domestic product of 48 countries. Their board is unelected and unaccountable. Many foundations on both sides of the border do not accept unsolicited applications. Some of them even start their own programs because apparently they can’t find any existing program that is satisfactory.
So what do nonprofits do? We scramble around trying to figure out who we know who could get us in to this or that foundation. But what we should do is first raise the question, “How does a society allow anyone to accumulate this kind of wealth, and then having accumulated it, give them enormous tax breaks for giving a tiny fraction of it back without using any known democratic process for making those decisions?” Why won’t we ask this question? Because we are frightened of losing our funding, which I might point out we are losing anyway.
I have stood here and been very critical of the nonprofit sector. I believe I am allowed to do that. The nonprofit sector has been and will continue to be my life. But now I want to turn the what I will take back with me to the United States: a number of very important ideas and beliefs.
I love the willingness to engage in conversation, consultation, to really pull people together. In order to make sure that as many people get to speak as possible, we have to take the time for meetings and discussion. Some people will have to have the same conversation several times in order that some other people get to have it for the first time. The places for doing that, the extent to which it is done, is much more developed here than in the USA.
I love the questions people start with. For example, a very large organization that has an endowment of a few million dollars looks at how that money should be invested and starts with the idea that investing in the stock market is immoral. They are not invested in the market at all because they do not believe in that kind of economy. Yet, they know they must use their endowment properly and so they struggle with what to do with that money.
I met with a group of artist run centers, of which I learned there are 22 in Montreal. They have, for the most part, been funded by the government and are now thinking about different options for fundraising. But the first question we discussed is what happens to art, to the definition of art and artists they have developed over the years, when you start seeking funding from other than the government? What happens to the government’s sense of its responsibility to art and artists?
These questions set a very high bar, and I want to bring back with me the idea that we can start with big important questions.
The University of the Streets Café program helped me develop some thoughts that had brought me to Canada in the first place. Many people are so alienated from public life that they don’t really have any opinions. The fact they have a right to an opinion is meaningless when they have no reason to think that anyone will ever be interested in what they think. People need space to form opinions in the presence of other people, not just alone, and to test their thoughts in a safe environment. They need to be asked questions they haven’t thought of, but which make sense once presented. People need to be heard, and they need to practice hearing.
I am in the “answer business” I am a teacher and a consultant. People don’t want answers from me—they want me to ask them questions and help them find their own answers.
I would like to leave behind these thoughts:
I’d like you to imagine that nonprofits can become more self-reliant without letting government off the hook. That self-sufficiency and an entrepreneurial spirit are not inherently bad, but can actually be quite creative.
Having a behemoth neighbor to the south with huge social problems can make you a little too sanguine about your lack of problems here. For example, racism is far larger problem that many white people are willing to acknowledge. Here in Quebec the ongoing struggles around language and identity obscure the fact the thousands of people are arriving here whose first language is neither French nor English. By 2017, almost the entire service labor force in Canada will be newcomers. Even now, poverty is increasingly racialized and it will get much worse, if you don’t act soon.
The reason I have raised these issues with you is because I believe, in spite of all our problems, we of the nonprofit sector are the last best hope for change. We have the money and we have the people to build the world we imagine. We must not be talked out of it or talked down from it. It will take time, more than my lifetime certainly, but possibly not more than some of yours. We want joy from our work. Those of us who have made social justice work our lives entered it because it gave us strength and excitement.
The set up now often just makes us exhausted. The biggest piece of work to be done in our communities is creating community. Not returning to some 1950’s and 60’s idea of it, homogeneous and rule bound communities of my childhood in which no one was gay and no one married outside their race or their religion, full of stereotypes, where questioning authority was forbidden. Not returning to the 1970’s of my coming of age, where everything was questioned, but root problems still were not addressed, such as racism and sexism. And certainly not returning to the “me” decade of the 90’s. We will not return to any previous way of life—we will take what worked and lessons we learned, but we will give ourselves permission, particularly our young people, to create, for the first time, a community that works, and then the work of citizen engagement will be continuing to build on that work.
- Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 13:34:18 (PDT)
"Tristan Corbiere And The Poetics Of Irony" -- Est un puissant et impressionnant en lecture poétique et d'ironie.
Suzanne.
- Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 09:35:51 (PDT)
Hey... i am really surprised to see this thing up and going..you folks are crazy. ;) well..This is Anna Blomqvist looking for Quemby Prater. I thought it would be cool to facebook her but i dont know if Prater is still her last name, maybe she got married..who knows? anyway.. should you see this.. facebook me. anna blomqvist of the Swedish network..(if not italian or australian).
Paul McCartney will help Quebec City celebrate its 400th anniversary by performing in the French-Canadian province on July 20th. The former Beatle will perform at the city’s Plains of Abraham. QUEBEC CITY, Quebec - On July 3, 1608, French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded a fur-trading post on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. Yes, iIt all started July 3, 1608, for the French-speaking people of the Americas. When Samuel de Champlain decided to settle in Kébec, “where the river narrows,” little did he suspect that it would mark the beginning of the great transatlantic French adventure. All previous colonization attempts had failed – meaning lost at sea (sunk). However, Aall in all, after much struggle and arduous work Champlain’s fur-trading post is now one of the oldest cities in North America. And so this summer, Quebec City celebrates four centuries of French heritage with many inspiring series of exhibits, festivals and performances.
I think by the fire under the starlight about things that I saw about flowers of the field and butterflies in summers that went quickly
About gossamer strands and yellow leaves in autumns past
With mist and silver sun and winds upon my hair
I think by the fire in shadow, how the world will be when the winter comes without a spring that I shall not see
For many things there are yet that I never saw
In the wood in every spring there are new green things
I sit by the fire and think about people in old times
And people who will see a world that I will see on no day
But when I, by the fading fire, think about ancient days
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.
- Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 08:53:57 (PDT)
Hobbit Like Human Ancestor Found in Asia.
Hillary Mayell, National Geographic.
Scientists have found skeletons of a hobbit-like species of human that grew no larger than a three-year-old modern child. The tiny humans, who had skulls about the size of grapefruits, lived with pygmy elephants and Komodo dragons on a remote island in Indonesia 18,000 years ago.
Australian and Indonesian researchers discovered bones of the miniature humans in a cave on Flores, an island east of Bali and midway between Asia and Australia.
Scientists have determined that the first skeleton they found belongs to a species of human completely new to science. Named Homo floresiensis, after the island on which it was found, the tiny human has also been dubbed by dig workers as the "hobbit," after the tiny creatures from the Lord of the Rings books.
The original skeleton, a female, stood at just 1 meter (3.3 feet) tall, weighed about 25 kilograms (55 pounds), and was around 30 years old at the time of her death 18,000 years ago.
The skeleton was found in the same sediment deposits on Flores that have also been found to contain stone tools and the bones of dwarf elephants, giant rodents, and Komodo dragons, lizards that can grow to 10 feet (3 meters) and that still live today.
Homo floresienses has been described as one of the most spectacular discoveries in paleoanthropology in half a century—and the most extreme human ever discovered.
The species inhabited Flores as recently as 13,000 years ago, which means it would have lived at the same time as modern humans, scientists say.
"To find that as recently as perhaps 13,000 years ago, there was another upright, bipedal—although small-brained—creature walking the planet at the same time as modern humans is as exciting as it was unexpected," said Peter Brown, a paleoanthropologist at the University of New England in New South Wales, Australia.
Brown is a co-author of the study describing the findings, which appears in the October 28 issue of the science journal Nature. The National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration has sponsored research related to the discovery. The find will be covered in greater detail in a documentary airing early next year on the National Geographic Channel.
"It is totally unexpected," said Chris Stringer, director of the Human Origins program at the Natural History Museum in London. "To have early humans on the remote island of Flores is surprising enough. That some are only about a meter tall with a chimp-size brain is even more remarkable. That they were still there less than 20,000 years ago, and [that] modern humans must have met them, is astonishing."
The researchers estimate that the tiny people lived on Flores from about 95,000 years ago until at least 13,000 years ago. The scientists base their theory on charred bones and stone tools found on the island. The blades, perforators, points, and other cutting and chopping utensils were apparently used to hunt big game.
In an accompanying Nature commentary, Marta Mirazón Lahr and Robert Foley, both with the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge, England, describe Homo floresiensis as changing our understanding of late human evolutionary geography, biology, and culture.
The discovery shows that the genus Homo is more varied and more flexible in its ability to adapt than previously thought. (The genus Homo also includes modern humans, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Neandertals—all of which are marked by relatively large braincases, erect posture, opposable thumbs, and the ability to make tools.)
