The New Agora November 2010

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NOVEMBER 2010

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UPFRONT Muppets and Middle East Peace | by Naomi Wolf 5 Water, water, everywhere. . . | by Kevin P. Miller 6 Cancer Research and the Terry Fox Run | by Michael Brine 7 Monsanto Roundup Linked to Birth Defects in New Study | by Aaron Turpen BPA Found on Cash Register and ATM Receipts | by M.Thornley 8 Deflate this | by Garth Turner 8

COVER Miss Landmine

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THE WORLD Time Magazine: Prospect Of Civil War In US “Doesn’t Seem That Far Fetched” | by Paul Joseph Watson Model describes Web page popularity | by Lisa Zyga 12 Why Permaculture Design? | by Michelle Avis 13 Argentina's Roundup Human Tragedy | by Claire Robinson 19

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NATIONAL Ineffective Flu Shots | by Sherri Tenpenny 15 An Open Rant to Stephen “I make the rules” Harper | by Dee Nicholson

LOCAL Grandview Park: Fights at the Monkey Bars | by Garth Mullins Incentive and Motivation | by Matthew C. Berkowitz 21

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HEALTH Pharmacies vs. Health Food Stores | by Mike Adams

Miss Landmine 2009 Cover photo: Gorm K Gaare

SCIENCE

Feature Designer Cliff Faber | Resource Graphix

NEWS BLITZ | World Headlines Of The Month 24

The Amazing Light Bulb | by Mike Adams

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HISTORY Vancouver in the 1870s | by Bruce Macdonald

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EVENTS | 29

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LETTERS | To the Editor

YOUR PAPER Hello Agorians, I found your newspaper a strange and fascinating change to my Skytrain ride today. I am Scientologist so I've experienced enough misunderstanding, apprehension and intolerance to last me a lifetime. We all need to just look behind the curtain or the mask and conclude for ourselves what is truth'.

There are many things in this world that are not as they are made to seem. I toast your courage to get out there, draw people to examine alternate truths and let them think for themselves. Best of luck to you in this endeavour. I will support your advertisers wherever possible.

Peter B THE REAL THREAT The real threat isn't big business and trade agreements, the real threat is the impeding destructive power of non-profits/societies which are not powered by greed but rather by power of those that control them. The legal process is flawed and will continue to be flawed because these societies are under the radar. There has to be a movement to make them transparent and accountable with checks and balances. Presently there are 26,000 non-profits in BC which are run like personal serfdoms.

You speak of Co-op radio and the management being turfed by the members. Forget it. Let a member try to get a copy of the membership list and I assure you he will be told that he can't get it which is against the the legislation and what can you do to get it. Everyone shold have access to membership lists so that a members view can be communicated to all members.

I doubt that if you ask coop radio to give you the names of the directors and management and their contact addresses you won't get them either. Nor the name of all the funders. How can you change a corrupt non-profit unless you have access to all this information.

CoRadio will keep it so tight that you

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won't even know when the next AGM will happen.

If you are serious Agora has to take over Co-op radio. You will need this media in addition to your print. The first thing you do is for you to become a member of Co-op radio and demand what legally you are entitled to and write about it not only to educate yourself but also to educate all your readers as to the deficiencies of the Society Act. There is talk of a new Act which will sanction that societies only have one director and oen member. These societies are 26,000 strong in BC alone and they are in line to take over all social service functions. It is scary.

Societies should be viewed as an education level for citizens; a step before running for political office.

Not a disappointing experience for those that care when they soon realize what a joke being a director is.

I will help you as much as I can. I have been a director of three societies and all of them were undemocratic and mean and I hear over and over from other past directors that they never want to be part of any governing body ever again. So there goes are democracy. If the good people do not get involved only the sociopaths are left.

Look at the Vancouver Food Bank. They have a list of directors who are only names names that might not even exist and they have no members which you would think the members are those that use the food bank.

In addition to the global thing look at the local thing. You can't just go after big business or big government you have to look at how they learned to be corrupt and it is due to participation in societies.

Audrey L UN CONTROL I feel compelled to communicate with you after reading A QUESTION OF SOVEREIGNTY by Kevin Miller which describes what's happening in Canada. Don't feel left out folks exactly the same is, or, has hap-

pened here in Australia! Our Nation once very strong and basically self sufficient with a very strong economy.Now we have reached the stage where our country is nothing more than a Shuddering Debt Ridden Hulk a mere shadow of its former self.

Thanks to a procession of Federal Governments over past decades who have lied,deceived and conned the Australian people into believing the great "Globalisation" was just a matter of opening our country up to "Free Trade" nothing could be further from the truth.

With the signing of the Lima Agreement in 1972 which was the Agenda for our country to be dismantled,deregulated, rationalised, restructured, taken over, sold off, destroyed by red tape to a point where today the Australian people own very little.

All our major Business organisations, Financial industry, Primary Industries, Secondary Industries, lost to takeovers by multinational Corporations. Our Manufacturing industries moved to third world Asia, the working class taxed to the eyeballs carrying the load.

Or Federal Governments have been complicit in destroying our Nation running on a "Hidden Agenda" lying to the people destroying our country as we knew it with the signing of a multitude of UN Multilateral Treaties and Agreements e.g. Treaty of Biological Diversity 1993, Millennium Declaration 2000, which resulted in our Government surrendering our Nations Sovereignty.

Agenda 21 = Control of Human consumption, control of all types of development such as, oceans, agriculture, water, Public Utilities!!

Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women 1983! Hidden in this Agreement was the UN requirement that the Civilian population be disarmed Nationally!

Disarmament of the Australian people occurred after the Port Arthur Massacre several years later???

Our Governments have handed over Governance of the people to the UN, all done "on the quiet "The Media is complicit as well!!!!

Now the latest UN Shock Horror diatribe surfaced this month and I Quote "Globalists representing 60 nations will meet at the UN this coming week in New York, September 2010 to push a tax on world financial transactions “Spearheaded by European Union countries, the socalled “innovative financing” proposal envisages a tax of 0.005 percent (five cents per $1,000), which experts estimate could produce more than $30 billion a year worldwide for priority causes,” reports CNS News,The call for a global transaction tax arrives in the aftermath of a leaked UN blueprint which outlined how elitists plan to re-brand global warming in an effort to dismantle the middle class by instituting a “global redistribution of wealth” via carbon taxes". Unquote!

We are being progressively herded into a New World Order cum One World Government while being deceived by our own Governments and Politicians who are pilloried by the Media as being great Leaders? Statesmen? When the have been deceiving the people for decades being nothing more than absolute Traitors to the Nation. Regards, one of many Disillusioned Australians Ray Cullen WHY IS COLONEL RUSSELL WILLIAMS IN JAIL? I’m a bit confused why serial killer Colonel Russell Williams is in jail, considering the established Canadian custom of allowing torturers and murderers to avoid prosecution simply by issuing an “apology” and a bit of money to their victims.

Our government and churches got away with that quite recently, and they caused the death of a lot more people than did Colonel Russ in their “Indian residential schools”. But of course, their victims were not white women.

Oh, Canada.

Kevin A

Can furry puppets in Day-Glo colors provide the lessons we need to calm the fires of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

The Muppet empire is now worldwide. Those who grew up with the children’s educational TV show Sesame Street know that it gives five-yearolds easy-to-take lessons in literacy, numeracy, and social skills. But Sesame Street has a loftier agenda, finding partners in the developing world – including Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Pakistan – to bring the fuzzy little creatures, with their message of peace and tolerance, to local audiences.

A new documentary, “When Muppets Dream of Peace,” tracks the harrowing joint production of Sesame Street in Israel and Palestine, with a Jordanian production team brought in to help facilitate. This program, like so many educational or cultural Israeli-Palestinian partnerships, began in starry-eyed idealism. But, based on the film – and on a recent panel discussion with the filmmakers and a Muppets spokesman in New York City – it was undermined by a common flaw in such partnerships.

The original plan – like with so many of these programs – was based on a notion of parity: Israeli and Palestinian production teams would work together. But the Palestinian partners vetoed that idea – “We aren’t there yet,” they explained. Could they have a stand-alone Palestinian Sesame Street? No funding for that, came the reply.

The Palestinian team finally agreed to parallel productions with a major “cultural exchange” element – rather than creating segments together, they would produce a series with Palestinian Muppets and adults that also incorporated cartoons and mini-documentaries produced by the Israelis and Jordanians. The other two teams would do likewise. Some unifying characters – such as an Arab- Israeli girl who explains each “side” to the other – would create a measure of continuity.

The New York-based management wanted the Palestinians and Israelis to portray each other in a humanizing way. Again, the Palestinians resisted. Rather than focus on creating scenarios that showed Israelis – even Israeli kids – in a positive light, they wanted to focus on showing Palestinian culture in a positive light, portraying Palestinian youths as role models, and providing images to kids that offered alternatives to violence.

But then reality intervened again. A suicide bomber attacked in Israel, and, in retaliation, the Israel Defense Forces took over Ramallah, where the tiny Palestinian Sesame Street studio was located. Day after day, the talented Palestinian team of animators, puppeteers, designers, cameramen, and producers could not get to work – even as the Israeli team was churning out their own material in a brightly lit, well-funded studio in Tel Aviv.

Then the IDF occupied the TV station itself and destroyed it, along with the team’s computers and cameras. The documentary’s footage of shot-out computer screens and piles of smashed printers and cameras – under graffiti reading “Palestine Never” – makes one despair.

Meanwhile, New York was growing impatient, letting the Palestinian team know that their segments were late – and, under what was

upfront

Muppets and Middle East Peace |

by Naomi Wolf

essentially a military occupation, the Palestinians began to rethink whether this was the right kind of project to which to devote their energies. The New York producer overseeing the project, a single mother, was reluctant initially to visit Ramallah – so the Palestinian team’s inability to produce their segments on time was, like so many aspects of the Palestinian experience, hidden behind a barrier of fear, not fully witnessed, and thus not fully comprehended.

The co-production has ended. But there is a Palestinian Sesame Street and an Israeli Sesame Street, and there are positive ArabIsraeli characters in the Israeli version. And the creators of these programs, together with the

without requiring the recipients to make friendly gestures to Israel?

Many civil-society elements in the Muslim world have turned their backs on possible partnerships with Israeli counterparts. One Egyptian actor was boycotted at home for merely appearing in Cannes with an Israeli actress.

But I am certain that the more intently outsiders invest in Palestinian civil society on its own terms, the less exasperated the Palestinian intelligentsia – and the Muslim world – will become with the often-coerced terms of Palestine's creativity. A vibrant Palestinian civil society could become more flexible and open toward possible partnerships – including more natural, holistic

The Muppets and their creators have given us another valuable lesson, this time in how – and how not – to help others. filmmakers behind “When Muppets Dream of Peace,” offer important lessons for all of us.

One quote from a Palestinian TV production team member stayed with me: “This is a shotgun wedding,” he explained when he was advocating for a Palestine-only Sesame Street. “And we want a divorce.”

The Palestinian team is utterly indistinguishable, superficially, from their European or Israeli counterparts: they are hip, young, talented, sophisticated, and more than anything they want to work to create a positive environment for their kids – or at least a psychological respite from the reality of occupation, violence, and war.

But how often does the outside world – even the best-intentioned donors and program creators – reach out to Palestinian civil society on its own terms, without insisting on that “shotgun wedding?” How often are resources invested in Palestinian films, books, newspapers, high schools, dance troupes, teachers, etc.

Israeli-Palestinian joint ventures – thus benefiting the region as a whole.

The Muppets have taught generations of kids worldwide how to count to ten and share cookies. In the 1970’s in the United States, they taught us about an interracial couple on Sesame Street. In South Africa, the creators asked for – and got – a puppet that was an HIVpositive child, since acceptance of such kids was a lesson that local educators told the New York team they needed to teach.

In the Sesame Street of Palestine and Israel, the failure of the joint venture was really a success: the Muppets and their creators have given us another valuable lesson, this time in how – and how not – to help others.

Naomi Wolf is a political activist and social critic whose most recent book is Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.

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Water, water, everywhere. . . |

HOT LINKS

by Kevin P. Miller

Life-Choice.net IT'S ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS LINES EVER WRITTEN, but when Samuel Taylor Coleridge published 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' he could not have envisioned the nightmarish truth to the words "water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink."

When I was filming my documentary GENERATION RX, I met a British psychiatrist and we talked about the revelation that Prozac had been discovered in the River Thames . . .had entered the water supply and was literally being consumed by millions of Brits.

"Are people in London really THAT depressed?" I asked him, somewhat sheepishly.

"No, no. . .no," was his response while chortling.

As it turns out, however, our conversation was no laughing matter.

Over the past few years, events have proven that the concern over drugs in public rivers and streams are not limited to the UK. In America, the Associated Press (AP) uncovered that “at least

each day." Enough antibiotics were being released daily "to treat every person in a city of 90,000."

And it’s not just ciprofloxacin. The water — supposedly cleaned by a wastewater filtration plant — was "a floating soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments," according to the AP. Researchers in India said, "It is the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment," but then again, this level of testing has yet to arrive in North America, where the AP has confirmed that this nightmare is coming to an ocean, stream, lake, or landfill near you.

"One thing is clear,” the AP report warned, “the massive amount of pharmaceuticals being flushed by the health services industry is aggravating an emerging problem: the commonplace presence of. . .pharmaceuticals in the nation's drinking water supplies,

BabylonYoga.com Eiriu-Eolas.org RedPillPress.com CanadiansForHealthFreedom.org AliveWater.net MonikaBlichar.com VirtuMortgages.com .JamesClayton.ca FoodLandTheMovie.com JeremyArneysBlog.Wordpress.com HiddenFromHistory.org BloodAndIron.ca Axiomatica.org TheArtOfLoving.ca SuperNaturalWoman.com Sott.net BeforeItsNews.com WhatReallyHappened.com Vancouver.Mediacoop.ca SubMedia.tv TheTyee.ca CanadianActionParty.ca ReFedBC.com NaturalNews.com

Make no mistake: we are also the victims of industry, hospitals and nursing homes which are pumping powerful contaminants and intoxicants like lithium into the world's drinking water every single day, 271 millions of pounds” of unused pharmaceuticals are being released by the drug companies in our public waterways annually. Millions more are flushed down the toilet and down the drain, according to environmental watchdogs, including the painkillers ibuprofen and naproxen as well as gemifibrozil, a cholesterol-lowering medication, and further research has shown that drugs containing hormones such as estrogen are causing changes and deformities in fish and other aquatic creatures..and endangering human health.

