stop the machine

happy birthday bob

jah, ever living, ever strong.

earth day = humans day

what am I doing for earth day? well I rode my bike to work in the pissing spring rain. please hold your applause. riding my bike to work is not going to "save our planet."

this may get a little ranty so cool your boots.

We’ve been getting duped for a long time with this earth day bullshit. Now everyone is “green” and every company offers a “green” product line. You can pledge monthly tithing’s to save: whales, wolves, hawks, beaches, frogs and trees. Hell you can even pledge to send some poor belly full of worms kid in a developing country to school. You can put their picture on your fridge and smile each time you go for your next beer. But really what it all boils down to is saving our own asses.

Before I get too cynical let I re-direct.

We are animals. Unlike other animals like iguanas in the Galapagos Islands, we do not speciate. This means that we are not limited by geographic location as we can adapt to live in any part of our earth. Like the iguana, we have a habitat which needs a basic level of natural functioning to support the life of the iguana. Any radical changes in the Galapagos sea iguanas’ environment and it will die. This is the same for us. However, because we can adapt so easily, and we can eat and digest just about anything, our habitat is not as easily derailed as say that of a really specialized animals like the marine iguana of the Galapagos.

All I’m saying through the above obvious statement is that we need to be honest with ourselves and with the language we use. We are destroying our own habitats. Some have destroyed theirs so completely that it doesn’t support them any longer and they must rely on aid. Haiti is the perfect example. I won’t waste any virtual ink on the blaming game as to who is responsible for the most damage to our habitat (we all know it’s the developed countries). The bottom line is that if you shit in your cage then you gotta sleep in your shit.

So what is the answer? How do we fix things? According to some it may be too late but perhaps the most powerful thing anyone in a developed country can do to help preserve their “own” habitat is to radically cut down on their total consumption of resources. I will leave it that as I intended this to be more linguistic discussion than an ethical argument about consumerism environmentalism.

Happy Humans Day!

stick out your chest: the book Chavez gave Obama

and not your ass

OK so some people think that the Hawaiian surf culture can take localism too far. that they use violence too easily. but what else is a people to do? the video below is very interesting and features a member of Da Hui reading an open letter to the people of Tahiti encouraging them to stand up against Billabong and the ASP and demand to be able to take a greater part in the contest both as competitors and organizers.

why? because it is their land, their wave, their culture, their capital interest and their sovereign right. I truly and sincerely hope that the Tahitian's take heed and move to force the ASP to comply.


this brings me to another point. I have often lamented here that the internet has questionable benefits in terms of human and personal relations. but the same way as Da Hui video will influence many so has the photo and story of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez gifting a communist book to America's Barak Obama.



the book is "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent." in the book author Eduardo Galeano explores the "various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation."

exploitation may seem like a harsh word to some North Americans, especially if you are a good law abiding citizen who works an honest wage and takes care of his family. but we need to open our eyes to the vast desert of social and environmental destruction which we are leaving behind in our wake of over consumption.


Chavez is brilliant in this public propaganda stunt. by this simple gesture he will effectively educate thousands of Americans in the way of economic and military exploitation that the US has been so successful at inflicting on Latin America. I hope that the Tahitians too will take back what is rightfully theirs and demand a major share in the earnings of the western companies who are exploiting Tahiti's natural resources.

kalle lasn (monkey see -do)

L.A.: But what about the good ideas? Do they really come from cyber these days, as some people are saying?

Kalle Lasn: I don’t know, I’m from the old school. I don’t see it yet. I see a lot of frenetic activity in cyberspace, but a lot of it is like the postmodern hall of mirrors. It’s just people sending email messages to each other, hand on the mouse, and you think that you’ve done something great if you get some big idea here and send an email to your friend, and pass it on, and you think you have made some sort of a big thing for the day. I don’t actually see too many really new ideas coming out of cyberspace yet. I see a lot of new ideas still coming out of philosophers, musicians, thinkers, sociologists, a few economists. I think that the big ideas are still coming out in the traditional way, and then they start to reverberate within cyberspace. They are amplified there in cyberspace.

for the rest of the interview go to adbusters

soundbites for this reading provided by dub.com dubcast #6

the abyssinians

subvert

Untitled from mudlevel on Vimeo.

to meat or not

lately I've been questioning my personal meat consumption for environmental and ethical reasons -which I won't go into here. some things are best dealt with on an individual level. it's funny though because it seems that the world conspires so that we see coincidences everywhere (I realize some may call these coincidences smart marketing). regardless, Banksy's latest art project poses the meat consumption question in a new and darkly humored way in the form of a pet store in New York City. Check out the clip.


you can read more about it at Wooster Collective

happy birthday to Mr. Mandela.

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”

here's a classic from the Burning Spear in honor of Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday.

Act 2: Reverse Graffiti

Cyclists and motorists spat as fuel prices skyrocket

from the Associate Press

Bicycle shops all over Canada are experiencing a glut of business as fuel prices continue to rise. In the province of Nova Scotia, a litre of gasoline reached an all time high of $1.81 today. Residents from the city and neighbouring suburbs are feeling a heavy pinch as the prices of other goods increase due to rises in shipping costs. Legions of people have begun to ride bicycles instead of driving their cars.

