chimurenga

water detail

2006-04-29T08:01:00.000-04:00

poised

2006-04-27T20:21:00.001-04:00

through gritted teeth

2006-03-17T21:02:00.000-05:00

semipermeable barrier

2006-02-16T23:47:00.000-05:00

deep-felt tangle

2006-02-16T00:30:00.000-05:00

carrier

2006-02-11T20:31:00.000-05:00

From the film, War Photographer, on James Nachtwey. Sulphur miners in Java, Indonesia.

brooding

2006-02-03T17:43:00.000-05:00

It's lies, it's lies, and it's more lies...

2006-01-15T18:37:00.000-05:00

The Countdown to War with Iran
by Mike Whitney, www.dissidentvoice.org
January 15, 2006

Iran must defend itself if it is attacked by the United States or Israel.

Defending one’s country against unprovoked aggression is sanctioned under international law and is a requirement of true leadership. We would expect no different if either the United States or Israel was attacked.

The Sharon and Bush administrations have done an admirable job of poisoning public opinion against Iran, interpreting President Ahmadinejad’s comments about Israel and the Holocaust as a potential danger to Israel’s welfare. But such statements, however offensive, are commonplace in the Middle East and cannot be construed as a credible threat.

In fact, Iran has not demonstrated any territorial ambitions nor is it involved in the occupation of any foreign country as is true of both the United States and Israel.

source

More Lies About Iran
by Mike Whitney, www.dissidentvoice.org
January 15, 2006

There’s been a lot of rubbish written about Iran’s “removing the seals” from its uranium enrichment equipment.

The fearmongering Western media have exploited the expression for all it’s worth. Even those who are normally skeptical of the Bush propaganda machine are taken aback by this ominous sounding phrase.

What gibberish!

How else does one make nuclear fuel for electric power plants if the fuel-producing mechanism is under lock and key?

The fear-engendering description provided in the news would have the reader believe that “diabolical” Iranians are ripping off the seals with crowbars so they can quickly assemble their secret nuclear stockpile to bomb Tel Aviv.

This is the worse type of demagoguery.

The fuel that is produced from these uranium enrichment reactors DOES NOT PRODUCE WEAPONS-GRADE MATERIAL. That requires thousands of centrifuges which Iran does not have.

source

Iran should not be attacked because such an act would be based on lies, lies, lies...

What's your reason Iran shouldn't be attacked? Join and tell us.

flaming man walks towards you

2006-01-14T19:55:00.000-05:00

her left hand

2006-01-09T21:21:00.000-05:00

b a

2006-01-08T10:03:00.000-05:00

play windows media

play quicktime

beautifulagony.com

visit beautifulagony.com

quiver

2006-01-04T19:23:00.000-05:00

bound together
the tension and trembling will to pleasure

that is cut to ribbons
in the violence of the moment

the naked singularity

leavings:

to be outside oneself...

...heightened capacity is typically accompanied by diminished awareness of some other matters. For instance, if one is concentrating on a physical task, then one might cease to be aware of any intellectual thoughts. On the other hand, making a spirit journey in an ecstatic trance involves the cessation of voluntary bodily movement...

/

Cached - Similar pages

ecstatic peace
ecstatic peace - ART MUSIC LITERATURE.
www.ecstaticpeace.com/ - 2k - Cached - Similar pages

Ecstatic Communications
I shook it, then stammered "tell him I named my Internet site `ecstatic.com'
after his book." She tried to convey this to him, despite not quite ...
ecstatic.com/ - 3k - Cached - Similar pages

Ecstatic Pregnancy and Birth
A virtual pregnancy and childbirth education center.
www.ecstaticbirth.com/ - 31k - Cached - Similar pages

Ecstatic Heart Openings
Transmitting Goddess Energy Accessing the Divine Within Ecstatic Heart Openings
Sacred Marriage Ceremony.
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Institute for Ecstatic Living

/

die bleierne Zeit [the leaden time] 2

2005-12-29T10:41:00.000-05:00

view through the trees

2005-12-27T15:31:00.000-05:00

shouldn't happen in Africa

2005-12-11T11:47:00.000-05:00

sky

2005-12-04T18:01:00.000-05:00

red rings

2005-11-22T20:40:00.000-05:00

barbed

2005-11-11T06:38:00.000-05:00

yellow strip sky

2005-11-07T19:22:00.000-05:00

slippery survey

2005-10-10T12:54:00.000-04:00

menace

2005-10-05T02:14:00.000-04:00

shade in colours

2005-09-28T12:43:00.000-04:00

urban strip

2005-09-17T06:11:00.000-04:00

down from roof

2005-09-17T04:09:00.000-04:00

urban 2

2005-09-12T19:11:00.000-04:00

plants & tracks

2005-08-20T12:29:00.000-04:00

plants & tracks

Iranian motif

2005-08-16T10:11:00.000-04:00

Iran 2

2005-08-14T18:09:00.000-04:00

Please check out this new community and add your reason why Iran should not be attacked. Then use the reasons people give in any number of ways: emails to Congress-members, to the Media, for protest posters, for discussion.