Make no mistake: we are also the victims of industry, hospitals and nursing homes which are pumping powerful contaminants and intoxicants like lithium into the world's drinking water every single day, which is being mixed in a cesspool of antibiotics, nitroglycerin (a heart drug that is also used in explosives), and dozens of different active pharmaceutical ingredients used for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments.

It's not only bad news for the fish, but for tens of millions of us.

If one refuses to take this threat seriously, they need only look to India, where a growing environmental and public health disaster is looming. When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were stunned to discover that a powerful antibiotic, ciprofloxacin, was "being spewed into one stream

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affecting at least 46 million Americans."

The AP series follows one by the New York Times last Spring, the BBC last year, the UK's Guardian newspaper and probably countless others. Millions of tons of narcotics, antipsychotics, antidepressants, stimulant drugs and more are being ingested by children, the elderly, and well, ALL of us who do not use some kind of sophisticated water purification system.

Now, that the AP has confirmed that codeine, lithium (used in bipolar drugs), blood thinners, chemotherapy agents like fluorouracil, epilepsy drugs and sedatives are being released into the environment by the ton, North America and the rest of the world had better take notice — and take action to protect themselves. Anyone who does not have access to a powerful water filtration system is playing Russian roulette every time they drink water from the tap.

Indeed, the situation gets darker and far more dangerous every single day. As tons of drugs taint the world's water supply, this issue only underscores the horrors we must confront as petrochemical and other multinationals vie for water privatization — and more power over our health — and our lives.

Kevin P. Miller is an award-winning writer/director.

This article was submitted as part of BLOG ACTION DAY 2010

Infowars.com PrisonPlanet.com CommonDreams.org ThePirateBay.com atdhe.net VigilantCitizen.com GlobalResearch.ca HarmonyProjects.Dragonsuntech.com Zeitgeistvancouver.com Venusproject.com PhysOrg.com FairTradeVancouver.ca Rabble.ca AgoraNews.org

A

"In a time of universal deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

George Orwell.

I find it very frustrating and sad when I see the efforts of well meaning people trying to support this effort.

Why? Because all efforts are centred on curing cancer rather than focusing on the CAUSE of cancer! Find the CAUSE and you'll find the CURE! If we don't focus on what causes a disease it will just keep coming!

The causes of this disease for me are fairly basic but no one wants to hear it, it seems. We are so conditioned to not question even when it doesn't make common

consume the most meat in the world, and we have the most cancer pervading our populations.

a sense of humour. Laughing is a great medicine - and infectious!

4 - Smoking - Need I say more!

DIET - B - Eat Organic. These foods carry the necessary nutrition to feed your cells. Basically, cancer is the result of cells dying. Think about it. If your cells don't get the nutrition needed to maintain a healthy body and a strong immune system the stage is being set for disaster. Most foods eaten to-day by the populations at large are not organic.

5 - Spend time outdoors in the natural world. No need to overly exercise - just enjoy the silence - and NO Take those bloody things off your ears! I said SILINCE! 6 Water. I never drink tap water because of the chlorine. I go to creeks for mine. Natural water has the nutrition needed by your cells.

sense for big Pharma who knows best and who profits best, and who 'owns' our Western medical fraternity - sadly, at our expense, and ultimately theirs.

Most of this I have written on before in my past articles but it bears repeating and I do so with no apologies! To me it is basic common sense. So, consider these common sense causes I've listed above and ask yourself do they make sense? If they do for you, then act on them, and live and have a long healthy life - with laughter! Be young at heart -

Cancer Research and the Terry Fox Run sense. For what it is worth here is my insight on some on some of the causes of cancer along with some of the factors for our overall ill health here in North America and very likely also in our brother/sister countries as in Australia and New Zealand. You decide for yourself. I'm not an 'authority' just an observer but it makes common sense to me.

1 - DIET - A - Far too much meat especially to-days meat from cattle who are raised in buildings and never see daylight, and extensively drugged to keep them 'healthy'. You then absorb this into your system when you eat it. North Americans

Everybody's favorite genetically modified seed and biotech company, Monsanto, has yet again proven their lovability. The world's poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit 1 was the focus of a new study looking at their topselling product, Roundup herbicides.

The study was conducted by Professor Andres Carrasco and an

2 - Vaccination. Yes I know - a very controversial statement! As I have said many times I almost died twice and got very sick on a third occasion because of vaccination. What - tell me- is the sense of injecting a poison into your system to prevent you from getting the disease?! A healthy immune system in a healthy body is all you need. Works for me and I am 75. I can counter every argument put forward by doctors who push vaccination. None so deaf as those who don't want to hear! The only beneficiaries are the drug companies.

Chlorine kills it. If you have a healthy immune system no worries. Older generations never had chlorine in their water. Think about it. Here in Yukon we are especially blessed with clean natural creeks. It's worked for me for 40 years!

3 - Attitude. Having a healthy attitude to life affects your overall heath over time. Don't think negatively - develop

Finally, consider Indigenous peoples around the world who have not been corrupted by Western life styles and who live close to the natural world using herbs and diet for cures when a malady hits them. We could learn much from them if we weren't so arrogant!

Our biggest curse is just that - we think we are so advanced and yet we have betrayed our common

The animal embryos used were frogs and chickens.

For comparison, a 1/5,000 concentration (2.03mg/kg) is about 1/10th of the amount used on most agricultural plants. The maximum level for GBH allowed in soybeans in the European Union is 20mg/kg (established in 1997 when GMO soy was

against our agricultural and food system. Over 90% of our soybeans, 70% of our corn, and many other common crops are now genetically modified. The plantpatenting and manipulation industry, led by Monsanto, has been taking over both the USDA and the FDA while systematically eliminat-

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by Michael Brine

"And a little child shall lead them".

So, go and play!

PS - The Cancer Society has been asking for contributions for many years but no one has seen any real visible results on a cure. Where does the money go? It ultimately ends up in the hands of the Rockefeller family in New York City - One of the wealthiest families in the world - tax free of course! One assumes it is used for the donator's intended purpose. Where is the accountability?

Other articles by this writer can be accessed at: www.missionignition.net/btb

RESOURCES 1 - Monsanto: The world's poster child for corporate manipulation and deceit by Jeffrey M. Smith, NaturalNews 2 - Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Produce Teratogenic Effects on Vertebrates by Impairing Retinoic Acid

Monsanto Roundup Linked to Birth Defects in New Study |

by Aaron Turpen

international team of scientists and researchers at the Laboratorio de Embriolagia Molecular at the University of Buenos Aires and was published by the American Chemical Society in August. 2 It focused on glyphosate, the prime ingredient of Roundup and the most widely-used broad spectrum herbicide in use worldwide. Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) are also the focus of most of Monsanto's herbicide-tolerant (HT-ready) genetically modified seeds (GM or GMO).

The Argentinian study looked at how GBH affects vertebrate embryos in development. Treated during incubation with a dilute 1/5,000 GBH, the embryos showed several abnormalities in bone development, particularly in the skull and vertebrae.

commercialized in Europe). Soybeans after harvest can typically contain up to 17mg/kg of GBH residue.

The research done by Carrasco and his team was prompted by the high rate of birth defects in rural areas of Argentina where Monsanto's GMO soybeans are often grown in large monocultures and sprayed with Roundup from aircraft.

At a press conference during the 6th European Conference of GMO-Free Regions in the European Parliament in Brussels, Professor Carrasco said, "The findings in the lab are compatible with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy.� 3 Here in the U.S., we are undergoing a 3-pronged attack

ing family and independent farmers who resist using GM seeds. 4 Meanwhile, the evidence against the safety of GM foods continues to mount. This study from Professor Carrasco and his team is just the latest in a long line of research showing the extremely negative effects of the genetic manipulation of our food supply.

The best way to combat this problem individually? Buy from local, non-GMO farmers and growers, eat healthy, non-processed foods, and continue to spread the word about the evils of Big Agra. Things will only change when people begin voting en masse with their wallets and forks, walking away from the Big Agra-IndustrialPharma-Government complex that is attempting to destroy our lives.

Signaling by Alejandra Paganelli, Andres Carrasco, et al, American Chemical Society, August 9, 2010 3 - Groundbreaking study shows Roundup link to birth defects, Press Release, GMO-Free Regions Conference 2010 4 - Three-Pronged System Enables GMO Takeover of American Agriculture by Aaron Turpen, NaturalNews About the author, Aaron Turpen is a professional writer living in Wyoming in the USA. His blogs cover organic/sustainable living and environmental considerations (AaronsEnvironMental.com) and the science debunking mainstream medical and proving alternatives (HiddenHealthScience.com).

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BPA Found on Cash Register and ATM Receipts |

by M.Thornley NaturalNews.com

Chemist John Warner learned about thermaland pressure-sensitive papers while working for Polaroid years ago. A powdery coating that contains BPA, a dye and a solvent is laid onto one side of the paper. Then heat or pressure is applied causing the substances to merge, and the ink's color is released. Remembering his work with thermal paper at Polaroid, Warner wondered if BPA coating was still used on thermal paper. He assigned his university students to collect shopping receipts in the Boston area and to test them for BPA. And they found it.

The federal government warned that 93 percent of Americans have BPA contamination.

Parents were warned to protect their children from exposure. But no mention was made of cash machine or retail receipts.

Warner and his colleagues at the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry in Wilmington, Mass., published data based on the substantial amounts of BPA on 10 receipts collected in the Boston area.

Not all store receipts use ink that contains BPA. The safe receipts look the same as the unsafe ones.

BPA, or bisphenol A, an estrogen-mimicking pollutant, has been tied to many potential health risks. It has been associated with plastics, in particular, baby bottles. It is believed to cause behavior problems in children, as well as obesity and heart ailments.

Among adults it has been linked to breast can-

cer, diabetes, and other health problems. It affects reproductive patterns, causes early puberty and diminishes intellectual capacity. It

causes diseases among animals.

Another researcher found that the BPA would rub off onto fingers. Dry fingers collected plenty of BPA, but wet ones collected ten times as much. And the longer the paper was held, the greater the BPA transfer.

The University of Missouri analyzed 36

About the author M. Thornley enjoys walking, writing and pursuing a raw vegan diet and lifestyle.

One thing I can count on after finishing a talk is a pissy guy who wants to wrestle with me. I hate to stereotype, but why not? Thirties, sunglasses on his head, Berry on his belt and a Durango outside.

Votes Conservative, convinced climate change is a crock and Sarah Pallin’s hot. Barely married, anti-tax, anti-government and hugely leveraged.

Dependent on the tenants he utterly disdains (“losers…”). He’s sure I’m full of crap. Came to argue.

Business won’t hire new help until sales pick up, and over-indebted consumers are in no buying mood.

Meanwhile US mortgage rates are at the lowest level ever, and yet the housing market crashes.

In Japan: In its tenth year of deflation, property values remain 60% lower than they were in the late 1990s. In fact, the Bank of Japan dropped its interest rates to zero back in 1999 in a bid to revive real estate. It bombed. Days ago the

as significantly as they were predicted too. They only fell by 1.5 per cent…” Poor Elli. If she only knew that 1.5% in a month is the same as 18% a year she might not be so effervescent.

In fact, as I try to tell people in my messianic cross-country proselytizing, groupie-infested romp, Canadians are getting a heroic amount of sunshine pumped up their rears while others taste reality. Facing a significant market decline,

It's a concern that retail workers who are handling receipts all day long would be exposed to higher amounts.

Dave Andrews Environmental Working Group

The truth is we’re losing altitude fast. All that stands between us and a US-style housing event is a lack of listings. Come the Spring, well, stand back.

Such guys think they’re astute but get talked into anything. After all, when a core belief’s that growth is natural and relentless, why not borrow a mess of money and buy a pack of houses or condos?

How can you lose in the long run when God wants a higher gross domestic product?

Actually, losing will be easy. When inflation and growth finally get here, they’ll be too late to save real estate values. The cowboys will have higher payments and lower rents. Worse, we have to get through this first: deflation.

In case you missed the latest news, here’s a flash recap.

In America: Teetering on the edge of deflation, the US is about to spend $1 trillion it doesn’t have. So said Fed boss Ben Bernanke on the weekend. The money will be created digitally then used to buy government bonds held by banks. The hope is the trillion will encourage banks to lend money to businesses which will then create jobs. Another goal is to screw up the bond market by dropping yields with the onslaught of cash, which will make those loans cheaper.

But it probably won’t work. Interest rates are already dirt-cheap, with no lineups to borrow.

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bank said money would remain at 0% for as long as necessary. Fail.

In Britain: With the housing market going into a double dip, the currency spongy and the economy a swamp, the coalition UK government’s about to go extreme.

The Bank of England will spend 100 billion incestuous pounds to also buy its own bonds. At the same time, interest rates will be kept at a record low of just one half of one per cent until at least late 2012. That’s the stimulus part. The other action seems just about certain to cancel it out – massive spending cuts. The deepest, in fact, since WW2 bankrupted the country.

The latest forecast for economic growth in early 2011 is 0.1%, which implies a 50% chance of recession and a 100% chance of deflation. Britons hear how the government will be slashing spending, come Wednesday.

In Canada: “Fresh and quite positive real estate information, from Canada, is here!,” says the blog of Toronto super-agent Elli Davis – who devotes a lot of time convincing rich Iranians to buy $5 million townhouses for their kids.

“September housing starts, in Canada, did not fall

receipts gathered from automated teller machines and popular fast food, grocery and drug retailers.

The amount of BPA was 250 to 1,000 times that commonly found on food cans or plastic bottles. In fact, the amount of BPA found on one popular fast food receipt was equal to that found in 126 cans of a popular grocery store item.

BPA on sales receipts can enter the body in two ways. It can leach through skin or be ingested when someone touches their fingers to their mouths or to food.

People who handle receipts frequently are believed to be more at risk. A cashier who used hand cream (which would enhance the permeability of the chemical) might sustain exposures approaching 50 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. People working in retail have 30 percent more BPA than other Americans.

