401 Main Street, Vancouver BC V6A ZT7 604-665-2289

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AUGUST 15, 2014

carnnews@vcn.bc.ca carnnews@shaw.ca www.caronews.org

Photo by Casey Bowman.

*-j News from Oppenheimer Park

Asahi Baseball Game I Saturday, August 16 at Woodland Park ~~ Looking for baseball players to play our annual ball game with the Asahi. Please sign up at Carne-

gie Center 3rd floor Program Office if you are interested . We will drive together and a bagged ~

lunch will be provided . Let's play ball! JIIJIIr * Upcoming Art Workshops with Eva I At Carnegie 3rd floor gallery ~

Printmaking: Friday, August 15, 10am-12:30pm

Drawing: Tuesday, August 19 & Friday, August 22, 10am-12:30pm

2D Collage: Tuesday, August '1h ft Friday August 29, 10 am-I 2:30pm ....

~MUst Bto & Statement Wo,kshop facilitated by UBC Leam;nq Exchange * At Carnegie Art Room I Tuesday, August 19, 9:30am-ll :30am *

Learn differences between artist bio and statement, share your current bio and/or statement to * ~ elaborate! Drop-in .

Community Art Project "petit BONHOMME'' At Carnegie 3rd floor gallery I Tuesdays & Fridays, 2pm-4pm

. etc. out of wine corks and recycled materials! ;

* The 8th Annual Endless Summer Festival ,:

Saturday, August 30 at McLean Park. .

New Location! Expect endless fun and music at this year's Endless Summer Festival rain or shine . "-~ ** _;:;;:i=·~;·"~ i'"'¥;~' ~ ~ ~

UBC Hum

Arts & Humanities Humanities 10 1 Community Programme offers three free university-level courses for people who live in and around the Downtown Eastside and Downtown South. The courses are for people who have encoun­tered financial and other barriers to university educa­tion and who wish to expand their intellectual hori­zons in an accessible, challenging and respectful envi­ronment. Applicants must have a love ofleaming, b<ific literacy skills and be willing to attend classes, complete assignments and participate in group discus­sions. Applications for these non-credit courses are

Jo'

accepted not on the basis of past academic history, but on applicants' desire and ability to be part of the Hum 101 Programme.

un1versity set free

Saturday August 16, !lam for Hum 101 & Hum 201 Tuesday August 19, !lam for Writing Thursday August 28, llam for Hum 101 Hum 201 & Writing · ' ·

Gathering Place Community Ctre, 609 Helmcken St. Saturday August 16, lpm for Hum 101 & Hum-201 Tuesday August 19, lpm for Writing

Vancouver Recovery Club, 2775 Sophia St. Wednesday August 20, !lam for Hum 101, Hum 201 and Writing

Crabtree Comer,•533 East Hastings St. (3rd fl. room) Wednesday August 20, lpm for Hum 101, Hum 201 and Writing

Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, 302 Columbia St. (women only) Thursday August 21 , 1 pm for Hum I 01 , Hum 201 and Writing

Classes· take place at UBC Point Grey campus on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, beginning in early September. You can apply for an eight month inter­disciplinary course where you will study a different subject in the arts and social sciences each week, in­cluding history and politics, art, music, architecture, philosophy, literature, soci<jpgy, first nation studies, Humanities 101 Community Programme economics, gender studies, popular culture and more. Dr. Margot Leigh Butler, Academic Director Or you can apply for a three-month long, hands-on Paul Woodhouse, Programme Coordinator writing course where a new genre and style of writing Alison Rajah, Writing Coordinator will taught each week. Participants receive school · Wil Steele, Programme Assistant supplies, student _cards, bus tickets to get to and from Michelle Turner, Programme Assistant class, meals, and childcare if needed. Madeline Gorman, Programme Assistant

Please attend the upcoming information and applica- tel. 604-822-0028 tion sessions for more details on how to participate in I Programme Office: th.~rogramme. Information is also available at \ #270 Buchanan E, 1866 Main Mall, U.B.C. humanities101.arts.ubc.ca I Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6T lZl Web-

. · J site: http://humanities1 01.arts.ubc.ca/ Carnegie Centre, Main and Hastings St. (top floor classroom)

MIC 5 MIC develops and makes weapons of war. MIC is the most prolific employer in the Western World. MIC decides who will be President. MIC tells the president and congress what to do. MIC is what Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about

before he left presidential office in the early sixties. MIC is: the

*'Military Industrial Complex,"* and it rules the Western world

as long as we stupidly allow it to.

night gift

"Water is to land what the voice is to the body" - Kaluli knowledge, via Steven Feld and Walter Lew

make space and let the night speak through you- what will the darkness say? will it sigh the song ofnightcleaners, the lament of the wrongly imprisoned, the rage of the ragged, the dispossessed? how will the night take you back? will you be the vessel for earth shatter, hydro poison, ancestral revenge? perhaps steady weeds, growing irrepressibly into the cracks, urban repurposing, straddling both the drugs that kill and the ones that heal ?' the globe moves around the sun, unstoppable, feeding pine trees and the ·petro-state alike, giving us the days and nights by which to stand with the trees, what the industry calls overburden, or to die more rapidly, more stupidly, by peak oil.