"Homo floresiensis is an addition to the short list of other human species that lived at the same time as modern humans. I think people will be surprised to learn that not so long ago, we were not alone," said Brown.
Lost World of Tiny People
Despite its smaller body size, smaller brain, and mixture of primitive and advanced anatomical features, the new species falls firmly within the genus Homo. The researchers speculate that the hobbit and her peers evolved from a normal-size, island-hopping Homo erectus population that reached Flores around 840,000 years ago.
"Physically, they were about the size of a three-year old Homo sapiens [modern human] child, but with a braincase only one-third as large," said Richard Roberts, a geochronologist at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and one on the co-authors of the research paper. "They had slightly longer arms than us. More conspicuously, they had hard, thicker eyebrow ridges than us, a sharply sloping forehead, and no chin."
"While they don't look like modern humans, some of their behaviors were surprisingly human," said Brown, the study co-author.
The Flores people used fire in hearths for cooking and hunted stegodon, a primitive dwarf elephant found on the island. Although small, the stegodon still weighed about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds), and would pose a significant challenge to a hunter the size of a three-year-old modern human child. Hunting must have required joint communication and planning, the researchers say.
Almost all of the stegodon bones associated with the human artifacts are of juveniles, suggesting the tiny humans selectively hunted the smallest stegodons. The Flores humans' diets also included fish, frogs, snakes, tortoises, birds, and rodents.
"The hobbit was nobody's fool," Roberts said. "They survived alongside us [Homo sapiens] for at least 30,000 years, and we're not known for being very amiable eco-companions. And the hobbits were managing some extraordinary things—manufacturing sophisticated stone tools, hunting pygmy elephants, and crossing at least two water barriers to reach Flores from mainland Asia—with a brain only one-third the size of ours.
"Given that Homo floresiensis is the smallest human species ever discovered, they out-punch every known human intellectually, pound for pound."
Both the tiny humans and the dwarfed elephants appear to have become extinct at about the same time as the result of a major volcanic eruption.
Mingling of the Human Tribes
There is no evidence of modern humans reaching Flores before 11,000 years ago, so it is unknown whether the hobbit intermingled with modern humans. The researchers found hobbit and pygmy stegodon remains only below a 12,000-year-old volcanic ash layer. Modern human remains were found only above the layer.
Still, rumors, myths, and legends of tiny creatures have swirled around the isolated island for centuries. It's certainly possible that they interacted with modern humans, according to the researchers.
"Looked at from a regional perspective, we definitely have modern humans in Australia from at least 40,000 years ago, and in Borneo from at least 43,000 years ago," Roberts said. "So there was temporal overlap between the hobbits and ourselves from at least 40,000 years ago until at least 18,000 years ago—more than 20,000 years minimum. What was the nature of their interaction? We have absolutely no idea. We need more sites and more hard evidence, and that's the next phase of our investigation."
Island Dwarfing
Researchers are also anxious to investigate how and why the hobbits came to be so small. When scientists discovered the hobbit remains, they thought it was the skeleton of a child. There was no record of human adults that were that small. Modern pygmies are considerably taller at about 1.4 to 1.5 meters (4.6 to nearly 5 feet) tall.
"H. floresiensis presents an intriguing problem in evolutionary biology," Brown said.
The most likely explanation is that, over thousands of years, the species became smaller because environmental conditions favored smaller body size. Dwarfing of mammals on islands is a well-known process and seen worldwide.
Islands frequently provide a limited food supply, few predators, and few species competing for the same environmental niche. Survival would depend on minimizing daily energy requirements. But there is no absolute proof that this is what in fact happened with this small human.
"While there are stone tools dated as far back as 840,000 years ago, no fossils of large-bodied ancestors have ever been found" on Flores, Brown said. "There is some possibility [Homo floresiensis] arrived on the island small-bodied."
"I could not have predicted such a discovery in a million years," said Stringer, of London's Natural History Museum. "This find shows us how much we still have to learn about human evolution, particularly in Southeast Asia."
- Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 08:41:08 (PDT)
Comedian George Carlin dies at 71
Anti-Establishment icon gained fame with his ‘Seven Dirty Words’ routine.
- Sunday, June 22, 2008 at 23:50:12 (PDT)
The Countdown Has Begun!
June 4th 2008
Email Wave Countdown Campaign.