Bisphenol sulfonate is a possible safe substitute for the bisphenol A for receipts. Until widespread use of a safe ink is instituted, people should avoid holding receipts or touching them. Retailers who do not use bisphenol A ink may begin to advertise the safety of their receipts by adding the line "BPA-free" to their cash receipts.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has begun to evaluate the safety of BPA and alternatives but it is uncertain how long this will take or what will happen after.

Deflate this |

by Garth Turner

the housing industry does things like point to declining five-year mortgage rates as blessed news, when cheaper rates are a death rattle for the economy. The federal government, in announcing a record deficit, announces new health care funding. Look! A shiny thing! In Ontario, facing the worst red ink in history, the premier spends $1.2 billion on all-day kindergarten, which is actually just vote-sucking day care.

The truth is we’re losing altitude fast. All that stands between us and a US-style housing event is a lack of listings. Come the Spring, well, stand back.

No doubt a dose of asset deflation is on the way. This comes after we lost a ton of jobs, many of which will never be replaced, after households have run up the biggest, steamiest pile of debt in history and amid total stagnation for salaries and wages. The inevitable result will be deflationary – when everybody expects prices to keep falling, so they put off buying until prices fall, which means they fall.

Deflation’s what keeps politicians tossing at night. And it should terrify the Durango guy. But he’s lucky. He knows everything.

documentary

As waves gently lap against the sandy shoreline, the woman smiles awkwardly and poses for a series of glamour shots taken by a professional photographer.

Miss Landmine MISS LANDMINE chronicles Norwegian artist Morten Traavik’s attempts to stage a beauty pageant for landmine survivors in Cambodia. Traavik’s art project is intended to raise awareness around issues pertaining to landmines and disabled people. Unlike Angola, where the government enthusiastically supported the controversial project, Traavik encountered a more hostile environment in Cambodia, where he was faced with cries of sexism and exploitation.

Director Stan Feingold and cinematographer Brian Johnson followed Traavik’s travels throughout Cambodia over a one-year period, as he recruited participants from each of the Kingdom’s twenty provinces. But just he was about to publicly launch a Miss Landmine photo exhibition in Phnom Penh, the government outlawed Traavik’s project for “causing shame to the Cambodian people”.

The Miss Landmine competition continued both online and overseas, as Traavik orchestrated a “pageant in exile” among a group of political refugees and expatriates in Norway. In the end, Traavik (and the filmmakers) were faced with a risky journey to crown the winner back in Cambodia and present her with the grand prize...a titanium prosthetic leg.

Miss Landmine was directed and produced by Emmy-award winning director Stan Feingold (Prisoners of Age, Heroines). Music

by John Korsud.

Morton, how did it all start?

My point of departure you could say is that of just another middle-class whiteboy from a privileged society with an itch to do something to save the world a little and feel better about myself. Being a director and actor to start with, I've grown increasingly bored with my often a bit too selfsatisfied work environment and wanted to apply my skills to a more challenging reality outside the self-imposed inner exile of the arts scene. The rest is chance meeting preparation: My then-girlfriend has an Angolan father, who lives in the capital Luanda and whom we visited over Xmas and New Year in 2003.

The civil war had ended just the year before and we still couldn't move around much because of all the landmines still littering the countryside. Some street kids were staging a homemade beauty pageant in the back alley behind the father's house and they asked me to sit in on the jury. So at some point those two impressions gave birth to one idea. Since I figured I was probably the only one in the world with that

particular idea at that time, that gave me a moral obligation to at least try to put it into action.

Manifesto EVERYBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO BE BEAUTIFUL! • Female pride and empowerment.

• Disabled pride and empowerment.

• Global and local landmine awareness and information.

• Challenge inferiority and/or guilt complexes that hinder creativity.

• Historical, cultural, social, personal, Asian, European.

• Question established concepts of physical perfection.

• Challenge old and ingrown concepts of cultural cooperation.

• Celebrate true beauty.

• Replace the passive term 'Victim' with the active term 'Survivor' • And have a good time for all involved while doing so!

After Angola, why Cambodia?

Several reasons - because I wanted to show that the landmine problem is global, and also the situation of landmine survivors is global, and that the wish to be seen and noticed as a beautiful and resourceful human being is something that everybody can recognize. Also, I wanted to try the project in a country with a different cultural setting than the Angolan one, but one that still had many similarities in its recent history.

What was the 1st prize for the winner in Cambodia?

As in Angola, the first prize was a specially-designed and customized prosthesis from Norway's leading orthopedic clinic, worth around $15,000 US Dollars.

How many candidates took part?

In Cambodia there were 20 candidates aged 18-48, each representing her home province.

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How were the contestants chosen?

In both Angola and Cambodia I collaborated closely with local and national authorities. Initially a matter of necessity as no foreign NGO would have anything to do with us, and still don't, but now I'm really happy it turned out that way because working within the local culture with a minimum of outside assistance gives us a far more grounded moral legitimacy then if this would just have been another "here's your money/goat/new village well, good luck with it" aid project. In Cambodia, the identification of prospective participants is handled by the Cambodian Disabled People's Organization (CDPO) and its dynamic director Ngin Saorath, himself disabled.

CDPO has a countrywide network of offices in almost all Cambodian provinces, and the word about our project was put out to its local field officers who then approached the landmine survivors already taking part in their rehabilitation programs.

As in Angola, we had many more applicants than we could possibly take on board, so I made the final selection in close dialogue with Saorath.

What kind of criteria do the judges consider when picking finalists?

Part of the point is not to impose too strict criteria on the judges, or on any other spectator who decides to get involved by voting for his/hers candidate. On the contrary, we encourage the voter to take a moment before voting to get to know his/hers own criteria for choosing a certain candi-

than differences. Which kind of supports my theory that the need for and joy of being seen, appreciated, taken seriously and - something so simple - not being patronized by neither bigoted neighbors nor aid workers; those feelings are universal and deeply human. And again I would say that from my own experience there are far more, and more important, similarities than differences. However, the most obvious difference so far is not between Cambodia and Angola, but between those countries and our part of the world: Very few Angolans or Khmer understand at all why there are Western "feminists" being outraged and concerned on their behalf for taking part in Miss Landmine!

As an artist, was this first and foremost an art project?

With raising awareness about landmines being a great added bonus? I don't think that making “art” – whatever that is - must exclude a vision that transcends genres . Which is precisely the point of staging Miss Landmine in real life and not in an art gallery or on a theater stage.

Are there any statistics to illustrate the severity of the landmine problem in Cambodia?

None very accurate, and that’s exactly the problem. Guerrilla forces tend not to keep mine grid plans, statistics are often sketchy and contradictory and the infrastructure roads etc, particularly in Angola, are still so damaged by the war that it is

remove the pictures from it. Then Prime Minister Hun Sen said in public that dissenters have "thick faces" and spoke about "chopping them one hundred times with a meat cleaver". As mentioned, the government forbade me even to meet with the women to say a decent goodbye to them. It all adds up to what I perceive as a relatively unpleasant athmosphere and my Cambodian friends and collaborators were very worried about me and advised me to leave the country. Also, I did not want my continued presence in the country to lead to any further trouble for my Cambodian associates and least of all the candidates themselves.

Did you get any explanation for the Government’s sudden cancellation?

The exact reasons are known only to them. Their one and only public statement so far is that the project "offends the honor and dignity" of the Cambodian candidates. However, already in 2007 I had the stated support of the Cambodian Mine Action Autority (CMAA) signed by their Secretary General. CMAA is the Cambodian government's central coordinating organ for all things landminerelated, including victims assistance and rehabilitation. Since then, I have been keeping in close contact with the CMAA, and the Canadian documentary film team who followed the whole process of Miss Landmine Cambodia from the start , even have extensive footage of meetings with top officials of the CMAA expressing their

“Miss Landmine”

is a voyage in the lives of women who saw their existences and hopes shattered in an instant.

More importantly, it is an ode to peace and to the profound beauty that resides in each and every one of us.

date. Is it because I find her the most conventionally beautiful one? The one I feel the most sorry for? Or the one whose prosthesis looks in the worst shape? Etcetera. The final events are staged along the lines of your regular Miss America-style pageant. No reason to alter a winning formula...And there can, of course, be only one winner. However, the ladies participating are fully aware that this is more than a mere beauty pageant, that they are employed as my fellow artists in a campaign where a main aim is to influence some attitudes, both outside and within themselves.

What kind of social nuances do you have to consider when suggesting that women get up on stage for a beauty pageant?

How does the attitude of the Angolans and Khmers differ from Western attitudes? In my work in general, I try not to worry too much about social nuances. I think a main problem with us whities when dealing with perceived "exotic" cultures are that we are either totally disrespectful or far too respectful. Both stem from exoticism and a fear of dealing with people as just that: people, on an equal basis. There are, of course, obvious cultural differences between countries thousands of miles apart and on different continents.

For instance, Khmer women would be very reluctant to pose in a bikini, something that most of the Angolan participants would have no problem with. In Cambodia, women swim fully dressed. But this is not what I regard as an essential difference.

So far, within the context of the Miss Landmine work process there have been more similarities

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difficult to get to the different parts of the countries.

What we do know is that there are an estimated 40.000 landmine survivors living in Cambodia today, and that figure does not include all those who died from their mine injuries. Even after 10-15 years of active mine clearance, there are still believed to be millions of landmines left in the ground in Cambodia. Both Angola and Cambodia are regarded as in top 5 of the world's most landmine-contaminated countries.

Have you ever had chance to talk with Cambodian officials involved with this event after it was canceled?

According to the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Affairs (MOSVY), the prakas(decree) signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen was made public on Friday July 31/09, however I was not made familiar with it until Sunday August 2/09. MOSVY have explicitly also stated that they would not allow any of the candidates to travel to Phnom Penh to meet me, even for a private farewell dinner. I have heard nothing from them since our last-ditch negotiation meetings on Monday August 3/09, the day after I was made aware of the ban. During two 3-hours long meetings between me and the Cabinet of the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Ministry's chief representative, Chief of Staff Samheng Boros (the son of the Minister of Social Affairs) stated repeatedly that the government would take "any possible step" to prevent Miss Landmine from going ahead in Cambodia, then threatened legal action against me for refusing to close down our website and

support for the project as late as March/09 . Also, I have had meetings with the Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSVY), represented by Secretary of State H.E. Sem Sokha who has given his support to the project. In an article in the Phnom Penh Post as late as July 27/09, slightly more than one week before the exhibition opening, Sokha was quoted as saying that MOSVY had "no objection" to the Miss Landmine Cambodia project. Also, in March/09 I had a meeting with H E Sivann Botum, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Women's Affairs, who expressed her appreciation and support of the project. Both Sokha and Botum were already in March shown the pictures of the candidates that are now appearing on our website. Not at any point before the P.M.s ban on Miss Landmine, after an initiative by Minister of Social Affairs Ith Samheng, have any of these organizations retracted or otherwise changed their stance of support for the project. That these representatives are going back on their statements after the P.M.s ban is not to wonder about.

Can you guess what is behind the government's decision? Is there any inconvenience for the government involved?

A good question, which you should really ask the Cambodian government, given that Miss Landmine had the government’s full and official support for almost two years before this sudden Uturn on their behalf. Officially, their reason was that they feared the project would “offend the honor and dignity” of the candidates and of disabled people in Cambodia. Again, without asking a single

one of the candidates what they themselves felt about Miss Landmine! However, in my view the whole incident is connected to a regime that has grown more and more authoritarian over the last few years, who allows less and less freedom of expression in Cambodia, beating up and sometimes killing opposition politicians, intimidating the free press, and who want to stay in power at any price. The day after the ban on Miss Landmine was made public, there was a peaceful opposition rally in Phnom Penh where protesters were beaten up by riot police. Naturally, the Government then are afraid of controversial art projects, because controversy breeds discussion and debate, and free expression, free discussion and debate is what the Cambodian government wants least of all at the moment.

What do the candidates themselves think about the cancellation?

The candidates were naturally very disappointed, after having looked forward to and prepared themselves for the official launch of Miss Landmine Cambodia for almost one year. Also, they do not understand why the Cambodian government, who says it cares about disabled people, doesn't want to let them show themselves in a positive way.

One of our candidates, Song Kosal who is also an ambassador for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, says that "I feel unhappy because when the party was canceled it meant that I, a disabled person, lost my right of expression." I think that she speaks for all the candidates and sums up their feelings quite precisely.

Do you think you can convince Cambodian government to accept the event after all?

I don't think once Big Brother has made up his mind that there is really any way back. Our only hope is - with the help of public opinion in Cambodia and the continued attention of the world media - hopefully over time to pressure the Government to reconsider this most ill-judged

THE WORLD With protesters in France entering a seventh day of strikes and demonstrations against draconian austerity measures, many political observers in the U.S. are now wondering how long it will be before similar scenes unfold on American streets, with even Time Magazine now conceding that the prospect of a civil war in the States “doesn’t seem that far fetched”.

To be clear, Stephen Gandel’s article entitled Will the Federal Reserve Cause a Civil War? largely dismisses the possibility that the Fed’s upcoming November 3rd meeting, during which Ben Bernanke is expected to announce a fresh round of money printing, will prompt national uproar, but it doesn’t exactly debunk the notion of longer term social dislocation as a backlash to the crumbling economy, as many are now forecasting.

As we highlighted yesterday in a piece that was later picked up by the Drudge Report, it’s only a matter of time before Americans are hit with almost identical austerity measures to those that have caused the French to set up fuel blockades, stage running battles with riot police, halt air and rail travel, and virtually shut down some areas of the country.

The question remains – how will Americans react if the Obama administration pushes ahead with its plan to seize all private 401(k) pensions, which will be swallowed up by the Social Security Administration under the banner of mandatory Guaranteed Retirement Accounts?

How will Americans react to the upcoming announcement that the Federal Reserve will further eviscerate the value of the dollar by purchas-

and dictatorial decision.I am also still waiting for the myriad of international NGOs long established in Cambodia to raise their voices in support of human rights.

MISS LANDMINE CAMBODIA 2009: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED For reasons of security we have been waiting a while with sharing this information, but we now regard it as safe enough for all parties involved to happily announce that on December 4/09, Dos Sopheap (19) was crowned Miss Landmine 2009 in a secret ceremony inside Cambodia.