Garry Gust

as rivers and oceans fill with carcinogenic wastes from the petroleum-plastic-supply-chain, the political systems follow, stuffed fu ll of suncorpse and tired old neo-colonial ego that refuses to stop growing until it reaches the limits of the planet's patience. who knows what alliances and monkeywrenches will be enough to stop the greed of the greasy machine?

what I do know is that humble migrants who've traveled the ocean know its wisdom better than an arrogant el ite that doesn't heed the world's necessary stories. jai l the stories and the storytellers, but they wi ll keep speaking the night until empire expires, with or without the multitudes alive.

in this race may we be ready to move fast, yet steady enough to encompass musicians and lake gatherings, forests and guerri lla gardens, fueled by a love more immense than the unnatural systems we've inherited! we need to live the world that is possible even while we struggle through war. respect living coasts and fluid watersheds, not murderous imperial borders.

in grief and in celebration, in fear and in courage, in anger and in compassion, the night replenishes us so that we may continue to embody her songs.

Rita Wong

One needs a place . ..

To sleep, to weep, to contemplate and eat. A safe place to park our things. So we can be there when the whistle blows or the school bell rings. To work we can then go, through sleet rain and snow. Knowing at day's end a warm, safe place is just around the bend .

You say I am a bum. I say no way. Give me a home, be it one I can afford, with security, And oh, my lord- You will see the person I am.

Affordable housing has sometimes been there, until now. In past times my relations could stroll in the woods and lay claim

to a home site without a worry or a care. But to this generation such affordable housing is no longer there.

The so-called Forest-Service burnt down our cabins in the woods. Sending us packing to cities in search of a place to call home. But none are to be had unless one is rich, indeed. The wealthy have more housing than they need. Those in this fair city have many homes privately owned and often leave them empty because the city allows this vile greed. Empty they sit, serving the rich: To drive up housing prices

not affordable to this old bitch.

The shortage of housing goes ever higher. The city officials abound with promises that, if I made them,

would make me a liar.

The Province buys the Woodwards building to house the poor, and the city says no, the rich of housing, they need more. So a few crumbs the city throws to the poor in the 'hood. The rest of the housing goes to those in the high end loop. While the most are begging for housing, jumping through hoops.

A home to be in within our means, not a mat on a shelter floor is what we need. If it was not for those following the god of mammon, for greed, We would have this and much more. Yes indeed. •

Yes, in the past we could sit at the door of our own cabin and watch the world go past.

But greed has made this situation so it would not last. Our country was one where all had a home. Today we've been reduced to tenting in a city park or left to roam.

Colleen Carroll

From the LibrarY We are in the heat of summer, the fans are going, the

windows are up & we are here to maintain your quest for the perfect book. Las t weekend l visited the I last­ings Urban Farm across from Save-on-Meats, and the Strathcona Community garden where the excess of blackberries inspired me to do some foraging and at­tempt to bake a blackberry pie!

Here are some books at Camegie around the theme of foraging, feasting and ancient wisdom ... The Earth Knows My Name: Food, culture and sus­tainability in the gardens of ethnic Americans (2006) by Patricia Klindienst. This book contains knowledge of gardening from the perspective of First Nations peoples, immigrants and ethnic Americans who all value restorative ecology and justice for their land .

• The Good Food Revolution: Growing healthy food, people, and communities (2012) by Will Allen. From being a KFC executive and professional basket­ball player, Will Allen tums the tide and looks to his farming roots. He became an urban farm advocate, showing how local food can help at-risk youth and create a thriving community. Walking with Aalasi: An introduction to edible and medicinal Arctic Plants {2009) by Anna Ziegler. While this is a basic guide to traditional plant use, the

author also shares memories and stories from Aalasi Joamie who learned how to observe and ·harvest plants from her mother in Pangnirtung in the 1940s. Where People Feast: An Indigenous people's cook­book {2007) by Dolly Watts. An award-winning book for " Best Local Cuisine,"

Dolly Watts offers a mouth-watering description of food traditions and recipes with a focus on west coast Native cuisine. Learn how to utilize local seafood, game, fruits & vegetables, and create delicious feasts for fr iends and family.

Your Carnegie Librarian, Natalie

My Childhood ... so far Childhood, innocence, pure curious wonder, learning to walk. running, skipping, jumping, hiding&seeking, climbing, making mudpies, crazy stone fights, builld­ing forts. rend ing under the covers. radio the same ... playing house, post oftlce, staying up late not wanting to ever sleep unti l passing out from excitement and fatigue, sneaking into the fridge, into the cookie jar way up high, tiptoeing on a precarious rickety kitchen chair, getting dirty 'n tearing ofT clothes, kneescrapes, bandaids stinging & Mommy ki sc; ing it better. Fairy tales, make bel ieve, story-te lling at beddy-bye time, sneaking out the window at night for whatever reason -maybe to raid the neighbourhood's cherry trees here & there; dressing up for Hallowe'en as a pirate or a tramp, going door-to-door with a ragged pillow case coming home n' tossing out all the fruit popcorn balls & other junk I really hated only to keep chocolate chips, pixie stix n' gum, gorging out with my best friend on a major sugar high; bel ieving in Santa Claus Popeye, the Fli ntstones, Jetsons and many others ...

The Ford Building Is it affordable housing or deplorable housing?

Propetty Management hired a new & cheaper ele­vator repair company.