Increasingly, consternation between drivers and the droves of new cyclists is causing ill feelings and tension on the roads and highways. The traffic bi-laws in the city of Halifax place the bicycle in the same category as motor vehicles. Many of the new cyclists complain of being run off the road by drivers who do not give them the right of way as decreed by the city’s bylaws. Furthermore, cyclists are running red lights and going the wrong way on one-way streets to cut down on their commuting time. A local cycling advocacy group claims that cyclists should have more rights than drivers and that they should not be treated the same, as they do not have the ability to accelerate as a motor vehicle does. The group, called Bikers for a Cleaner HRM, also claim that cyclist should have more rights do to the fact that they are not polluting the environment and do not take up as much real-estate in city centre as automobile parking.

One bike shop owner we talked to said that some of his employees were going home in tears do to the excessive demand for new bikes. Bike mechanics are working twelve-hour shifts assembling new bicycles and refurbishing old ones. Shelves generally stacked with accessories such as tires, inner tubes, and lights, are completely empty. Bob Derailleur of Bob’s Bikes told us that he hoped things would slow down soon but that he’d never made so much money in such a short time.

City officials have reacted by staying out of the heated public dilemma. Recently they overturned a request by a special interest group to subsidise fuel for certain industries. However, the city officials refuse to hear any proposals to change traffic bi-laws, which would give cyclists more rights to the road. One official was quoted as stating that “our roads are made for cars, not bikes! If you want to ride a bike you should go to the park but keep off the roads because people need to get to where their going and cyclists make the roads extremely dangerous for drivers.” Who will win the war of the roads between cyclists and cars remains to be seen, as tensions continue to rise with the rising fuel prices.


Cog Shimano reporting from Halifax for the World Absurdist Press

Foulweather: The Beach

I’ve been meaning to post this for a little while now. The second edition of the print zine Foulweather is out now and you should get one. The Beach, as the current volume is titled, is a collection of writing, art, and photography compiled, edited, and published by Mr. P. Lewis, author of the renowned Foulweather blog.

I was lucky enough to have my first ever essay published here. It is an account of some of my experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica in late 2001. One of the key attributes to the Foulweather series is that the work takes a deep look at western culture and not from a distant point or a bird’s eye view, rather from the level of the individual, questioning his actions, his lifestyle, his responsibility.

You can get Foulweather by writing directly to Mr. Lewis. You can also order it from Powell’s Books and Microcosm Publishing and the Foulweather blog.

In a time when we can type our thoughts and immediately put them out for the world to see, it is imperative that we also keep the printed word alive because although it takes paper and ink to print, it is far more sustainable in the long run that this world wide electronic web powered by coal, oil, and nuclear reactions.

Prisoner in Freedom City

It's easy for us to criticize China's environmental policies and labour issues. What we do not clearly see however is how people actually live in China. Perhaps the Olympics will allow the world a broader view of Chinese rule but most likely, issues like human rights and working conditions will be whitewashed for the foreign cameras.

Below is a video titled "Prisoner in Freedom City." It depicts secret police keeping an eye on a couple that are known human rights activists. As of Dec 27th the man who shot the video had been under arrest and out of touch. His wife and newborn baby are under house arrest and not one of their friends have been able to get in touch or even bring her food. It is not known what condition mother and baby are in either.

We have so much to be grateful for -living in North America and expressing ourselves however we please. I don't know how we can help those in other places where things are not as easy as here, but I suppose we could start by living intentionally and recognizing that our every action, our every purchase, has a cumulative effect on the lives of others.


more on this story at the New York Times.

It's Begun

The police in Burma have made their first move on the peaceful protesters using tear gas and firing live bullets over the heads of protesters. Over one hundred people have been arrested and many have been beaten and seriously injured by the police. It's hard to get much news because the government keeps a tight grip on censorship.

We are so lucky to have our basic freedoms. And yet, as our governments impose on the freedoms of other countries we stand by idly or simply in ignorance. We should learn something from the Burmese monks, who knowingly risk their lives for the sake of their people and even ask the public not join the protest so that they are not hurt.

Spread the word about this travesty in the making to all the people you know.

Participatory Culture Shift - "coming to come seen"

This week I have somehow managed to read several different pieces about a new form of public participatory culture happening across the globe. The idea is basically that everyday people, like you reading this, and me typing while at work, are coming together without leadership or hidden agendas to share information, ideas, dreams and even practical information. This has been quite evident as a movement with the internet and things like blogging and Wikipedia. But it is not limited to cyberspace. One of the articles I read was in Ode Magazine and it talked about the G8 summit protests, which brought together thousands of people who were there to represent a myriad of ideologies, from environmental issues to religion, human rights and business.

There has always been a sort of strange relationship to the idea of "the man” controlling society. Some people refer to the man with a sense of dread; while others laugh at the thought that there is some hidden power out there controlling everything, or at least watching. Whether or not the “man” exists or not may soon become irrelevant because technology and communications are allowing normal people to share ideas and create community like never before.