Her half-finished 1st prize titanium leg was fitted and personalized, and will be taken back to Norway for building its exterior before she receives the finished prosthesis later this spring. Sopheap says the new prosthesis feels like having a new leg again. She also received a cash prize of 1000 USD earmarked for her future education as an economist.

On the same trip, director Morten Traavik traveled around Cambodia and managed to meet up with 10 of the Miss Landmine candidates in their home villages. Due to the governmental ban on Miss Landmine and the deteriorating human rights situation in Cambodia, the candidates were not told about our visit in advance and were naturally both surprised and delighted to see us again and to hear about the global attention their stories and pictures have received since we saw each other the last time. They also received a press pack with selected newspaper clippings from the international coverage, and were shown video footage from the Cambodian final-in-exile in Norway on November 14. All candidates also received a cash prize of 300 USD each for their brave and beautiful contributions to the Miss Landmine project, enabling them to invest in household goods or set up a small business in their home villages.

The Miss Landmine project is a possible nucleus for a national female landmine sur-

vivor’s network through a CBR (Community Based Rehabilitation) -program with practical guidance and support from national authorities and international NGOs. Depending on the level of commitment from local authorities, each participant may be assigned as a Miss Landmine representative in her own province, with responsibilities of coordinating and providing information and assistance to other women in the same situation and monitoring ways of empowerment, such as education and specialized health care. “ Some people may find such a project to be yet another disdainful, objectifying scheme against women. The Cambodian government sure seems to agree, barring the project from further advances. Yet, the essence of this expedition is quite the opposite and strives to push people to redefine their perception of beauty. Morten Traavik, the creator of the project, simply summarizes the dominant beauty standards that the Miss Landmine Project tries to dispel by paraphrasing George Orwell: “Two legs, good. One leg, bad.”

“Miss Landmine” is a voyage in the lives of women who saw their existences and hopes shattered in an instant. More importantly, it is an ode to peace and to the profound beauty that resides in each and every one of us. It is an optimistic cry to the world, which transcends the boundaries of conventional beauty and denounces the barbarity of humankind. Feingold’s reportage combines humor and compassion to uncover a controversial yet laudable mission and to usher collective action in the hope that, one day, as one of the pageant’s participants says, we will collaborate with one another to “make peace grow like a flower.”

Cambodia Mirror, Oct. 14th 2010, Miss Landmine comes to Canadian television on November 22 when it has its broadcast premiere on documentary CBC. World Premiere took place Oct 16th at the San Francisco Documentary Festival.

Time Magazine: Prospect Of Civil War In U.S. “Doesn’t Seem That Far Fetched” | by Paul Joseph Watson ing junk assets from big banks at exorbitant prices with money printed out of thin air?

Time Magazine, which as a guardian of the establishment would normally be expected to dis-

parage the potential of mass civil disobedience, actually lends the notion some spotlight by linking to a Zero Hedge story which paraphrased economic forecaster David Rosenberg, who warns that the Fed’s plan for more quantitative easing, “positions US society one step closer to civil war if not worse.”

The article also features a quote from a Washington’s Blog piece which warns that the Fed’s policies could lead to the very destruction of the republic.

“In a very real sense, Bernanke is throwing Granny and Grandpa down the stairs – on purpose. He is literally threatening those at the lower end of the economic strata, along with all who are retired, with

starvation and death, and in a just nation where the rule of law controlled instead of being abused by the kleptocrats he would be facing charges of Seditious Conspiracy, as his policies will inevitably lead to the destruction of our republic.”

Lending the notion credence, Gandel writes, “With the Tea Party gaining followers, the idea of civil war over economic issues doesn’t seem that farfetched these days.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Even Time Magazine is now conceding that the current economic course of the nation could lead to outright civil war and revolution.

Gandel finishes the article by leaving the prospect of widespread civil unrest as an open question.

“So it seems clear what the Fed is likely to do,” he writes. “How the economy, the militias and the rest of us react is up in the air. The count down is on. T minus 15 days to Fedamageddon. See you there, hopefully.”

Of course, people like Gerald Celente and a host of other economic forecasters have been predicting civil unrest, food riots and tax rebellions for the past two years, but to have Time Magazine seriously entertain the notion of civil war in the United States is a shocking reminder of just how close to the precipice we now stand.

Numerous forecasters, governments, spy agencies, and international bodies are predicting mass riots and unrest in response to a worsening economic picture.

The Agora | 11

continued....

In November 2008, right as the economic implosion was unraveling, the U.S. Army War College released a white paper called Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development. The report warned that the military must be prepared for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”

A British Ministry of Defence report struck a similar tone when it predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”

How Americans will react to what many see as a make or break moment for the US economy, the Fed’s announcement on November 3rd, largely depends on how well they understand the fact that their financial future and that of their children now hangs in the balance like never before.

As the Economic Collapse Blog points out, QE2 represents the biggest bank robbery in history, and is nothing less than another huge transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to big banks. The money Bernanke prints out of thin air, which will further devalue the greenback and every dollar earned or saved by American citizens, will be used to purchase large quantities of “troubled assets” from U.S. banks at well above market price.

Small banks will be allowed to wither and die, whereas the huge megaliths will collect mountains of free money at the expense of hard working Americans.

The long term impact of the Fed buying these toxic junk assets with money printed out of thin air will be an inflationary holocaust that does nothing to rescue the US economy but everything to depreciate the very real assets of the American taxpayer.

We are already on the road to serious inflation and the Federal Reserve has not even fired up the money hoses yet. So what is going to happen after they pump trillions more into the economy?

Printing more money and giving it to the banks is not going to solve our economic problems. It is just going to make them worse.

But unfortunately, American voters get no say about any of this. Our national monetary policy is in the hands of an unelected central bank that does pretty much whatever it wants.

THE WORLD Model describes Web page popularity |

by Lisa Zyga

How do some Web pages become popular? In a recent study, researchers have analyzed Wikipedia articles and a collection of all the Web pages of Chile to better understand the dynamics of online popularity.

They observed that online popularity is characterized not by a gradual accumulation process, but by "bursts" that display many of the same features of critical systems, such as stock market crashes and natural phenomena. They also developed a model that captures these critical features of online popularity.

“We see that Internet popularity behaves in unpredictable ways, with big shifts in attention causing changes which have statistical signatures like those seen in earthquakes and avalanches,” says Jacob Ratkiewicz from Indiana University.

Ratkiewicz and his coauthors from Indiana University and the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Torino, Italy, have published their study on online popularity in a recent issue of Physical Review Letters. As they explain, online information that becomes popular has formidable power to impact opinions, culture, and policy, as well as earn higher advertising profits.

Achieving online popularity is obviously highly desired for these reasons, but as previous studies have found, very few sites become tremendously popular.

In the researchers' analysis, the popularity of a Wikipedia article or Web page is expressed by the number of clicks to that page and the number of external links to that page. While previous studies have found that the popularity distribution of Web pages follows power-law behavior, it has been difficult to observe the growth in popularity of individual pages due to the lack of data with temporal information. Here, the researchers gathered the traffic data of millions of pages (3 million Wikipedia articles with a one-second time resolution during 2001-2007; 3 million Wikipedia articles with a one-hour time resolution during 2008-2010; and 3 million Web pages from Chile's .cl domain with a one-year time resolution during 2002-2006).

They obtained the Wikipedia data by mining the full edit history of every article and the Chilean Web page data using the country's TODOCL search engine.

Among their results, the researchers found that almost all pages experience a burst of popularity near the beginning of their lives. Then, some pages maintain a constant exponential growth, while many other pages experience intermittent bursts. Looking at these bursts more closely, the researchers found that their distribution follows a “heavy-tail” behavior, which

The Agora | 12

is a common feature of critical systems. In a heavy-tail distribution, most of the items exhibit small values, but a few items exhibit very large values that dominate the overall volume of traffic. As the researchers noted, these bursts are different from those observed in news-driven events, where attention fades rapidly; instead, sequences of bursts occur for certain Web pages and these pages accumulate popularity.

The researchers developed a ranking model that could reproduce some of the features of the popularity burst distribution, but they had to add a “reranking mechanism” to reproduce the heavy tail. The reranking mechanism randomly boosts the popularity value of a Web page, and enables the model to more closely represent the features in the actual data. Although the model is mostly descriptive, its ability to reproduce the dynamics of online popularity could lead to a better understanding of how online information becomes popular.

“We hope that deeper understanding of how popularity evolves could lead to methods for predicting things that will become popular before they actually do,” Ratkiewicz said.

“I'm not sure that this understanding could be used to legitimately improve the popularity of specific Web pages,” he added. “However, recent experience in another project of ours suggests that people are trying to exploit social media to generate bursts of attention toward specific Web sites. It's been shown that these 'twitter-bombs' can catapult a page to the top of Google search results.”

More information: Jacob Ratkiewicz, Characterizing and Modeling the Dynamics of Online Popularity.

become popular ...its ability to reproduce the dynamics of online popularity could lead to a better understanding of how online information becomes popular

THE WORLD

| by Michelle Avis

PEAK OIL, loss of diversity, species extinction, conspiracy, oil spills, food insecurity .... the problems that we face seem to increase both in size and complexity every day. However we can simplify all of these global issues and emphasize three primary concerns. In order of increasing priority, the three biggest issues are:

Why Permaculture Design? be solved in a garden. This is such an empowering message as we can forget about being paralyzed by fear and focusing energy into negative issues we have no control over (i.e. peak oil, climate change, etc) and we realize that each and everyone of us has the opportu-

Here's the interesting thing. Sentiment is dissolved with a common ethic. In permaculture, our common ethic is: Care of Earth, Care of People and Return of Surplus. Our decisions are not based on frivolous beliefs, but based on practical and natural constraints, ultimately allowing us

• Pollution • Deforestation • Soil destruction and erosion Biology is remarkable in its ability to break down and lock up pollutants. Mushrooms have been shown to be effective in breaking down hydrocarbons and even nuclear waste.

However, without soil and without forests, we are unable to support the biology required to deal with pollution.

We continue deforestation at record rates, which further emphasizes soil loss. In addition, removal of our forests is removing the planets most important energy transducer and climate stabilizer. Without forests we will not have a stable climate.

Books like David Montgomery's Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Jared Diamond's Collapse, draw the connection between how historic societies treated their soil and the success or demise of their civilizations. As Montgomery points out that last year the world lost 83 billion tons of topsoil we must recognize that we have a big problem.

Healthy topsoil is the most biodiverse ecosystem we know of. Without it, life could not be sustained on this planet.

I like this simplification because many of the other issues are second generation issues to these primary factors. What this exposes is that unfortunately, recycling, biofuels, CO2 sequestration, wind turbines and solar panels aren’t going to cut it unless we deal with soil loss. In the end it really all comes back down to healthy soil.

The good news is that teachers, designers and grass-roots activists around the world are spreading the word that all our problems: pollution, deforestation and soil loss, can

last year the world lost 83 billion tons of topsoil we must recognize that we have a big problem. Healthy topsoil is the most biodiverse ecosystem we know of. Without it, life could not be sustained on this planet.

nity to profoundly shift the course of humanity with the simple act of stewarding soil.

And now that I've laid out what the problems are, why do these problems persist?

Why do we drive big trucks that only use 1% of the energy consumed to transport passengers?

Why do we design our cities to concentrate and dispose of water? Why are we drawing down fresh water aquifers to irrigate crops that won't grow with the annual rainwater budget? Why is the average North American house size and energy demands continuing to climb? An my personal favourite - why do we defecate into drinking water then wipe with toilet paper made from old growth forests.

The answer is sentiment. I'm making a generalization here, and I'm referring the sentiment held in common in overdeveloped countries. We believe that “it's better that way”, “there's no other way”, or “we like it that way” but there is no fundamental reason or underlying logical explanation. In fact, many of the design decisions make no sense whatsoever.

Sentiment leads to poor design and we pay the price in extra energy usage and pollution.

to live in harmony with the ecology. And this is how we create permanent cultures.

And so, tackling cultural sentiment is the most important thing we can do and would have the largest positive impact on the above mentioned problems.

Here's why.

• Currently, approximately 30-40% of the energy consumed by society is invested into the delivery of potable water and the removal of sewage.

Pumping fluids is extremely energy intensive. If cities adopted rain water catchment, greywater, composting toilets and landscape water harvesting we could stop this monumental misallocation of finite energy resources.

• If consumers started demanding that architects, engineers and city planners face homes to the sun, rather than to the direction of the best view, we could eliminate 30% of a households heating energy. Add in super insulation and efficient design and we further reduce heating and electrical needs by up to 90%.

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continued.... • It has been estimated that 10 units of hydrocarbon energy are used to produce 1 unit of food energy (i.e. calorie).

This problem could largely be alleviated if we converted the most energy wasteful icon on the planet (the lawn) into food production.

I'm not saying it is going to be easy, but we must dissolve sentiment so that we can install composting toilets, catch rainwater, use smart home design, and start growing food in our yards.

And we must tackle this first, before going out to seek “solutions� to energy supply or pollution, such as biofuels or using CO2 sequestration. The reason: technological solutions driven by sentimentality will never work because they perpetuate a broken system, whereas technological solutions driven by design and ethics yield appropriate technology and lead us in a sustainable direction. know that changing the sentiment of a culture seems nearly impossible, insurmountable and unbelievable. But this has not been our experience. There is an exponentially increasing number of people who are keenly aware of a need for change and care deeply about the planet and their communities. While they initially may feel powerless to do anything to make a difference, people become inspired and empowered changemakers in their communities when informed about a diverse and deepening scope of positive, practical & effective solutions. When exposed to the facts, and empowered through simple design concepts and strategies, the move past sentiment is almost instantaneous. This is the power of a Permaculture Design course. We know that it is so effective that we have made teaching permaculture our life mission! Get the word out, educate, inform and most importantly, teach more teachers.

Rob Avis and his wife Michelle run the Calgary-based consulting & education company, Verge Permaculture (www.vergepermaculture.ca) which specializes in creating sustainable human environments using wholesystems philosophies and working with nature. Offering a wealth of knowledge and experience from around the world and bringing together mechanical engineering, renewable energy and permaculture systems, their portfolio includes a three month volunteer position at the Permaculture Research Institute in Australia, a six month sabbatical learning about renewable energy systems in Denmark and off-thebeaten track travels throughout Mexico examining sustainable agriculture practices.