300 DAYS to the end of federal homelessness funding!
As of June 4th, the Homeless Partnering Initiative (HPI) ends in 300 days on March 31st, 2009. We invite you to participate in the first wave of a Countdown Campaign asking the Conservative government to make an announcement NOW.
Send it to the Prime Minister at Harper.S@parl.gc.ca and to the Minister responsible for HPI, Monte Solberg at Solberg.M@parl.gc.ca.
300 days is very little time to prepare and announce a new program, to get the funding in place, to insure a renewal for projects that are currently funded and/or to develop new projects. Communities across Canada desperately need these funds to help homeless people and those at risk of homelessness.
In Ottawa from January 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009, federal funding will provide a total of $ 8,261,000 to 24 organizations. In spite of the current combination of federal, city and provincial funds, there were 8,915 individuals who stayed in an emergency shelter last year and an additional 9,567 households who were helped to remain housed in 2007. The latest census found that 12% of the Ottawa population or 95,691 individuals live on low incomes after tax which puts many of them at risk of becoming homeless.
Imagine what the loss of federal dollars will mean to our community's ability to end homelessness.
The Alliance to End Homelessness in Ottawa hopes the Prime Minister will listen to concerned people in Canada and in the meanwhile we are calling on the federal government to act to:
1. Create a National Housing Strategy that clearly defines direct federal responsibility for funding affordable housing and supportive and supported housing.
2. Put in place long-term and sustained funding to support our community's capacity to end homelessness.
3. Increase significantly the rates of and access to federal income support programs:
Employment Insurance, Canadian Pension Plan, Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement.
Thank you for you support.
- Tuesday, June 03, 2008 at 12:31:26 (PDT)
Conservatives fail Canada's Aboriginal peoples.
Canada's First Nations gathered on Thursday to stage a Day of Action - the second in two years - to draw attention to the broken promises of the Conservative government regarding the Kelowna Accord and the government's failure to build a relationship with Canada's Aboriginal peoples.
Since coming into power, the Conservatives abandoned the Kelowna Accord and left First Nations people with few alternatives to address the issues of health, education and infrastructure that confront their communities. They also reduced the capital budget for on-reserve schools and indefinitely delayed the construction and repair of schools in communities across Canada. Last year, they voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
As a result, this year's Day of Action puts a strong, clear focus on the plight of First Nations children who are paying a very high price for this government's failures.
The Conservatives need to wake up and understand that the time for action is now. Both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians deserve more from their government than the Conservatives' lackadaisical attitude.
On the eve the of the Day of Action, Stéphane Dion met with Phil Fontaine, Assembly of First Nations' National Chief, to discuss issues facing Aboriginal Canadians.
- Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 08:20:15 (PDT)
Dearest readers,
(title of a poem or open stereotyped editorial?)
For an indeterminate length of time, I have not addressed an audience of magnitude. My seeming indifference is none but a defensive ruse, I suspect. Within this mortal casing, dual entities wage a fierce, then wearied, battle.
If you dare, grasp a fleeting moment from the toils of the hour to ponder a timeless question with me:
At precisely what point does the human spirit perceive that the sledgehammer subtleties of progressive loss have reached the incalculable torment wrought by abandonment in total?
Abandonment by whom...or what, say you?
Ah...therein lies the real question.
The answers provoke; they gnaw the slumber from nerve endings. They soak, simmer, and seethe--do they eventually and finally consume?
Ah. Another question!
Kindest regards, (a cheery tune hummed to the rattle of chains)
Edgar Poe
PS: Eureka--have I lost it?
- Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 22:15:52 (PDT)
Anima mundi: The constant state of Being by which this world is indeed a living Being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.
Plato, Timaeus, 29/30; 4th century BCE.
- Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 11:16:58 (PDT)
- Saturday, May 17, 2008 at 07:25:49 (PDT)
2181 Rue de Bordeaux, Delorimier, QC
- Tuesday, May 13, 2008 at 19:12:37 (PDT)
Jeudi le 8 mai, 19h à 21h
Café Culturel Volver, 5604 Parc. Montréal.
Art et Oppression: À quelles fins utilisons-nous l’art?