The 8-storey build1ng has had no elevator for 16+ days! Lots of seniors with physical handicaps live there & they can' t get out for food &/or to get their prescriptions filled. There is no access (except for Management) to the

basement laundry room. The situation is abso lutely horrendous. Please,

everyone, spread word of this as widely as possible. Management has reportedly decl ined to assume responsibility for any stress or peccadi lloes caused ('not our responsibility'). The thinking is that only public embarrassment I humi liation will work.

A resident.

and now, still sometimes wondering what if whatever spin the bottle knicky-knicky 9 doors, growing up to be a fireman/astronaut/secret agent -go figure ... delusions of grandeur, pie-in-tht.:-sky pipe dreams; smoking cigarettes getting headaches Grampa's home made .. overdoes, throwing up sick as a dog ... oh yes all the beautiful wondrous memories with no regrets really, uh huh. Those were most definitely the be~t years of my life!

By ROBYN LI YfNGSTONE

Embassy for Strays

The entrance is intimidating to some. Once inside, however, A discovery. People everywhere. Playing chess, Cutt ing hair, Bead in~. Read ing, Meeting friends.

·A home for the forgotten, The mi sunderstood, Unloved, Unwanted, Don' t fit in, "Wish they'd just disappear."

A place where things happen. Dreams dare to become,

Action plans hatch, ~ Learning occurs, Appetites are satisfied, Connections are made. Life is normal, If only for a short v.·hile.

A refuge the neighbourhood looks up to. An embassy for those Who are strays no more.

Lisa David

Notes on 'anti-Semitism' & terrorizing minorities -By Ron Gostick (fhe Globe & Mail,published the following leller by I. Zayid off lalifax, dealing with the Israeli- Palestinian controversy) "We read \\~th amazement your June 3 report fi·om Israel (Israeli Peace Activists Attacked By Settlers): 'The seminary's spiritual leader. Rabbi Vitzhak Ginsbw·gjusti lied the slaying (of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl by Je\\-ish settlers) and said the blood of Jews and non-Jews cannot be equated. "We have to recognize that Je\\-ish blood and the blood of a goy (non-Jew) are not the same thing," he told Israel Radio: "Every law that is based on equating goys and Jews is completely unacceptable." "On another page we read of a computer game, developed in Israel, where liquidation of Arabs is fun; Arabs are dehumanized and wiping them out is the objective (Computer Game Based on Arab Uprising Causes Stir in Israel). A few days earlier we read that the Jewish settlement af Ariel required that Arabs be 'tagged' as alien workers. A reminder afthe Nazis' yellow star? These trends are simp!) incomprehensible from a people who have suffered so much from similar supremacist and dehumanizing ideologies. "We are, however, heartened that there are honorable voices raised in Israel against such sickening ideas. Knesset (parliament) member Dedi Zucker condemned the computer game and said: 'A society in which liquidating human beings becomes a computer game will, in the future, be unable to explain why kill ing a man because he is an Arab is a crime and not fun.' "AlufHa Reuventfo, fom1er Israeli general, described the game as 'totally destructive and dehumanizing' and asked: '!fin Germany they had a game of getting Jews into a concentration camp and 9-year-olds played it, what would be the implications?' Perhaps the most significant point in the foregoing letter is the statement of Rabbi Ginsburg, justifying the slaying of a young Palestinian girl , contending that the blood of non -Jews is of less consequence than that of Jews- which, ofeourse, is the Talmudic teachi ng. The same issue of the Globe followed th is letter with one by Alan Lazerte, Executive Director. Canadian Friends of the 1 nternational Christian Embassy, Jerusalem. Mr. Lazerte began his letter in these word.s: "The recent defacing of a Jewish synagogue and school in Toronto was more than an isolated event -it was the intent of the perpetrators to terrorize Canada's Jew ish community. many of whom carry unspeakable memories (Synagogue Spray­painted With Swastikas- June 12). The balance of Mr. Lazerte's letter was an attack upon freedom of speech in Canada, even dismissing the defences of "truth" and "in the public interest" as being irrelevant to group intimidation or libel. Mr. Lazerte concluded his letter: "Canadians must be vigilant. The world is erupting around us and 'it can happen here.' " Analyzing Mr. Lazerte's opening paragraph (reprinted above), re the defacing with swastikas of a Toronto synagogue and school, it's rather interesting that although he does not seem to know the perpetrators, he knows their intent: "to terrorize Canada's Jewish community." Mr. Lazerte is absolutely correct- but for reasons obviously far beyond his understanding of so-called 'anti-Semitism' and its use in discrediting and destroying any effective opposition to the anti-Christian total-itarian policy of Political Zionism. •