The Agora | 14

NATIONAL

Ineffective Flu Shots Just as busy parents scramble to get back into regular school routines, medical organizations and government agencies are urging them to add one more thing to their packed "to do" list: Get a flu shot.

| by Sherri Tenpenny

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is recommending universal influenza vaccination. Instead of confusing lists based on age and health status, now it's simple. Everyone, 6 months of age and older, is advised to get a shot.

Public health officials have been moving in this direction for several years. It is disturbing how doctors, agencies, and government officials can ignore the data and get away with advocating - even mandating - potentially harmful, ineffective products with a track record of failure on an unsuspecting public.

Founded in 1993, the Cochrane Collaboration is an independent, not-for-profit, non-local organization. Funding comes from a variety of sources including governments, universities, hospital trusts, charities and personal donations but no funds are accepted from commercial sources that could represent a conflict of interest.

This allows researchers and writers to work freely, unconstrained by those who have a financial interest in the outcome of their work. According to its website, the Cochrane group is an international network of volunteers and paid staff who are concerned with effectiveness of medical care. World leaders in medicine, health policy, scientific research and consumer advocacy join forces to analyze complicated data to advance evidencebased medicine, an approach to decision-making where clinicians use the best available evidence for all elements of patient care.

Researchers pick a topic - such as hypertension or mammograms - and then tackle a complete review of all world research published on that silo subject. When finalized, the reviews are considered to be the best and the most current evidence for making medical and policy decisions.

Cochrane Reviews address effectiveness of a treatment or intervention, defined as, "the extent to which a specific intervention, when used under ordinary circumstances, does what it is intended to do." In 2006, the Cochrane group investigated the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine.

The research data was divided into three groups: children, middle aged adults and senior citizens. For children, 51 studies were reviewed, including 17 papers translated from Russian. A total of 260,000 children were collectively involved in research studies. The Cochrane analysis con-

ering them to be the population most at risk for contracting influenza and its complication, pneumonia.

Many methods are used to remind older persons to get their flu shots include personalized postcards, letters, phone calls, facilitators at the doctor's office and even house calls. All this persistence, and money, is used to inject the elderly with a solution that simply doesn't keep them from getting the flu.

In a 2006 study of 103,162 elderly, where a representative sample had an overall vaccination rate of 66.2 percent, only 7 patients were hospitalized for influenza and 135 for pneumonia. It

All this persistence, and money, is used to inject the elderly with a solution that simply doesn't keep them from getting the flu. cluded that, "there was no evidence that injecting children 6 to 23 months of age with flu shots is any more effective than a placebo."

Adults from 19 to 60 years are encouraged to be vaccinated each flu season to avoid missing work. After studying 25 reports involving more than 60,000 adults, the bottom line was that,"Vaccination of healthy adults only reduced risk of influenza by 6 percent and reduced the number of missed work days by less than one day (0.16 days)‌ Universal immunization of healthy adults was not supported by the results of this review."

The group that is pestered the most stringently about flu shots is the elderly. In fact, the U.S. Public Health Service has been recommending influenza vaccination of seniors since 1964, consid-

was concluded that vaccination did not significantly reduce the risk of in-hospital death, influenza or pneumonia admission. A more recent study of seniors concluded that the benefit of flu vaccination, initially reported as a 50 percent reduction in all-cause mortality, was considered to be a "statistical artifact" upon additional analysis of the data.

The researchers further argued that "the mortality benefits of influenza vaccination may have been largely overestimated."

In 2010, the Cochrane group reviewed 75 research studies over the past 40 years and concluded that, "Due to the poor quality of the available evidence, any conclusions regarding the effectiveness of influenza vaccines for people 65 years or older cannot be drawn." As far back as September,

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continued....

2005, Dr. Thomas Jefferson, the lead influenza vaccine investigator for the Cochrane group, was quoted as saying, "The runaway 100 percent effectiveness that's touted by proponents [of flu shots] was nowhere to be seen…What you see is that marketing rules the response to influenza, and scientific evidence comes fourth or fifth."

Mandates for Healthcare Workers Even though flu shots don't seem to be effective for any age group, conventional hospital systems have crossed the line. They have gone from suggesting flu shots as a matter of "health" to requiring flu shots as a condition of employment. In a new policy statement, released October, 2010, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended that all health care personnel should be required to receive an annual influenza vaccine. The policy states that "despite the efforts of many organizations to improve influenza immunization rates with the use of voluntary campaigns, influenza coverage among health care personnel remains unacceptably low."

The statement went on to say that mandatory influenza immunization for all health care personnel is "ethically justified, necessary and long overdue to ensure patient safety. " Other groups are following the lead of the AAP. The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, Infectious Disease Society of America and the National Patient Safety Foundation have all called for mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers.

Hospital systems across the U.S. are quickly jumping on the bandwagon. On September 9, 2010, the Poudre Valley Health System, based in Fort Collins, Colorado, and provides healthcare services for northern Colorado, southern Wyoming and western Nebraska, detailed its new policy that requires all hospital employees to get a flu shot as a condition of employment.

In fact, flu shot mandates for healthcare workers have been around for several years. Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle pioneered mandatory vaccination in 2005. So far, it has fired only two employees, although seven more left voluntarily. About 50 hospitals or health systems now require employees to get flu shots, according to the Immunization Action Coalition. But it has not always gone smoothly. Last year, New York issued an edict requiring health-care workers to be vaccinated against flu. The decision was later abandoned in the face of legal challenges. The health commissioner has not announced plans for the 2010 flu season.

Flu Shot Production: What Is In That Needle?

After the influenza viruses are separated from the eggs they are grown in, they are inactivated (killed) with formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. The surface antigens of the virus, (H) and (N) are "split" by a detergent called TritonX-100. The process spreads the surface antigens apart, increasing the probability of developing an antibody response after the flu shot is injected. Traces of Triton X-100 remain in the vaccine solution. The chemical can alter metabolic activity, damage membranes, and cause a rapid decline in cell function.

The suspension of viruses and chemicals is further concentrated in a centrifuge using a sucrose (table sugar) solution and then suspended in sodium phosphate-buffered salt solution. In the final steps, gelatin is added as a stabilizer and thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative, is still added to the multi-dose vials of the flu vaccine.

The fact that the flu shots are ineffective in every age group and contain measurable amounts of chemicals that can be harmful to health hardly seems to matter to doctors and officials who promote their use.

People across the country are becoming informed, taking a stand and refusing to be injected. It is past time for the medical industry to become aware of industry research and stop forcing flu shots on the general public. In fact, it is time for flu shots to not be used at all.

i "Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy children." The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 1 (2006). (Last assessed as up-to-date: September 30. 2007) 11 "Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults." The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 1 (2006). iii Manzoli L, et al. "Influenza vaccine effectiveness for the elderly: a cohort study involving general practitioners from Abruzzo, Italy."

Journal of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene. 2009 Jun;50 (2):109-12. iv Eurich DT, et al "Mortality Reduction with Influenza Vaccine in Patients with Pneumonia Outside "Flu" Season: Pleiotropic Benefits or Residual Confounding?" American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine; 2008; 178: 527-533. v Jefferson, T., et al. "Vaccines for preventing influenza in the elderly."Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 2. vi Rosenthal, Elisabeth. "Two Studies Question the Effectiveness of Flu Vaccines." New York Times. September 21, 2005. vii Press release from the American Academy of Pediatrics. viii Fluzone, influenza virus vaccine package insert.

The Agora | 16

NATIONAL Last week, Mr. Prime Minister, you stated that your government takes its positions based on the promotion of "our values — freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, justice, development, humanitarian assistance for those who need it.”

You also said these are the principles we hold dear. You’re right, we do. Too bad you hauled them out in a spate of childish petulance, because, after having arrived late to the feast at the Security Council, your non-bid for appointment was upended by little old Portugal, a world power if ever there was one. Under the circumstances, those words about our principles didn’t even ring hollow: they landed with a dull thud.

To me, it was a cheap piece of doublespeak, all that puffery about freedom and democracy; these are two words for which you show an admirable contempt. And I have serious concerns as to whether or not you even have a passing familiarity with the “rule of law”, for you to take its name in vain as you did on this occasion.

Those of us who actually hear what you say, and compare it to what you do, are experiencing repeated jaw-dropping moments at the audacious crap that comes out of your mouth, stuff like “I will protect Canada’s sovereignty”. What hogwash!

You can’t sign international trade agreements, which are enforceable contracts superseding our laws, and protect sovereignty, at the same time!

You, and Brian Mulroney, and a few other adherents to the idea of “enlightened sovereignty”, have outsourced our democracy to offshore interests, none of whom give a fig for anything but what we’re worth to them. Thanks to you, with each agreement, our vote is worth less and less, our democracy swirls more inexorably in the bowl, and Parliament is made more irrelevant than we even dreamed it could be!

Take Bill C-36, for example, the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act. If it weren’t such a deliberate assault on our cherished (you said it, I didn’t) rule of law, and our democracy, our freedom, and our sovereignty, as well as a downright insult to any lawyer’s intelligence, it’d almost be funny.

You give Health Canada, in this ridiculously unnecessary “update” to the Hazardous Products Act, extraordinary powers of enforcement, judgment, and punishment, on the opinion of unknown-quantity “inspectors” and using electronic warrants presented by SWAT teams with guns drawn ---- in fact legitimizing what Health Canada has already done on multiple occasions, raiding sellers of vitamins while pointing pistols at their families, ripping the heads off children’s dolls, as though these simple purveyors of natural health products were dealing heroin!

How would you like it if a bunch of guys looking like Darth Vader busted down your door and pointed pistols at your kids, huh? How would you feel about that rule of law then? How disconnected can you be, that you don’t see how Canadians might have an objection to that sort of treatment in a (dare I say it?) democracy?

You respect the rule of law, do you, Mr. Prime Minister? Don’t make me laugh. This legislation flies in the face of the rule of law, and is really nothing but a sham, because Health Canada can use Criminal Code provisions to force a recall, if (and it could, theoretically, actually happen, maybe) an offending manufacturer were to refuse to comply voluntarily. If someone’s child were actually being strangled to death by a

An Open Rant to Stephen “I make the rules” Harper | marauding baby crib, the police could be called.

Bill C-36, for the purposes of public safety, is a complete and total waste of time, and reinvents a perfectly good wheel that suffers from nothing more than having a few loose nuts at its hub.

Leona Aglukkaq says that the Hazardous Products Act is outdated, and isn’t efficient, yet there has been a 235% increase in recalls over the past three years. That’s not a bad record for such an outdated law. In fact, there is nothing in Bill C-36 that is a necessary update to anything.

Have you been taking lessons in annoying, cumbersome and unnecessary updates from Bill Gates? That’s how Microsoft took over the world!

Ah, but there is one twist in Bill-36 that really is an update, though in actuality it’s more like a Trojan: Section 37(2)(c), (4). That’s the puppy that really ticks me off; it’s the one that makes me want to put a fire under a bucket of tar and open up a few feather pillows, just for you.

And for this clause alone, Mr. Prime Minister, that would be small punishment indeed.

When was it, exactly, that our government was given the mandate to give away, by stealth, the right to make our laws, to unnamed “foreign authorities” that the Legislative Summary of the bill describes in part as “organizations of nations, such as the UN” ? Trade groups are “organizations of nations” too. And they are not based on the welfare of citizens, but on profit margins for the multinational corporations whose laps you snuggle into so nicely.

And allowing a trade group to determine Canadian law literally amputates a chunk of our democracy, by removing our right to self-governance.

I’ll ask you again: when did the Canadian people give you that mandate?

Bill C-36 is a cancer poised to eat democracy in this country, the same democracy you say (and I presume you would include yourself here) we all hold dear. So, I have to ask: were you lying when you said you would protect our sovereignty, or were you lying when you said giving up sovereignty was a “simple reality of life”?

You can’t have it both ways, now, can you? So which is it?

A very wise Canadian I know wrote the following to MP Kirsty Duncan (L-Etobicoke North): “You say this Bill has backing right across Canada, and I suppose it does, if you go by the

by Dee Nicholson

title, as everyone wants the things they buy to be safe… however, how many people have you told in your riding that they could be guilty until they can prove themselves innocent, or that ignorance or best intentions are no defense, or that the regulations for this Bill will not come through you in Parliament but through foreign governments and bodies of foreign states? Section 37 (2) (c), (4) Section 38 specifically states that only a regulation made under 37(1)(a)(b)(c) has to be laid before parliament. Section 37 (2) regulations (see above) DO NOT. Bye-bye sovereignty.

According to the Black’s Law Dictionary the word ‘may’ in legislation means ‘must’ or ‘ shall’, so when you see this word ‘may’ in conjunction with the regulations in this act (37 (2) (c), know that it means that regulations “must’ or ‘shall’ be made by foreign governments or bodies of foreign state and not by our parliament.

This Bill is a can opener to global control of the Canadian Parliament, not to consumer safety.”

Jeremy Arney, the author of those words, is far more polite than I am. I don’t happen to give a good gosh-darn whether you like my syntax or not, so I’ll tell you straight out: I think any elected representative who would literally make his own job irrelevant by destroying the democratic process has got to be the dumbest yokel on the planet, as well as the worst Benedict Arnold to his own compatriots. And if you are so short-sighted as to think that, after what you’ve done sinks in on Canadians, you and all the other dumb yokels supporting this assault on our nation will not be in a heap of holy hell, there is something seriously defective about your thought processes.

It may take a few pokes with a sharp stick to piss off a Canadian, but you’d better look out on that last poke.

George H. W. Bush said it best: “If the people knew what we have done, they’d be chasing us through the streets to lynch us.” You can borrow it, if you wish, the sentiments haven’t changed much, and I’m sure the ex-prez wouldn’t mind. Besides, we all know how you like to mimic other guys’ speeches, like you did with John Howard. Did you two plan that in advance? It was one of your better Homer Simpson moments.

We see you, Mr. Prime Minister. The emperor is naked, and it’s not a pretty sight.