Iran 1

2005-08-14T09:50:00.000-04:00

Every day takes us a step closer to the implementation of the Bush Administration's plan to bombard Iran. The mainstream media offer cheerful encouragement for this strategy, presumably meant to rally public support at a time when this has never been lower and meant to consolidate and extend greater US military and economic control over central Asia.

This could not be a more provocative - and dangerous - course for the US government to take.

Iran is not - as Iraq was in 2003 - a country already devastated by bombings, malnutrition, environmental disaster - a country without any means to defend itself except through desperate guerrilla action (including the first suicide bombings in the country's history). No, Iran is a country of 70 million people with a well-organised and equipped military. It is a country that - even if defeated in conventional terms (in itself, hardly a certain outcome given the remarkable military failures of the US-UK invaders in Iraq) there can be no doubt that there would be a giant increase in terrorism (in the limited, mainstream media sense of the term, which outright excludes the state terrorism of the US and UK, et al). The result would be a much more dangerous world than it already is - possible irretrievably so, given the involvement and/or proximity of several nuclear powers (US, UK, Israel, Russia, Pakistan, India).

As a Canadian, I can appeal to my government to condemn any military actions against Iran - I can criticise my country's current and connected military intervention in Afghanistan and its rhetorical and material support of the invasion of Iraq. But I can't appeal to the US government not to attack.

What are you who are Americans going to do to try to prevent further slaughter in the region and consequent horrors (including more Draconian domestic policies)? Maybe writing your members of Congress and your President seems like an empty gesture, but it's a start.

If you've ever seen the Doomsday Clock that appears on the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, maybe you agree with me that since the Cuban Missile Crisis it has never had more reason to be close to Midnight. And that means Midnight for all of us.

orangepink 1

2005-08-04T13:55:00.000-04:00

orangepink 1

Tommy Douglas's reminder...

2005-08-01T19:05:00.000-04:00

The Story of Mouseland

Mouseland, was a place where all the little mice lived and played, were
born and died, and lived pretty much like you and I do. They even had a
Parliament. And every 4 years they had an election. They used to walk
to the polls and cast their ballots. Some of them even got a ride to the
polls. And got a ride for the next four years afterwards too. Just like
you and me. And every time on election day, all the little mice used to
go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government
made up of Big Fat Black Cats.

Now if you think it's strange that mice would elect a government made
up of cats, you just look at the history of Canada for the last 90
years, and maybe you'll see that they weren't any stupider than we are. Now
I'm not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows, they
conducted the government with dignity. They passed good laws - that is,
laws that were good for cats. But the laws that were good for cats,
weren't very good for mice. One of the laws said that mice holes had to be
big enough so the cats could get their paws in. Another law said mice
had to travel at certain speeds - so the cat could get his breakfast
without too much physical effort. All the laws were good laws for cats.
But, oh, they were hard on the mice, and life was getting harder and
harder.

When the mice couldn't take it anymore, they decided that something had
to be done about it. So they went en masse to the polls. They voted the
Black cats out. They put in the White cats.

The White cats had put up a terrific campaign. "All that Mouseland
needs is more vision." They said, "The trouble with Mouseland is all those
round mouse holes we got. If you put us in, we'll establish square
mouse holes." And they did. And the square mouse holes were twice as large
as the round mouse holes, so now the cat could get both his paws in.
And life was tougher than ever.

And when they couldn't take that anymore, they voted the White cats out
and put the Black ones in again. Then they went back to the White cats,
and back to the Black cats, they even tried half Black cats and half
White cats. And called that coalition. They even got one government made
up of cats with spots on them: they were cats that tried to make noise
like a mouse, but ate like a cat.

The trouble wasn't the colour of the cats, but the fact that they were
cats. And since they were cats, they naturally looked after the cats,
instead of mice. Presently, there came along one little mouse, who had
an idea.

My friends, watch out for a little fellow with an idea.

And he went to the other mice and said, "My friends, why do we keep on
electing a government made up of cats, why don't we elect a government
made up of mice?" "Oh!" They said, "He's a Bolshevik! Lock him up!" So
they put him in Jail.