Patrick Walsh, a former RCMP undercover agent, authored a reveal ing little book on this very subject: The Unholy Alliance, documenting how Communist and certain Jewish organizations themselves use agents provocateurs to commit outrageous acts of desecration, and then blame them on and thereby discredit their adversaries, while at the same time terrorizing members of the Jewish community in order to extract heavier financial support for their 'defence' and 'protection,' and gaining sympathy for the policies and actions of the perpetrators of this hoax. The truth is that for any group to deface a Toronto synagogue, except for the architects of this agem-provocateur ploy explained by Mr. Walsh, it would constitute nothing more or less than an exercise in asininity. The photographic reproduction on the next page of Mr. Andrew Benjamin posing for The Jewish Chronicle in the U.K. ("the world's leading Jewish newspaper, established in 1841") is rather revealing. This photo, in the March 31, 1989 issue of Jewish Chronicle (" JC"), is accompanied by this report: 'Blood and Honour' organisation- a breakaway from the :\'ational Front's White Noise Club. fascist links here and abroad. "Mr. Benjamin plays down the significance of his business. Speaking from his shop, surrounded by T-shirts and flags with swastikas and other Nazi symbols, he said: 'It pays for the car and mortgage.' "His connections with the neo-Nazi music scene in this country extend far beyond the mere sale of records. Last April, a London concert of skinhead bands degenerated into fighting that spilled out into the street. A passerby was stabbed. The promoter of that conce11 was a Mr. Andrew St. John. 'Andrew St. John is an alias I sometimes use in business.' Mr. [lenjamin told me. "In spite of last year's problems, he is helping to organise a similar concert at a secret location in May. It will feature all the top Nazi-style bands, including Skrewdriver, Brutal A/lack and No Remorse. "No Remorse members are avowed British Movement supporters. One of their numbers is called 'Six Million lies.' "Mr. Benjamin is adamant that he will continue his business ... "

The foregoing Jewish Chronicle report illustrates Jewish promotion of so-called 'Nazism' for a purely financial motive. But far more dangerous to our freedom is the agent-provocateur-organized 'Nazism' and 'anti-Semitism' which usc swastika-spraying and synagogue-defacing to scare and bi lk the Jewish community and psychologically condition and manipulate public opinion in the interests of the unseen architects and promoters.

lnci~e~tall~· · :'vir. La.zcrte and his "Canadian Friends of the Internationa l Christian Embassy" arc \\ ell 1-.nown to us _ and 4 to Ch~tst.mn~ 111 the Mtddle Ea~t. Many of them arc Palestinians, who have suffered so grievously under the ·ackboot of g~a~lt.ltomsts . financed and s tcked on by the Lazertes and \\ell-meaning, nai\e but mis led Christians ofth! West The ns:;a~ .~~v~\~Oma~, ~rac.e I lalsell. who actually joined a Jerr) -Falwell Israel tour as part of her im cstigation of th is

so-ca .c1

;.tsttan Ztontsm racket came back and published a tremendously revealing book, Prophecy and Politics _ essentta rea tng for ~ho~e who wam to rcall) understand what's going on in the name of Christianity touay. (Recommended readmg. The U1~holy Allwnce by Patrick Walsh; Prophecy and Politics by Grace llalscll )

All !halts necessary for the triumph of evil, is 1//(/f good people rio nothiug.

"Get Back to Active" Program

'S111all Clas-; '> •:s~ions Ortt:n.:u !11 '\n,_ ,,nc \\ i.n E'\isti lL \lu:;c!e. 8on..: or AoJ~ 'njuri~-.'.

' FRL:E. it~jury ·1ss..:c;-;m.:m ilnd ~xcrcis.: pro..!::.Jm by certified personal trainer. ~

*Get back ro bein::, your <~ctiw :-cl,! Get help wirh i.:;sues such as ~lrthriti s, ostcoporo:.-.is , ml.sclc degenerat ion or aches and pains \\ ·t:· a pcrsonal iLeJ c:-..cn: ise and stretching r~gil!lC'"' .

Tuesdays, 12-1 pm Thursdays, 10-llam

Starting Aug 5, Carnegie Centre, Classroom 2 Facilitated by NCSA Certified Personal Trainer For more info, Contact Mary Ellen at 604-665-3005

Hoodwinked Again?

If one of us so-called 'little people', which is to say those without huge money, influence or power was to intentionally or accidently pour a litre of motor oil down a gutter-drain and was caught, there would be ­needless to say- Hell to Pay! However, wi ll Imperial Metals and its executive and rhe BC Liberal govern­ment have hell to pay?

In Tuesday's August 12111 Province columnist Mi­chael Smyth wrote that "The majority sharehold~r of Imperial Metals (whiclt owns the mine) helped organ­ize a $1 million private fundraiser for Premier Christy Clark." In the same article Smyth wrote that Mines Minister Bill Bennett told him that "It's really insult­ing for anybody to suggest thar because we rake dona­tions from a group of corporations like the mining industry that we're going to cut them a break."(!) Bennett then continued on: '·We can ' t be bought, OK? We're not go ing to be cutting this company a break. If

(f v

they have been negligent, if they have been dishonest, if they have made mistakes even in an honest way, they're going to pay for it." Bennett then concluded that there would absolutely be an independent inves­tigation into the collapse of the tailings pond dam at Mount Polley.

In Monday's August 11 th Vancouver Sun, Stephen Hume wrote that, '"Since 1960 there have been more than a hundred ~uch major containment dam failures reported worldwide. Tailings Dam failures have killed more than 1600 people, destroyed more than 2500 homes in downstream locations, poisoned thousands of kilometres of ri ver systems, ruined thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land and deprived m i !­lions of people of safe drinking water. The Mt Polley accident on Aug I occurred on a tributary which con­nects to a river basin that's home to 63% of B.C.'s population. About 2,4 million people live along the Fraser River in 32 downstream communities and the urban sprawl that is Metro Vancouver. That' s where any toxins escaping from the spill are ultimately bound."