The Agora | 17

LOCAL Grandview Park: Fights at the Monkey Bars | by Garth Mullins

GRANDVIEW PARK is a desolate wasteland, a fenced-in building site, depopulated for eight months. The city’s most well used, diverse park was shuttered in mid August. The previous day, as usual, hundreds were in the park: families with children running amok on the playground; street-involved entrepreneurs selling used and recycled articles on the park’s perimeter, a choir singing near the often dry water park; pot-smoking hippies locked in internecine struggles with acoustic guitars; Christian youth giving away hugs; a predominantly Aboriginal homeless population sleeping on the grass or seeking shelter under the trees, groups of friends sitting in the sun; activists plotting or gathering for an action; various organizations feeding the hungry; cyclists playing bike polo in the tennis courts.

A last hurrah before fences were erected saw hundreds of people dancing in the street late into the night – a celebration of the freedom

sparsely attended consultation sessions.

After the circus left town and another one came and went in Toronto, many activists were focused on the aftermath of the G-20. On a warm July night, the parks board ratified the plan. Though many spoke out, activists felt ambushed by plans to close the park for eight months and to totally change what was so close to the hearts of many. Miles to the east, the park was full of its usual occupants.

Many welcome the remaking of Commercial drive in the image of a wealthier, consumer driven enclave. New neighbours and new wine bars need a new, shinier Grandview Park.

Angry evictees and earnest business owners exchanged barbs on-line. “Gentrifying yuppies” against “spoiled anarchist kids.” Debates echoed from over a decade ago, when the Community Police station was moved into the park

This community is the historic sanctuary of an embattled Left; home of communists, trade unionists, anarchists and radicals of all kinds from around the world. La Quena was a collective located at 1111 Commercial Drive. After more than 10 years of lively debate, vegan burritos and CSIS infiltration, it closed, giving way to an upscale yoga studio. The Pofi bar, a longstanding tradition where one could get a proper drink at almost any hour and play chess all day with no minimum charge shuffled off (with a little help from bylaw enforcement) to be replaced by a tasteful toyshop – no guns or Barbie, just educational toys. Local colour attracts a certain demographic which then remakes the new world over in the colourless palette it originally fled.

Some time in the ‘90s, the Drive became selfaware – conscious of its own caché. It may have been Utne Reader’s “Most Hip Neighbourhood” list.

Businesses started to go up market. Rent and property

Many welcome the remaking of Commercial drive in the image of a wealthier, consumer driven enclave. New neighbours and new wine bars need a new, shinier Grandview Park. engendered by the community who’s public center is Grandview park. Just after work began, a community meeting on the sidewalk of Charles Street attracted 40. After only a few days of construction, the high, yellow, metal fence was knocked down.

Redevelopment was not universally appreciated.

Now, heavy equipment seems to sit idle for weeks then screams into action early on a weekend morning. Tree stumps appear. Leaves, branches and trunks make way, revealing more and more of the battleship grey autumn sky. Better sight lines for police surveillance. The debate rages: safety or social cleansing? Park expatriates roam the streets, set up impromptu stalls in the three feet of dirt between the fencing and sidewalk. Or reconvene spontaneously, three blocks away in Victoria Park, where the redevelopment cycle was completed last year. Mostly they are atomized, scattered to endlessly migrate between the few public spaces in the neighborhood.

The Plan In early 2009, a slosh of federal economic stimulus dollars began burning a hole in parks board pockets. It needed to be spent before the recession ends. Piecemeal upgrade gave way to wholesale makeover. While the Olympic spectacle galloped toward us, planners hatched redevelopment plans in earnest. The Big Reveal was made before

The Agora | 18

house. A packed Britannia auditorium heard that a park house cop shop was an invasion, an occupation. As Spice Girls announced pregnancies, the BIA argued that more police means safer streets.

Feeling unwelcome, the community police station eventually moved several blocks north.

City blueprints (http://vancouver.ca/parks/info/planning/grandviewpark/index.htm) do not reveal a yuppie-designed dreamland of Lululemon outlets and Starbucks, where once a Proudhonist utopia prospered. It looks to me like a park. Some trees gone, some new ones added.

More open, less private. Police have been slashing at the shrubbery to improve their sight lines for years.

The conflict is much more about the social than it is the physical character of Grandview Park.

It is one of many flashpoints of struggle over what kind of community Commercial Drive is becoming.

And while more seating around the cenotaph may not be a harbinger of gentrification, the surrounding neighborhood is deep in its throws.

Charles Demers says in Vancouver Special: “Every now and again, shifting plates from the various, sedimentary layers of Commercial Drive’s social geology bump up against each other.”

But class is the fault line and this debate represents the Big One of neighbourhood political seismology.

values soared. Those who grew up in the area could not afford to stay. And its working class and leftist denizens started to feel less comfortable and more marginal.

Traditional, pluralist community groups began to hemorrhage influence to the Business Improvement Association agenda. Many now feel as if there is a battle for the soul of Commercial Drive. It is becoming more a site of consumption than of cultural, artistic and political production. Such forces coexist uneasily at the best of times, but once understood as a target market rather than a neighbourhood, the balance begins to shift.

Fortunately, the Drive is well equipped to resist.

People tell me that Kitsilano used to be really cool in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Anger about the park is also fear that the Kits of today will be the Commercial Drive of tomorrow.

The end product is not so much a problem as the process. Closing the park for eight months displaces a marginalized community that has little in the way of resources or space. This is like me deciding to redecorate your living room (and kitchen and bedroom) and kicking you out until the spring. You complain, but I tell you that you should have been at the meeting where I chose the wallpaper last year. The end result might not be so bad, except that I will remove your curtains for better “sight lines,” but that doesn’t help you now.

How we make decisions and treat marginalized peoples go to the heart of what this community is about.

Ten years of GM soy and glyphosate poisoning have escalated the rates of cancer and birth defects. |

by Claire Robinson

Argentina's Roundup Human Tragedy

| GM soy a death sentence for humans and the environment Argentina has become a giant experiment in farming genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready (RR) soy, engineered to be tolerant to Roundup, Monsanto’s formulation of the herbicide glyphosate. The Argentine government, eager to pull the country out of a deep economic recession in the 1990s, restructured its economy around GM soy grown for export, most of which goes to feed livestock in Europe. In 2009, GM soy was planted on 19 million hectares - over half of Argentina’s cultivated land - and sprayed with 200 million litres of glyphosate herbicide [1]. Spraying is often carried out from the air, causing problems of drift.

In 2002, two years after the first big harvests of RR soy in the country, residents and doctors in soy producing areas began reporting serious health effects from glyphosate spraying, including high rates of birth defects as well as infertility, stillbirths, miscarriages, and cancers [2].

Environmental effects include killed food crops and livestock and streams strewn with dead fish [2, 3].

One of the first medical doctors to report problems from glyphosate spraying of GM soy was Dr Darío Gianfelici, from Cerrito, Entre Ríos, Argentina. According to Gianfelici, there are two levels of toxic effects from glyphosate: acute effects, such as vomiting, diarrhoea, respiratory

problems, and skin rashes; and chronic effects, which take 10–20 years to show up. These include infertility and cancer [4].

Gianfelici said [4]: “Our town experienced drastic changes before and after soy. I’ve seen people die from cancer at age 30. I have witnessed pregnancy problems and a significant increase in fertility problems. I have seen an increase in respiratory diseases, as has never been seen before.

“GM soy has been a death sentence for humans and for the environment. No money can compensate for the damage that has been caused – the contamination, the deaths, the cases of cancer and malformations.”

ble with malformations observed in humans exposed to glyphosate during pregnancy,” said Carrasco [6], “I suspect the toxicity classification of glyphosate is too low ... in some cases this can be a powerful poison.”

At a recent conference, Carrasco, professor and director of the Laboratory of Molecular Embryology, University of Buenos Aires Medical School and lead researcher of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), said a frequent result of malformations in human embryos is miscarriage. He said that it was now not unusual for women in GM soy producing regions of Argentina to have up to five miscarriages in a row [7].

The research findings of Carrasco and his colleagues were not welcomed by some sec-

| Scientists corroborate birth defects & threatened by organised mob Reports of birth defects in glyphosate-sprayed areas of Argentina gained scientific credibility in 2009, when senior Argentine government scientist Prof. Andrés Carrasco went public with his research findings, fully published a year later [1], that glyphosate causes malformations in frog and chicken embryos at doses far lower than those used in agricultural spraying (see [5] Lab Study Establishes Glyphosate Link to Birth Defects, SiS 48). “The findings in the lab are compati-

tors of government and industry. After he announced them, four people from Argentina’s crop protection trade association CASAFE were sent to try to search his laboratory and he was “seriously told off” by Lino Barrañao, Argentina’s science and technology minister [6].

Things took a violent turn in 2010, when an organized mob of thugs attacked people who gathered to hear Carrasco talk in La Leonesa, an agri-

The Agora | 19

continued.... cultural town that has become a centre for activism against agrochemical spraying of soy and rice crops. Three people were seriously injured.

Carrasco and a colleague shut themselves in a car and were surrounded by people making violent threats and beating the car for two hours [8].

Witnesses said the attack was organized by local officials and a local rice producer to protect the economic interests behind local agro-industry. Amnesty International has called for an investigation.

Defenders of glyphosate may say that these figures do not show a risk to consumers, because embryos are designed to keep toxins out. However, studies show that the added ingredients (adjuvants) in Roundup make cell membranes more permeable to glyphosate, increasing its toxicity to cells [17, 18].

Even without soy, glyphosate is all around us. Apart from its use in agriculture, Roundup is marketed to home gardeners as safe

| Revolutionary ruling ban agrochemical sprays Based on Carrasco’s findings and other reports of health problems from spraying, the Environmental Lawyers Association of Argentina petitioned the Supreme Court of Argentina to ban the use of glyphosate (see [9] Glyphosate Herbicide Could Cause Birth Defects, SiS 43).

But such is Argentina’s dependence on the GM soy farming model that Guillermo Cal, executive director of CASAFE, said [6] a ban would mean “we couldn’t do agriculture in Argentina”. In addition, the cash-strapped Argentine government relies heavily on tariffs levied on soy exports and is protective of the industry.

No national ban on glyphosate has yet been implemented. But in March 2010, just months after the release of Carrasco’s findings, a lawsuit brought by sprayed residents resulted in a regional court banning the spraying of agrochemicals near populated areas of Santa Fe province [10]. The ruling was revolutionary in that it implemented the precautionary principle and reversed the burden of proof [11]. No longer do residents have to prove that agrochemical spraying causes harm, but the government and soy producers have to prove it is safe.

Viviana Peralta, a housewife, instigated the lawsuit. She and her family were hospitalized following aerial spraying near her home. Her newborn baby had turned blue and Peralta herself suffered respiratory problems. Peralta said, “When I saw my baby like that, I said [11], “Enough. This cannot go on.” ”

to use around children and pets. It is sprayed on schoolyards and verges by local authorities. The myth of Roundup’s safety persists despite two court rulings forcing Monsanto to withdraw advertising claims that Roundup is biodegradable and environmentally friendly [19, 20].

In reality, the research of Carrasco’s team is the latest in a long list of peer-reviewed studies showing dangers to health and the environment from glyphosate. Many of these studies are collected in a new report co-authored by nine international scientists [21], “GM Soy: Sustainable?

Responsible”. The report challenges claims of sustainability for GM soy and the glyphosate herbicide on which it relies. Published by GLS Bank, Germany and ARGE Gentechnik-frei, Austria’s GM-free industry association, the report has been released together with the powerful testimonies of Argentine people affected by glyphosate spraying on GM soy [22].

Carrasco remains humble about his study, saying [11], “The origin of my work is my contact with the communities victimized by agrochemical use. They are the irrefutable proof of my research.” So the final word on the claimed safety of glyphosate and other agrochemicals sprayed on GM soy must go to Peralta. She said [11]: “I do not know about chemistry, I did not go to university, but I know what my whole family

has suffered. To people who are not familiar with this model of agriculture, I say: Do not trust these companies. Reject agrochemicals. Do it for the life of your children.”

| References 1. Paganelli A, Gnazzo V, Acosta H, Lopez SL and Carrasco AD. Glyphosate-based herbicides produce teratogenic effects on vertebrates by impairing retinoic acid signalling. Chem Res Toxicol, August 9.

2. Gianfelici, D.R. 2009. La Soja, La Salud y La Gente.

3. Branford, S. 2004. Argentina’s Bitter Harvest.

New Scientist, April 17, 40-43. id=95 4. Dr Darío Gianfelici, Interview by Darío Aranda, August 2010.

| Embryonic defects at well below legal exposure levels Speaking at a conference, Carrasco noted the irony that Argentina’s people are suffering from the production of a commodity (GM soy) destined for Europe, which European consumers do not want [7]. Europe imports around 38 million tonnes of soy per year [14], much of which is GM soy sprayed with glyphosate. Because of consumer resistance to GM, most of it ends up hidden in animal feed.

Carrasco found malformations in frog and chicken embryos injected with 2.03 mg/kg glyphosate – nearly ten times lower than the maximum residue limit (MRL) for glyphosate allowed in soy in the EU (20 mg/kg) [15].

Soybeans have been found to contain glyphosate residues at levels up to 17mg/kg [16].

The Agora | 20

10. Romig, S. 2010. Argentina court blocks agrochemical spraying near rural town. Dow Jones Newswires, March 17. http://bit.ly/cg2AgG 11. Dario Aranda, Interview with Viviana Peralta, instigator of the lawsuit, August 2010.

12. Comision Provincial de Investigación de Contaminantes del Agua. 2010. Primer informe.

Resistencia, Chaco. April. Report available in original Spanish: http://www.gmwatch.eu/files/Chaco_Government _Report_Spanish.pdf or in English translation: http://www.gmwatch.eu/files/Chaco_Government _Report_English.pdf 13. Aranda, D. 2010. La salud no es lo primero

| Long list of peer-reviewed studies document glyphosate toxicities

| State commission reports birth defects up fourfold in ten years Shortly after the residents’ court victory, a commission of the provincial government of Chaco state reported that between 2000 and 2009, the rate of childhood cancers tripled in La Leonesa and the birth defects increased nearly fourfold over the entire province [12]. These staggering rises in disease coincided with the expansion of the agricultural frontier into Chaco province and the resulting rise in agrochemical use. The commission identified the main problem as glyphosate and other agrochemicals applied to “transgenic crops, which require aerial and ground spraying (dusting) with agrochemicals”. A member of the Chaco commission, who did not want to be identified due to the “tremendous pressures” they were under, said [13], “all those who signed the report are very experienced in the subject under study, but rice and soy planters are strongly pressuring the government. We don’t know how this will end, as there are many interests involved.”

birth defects. Science in Society 43, 36, 2009.