But what I want to remind you, You can lock up a mouse or a man, but
you cannot lock up an idea.

~ As recited by Tommy Douglas,
1st January 1961, on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio. The speech
was written in 1961 by Clare Gillis for Tommy Douglas, leader of the
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (now the New Democratic Party),
a democratic socialist party in Canada.

text and audio ~ Saskatchewan NDP
Mouseland ~ Wikipedia

body parts...

2005-07-30T09:20:00.000-04:00

Canadian troops in Kandahar aim to win 'hearts and minds' of Afghans

hearts and minds

Yes, that seems likely. The Canadian method - as opposed to the US/UK method - is to kill with kindness, I suppose. But if Canada's larger-scaled participation in this little War for the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous goes on for a very long time maybe Canadian troops will start wearing the Hearts they've won from their belts, the way troops wore the severed cocks of Vietnamese men during the Vietnam War.

In the Bushes of the Sculpture Garden

2005-07-27T19:44:00.000-04:00

When the weather is good I often take my lunch to the sculpture garden across from where I work. There is a beautiful view of lower Montreal as it falls away to the St. Lawrence River. There are the spires of churches and the towers of grain elevators, factory chimneys and distant condo high-rises, far-off mountains and nearby expressways. And it's a view of well-kept working class three-floor walk-ups with brightly coloured trim and grey stone walls.

Back in the '60s, Montreal was the city of tomorrow and Expo '67 seemed only to be pointing toward a techno-multicultural golden age rather than to be the endpoint of a ten or fifteen year boom time of governments and businesses buying the favour of the postwar generation. It was unimaginable that only ten years later Toronto would have supplanted Montreal as Canada's largest city and official centre of the national culture. In the '60s, the shadow of Britain's Empire was still greater over the country than that of the US.

Montreal's mayor at the time, Jean Drapeau, was a visionary. In some ways a sort of mayoral and Catholic Bugsy Siegel. He remade the city. He had two islands rise up from the riverbed for the site of the World Exhibition. He had miles of tunnels excavated for a subway and an underground labyrinthine shopping paradise. He had towers rise and neighbourhoods fall to create the concrete image of a publicly subsidised corporate utopia.

One component of this multifaceted mega-project was the construction of the Ville Marie Expressway extending from the suburbs at the west end of the island of Montreal to Centreville, downtown. The expressway was built along the edge of an escarpment, the line of transition from the expensive houses of Westmount and downtown office towers to the lower industrial belt and working class houses of lower Montreal. Lower Montreal: St-Henri, Little Burgundy, Griffintown, Pointe-St-Charles, and Verdun, whose residents worked in the port and nearby factories and in the offices, shops and houses above.

The construction of the expressway removed a wide swath of these workers' houses, scarring neighbourhoods that had been established one hundred - two hundred years earlier. And the expressway more emphatically divided the wealthy from the poor - so that even now the people living below the highway seem to emerge from caves as they pass under the elevated roadways on their way to buy groceries or to clean the houses of the rich.

The territory running either side of the expressway is like a frontier - and like any borderland it is frequented by a variety of people and serves many functions. Just in the few blocks around my workplace there's a children’s hospital, where I've often seen northern Cree and Inuit families down from places like Kuujjuaq and Great Whale (aka Kujjarrapik [Inuktitut], Whapmagoostui [Cree], Grand Baleine [French]) a good thousand miles away. There's the park dedicated to Giovanni Caboto (better known as John Cabot), the man who first planted the Union Jack in North American soil, thereby beginning Britain's colonial history in the Americas. The park is a sort of haven for hospital visitors and homeless people. Across the street is the old Forum - once the home of the Montreal Canadiens and therefore the most important pilgrimage site in hockey. Now it's a 22-screen cinema. There's a Pentecostal church, a college, shops, mid century apartment buildings, heritage houses and the museum where I work. The museum with its grounds and sculpture garden tended by anally retentive keepers and surveilled by cautious security guards on their rounds or from their remote control command post.

The sculpture garden is a lawn framed by rows of crab apple trees meant to echo the apple orchards that were on the site when it still belonged to the Sulpicians, going back to the 1600s. Then there's a concrete truncated false facade - almost like a mock ruin - that mimics the front of the old mansion at the core of the museum. Just before the lookout at the crest of a hill is a gravel promenade punctuated by Melvin Charney's sculptures reflecting the architectural forms of Montreal: skyscrapers, cabins, Roman columns, smokestacks, and Miesian dwellings. The gravel ends with a long, low stone wall that runs along the edge of the escarpment. At one end of the wall there's a dense gathering of bushes.