What we now need - besides an independent investi­gation- is the same independency in testing of the water bound here. As is scientifically known, water raken from a shallow depth is different from warer taken from a deep depth. Is the water being tested taken from clean, shallow depths or dirty deep depth? Most likely it ' s being taken from the shallows,

By Harry Schorncck

community rising

I rolled into vancouver on a greyhound bus in 1986

just after expo evictions from the hotels executed oiur martyr

olaf solheim whose death was officially attributed

to eviction from the room he had lived in for decades and at that time the poverty agencies were in constant conflict

with each other city hall and its developers

reduced low-income housing ~ throughout the city

deliberately forcing poor people into the downtown eastside

from where we are to be driven elsewhere I nowhere and city hall refused to enforce by-laws

and so the hotels parks and alleys became festering cesspools for pandemics

hiv/aids hepatitis a b and c tuberculosis and overdose deaths

the highest in the western world and the money/power people call it revitalization

when our situation by definition was genocide meaning

withholding the necessities for life of a targeted group -

primarily the very ill street addicts there were no demonstrations or protests in the streets then

but dead bodies disappeared women serial killers police thugs

and a health board having spent more money on an outbreak of bumble bee stings

infecting a dozen students at ubc than on a health epidemic

in the downtown eastside and while I early recognized signs of the violence of gentrification

I was told to just wait until the next provincial government was elected

and when they were welfare rates were cut

meanwhile a few poverty agency directors claimed to speak

to the media and politicians for thousands

of suffering people but finally a small group

of downtown eastside residents

organized and made signs

hit the stn and spoke loudly

for health and the promises 1

to help d~ the mentally traun

and missi disappeared

after grar and we learned

bitterly that our governme

often gov rather than human

and now 22 years after I an

only hom where housing -

the centra is disappearing

ecades vere in constant conflict

where IS

nics

vitalization

:sts in the streets then ers

the violence of gentrification

was elected

oooo~ df/p

organized rncl! again and made signs

hit the streets and spoke loudly

for health and housing and the promises made from victoria

to help demonized addicts the mentally traumatized

and missing women -disappeared

after grandiose and fake announcements and we learned

bitterly that our governments

often govern by political announcement rather than human reality

and now 22 years after I arrived at the

only home I've ever known where housing-

the central determinant of health is disappearing

···lacJ

the hiv/ids an1

is closer to th<

yet there is act

unity amon an

once thoug an

alongside L

fip to support 1

as unique con

wi and what~

is of resistanc

re1 the face of

on and everyti

so and everyti

wl and sandy

ce and what v

mt at this criti

an is self-sacr

an and a mult

nc to lying de

an amazing st deep and i1 spirituality

of

tearing apa and liberat

g tictoria !diets

:tke announcements

ical announcement

~nown

1t of health

the hiv/ids rate is now close to botswana's according to the united nations and life expectancy

is closer to haiti 's than the rest of vancouver's

yet there is again an active inspiring hopeful

unity among agencies and organizations and there are accomplishments

once thought impossible and allies

alongside us fighting in many ways

to support our continuing existence as an extraordinary

unique community exploding with beauty and knowledge

and what we have is a powerful history

of resistance reminding us each time we see

the face of bruce eriksen on the building honouring him

and everytime we hear libby davies advocate so fiercely for us

and everytime we see jean swanson whose presence empowers us •

and sandy cameron whose writings celebrate and safeguard our history

and what we have more than ever

at this critical and desperate moment

is self-sacrifice and care for one another

and a multitude of our voices now speaking fiery powerful truth

to lying destructive power and we have a remarkable

amazing sustaining deep and impregnable spirituality

of strength joy hope and determination

tearing apart trauma and liberating courage

Bud Osborn

THE WEAKEND One & only thing we sort of have in common is our fear of Pigs, the Bulls that must show off their might that blood red day seeps thru living ti ssue & into the night, when people disappear are attacked or killed like a rabid dog people look up to their chosen god (so many to choose from) while others collapse and others fade into that last big s leep but when Officer Down & his vaudevillian troupe storm on in you won't hear peep from the weakend of the twilight pool it's out of sight, like a boy not allowed to even watch his family eat sentenced to eternity in the cor­ner of his room one day he will make an excellent play-by-play announcer for his generation's war(s) Until then he plays with darkness building his own cocoon his remembering will never stop, He could be the next Adolph Hitler or the next Abra­ham Lincoln with shrinking seas & overpopulated cities .. am I one of the few who at least are thinking every writer who's he lped the Carnegie Newsletter I Centre don't g ive up because of the futility of it all & by no means let that Aftliction Finder make that rea­son a killer cop, just living gets them all angry & pissed & that is something I could never resist so to does the boy in a corner of a room, I'd feel safer kick­ing a long row of Hell 's Angels motorcycles over than asking a cop for directions hospitals are better than shallow graves we maybe remind all people of authority that we live in that same world where eve­ryone deserves to be saved & maybe one day no one will have to sit in a corner of a room.

By ROBERT MeG ILLIVRA Y

"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." -Sir William Osler

FM radio tunes from the past Somehow more charming than 'in the day' Shania warbling about LOVE The Beatles had the same song

Rain on this day in .July Has been on and off again; th is time

around ol' Sol a w·elcome wetness, and cooing too. Unpredictable has been the order of the day Accepting the vicissitudes of NATURE We have no choice in this matter.