À quelles fins utilisons-nous l’art? Est-ce dans un but divin et pour adorer Dieu ? Ou pour nous libérer de l’oppression ? Ou encore pour faire de la propagande ? Aujourd’hui et à notre âge, que signifie la création pour nous? Est-ce que l’art existe, tel une force capable de modifier le cours de l’histoire ? Ou l’art est-il simplement devenu un autre bien de consommation que nous produisons, consommons et dont nous débarrassons après usage ? Venez discuter du rôle de l’art dans notre société.
Invités: Pascal Contamine partage son temps entre l'écriture, la mise en scène, l'interprétation, les arts multidisciplinaires et l'enseignement. Il est le fondateur et directeur artistique du CIRAAM, www.ciraam.info. En parallèle, il a développé un grand intérêt pour le mouvement (kalaripayattu, wushu, capoiera, danse, mime...), participé à divers projets multimedia et réalisé deux court métrage.
Ilona Dougherty est directrice exécutive de Apathy is Boring www.apathyisboring.com, un organisme national non partisan dont le but est d’utiliser l’art et la technologie pour réinsérer les jeunes dans le processus démocratique. Elle a récemment été nommée l’une des cinq femmes qui contribuent à changer le monde et est à l’honneur dans le livre Notes form Canada’s Young Activists, publié par Severn Suzuki.
Modératrice: Lynne Cooper sort du lot de par son histoire tout à fait originale: celle d’une immigrante polyglotte chilienne-trinidadienne-britannique, elle est aussi une artiste de scène et de guérilla théâtrale. Elle surfe aux commandes de Santropol Roulant, s’amuse follement dans son rôle de directrice artistique de Sunk in the Trunk et ne se tient plus de joie lorsqu’elle découvre d’autres façons d’utiliser les arts comme outil de développement communautaire.
- Monday, May 05, 2008 at 07:44:26 (PDT)
Mis U lotz Rob!
- Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 10:08:49 (PDT)
Miss U lotz Rob!
- Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 10:08:00 (PDT)
Change the World.
Michelle Spottedhorse.
hey wats up all people out there my name iz michelle and im 14 years old nuttin to say so mabey comment me and ill tell you more but if you a h8a then get the fuck off my page..oh also
Roses are red NATIVES are brown
That's my race so don't fuck around
My NATIVE pride I will not hide
My NATIVE race I will not disgrace
My NATIVE blood flows hot & true
My NATIVE peeps I will stand by you
Thru thick & thin till the day we die
Our NATIVE flag always stands high
I yell this poem louder than all the rest
Cuz every1 knows NATIVES ARE THE BEST!!!
NATIVE pride in my mind
NATIVE blood is my kind
So step aside and let me through
Cuz it's all about the NATIVE crew
Life sucks and then you die
But if you're NATIVE you die with PRIDE!!!!
IF YOU NATIVE AND YOUR PROUD OF IT
SEND THIS TO ALL YA HOMIES THAT YOU KNOW
WHO ARE DOWN WITH THE NATIVE YOU KNOW I BE REPPEN CRIPS CUZ BLOODZ ARE A PIECE OF SHYT
Michelle Spottedhorse says, "I really wish that I HADNT LOST MI BESTEST CUZN ROBERT BETO MANUEL RAMON HE WILL NEVER BE 4 GOTTEN !
- Sunday, April 27, 2008 at 10:04:29 (PDT)
Jeudi le 24 avril • 19h à 21h Café Culturel Volver, 5604 ave du Parc, Montréal.
Art et Oppression: Est-ce que l’argent modifie notre façon de créer?
Nous vivons dans une société où l’art est consommé rapidement. Comment cela influence-t-il la façon dont nous créons? Est-ce que le type de subvention (privée ou gouvernementale) change quelque chose à notre façon de faire de l’art ou au résultat final? Sommes-nous libres de créer ce que nous voulons lorsque l’argent investi dans le projet ne provient pas du créateur lui-même?
- Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 07:01:32 (PDT)
EARTHQUAKE! gimmie that bottle, Schtevie--whole lotta shakin' goin' on--AGAIN.
- Sunday, April 20, 2008 at 23:55:11 (PDT)
- Saturday, April 19, 2008 at 07:15:59 (PDT)
a dark heart burns
celestial sun
- Friday, April 18, 2008 at 20:48:29 (PDT)
.....FREE MY CROWN BOTTLE !!! .........puhleeeezz
- Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 18:57:06 (PDT)
Every once in awhile just let go of the steering
wheel and trust there will be someone to help drive.
Fly on, Little Wing...........