I usually climb up on to the wall to eat my lunch and watch the traffic go by. On the far side of the wall there is a strip of lawn at the top of the escarpment: an excellent place for sunbathers... a spot for Montreal snowbirds to get themselves beach-ready before going south to Miami, the Dominican Republic and Cuba. Some of the women go topless, some of the men go to see the women... It's the spot where, one day, I saw a museum security guard trotting along beside the wall to intercept a man and a woman - coworkers in a nearby office, maybe? - who had just been having a lunchtime snog. Even in easy-going Montreal this was too much for the blue-jackets gazing at a surveillance camera computer screen in the security bunker of the museum.

And one cool day in early spring or late fall I had the garden to myself. Steam was rising from my Boustan vegetarian pita, the one with fried cauliflower, eggplant, falafel, omelette, garlic potatoes, plenty of hummus and pickled radish... The sky was dead grey, the view was grim and even the cars on the expressway seemed sluggish. There was a surprise rustle in the bushes and someone emerged: a big man - six-foot something, big belly. Then from behind him, coming out from his shadow, was a junky-thin woman. I recognised her as an occasional panhandler. The two parted company as though they had nothing to do with each other. But he was still doing up his fly. And she was spitting. I turned back to the view of the slow moving cars and finished my lunch.

This is the city that I chose or that chose me. City of history, of Mohawks, of French, of English, of Allophones, of immigrants and refugees, of radical politics, of fascist politics, of the Church, of the Synagogue, of the Mosque, of coureurs de bois, of the schmatte trade, of moustache wax, of sex shops, of art, of folk songs, of post-rock, of poutine, of fine cuisine, of the mountain, of the river, of the frontier.

innocent man

2005-07-26T20:19:00.000-04:00

As with authority generally, force may be justified, but the burden of proof is with those who would use force, not with those upon whom it is used. Questions should be directed at the police, not their innocent victim. I think that particularly at a time when tension is high, when police resources are stretched while dealing with a crisis, caution and restraint should be paramount - precisely because the likelihood of this sort of "mistake" becomes much greater.

Before going over some of the details that have been revealed in other stories about this incident (and that were conveniently left out of this editorial), let's consider one of the obvious consequences of this police action if the victim had actually been involved with the bombings. Being dead, he would no longer be of any use to the investigation. He couldn't answer any questions about his actions, his collaborators, his motives, etc. At the very least, that's shoddy police work.

Now for some of the details (that I think cast the last paragraph into even sharper relief).

Following the failed bombings of 21 July, the apartment building that Menezes lived in was identified from materials found inside the bombers' unexploded backpacks and was immediately put under surveillance. When Menezes - "dressed in baseball cap, blue fleece and baggy trousers" - left his apartment on the morning of 22 July he was followed by plainclothes police. As he approached a nearby subway station the police decided to arrest him. An armed police unit took over and ordered Menezes to stop. He did not. He ran onto the platform, tried to board a train, was caught by the police, knocked down and then shot five times in the head.
[details from Source]

So, imagining that the police really had found someone involved in the bombings, they failed to exercise the self-control necessary to efficiently and successfully fulfill their duties (investigating a crime) by killing the only potential informant then in their custody.

But, going back to reality, Menezes wasn't involved in the bombings. He was an electrician from Brazil - 3 years in the UK - who may-well have wondered why he was being pursued by a gang of men. And if we are to excuse the actions of the police because of the post-bombings atmosphere of tension, we must consider the fear and confusion of a civilian subway-user in the same atmosphere being told to Stop! by a group of armed men. We might speculate that - since he knew he wasn't a terrorist - Menezes thought the police (if he knew they were police) were after someone else and he didn't want to get caught in the crossfire. Or we might consider that Menezes feared that - being the target of police pursuit - he might be killed by them in this atmosphere of high tension before he could prove his innocence. Of course, that's just what happened. We'll never know what Menezes was thinking during the last moments of his life, we can only infer from the reports of eyewitnesses who said, for example: "he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified..."

To return for a moment to the issue of police investigations... This shoot-to-kill policy (refined after consultation with Israeli police) and other lethal force and extraordinary police powers policies enacted or bolstered in the UK, the US and elsewhere following 9/11 are reminiscent of the 1970 implementation of the War Measures Act in Canada during the FLQ crisis.