5. Ho MW. Lab study establishes link to birth defects. Science in Society 48 (to appear).

6. Webber, J., Weitzman, H. 2009. Argentina pressed to ban crop chemical after health concerns. Financial Times, May 29.

7. Prof. Andrés Carrasco, speaking at the GMOFree Regions Conference at the European Parliament, Brussels (September 16–18, 2010) 8. Amnesty International. 2010. Argentina: Threats deny community access to research. 12 August 2010. http://bit.ly/cJsqUR 9. Ho MW. Glyphosate herbicide could cause

en el modelo agroindustrial. Pagina12, June 14. http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1147561-2010-06-14.html 14. Cert ID. Cert ID Certified ‘Non-GMO’ Soy Meal and Other Soy Products: Volumes Available from South America. Porto Alegre, Brazil, July 14, 2008.

15. Pesticide residues in food – 1997: Report.

Report of the Joint Meeting of the FAO Panel of Experts on Pesticide Residues in Food and the Environment and the WHO Core Assessment Group on Pesticide Residues. Lyons, France, 22 September – 1 October 1997. http://www.fao.org/docrep/w8141e/w8141e0u.htm 16. Pesticide residues in food – 2005. Report of the Joint Meeting of the FAO Panel of Experts on Pesticide Residues in Food and the Environment and the WHO Core Assessment Group on Pesticide Residues, Geneva, Switzerland, 20–29 September.

FAO Plant Production and Protection Paper 183, 7.

17. Haefs R, Schmitz-Eiberger M, Mainx HG, Mittelstaedt W, Noga G. Studies on a new group of biodegradable surfactants for glyphosate. Pest Manag. Sci. 2002. 58, 825–33.

18. Marc J, Mulner-Lorillon O, Boulben S, Hureau D, Durand G, Bellé R. Pesticide Roundup provokes cell division dysfunction at the level of CDK1/cyclin B activation. Chem Res Toxicol.

2002, 15, 326–31.

19. Attorney General of the State of New York, Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau, Environmental Protection Bureau. 1996. In the matter of Monsanto Company, respondent.

Assurance of discontinuance pursuant to executive law §63(15). New York, NY, Nov. False advertising by Monsanto regarding the safety of Roundup herbicide (glyphosate). http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Monsanto-vAGNYnov96.htm 20. Monsanto fined in France for “false” herbicide ads. Agence France Presse, 26 Jan 2007. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4114.cfm 21. Antoniou M., Brack P, Carrasco, A., Fagan, J., Habib, M., Kageyama, P., Leifert, C., Nodari, R., Pengue, W. 2010. GM Soy: Sustainable? Responsible? GLS Gemeinschaftsbank and ARGE Gentechnikfrei. Download full report and summary from: http://bit.ly/9D9J2k. At the time of writing, the full report is available in English or Portuguese, but will soon be available in French, German, and Spanish translations.

22. Interviews with Argentine people affected by glyphosate spraying, conducted in August 2010 by journalist Dario Aranda, are available here: http://www.gmwatch.eu/component/content/article/12479-reports-reports

Incentive and Motivation |

by Matthew C. Berkowitz

IN PREVIOUS ARTICLES I wrote for The Agora National, I described various tenets of The Zeitgeist Movement, a less-than-two-year old social movement in avocation of broad social changes that entail the redesign of our culture. In effect, we are an educational campaign of another organization called The Venus Project dedicated to establishing the scientific and technological understandings and sociological imperatives needed for implementation of this new social system. The new social direction transcends the need for the traditional institutions most people assume to be necessary for 'civilization', while it instead focuses on a scientific-based understanding of how we align with nature, of which we are intimately tied to. If you are unfamiliar with these organizations, I invite you to visit: www.thezeitgeistmovement.com and/or www.thevenusproject.com; or watch the groundbreaking documentary, Zeitgeist: Addendum, which can be viewed online in various places (one of which is www.zeitgeistmovie.com).

The Venus Project could be summed up as the application of the scientific method for social and environmental concern. Today, we still operate in archaic social and economic structures that were developed centuries ago. Our technological advancements have not been met with a sufficiently equal progression in our social evolution. The Venus Project aims to bring this to fruition. We have the technological capability to move into a completely new system where our broadest social problems of war, poverty, environmental destruction, strategic corruption, crime, etc. are viewed not only as avoidable, but completely unacceptable.

In this new social arrangement, termed a resource-based economy, the Earth's resources are declared as the common heritage of all the world's people?eventually outgrowing the need for the artificial boundaries that separate people.

Anything less will result in the same catalogue of problems over and over again. It appears the real wealth of the planet is measured in the available resources we have at hand, not money. Therefore, our most important focus should be on the intelligent management of the Earth's resources. The best method at our disposal to make objective, unbiased decisions, and thus to manage these resources, is termed the scientific method. Nature operates under strict laws and does not have the capacity to recognize or care about what humans wish to believe is true. Thus, it is in our best interest to learn from and align with nature as best as we can. This means reexamining our values and adjusting them accordingly.

One of the most common reactions by those new to the resource-based economy concept is to assert that without the monetary system,

The most powerful contributions to society came from those who were truly interested in social progress, not detached monetary gain. ested in social progress, not detached monetary gain. Einstein, Galileo, Newton, The Wright Brothers and Tesla were individuals genuinely concerned with solving problems and improving society rather than simply detached monetary gain. "The idea that everybody wants money is propaganda circulated by wealth addicts to make themselves feel better about their addiction." In actuality, there is often mistrust for individuals who are entirely motivated by the profit incentive,

rewards, whether it is money, grades, praise or other bribes, to control people's behaviour is a practice that is widely accepted and exercised, but rarely challenged. Extrinsic motivators, controlling sources that come from outside the individual, are the preferred way to manipulate behaviour in the classroom, at home when raising children, in the workplace, and in society at large as the dominating work ethic.

Similar to the use of punishment and threat (which I

Today,

we still operate in archaic social and economic structures that were developed centuries ago.

Our technological advancments have not been met with a sufficiently equal progression in our social evolution. whether it be salesman, stock brokers, businessmen or those in almost any other field. It is said that money produces incentive; this may be true to a limited extent, but it also produced a propensity for greed, embezzlement, violent crime, stress, economic hardship, and insecurity (just to name a few). To be fair, it is simple to understand why some may claim that the absence of money would erase motivation, for in this society, most people dislike or contemptibly abhor their jobs - which is, again, simple to understand since this society condemns many of us to monotonous, arbitrary, meaningless, rote professions that do not exercise people's minds, nor contribute to social well-being in any tangible way other than to serve the detached-from-nature economic paradigm. If such occupations were not required and human beings were free to pursue their genuine interests, would not incentive shift from being externally manipulated to internally motivated?

In the mid-1990s, a Gallop poll was conducted which found that over 50% of American adults (94 million) volunteered time for social causes, at an average of 4.2 hours per week, for 20.5 billion hours per year! Even with the corruption generating, detachment promoting, and blindly self-serving sickness generated by the monetary system, human beings still strive to help one

will discuss later) to elicit mindless obedience, offering rewards may provoke temporary compliance.

However, the longer-term effectiveness of extrinsic motivation does not hold up under close scrutiny.

To better understand the effectiveness of (or lack thereof) rewards, we must first pose a few preliminary questions.

Firstly, for whom or what are rewards effective? It is easy to see the attractiveness of rewards and punishment, as it requires very little effort for the person, group or institution seeking a particular behaviour. Such a disposition ignores understanding the environment that affects motivation. It opts for an approach that precludes working with people, while instead focuses on doing things to people.

For how long are rewards effective, and at what are rewards effective? As sociologist Alfie Kohn explains in an article entitled The Risk of Rewards, "Studies over many years have found that behavior modification programs are rarely successful at producing lasting changes in attitudes or even behavior. When the rewards stop, people usually return to the way they acted before the program began." For example, The Candle Problem, a cognitive performance test originally devised in 1945 by psychologist Karl Duncker, challenged participants on how to fix a lighted candle on a wall in a way that the candle

Many claim that if there is no money, humans will just lie around and be lazy. This is just sad. people will lack the necessary incentive that drives people to persevere in our current socioeconomic model. This article will examine the relevant evidence about what truly motivates human beings.

"Do this and you'll get that." These six words summarize our society's doctrine for raising children, teaching students and managing workers. The monetary system has engraved this idea into society so deeply that an inordinate portion of the population believes that the monetary incentive is an effective mechanism. Many claim that if there is no money, humans will just lie around and be lazy. This is just sad.

First of all, the most powerful contributions to society came from those who were truly inter-

another. The logical deduction from this finding is that a social system that inherently supports and reinforces acts of reciprocation would drastically increase these statistics. In a social system which frees people from arbitrary and socially meaningless occupations; which provides goods and services to everyone without a price a tag; and where mental development is the highest priority, the incentives would change. In a resource-based economy, everyone is raised to his or her highest potential in order to become a contributor, greatly enhancing our social evolution and raising everyone's standard of living.

Such an environment would allow intrinsic motivation (liking what you do) to flourish. The use of

wax was prevented from dripping onto the table.

To do so, the only materials allowed were the candle, a book of matches and a box of thumbtacks.

The solution is simply to empty the box of thumbtacks, place the candle in the box, secure the box to the wall with the thumbtacks, and light the candle with a match. Sam Glucksberg, professor of psychology at Princeton University, originally conducted an experiment where he divided participants into two groups, assigning both to solve The Candle Problem. One of the groups was offered a cash incentive if they solved the problem faster than the average person who took the test. The other group received no reward. The group who received the reward took, on average, three and a

The Agora | 21

continued.... half minutes longer to solve the problem. This is merely one example amongst an overwhelming body of research that has been replicated over and over, demonstrating the futility and harm of rewards (and extrinsic motivation in general).

Kohn further elaborates, "Indeed, extrinsic motivators do not alter the emotional or cognitive commitments that underlie behavior--at least not in a desirable direction. A child promised a treat for learning or acting responsibly has been given every reason to stop doing so when there is no longer a reward to be gained."4 It is simple to understand why-rewarding shifts people's focus from the behaviour to the reward itself. It is resultoriented rather than process-oriented, a recipe that ensures disinterest, lowered creativity and suboptimal efficiency.

So, do rewards motivate people? Certainly.

They motivate people to obtain the rewards.

However, this extrinsic motivation usually comes at the price of deteriorating interest and excellence at whatever is being done. Here are a few more central reasons why rewards ultimately fail: • 1 Rewards Punish: The underlying assumptions about conventional parenting, teaching and workplace management are that there are two dispositions: positive reinforcement via rewards, and punitive responses. However, the research clearly demonstrates that rewards and punishments are not opposites-as Kohn denotes, "they are two sides of the same coin, and it is a coin that does not buy very much." Kurt Lewin, founder of modern social psychology, explains that rewards and punishment are used when we wish to elicit "a type of behaviour which the natural field forces of the

moment will not produce." In fact, research shows that positive relationships exist between the use of rewards and punishments amongst both elementary school teachers and parents. Furthermore, the cessation of rewards that were required to induce a behaviour in the first place can appear to have an identical effect as punishment.

• 2 Rewards Destroy Relationships: Rewards connote, by their very definition, the disruption of cooperative learning, and they are most destructive when made artificially scarce. When only a few children in a class are awarded gold stars, everyone is turned into a competitor-an obstacle to others' success. (I will be doing a subsequent article on the colossal detriments of competition.) The same logic can be applied to classes where students are graded on a bell curve.

Similarly, when collective rewards are offered-that is, the issuance of a reward is made dependent on everyone's performance-a person or group is much more likely to be blamed as the party responsible for the failure to obtain the reward in question, thus rupturing relationships. Distrust and stress tend to flourish in such a system.

• 3 Rewards Ignore Reasons: A child is "misbehaving"; a worker is performing poor quality work; a student is unmotivated to learn-these are many of the situations in which we are inclined to offer rewards, in an attempt to correct what is going wrong. The problem is that the rewards do nothing to address the true underlying causes about why the trouble has occurred in the first place (similar to the way in which laws do not address the root causes of criminal behaviour). It is simple to recog-

nize why this approach is used-it requires little effort on behalf of the intervener. (The exact same line of reasoning can be applied to punishment.)

The implications of all this research is that our schools, our workplaces and in fact, our entire economic system are predicated on a motivational structure that is backward. It is a structure that is ineffective at best, and socially crippling at worst. It is a structure that, as far as this author can contemplate, cannot disconnect from the monetary system. Instead, it necessitates the monetary incentive's removal, and is simply another reason for why the monetary system must be removed holistically.

In a resource-based economy, people's motivation will not be corrupted by an artificial monetary mechanism; instead, the social environment will encourage an overwhelmingly positive value system, one that we probably cannot even fathom in our society today. Furthermore, in such an economic system, technology will be harnessed to its full potential, emancipating human labour from the laborious, mindless tasks that we are presently forced to endure. I will not go into detail about this aspect here; however, let me emphasize that an environment where arduous, demeaning toil is absent, intrinsic motivation flourishes.

It is mankind's responsibility to systematically question every part of tradition we have been inculcated with since birth, lest we fall victim to deleterious practices that cripple our potential as a species. Our archaic beliefs about what effectively and healthily motivates people are no exception.

1 Philip Slater, Wealth Addiction. New York: Dutton, 1980, p. 25 2 U.S. Workers Hate Their Jobs More Than Ever: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,257345,00.html 3 Hodgkinson & Weitzman, Giving and Volunteering in the United States: Findings from a National Survey, 1992, p2 4 Kohn, Alfie. The Risk of Rewards, 1994. http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/ror.htm 5 Daniel Biella and Wolfram Luther. "A Synthesis Model for the Replication of Historical Experiments in Virtual Environments". 5th European Conference on e-Learning.

Academic Conferences Limited. pp. 23. ISBN 9781905305308 6 Kohn, Alfie. Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's , Praise, and Other Bribes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993, p.50 7 Lewin, 1935, p. 153.