- Saturday, April 12, 2008 at 11:14:16 (PDT)
Hi George that Richard Gere film in "Spring Break in Bosnia" or The Hunting Party" is a cool movie.
Change the World in a Café.
Soufia Bensaïd, via The Metro (Presse papier). 07 April 2008.
Thinking on the University of the Streets Café via Concordia University is about people communicating their Life journey’s knowledge to one another in a free flowing way, that opens us to new awareness. And giving his views in a public place, like a garden of learning, is the formula of a university and it islike no other. The University otherwise: In cafés proposes a new way of learning by participating spontaneously in public conversations in cafes.
"These meetings, everyone can participate. They teach us to commit ourselves with others, to talk and listen to other opinions, "says the fiery coordinator appointments, Elizabeth Hunt, in an interview at Subway. They also learn to demystify the idea that we have to be an expert to give his opinion on a matter that concerns us. "
A concept Montreal: This concept, now widespread in cafes in Vancouver, has sprouted in Montreal in 2003 at Concordia University. The formula is simple: a social issue important, a veteran, two or three special guests who transmit knowledge theoretical or practical, a friendly atmosphere and the world in coffee. All those present can react and embarking on the conversation.
"I emerged from this meeting more informed," said Hani Patric,
Participating in a public conversation about what is on your plate. I changed the way I eat since, I buy more "responsible". Moreover, when the "lay" confront me in relation to it, I am more able to explain the real issues involved, I am more convincing. "
Transforming society ...
When the Institute for Community Development at Concordia University has launched another way: In the cafes, the goal was to create spaces that allow citizens to learn and participate voluntarily to the social dynamics. These exchanges are in fact perceived as part of the process of social transformation of the community.
In a society where people from diverse backgrounds, with bold different cultural baggage, University otherwise: In cafés inspired by the popular education which is transmitted through the floor. "The idea is to give the opportunity for people to talk together and see what kinds of visions and perspectives are issued each other," says the coordinator of these meetings.
Like pubs of yesteryear where members of a group gathered to remake the world, the university differently: in cafes offering Montrealers to continue learning, to go further in their commitment and " deepen their reflection.
"The other side of the coin is that we do not know the impact of these conversations in the community and what people pose in the future," says Mme Hunt.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper slammed for refusing to discipline MP over homophobic slur. The Canadian Press.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is subtly condoning bigotry by refusing to discipline a Conservative MP over a vulgar anti-gay slur, say the Liberals.
Liberal MP Scott Brison, one of several gay MPs, said Harper's refusal to strip Tom Lukiwski MP of his duties as a parliamentary secretary "debases" the institution of Parliament.
The prime minister's "tepid" response to the affair also suggests that "hate prejudice and bigotry are just fine in his Canada," Brison told the House of Commons on Friday.
Lukiwski was caught on videotape during a boozy party at Progressive Conservative campaign headquarters during the 1991 Saskatchewan election. He pontificated about the difference between himself and "homosexual faggots with dirt in their fingernails that transmit diseases."
The Regina MP apologized Thursday and repeated that Friday to the House. In particular, he sought the forgiveness of gay friends and colleagues whom he acknowledged must have been aghast at his comments.
"To them I say, I'm truly sorry . . . To the entire gay and lesbian community, I also want to extend my deepest and most abject apologies."
He said the remarks were "stupid, thoughtless and insensitive," and do not reflect his personal beliefs.
MP Peter Van Loan, the government's House leader, said the government is satisfied that Lukiwski's apology was "quick, complete and unequivocal" and declared the matter closed.
Lukiwski made no attempt to rationalize his remarks or explain the context in which they were uttered. Indeed, he said the gay and lesbian community is justified in being furious with him.
"The comments I made . . . should not be tolerated in any society. They should not be tolerated today, they should not have been tolerated in 1991, they should not have been tolerated in years previous to that."
Lukiwski insisted he is not anti-gay and the comments don't reflect his personal beliefs either then or now.
"Which lends itself to the obvious question . . . if I didn't mean what I said why did I say those things to begin with? The only explanation, Mr. Speaker, that I can give to you and the members of this House is that I was stupid, thoughtless and insensitive."
Lukiwski concluded: "I will spend the rest of my career and my life trying to make up for those shameless comments."
Saskatchewan New Democrats found the videotape of Lukiwski, Premier Brad Wall and others, which contains sexist, racist and homophobic comments.