Take this blog her for example. I started writing on Ku Yah! about a year ago. My intention was to practice my writing and have a way to get it out of my head and notebooks. What it’s really done is caused me to write. You see I’ve come realize that, having the desire to write and actually writing are two different things. In the span of a year I have certainly grown in my own sensibilities as a writer, I have come closer to understanding where my skills and strengths are and perhaps even where I may want to move with my writing in the future. But those are consequences which I set out to achieve.

What I hadn’t expected was to be absorbed into an international community with other bloggers. We link each other, read each others ideas, follow each others links to far flung cyberspace reaches and learn about new ideas. And blogging is only scratching the surface. Participatory projects like , Flickr, Wikipedia and WiserEarth are changing the way information is valued. If you ever had the Encyclopedia Britannica sales guy come to your house and make his pitch to your parents, using you as an excuse for the exorbitant amount of dough they had to lay out for this printed knowledge, then you have seen what kind of pressure this can have on a person.

What is exciting now is that knowledge which is free to the end user, and was created for free, will tend to have less of an agenda than knowledge created for profit. Maybe we will see history books 30 years from now being written based on blog archives and not by historians working for massive publishers with huge lobbying power. And maybe then history will be a bit more objective and inclusive of all people.

So as I close down the workday I feel excited about the possibilities. I feel that the future is not all Global Warming and wars. Of course the key is participation, and participation is the corner stone of democracy, and George Bush is not democracy. So I plan to get out there and conitinue reading, linking, writing, and more importantly –doing.

my responsibility?

Twenty or thirty years ago our access to world issues was limited to the papers and televised news coverage. It was easy to be unaware of major conflicts or human crisis outside of your own nation or region.

But today things are different. With the advent of the internet there is nothing too obscure. This week the Holocaust Museum and the Google Earth launched a campaign to highlight the genocide taking place in Darfur. You can actually see satellite images of destroyed villages and refugee camps. Go to the BBC News for the article.


The question of individual responsibility to humanitarian causes is a personal one. We each have our own set of ethics and values. Although many of us share similarities in these values due to our shared cultural and political backgrounds, how we react to situations is an individual choice.

I grew up in an environment where my family worked in community development. As a young adult I entered into a two year volunteer contract to do environmental health work in rural Jamaica. Since then I’ve worked in social work and community development in the States and am now involved in mental health education. These experiences have shaped my view of the world and my sense of social responsibility.

Yet I struggle to now what to do; to asses my place and responsibility in light of atrocities like the ongoing conflict in Darfur. One of the things that I try to be aware of is the sheer luck of my being borne into a place and time where social inequity does not inhibit my basic needs. I have also tried to find employment where I can be an asset to society and not focus my efforts on material profit. And still I feel that I am doing nothing.

So perhaps this is political, and perhaps the departure from my surfing adventures turns off some of my readers. But I feel it is my duty to continue to pass on this vital information about the Darfur region because we can’t ignore it. As the world becomes more connected through globalization and communications, we are all more and more intricately linked. Our actions today will have impacts tomorrow. I would like to imagine that if I was ever faced with a life where my government was trying to kill me and all of my loved ones that someone out there would do something to help.

In the links below you will find both information about the current conflicts and also ways that you can do something to help. Dialog is of utmost importance.

Darfur Perpective
http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/alert/darfur/contents/01-overview/

What can you do?
http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/alert/darfur/what/

ya think?

Here's an interesting story. Bush stops in Indonesia for a visit with that countries leader to discuss security, trade and health issues. There were mass protests. Bush stated that the protests were a sign that Indonesia had "a healthy society". What a brilliant response.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country and many there are deeply opposed to Bush's international policy and the war in Iraq.

Aeolian Ride Photos

A few weeks ago I posted about participating in the Halifax Aeolian Ride. Well the photos from that day are finally up on the Aeolian website. ChecK em out .



If you've never participated in a mass bike ride, I highly encourage it -and most rides don't require costumes. Chances are that if you live in a major city, you can participate in the monthly Critical Mass rides. Critical Mass always happens on the last Friday of every month around six o'clock. Check your hip local bike shop for ride locations.


For general information about Critical Mass click here.

655,000 deaths in Iraq!

It’s time that we stop and take a look at our actions. We North American’s have become the terrorists. Today the BBC reported on a survey led by John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that estimates over 655,000 Iraqi deaths since the invasion in 2003.

The absurdity of the death toll numbers in no way compares to the few thousand lives lost on September 11th on US soil.

We must all rise up and demand that this nonsense killing be stopped, lest we become a nation of genocidal maniacs that needs to be stopped by the rest of the world. Remember World War II?

This number is so grotesque that it seems unreal. Imagine if our nation had lost this many people to bombs and guns in three years? How can we let this continue? I am at a loss of words. President Bush states, “I stand by the figure that a lot of innocent people have lost their life... and that troubles me, and it grieves me…” but “Six-hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just... it's not credible…”

For the complete article click here.