This Pilgrim awakens in the same downish mood That dark brown taste, the ache in every

bone and sinew Memory flooding in Remindihg me GOOD FORTUNE is coming

breathing hard. Bright future beckoning-The finger crooked toward me.

Slough of Despond: Swamp of Despair Hope long gone Expectations only a memory or a memorex Now a light appears in the forest The end is in s ight The 0 coming up warms my old bones Expanding the metallic parts of my body Easing the pain - casing the tension As I walk that tightrope once more From dawn to dusk Trying to maintain homeostasis Trying to modulate the dreadfulness I witness Trying to keep my cool in a world gone mad Again.

Wilhelmina M Miles @ the Ovaltine

the Ides of August Dog Days of2X14

\

CRUNCH Ndtes

OBVIouSLY You HA.VE PosT lfl.A(I/1~Tic

J)owt.Jiow!tl EAsr.Sil>£ STR.! SS 7>/Soi(/) £f<.

~~

0

Resources for SRO Tenants

*City of Vancouver vancouver.ca Phone 3-1-1 Problems in your building including:

broken toilets or fixtures bedbugs general repairs rodent/pest infestations heat and fire safety

*Residential Tenancy Branch rto.gov.bc.ca Problems with your landlord with your tenancy agreement Phone 604-660-1020 or visit 520 Richards Street, Monday to Friday, 9-11 :30am or Four Directions 390 Main Street, Monday to Friday, 12:30 - 4pm

*Shelter and Housing bchousing.org Phone 2-1-1 Provincial information line on shelters.

*Subsidized H,ousing Registration 604-648-4270 or visit 297 East Hastings, Mon to Fri, I Oam-4pm

*Vancouver Coastal Health vch.ca 604-736-2033 Info about health services in your community.

*Emergency Assistance Phone 9-1-1 Immediate help for health or safety of yourself or another person.

HELP

DOWNTOWN

EASTSIDE JUNE 2014

*47"*

FREE OR lOW-COST GOODS ................ .! SHELTER & HOUSING ................................ 2

HFAL TH SERVICES ..................................... 3 COUNSELUNG, SUPPORT, INFO ............ 5

LEGAL SERVICES ·····················-··················9 ADVOCACY RESOURCE UST ................. 10 EMPLOYMENT ASSISTANCE ................ .10 LANGUAGE, LEARNING ........................... 11

SOOAL, DROP-IN, RECRFA110N ....... .12 REPLACING 1DEN11RCA110N ............. .13 INFORMATION: Legal, General ............... .14 DTES YOUTH SERVICES .......................... 14 OTHER SERVICES, RECYCLING ........... .15 COMMUNITY ACTION PROJECT ......... .16 HlV+/AlDS, Immigrant Services ................. 17 Map-18, Mental Health Consumers ··---. .19

~~ CARNEGIE NEWSLETTER

665-2289

How The B.C. Liberals balanced The Budget The New Democrats said, "It can't be done." Yet

the B.C. Liberal government did it; They balanced the budget. And out of a total $44 billion budget they even ran a small surplus of$135 million.

That's the good news. T he bad news is that this balanced budget comes with a price and it's called "People's needs." The needs of many people in B.C. are short changed and even ignored. Here's how the Liberals performed their balancing act.

First off, they raised government fees all along the line. Medicare premiums got hiked 4 per cent this year and will go up again next year. B.C. Hydro bills go up nearly $100 this year for the average household and will keep rising until 2019. The Liberals boosted ICBC rates 5 per cent this year. Now even park fees witt go up since a reservation fee is now slapped on to the $42 a night fee you pay when you stay in a park overnight. Every night you stay in a provincial park you pay an extra $6 reservation fee.

Then there are ferry fares . They're rising and will continue to shoot upwards.

And don't forget water fees. "Water is the tree of life," the Bible once said. Now the B.C. government may soon hike the price of water for everybody but especially B.C. households. But first , the government wi tt set up a commission to examine this issue.

Anyway all these hikes means more money streaming into government coffers. To add to this money, the Liberal government raised the tax on high income earners. Yet this tax only applies for the next two years. Then it comes off. The government also hiked the corporate income tax.

"Those tax hikes were part of our 2013 election program," groi1sed an N.D.P.'er. This man was sur­prised that premier Christy Clark had carried out a small part of their program. But like they say, "That's politics."

Now after jacking up fees and taxes, the Liberals kept a tight lid on social spending. When the teachers went out on strike in June, the government saved more than $ 170 million in unpaid wages. Welfare rates are held down to basically starvation wages. A single person on welfare gets only $6 10 a month. And the Liberals have now extended the waiting time for get1ing welfare from three weeks to an incredible five

A welfare parent with one chi ld gets only $845 a month from the C lark Liberals. A s ingle handicapped

person receives about $910 monthly. Premier Clark has made it clear there'll be no increases in this kind of social spending.

Then the government plans to spend only very small amounts on more social housing. "We don't build social housing," Housing Minister Rich Cole­man said in effect this past spring. Instead govern­ment money will go into housing subsidies.

Still, two out of every three dollars go into health and education. The C lark Liberals haven't been able to make too many cuts here. Yet that's only because they've already made them.

"Cut health and education," Liberal Premier Gordon Campbell told his cabinet ministers when he became premier in 200 I. And the min isters of health and education, one of whom was our premier Christy Clark, followed Mr. Campbell's orders. So right now there's not too much space for many more cuts. Stil l some have happened.