In that episode two prominent men (James Cross, British Trade Commissioner, and Pierre Laporte, Québec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour) were kidnapped and held captive by members of the FLQ, who had been involved in a number of bombings and other crimes over the preceding years. Claiming that the country was in a state of "apprehended insurrection", the Canadian government invoked the War Measures Act, allowing the government and police to control all forms of transportation; to censor, suppress or control publications; to take over, control, confiscate or dispose thereof or use any property; and to arrest, detain, exclude or expel individuals without explanation or trial. The military occupied the streets of Montreal. Hundreds of people across the country (but particularly in Québec) were investigated, arrested and held - sometimes incommunicado and for many days. In the end, Pierre Laporte was killed by his captors and James Cross was released following negotiations between the police and his captors. According to a number of the investigating police officers involved, it was regular police work and not the extraordinary rights of the War Measures Act that led to finding the FLQ terrorists. Furthermore, it is quite possible that the conditions of the War Measures Act actually contributed to the murder of Pierre Laporte.

I recount this story because it shows that as tempting as it may be to give police and other authorities extraordinary powers to use force, it is not the force that solves crimes, though it may indeed intimidate the population. In fact, time and time again it is shown that the use of force only exacerbates problems, heightens tensions, draws on prevalent bigotries, and results in "tragic mistakes" like the death of a 27 year old Brazilian-born electrician named Jean Charles de Menezes.

Finally, a reminder that this indefensible killing is only one of the inevitable products of the policies of Force and Fear being implemented and extended by the governments of the UK, the US, Canada and elsewhere. This incident is just a single wretched example of what happens when fear and force are unleashed. For every Jean Charles de Menezes there are literally hundreds of thousands of unnamed and unmentioned people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Columbia, Nigeria, etc. having their heads blown off to safeguard the freedom and prosperity of Kennebunkport and Crawford.

collection

2005-07-23T01:32:00.000-04:00

collection

gold sky 2

2005-07-20T13:24:00.000-04:00

gold sky 2

white zip 2

2005-07-19T11:29:00.000-04:00

red & blue sky

2005-07-18T14:08:00.000-04:00

gormley 3

2005-07-15T13:58:00.000-04:00

gormley 3

electric pink

2005-07-12T11:09:00.000-04:00

electric pink

court & pile

2005-07-12T11:04:00.000-04:00

court & pile

floral branches

2005-07-02T12:58:00.000-04:00

floral branches

It was the best of times...

2005-06-29T20:05:00.000-04:00

Historic Commons vote paves way for same-sex marriage across Canada

The House of Commons voted 158 to 133 to adopt controversial legislation that will make Canada the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.

Source

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—
~ Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two cities

For a moment or two anyway, it's the best of times.

[By the way, the "controversy" was much more in the eye of the reporter than it was real.]

calmar

2005-06-27T10:02:00.000-04:00

calmar

green rings, ceramic squid

hose & blocks

2005-06-26T01:16:00.000-04:00

hose & blocks

faux x ray

2005-06-24T08:24:00.000-04:00

gormley

2005-06-18T13:15:00.000-04:00

gormley

Close up of a statue by Antony Gormley.
Montreal

under cover

2005-06-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

under cover

express

2005-06-13T01:35:00.000-04:00

express

test

2005-06-02T15:06:00.000-04:00

stats

2005-05-29T12:59:00.000-04:00

stats

crescent

2005-05-24T03:14:00.000-04:00

stack

2005-05-22T09:31:00.000-04:00

noon

2005-05-21T02:34:00.000-04:00

obscure

2005-05-20T09:38:00.000-04:00

mostly nitrogen

2005-05-20T07:30:00.000-04:00

aggregate

2005-05-18T16:39:00.000-04:00

Once living rock.

start

2005-05-18T16:27:00.000-04:00

This was the start of Spring. Puddles of melted snow and ice on concrete. And reflections of apartment buildings that remain silent.

well

2005-05-18T15:52:00.000-04:00

On a January day in the artificial summer of the greenhouse. Still the winter brooded above the glass, and the water in the well of this bloom was not enough to melt it away.

scanning

2005-05-17T09:59:00.000-04:00

tv menace

After Pinkville

2005-05-11T13:47:00.000-04:00

A quick journey in the Wayback Machine...

"Pinkville", that is, the original Vietnamese Pinkville, better known to its inhabitants as the village of My Lai.

For an enlightening bit of history here's a link to an article that Noam Chomsky wrote back in 1971.

After Pinkville

And while I'm at it, here's a link to a site dealing with the events at My Lai and their aftermath.

yellow crackle

2005-05-10T02:58:00.000-04:00

pinkville

2005-05-10T02:54:00.000-04:00

My Lai - known to the US military in Vietnam as "Pinkville" (along with many other hamlets in the area).