The old Pine Free Clinic in Kitsilano that dated back to the late 1960's is gone. The Portland Hotel Society has been taken over completely by the gov­ernment. Maybe more cuts are on the way here. Meanwhile II ,000 British Columbians sleep in the streets or in shelters every night. And up to 60,000 more people exist on the edge of being homeless.

So yes the" B.C. Liberal government balanced the budget in 20 14. Yet for the poorest third this budget is terrible. And for the poorest third of these people, or the bottom ten per cent, it's a disaster.

By DAVE JAFFE

Big news! Negotiations on the proposed Canada-EU Compre­

hensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) corporate rights deal have hit a major stumbling block.

A report has just surfaced that Germany is now rais­ing serious concerns over the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism in CET A- the part of the deal that grants foreign corporations the right to sue gov­emments over laws that infringe on their corporate profit-making.

This is modeled on NAFT A's notori ous Chapter II, which has already cost Canadian taxpayers over $170 million in awards to U.S. corporations- and poten­tially S2.5 billion more in pending challenges!

Council of Canadians

To Serve and To Protect?

I worked at the Arco a few years back, the night shift with this feeble seventy year-old man. I mean, I don't wish to speak ill of the elderly, but this guy was iras­cible & unpleasant & extremely decrepit & absolutely useless in the extreme. What a wreck! The only thing worse than his ceaseless flatulence was the stunning halitosis in the aftermath of one of his frequent belch­es. Ay Canm1ba! And I'm in a small office with this guy for eight hours, all night! Good God! So anyway, when this scary looking dude walked right by us at the front desk, I was on my own- this old man was in no way any kind of back up. Now, at night at the Area, it was my job to stop prac­tically everybody from getting in the building. I never cared for that rule. If a person wanted to visit a friend, who was I to get in their way? But if someone looked like real trouble - like this dude - then I figured I had to something about it.

Well, this dude was indeed real trouble. He was try­ing to get into the rooms on the fourth floor. He was smoking crack. For all I know he may have been mute -he never said a word. Despite all that I had to say to him; he just stared right through me when I talked to him. He had a scar on his forehead and wore leather gloves with pointy metal attachments on the knuckles. 1 implored, cajoled and beseeched this big crazy bas­tard to leave the goddamn building but he just kept trying to get into rooms and smoking crack in the hallway. Sometimes a door would be unlocked and a tenant would exclaim, "What the fuck!" Who the fuck are you?!" And then I'd step between the outraged tenant and this mute, impassive crackhead, thinking all the while this situation will surely erupt into vio­lence at any moment. After a half hour, when the cops didn't show (my

constant warnings about the imminent arrival of the police didn't faze him) a helpful tenant, emboldened by a whack of gib, came to my aid and we lured this crazy loon down the stairs with promises of going to a room where there was this wonderful sale on crack, where he could find a plethora of smokable cocaine essentially for free. Luckily, he was not only mute but also gullible. When we reached the first floor, we pushed and shoved the mute madman down the stairs and out the front door. 1 felt terrible about lying about the crack .. just kidding, of course .. sometimes in this old world mendacity can be a noble thing.

At six o'clock in the morning - five hours after I'd twice called for the cops!_,_ the dispatcher cal led back and asked if I still required help.

"No cops required," I told her. "You can tell your scaredy-cat police to relax now. I took care of it." And I hung up. A few days later (on my day oft) I'm running at

night, three or four in the morning. Police car stops me. Officer asks who I am, where I'm going, why am I running so fast? I explain to them about "exercise"-a concept that is apparently unknown to donut addicts. They treat me I ike a criminal for at least 15 minutes, checking me for needle marks, frisking me, asking questions about the history of my life. I grew agitated. They remarked about the fact that I'm "agitated." It's pretty suspicious, my being so agitated and all. 'Why am r so agitated?' And I say, "Two heavily armed strangers stop me in the middle of night for no reason. I don't know who you are; I only know that I better take what you dish out. For some reason, you're suspicious. I don't know why. But it's up to me to allay your suspicions. Until l do, I can't move. So yeah, I'm fucking agitated." Throughout the interrogation on Georgia Street, I'd

noticed that they 'd received & turned down two radio calls. Then it hit me. This is what cops do. They make up shit to do in order to avoid doing something that could be real trouble for them. You know, like re­sponding to a potentially dangerous situation ~tan SRO ... "Where were you guys Saturday when I called from

the Arco?" I said to them. Then I explained what I meant. One of them looked a little sheepish and said I could finally go. Oh well.. if the cops had showed up they would've

probably killed the mute madman. l know for damn sure if one decent, thoughtful fellow human hadar­rived to deal with Robert Dziekanski or Paul Boyd, instead of a gaggle of pumped up, macho cops, Boyd and Dziekanski would be alive today.

By DAN PAGE

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Censored 2012: An informative book Project Censored started a few years ago with a few

actual investigative journalists doing research, com­pi li ng mainstream-media presentations of news and non-presentation of the full or even true story.

The categories are entitled as clusters of ideas/ideals/ issues that have the actual facts or takes so spun or distorted that what becomes 'news' is often (well , almost always) the way-of-thinking that those with the most invested in reports tailor-made to be theirs.

With the Internet and search engines and more, the existence of ' false flag' operations (9/11), groups be­ing up front environmentalist ( fishing, forests, nuclear waste etc) are set up by governments (read CIA, NSA, the "military-industrial complex" and others) to pro­duce and endorse the very bullshit that actual envi­ronmentalists abhor. Like how 'wonderful ' nuclear power is, or how overfishing is a myth, or how trees are a 'renewable resource (while actual forests are c learcut and replaced by monoculture tree' farms').

Little bits of truth are mind-blowing. The first one that stopped me was the fact that as many US soldiers commit suicide as are killed in combat ... thatthe si.mple number of those wounded doesn't include those wi th serious mental disorders due to horrific acts committed while ' under orders' or the hundreds of thousands with long-term disabilities (nor the de­nial o fveteran's benefits to these and more).

The next bit that rocked me was the entire, complex and extremely well-funded attack on the public edu­cation system. First of all , the very wealthy own the major media- television networks, radio, various inte rnational news networks & the daily print media. The prefac·e of this entire chapter was the story of where the term "Welfare Queen" came from. Ronnie Reagan, in one of his speeches about the evil of wel­fare, threw that term out with " freeloaders, bums, lazy, ... all the buzzwords about economically poor people. Right-wing pundits picked up on it and a new stereotype was born, even though such a person "with 80 names, 34 addresses, 175 children all starving to death while "mom" drives a Cadillac" does not and never has existed. But when it 'works' flaunt it. Now the luxuries in the life of this "welfare queen"

can be safely imagined and thinking by those being fed such crap can go to Charlie Sheen's drug-addicted antics or the sexual escapades of Tiger Woods. All women on welfare are welfare queens and bettering

their lives or those of thei r children (invariably those "crack babies") can be relegated to the garbage cans.

The first Censored story was then al l about Public Education. You know, the system that is "broken, worse-than-useless, with ' teachers' who are overpaid incompetent blocking innocent students from actually learning, administering provincial tests for the extra money to buy breast implants or penis-enlargement kits to wow their non-existent classroom aids AND ALL BECAUSE OF EVIL UNIONS!!!. The scenario of the BC gov't (read Christy Clark) so

opposed to any improvements suggested by these same stereotyped teachers now gets clearer. The multi-billion dollar industry of Charter Schools in the States and the up-and-coming thing of private, for­profit schools in Canada is hell bent on denigrating every aspect of the public education system, including underfunding by their government hacks (identical to the unfolding drama in the health industry) to make those with any money forego public institutions for the very expensive private ones. The extent that this goes is personified in movies like "Bad Teacher" and "Waiting for Superman" which are then referred to ad nauseum by politicians and on televisions shows. The kids who appeared in WFS were even invited to the White House and Qbama came out repeating how broken public education is.

Here we have the Fraser Institute and its ' rating' of High Schools; always topped by private, for-profit businesses and its myriad publications based on "ex­pert" research/opinion presented as indisputable fact. To quote from the book:

" ... education reform has become a euphemism for a very narrow, specific philosophy, a free-market one [promoted & extensively funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation [Microsoft..world's richest man] the Walton Family Foundation [owners ofWalmart, four people collectively worth $120 billion], the Koch brothers et al). As Joanne Barkan observes in a com­prehensive investigative report on private spending in education policies, reform has come to mean 'choice, competition, deregulation, accountability and data­based decision-making. In other words this means supporting policies that either privatize public educa­tion, or turn public education into a simulation of education in the private sector. This includes, as Bar­kan shows, "charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing for students, merit pay for teachers whose stu-

dents improve their test scores, firing teachers & clos­ing schools when scores don't rise adequately, and longitudinal data-collecting on the performances of every teacher and student. This ' free-market' educa­tion reform movement means pushing public schools from a model of cooperation to one of competition ... turning schools into a marketplace where the con­sumer is king." Free choice curriculum is replaced by corporate training to be an employee for life. In Japan this corporate training has hooks- leaving, quitting, changing companies etc is viewed as high treason & can lead to being blacklisted or scorned or cut dead by friends fearing for their security at the same company.

Mirrored throughout this coverage, to me anyway, was Christy Clark again. Her vehement vitriol about the BC Teachers Federation must stem from some real or imagined traumatic experience. Maybe she was trying to make money as a substitute teacher when in college, or even applied for a juicy job as a top teacher at some hoity-toity school , and was sty­mied by some obscure (to her) union rule that union members had first dibs, or experience and good peo­ple skills were also considered along with whatever you think of yourself. She's been frothing at the mouth about "education reform " ever since and this "free-market" stuff is music to her ears. (You know, where it's not so much what you know as who you know ... )

An ongoing censored story is the community and people of the Downtown Eastside (not in the book but the same slant/coverage/stereotyping as everywhere else). Economically poor or drug-using or alcohol­dependent or disabled or just discriminated against non-people! Every 'improvement' suggested by the developers, owners/speculators is for the best always. Make a wish and it can come true! ? Our community has been relegated to the shadows so pioneering can proceed like a juggernaut.

Keep your mind, ears and eyes open to this aspect of all so-called news but especially to what the coverage is trying to convince you of. It's never what it seems!!

By PAULR TAYLOR

One taste of Volunteering is deliciously rewarding.

VOLUNTEER TODAY FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

~o.t:u"ir~e ,,. ~~u~

Submitted by Starr Wah Sing-Long, Volunteer Coffee Seller

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