8 Newby, 1991, p. 197 9 Sears et al., 1957, p. 324

people who take their drugs are extremely unhealthy, depressed and highly toxic.

But don't take my word for it: Check out the people walking in and out of pharmacies versus the people who visit health food stores: • People who visit pharmacies tend to have toxic livers, poor kidney function (because drugs damage the kidneys), wild mood swings, terrible digestion and elimination capabilities, poor

atively little on health care expenses while investing their money in organic foods, green products, medicinal herbs and nutritional supplements.

Keeping you ignorant What the drug industry and the FDA absolutely do NOT want you to learn is that healing foods, herbs and supplements make virtually all pharmaceuticals obsolete. If you really knew the truth about what these items can do to protect your health and cure degenerative disease, you'd probably never take another chemical pill in your life. That's why the FDA works so hard to censor nutritional supplements and make sure they can't make truthful, scientifically-validated claims on their labels.

Change your decisions and you'll change your life It's up to you to determine how the rest of your

Pharmacies vs. Health Food Stores | by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com The drug industry is constantly trying to convince you that drugs are good for your health while nutritional supplements and healthy foods are somehow bad for you. This same line of nonsense is also repeated by the FDA, which goes out of its way to censor the truth about the healing properties of natural foods like walnuts, cherries and berries.

The drug industry and the FDA are, of course, just plain wrong about all this. Although their advertisements show happy, healthy people taking pharmaceuticals, in the real world,

The Agora | 22

skin health, poor posture, low energy, sleep disorders and sexual dysfunction. They tend to be suicidal while living in chronic pain. They have huge medical expenses that often send them into bankruptcy.

• People who visit health food stores tend to have healthy skin, happier outlooks, better energy, better sex lives, healthy sleep, healthy hearts, healthy liver function and greatly improved brain function.

They are more creative, adaptable and optimistic, and they tend to enjoy their lives. They spend rel-

life will be experienced. If you continue to find yourself standing in line at the local pharmacy, or if you look in your medicine cabinet and notice a half-dozen prescriptions, let that be a wake-up call. These drugs will never give you health or happiness. They will never create the life you're truly looking for.

Instead, take a walk to the other side of the street. Walk into a health food store. Ask the friendly staff how to get started with healthy living.

These people are incredibly helpful, by the way, so don't be afraid to ask questions.

The Amazing Light Bulb | by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com THE INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULB was downright amazing when it was invented in 1809 by Humphry Davy. Nope, it wasn't invented by Thomas Edison -- that's just another American history lie, much like the stories about Christopher Columbus "discovering" America and being some sort of upstanding hero. In truth, he and his men were butchers who committed numerous atrocities against the Native Americans (see The People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn). Note that the U.S. government continues to celebrate Columbus Day every year -- a fitting holiday for the only nation in the world to have ever dropped nuclear bombs on a civilian population. Twice.

U.S. history is largely a collection of politically convenient lies, and the story of the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Edison is just one of many such distortions. Read the timeline of the history of the incandescent light bulb here: http://inventors.about.com/library/...

Unfortunately, very little has changed about the light bulb since the turn of the 20th century. The device still wastes 95 percent of the electricity it consumes. And thanks to a deliberate design by manufacturers to encourage repeat sales (i.e. they are deliberately engineered to burn out), light bulbs still burn out after about 1,000 hours, requiring consumers to toss them into the garbage and buy new ones. (It's true: Light bulbs were invented in 1991 that last 60,000 hours, but companies refuse to mass produce them, since repeat sales of light bulbs would plummet. The bulbs sold to consumers today are designed to self-destruct.)

Incandescent lights are a safety hazard (glass shards, anyone?) and an environmental hazard, since they produce massive carbon dioxide emissions from the coal power plants used to power these bulbs. They're incredibly cheap to purchase up front, but astonishingly expensive to use over time. A typical incandescent light bulb is ten times more expensive to operate than an LED light bulb. It also produces ten times as much carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming.

Want to warm the climate? Turn on the lights!

So why, then, are so many people still using incandescent light bulbs? Primarily because they have no idea what it costs to actually operate them.

The fact that these light bulbs are secretly slipping dollars out of your pocket every time they're used seems to go unnoticed by most consumers. All they see is the price tag at the store. And there, incandescent lights look really cheap.

The $500 incandescent light bulb But what if the price of the light bulb at the store

included the entire cost of the electricity needed to actually power the light bulb? If that incandescent light bulb actually lasted 50,000 hours like LED lights do, the cost of buying the bulb together with all the electricity needed to power it would be a whopping $500!. Would you pay $500 for a light bulb?

Of course, incandescent lights don't last 50,000 hours. They last only about 1,000. Which means you have to buy fifty bulbs, replace them fifty times and throw fifty burned out bulbs in the garbage, all while still paying nearly $500 in electricity anyway. In other words, paying for 50,000 worth of light from an incandescent light bulb actually costs MORE than $500!

That's no bargain. Not by a long shot.

Especially when a $100 ten-watt LED light bulb can operate for 50,000 hours using only about $54 in electricity. (We're assuming 10 cents per kilowatt-hour for these calculations. Folks in California are paying a lot more than that, but in some states, it's less...)

Would you rather pay $500 for light, or $154? If you love overpaying for stuff, and destroying the environment, and piling more garbage onto landfill, then keep buying incandescent light bulbs!

They will raise your electricity bills, fill your trash with shards of glass, use up natural resources and accelerate global warming faster than any other light source on the planet today.

Are Compact Fluorescent Lights the answer?

But what about CFLs? Everybody's crazy about CFLs all of a sudden, it seems. People know that CFLs use only about 1/3rd the electricity of incandescent lights. Of course, they flicker and hum, and they take a long time to warm up, but they do save on electricity compared to the extremely inefficient incandescent light bulb. So what's not to like about CFLs? Mercury, for one thing.

All fluorescent lights contain mercury, period. It's the dirty little secret of the CFL industry. This is mercury brought into your home, and if you break a fluorescent light in your home, you are releasing a powerful neurotoxic heavy metal in your home! Birth defects, neurodegenerative diseases, developmental disorders, dementia... these have all been linked to mercury exposure.

It's not even debated in the scientific literature.

Even doctors readily admit that mercury is extremely toxic to the human body. (Dentists, of course, remain in bewildering denial and continue to place mercury fillings into the mouths of children, seemingly oblivious to the neurotoxicity of this extremely dangerous heavy metal...)

There's enough mercury in a single fluorescent light bulb to contaminate 7,000 gallons of fresh water.

I cringe to think about how much water could be contaminated by the recent fluorescent light giveaway programs hosted by big box retailers like The Home Depot, which gave away an astonishing 1 million fluorescent lights containing approximately 3 million mg of mercury (that's a whopping 3 kilograms of mercury!). And on what day did they choose to distribute these toxic light bulbs all across the country?

Earth Day, of course! (It would all be rolling-on-thefloor hilarious if not for all the deformed babies that will probably result from widespread mercury contamination of our environment...)

So why are people rushing out to buy mercury light bulbs and place them in their homes?

Because no one told them about the mercury, that's why! Of the hundreds of consumers I've talked to about this issue, very few (less than 4%) were aware of the mercury in fluorescent light bulbs. Sure, it's printed in microscopic text on the packaging of CFLs, but nobody reads that.

So most consumers keep on buying mercury light bulbs and bringing them right into their homes and communities, oblivious to the extremely hazardous materials found inside each light. I launched www.EcoLEDs.com because I wanted to provide an eco-friendly alternative to toxic CFLs and wasteful incandescent lights. My aim is to educate consumers about the advantages of LED lights and make them so popular that even WalMart starts selling them, putting my own company out of business.

I will only consider EcoLEDs.com a meaningful success when LED lights are sold at mass merchandisers and incandescent lights become a thing of the past. I hope The Home Depot stops giving away toxic fluorescent lights and starts selling LED lights instead.

Isn't it interesting how the U.S. government requires Energy Saver statistics to be printed on washing machines, dryers and other household appliances, but NOT on incandescent light bulbs (which are, by any measure, the least efficient household appliances of all)? I think we should start with mandated labeling that shows the lifetime cost of each bulb sold at retail so that consumers can start to see the different in the total cost of ownership right there at the point of purchase.

That would, for the first time, make consumers acutely aware of what it costs them to operate a light bulb, not to even mention the cost to the planet.

But can people do math anymore?

Of course, all this requires that consumers can actually follow basic math... or even read labels, for that matter. And given the fact that even many high school graduates today are functionality illiterate (and mathematically inept), there will always be a few stragglers left behind, buying incandescent light bulbs along with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Doritos and Diet Coke. These are the ignorant masses that can't read labels, don't understand math, and are primarily interested in surviving to their next paycheck. Ultimately, if we are going to save our planet and human civilization from self-induced climate change chaos, we are going to have to do something about our public education system, too.

Why are we teaching high school students useless geometry theorems while neglecting to teach them how to read labels while shopping at the grocery store? Why are we teaching algebra but not how to estimate a 10 percent waiter's tip in your head? Our public education system is a massive failure, and if it weren't for the courageous sacrifices of the front-line teachers, counselors and school workers trying to make a difference, we would have no functional education system at all.

It's time for massive reforms in this country; both in public education and energy usage. Changing light bulbs to LED lights is one of many ways to start making a different right now, but accomplishing it requires that the population can grasp concepts such as total cost of ownership.

Here's a joke for ya: How many lawmakers does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: Only one, but there has to be a corporate sponsor to pay for it first.

The Agora | 23

News Blitz World Headlines Of The Month

Asteroid to skim past Earth www.telegraph.co.uk Reported:

Beck Aides Try To Debunk Diet Coke Dangers

An 'Unprecedented' Bat Die-Off Could Devastate U.S. Agriculture

rense.com Reported: “The giant rock, which is 20ft (6m) wide, will come its closest shortly before midday, though astronomers are not sure what its exact path will be.”

“But experts, who named the asteroid 2010TD54, said that despite passing very close to the planet it would not enter the atmosphere, and that even if it did it would burn up before reaching the ground.”

“Nasa’s Asteroid Watch said on Twitter: “Small space rocks this size would burn up in our atmosphere & pose no ground danger.”

“The group added that a “moderate telescope” would be required to make out the rock, which will at times be closer to Earth than some satellites, and significantly nearer than the moon.”

“Emily Baldwin, of Astronomy Now, told The Times: “Fortunately it seems this one will miss us. But it is a reminder that the Earth is still in the middle of a cosmic shooting gallery and we need to keep constant watch for incoming asteroids”.”

Butterflies Cure Themselves with Plants news.discovery.com Reported: Monarch butterflies can cure themselves and their offspring of disease by using medicinal plants, according to a new paper in the journal Ecology Letters.

The disease is caused by a protozoan parasite called Ophryocystis elektroscirrha. The parasite invades the gut of the caterpillars and then persists when the caterpillars become adult monarchs.

Project leader Jaap de Roode in eScience Commons today said, “We have shown that some species of milkweed, the larva’s food plants, can reduce parasite infection in the monarchs. And we have also found that infected female butterflies prefer to lay their eggs on plants that will make their offspring less sick, suggesting that monarchs have evolved the ability to medicate their offspring.”

The Agora | 24

www.dailyfinance.com Reported: “It’s hard to believe after three decades of controversy on aspartame anyone would even question the fact that aspartame is a chemical poison.”

“In reality, it is an addictive, excitoneurotoxic, carcinogenic, genetically-engineered drug and adjuvant that damages the mitochondria and interacts with drugs and vaccines.”

“The medical text, Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, www.sunsentpress.com by H. J. Roberts, M.D., is over 1000 pages of symptoms, cancers, neurodegenerative diseases and other horrors triggered or precipitated by this poison. It has a chapter on the eyes and how it triggers eye diseases and blindness. In 1986 James Turner, Washington, D.C. attorney and the Community Nutrition Institute petitioned the FDA to ban aspartame because so many were going blind and having seizures.”

“The movie being mentioned below is “Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World”, www.soundandfury. tv and tells the whole story of how a product was so poisonous the FDA tried to have the manufacturer indicted for fraud and revoked the petition for approval. That is until Donald Rumsfeld stepped in, “called in his markers” and using political chicanery got a deadly poison on the market.

“Beck’s sidekicks need to do some homework and be more concerned about the health of Glenn Beck.

In 1999 I was on the Debra Duncan show in Texas along with victims like Mary Reiff who was declared legally blind on aspartame, Dr. Sandra Cabot, and Attorney Ed Johnson who worked in the Justice Department before he suffered two aspartame brain tumors.

Former FDA Investigator Arthur Evangelista also was on the program and Ermelle Martinez who would be a physician today if she hadn’t gotten on aspartame and was diagnosed with MS. She is fine today off the poison.”

Are We Giving Our Soldiers Drugs That May Make Them KillThemselves? www.alternet.org reported: In 2009 there were 160 active duty suicides, 239 suicides within the total Army including the Reserves, 146 active duty deaths from drug overdoses and high risk behavior and 1,713 suicide attempts.

In addition to suicide, other out-of-character behavior like domestic violence is known to erupt from the drugs.

More troops are dying by their own hand than in combat, according to an Army report titled "Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, Suicide Prevention." Not only that, but 36 percent of the suicides were troops who were never deployed.

The unprecedented suicide rates are accompanied by an unprecedented rise in psychoactive drug rate among active duty-aged troops, 18 to 34, which is up 85 percent since 2003, according to the military health plan Tricare. Since 2001, 73,103 prescriptions for Zoloft have been dispensed, 38,199 for Prozac, 17,830 for Paxil and 12,047 for Cymbalta says Tricare 2009 data, which includes family prescriptions. All of the drugs carry a suicide warning label.

In addition to the leap in SSRI antidepressants, prescriptions for the anticonvulsants Topamax and Neurontin rose 56 percent in the same group since 2005, says Navy Times -- drugs the FDA warned last year double suicidal thinking in patients.

In fact, 4,994 troops at Fort Bragg are on antidepressants right now, says the Fayetteville Observer.

Six-hundred-sixty-four are on an antipsychotics and "many soldiers take more than one type of medication."

Chilean miners rescued after 69 days underground www.reuters.com Reported:

Google invests in $5 billion wind farm project www.telegraph.co.uk Reported: “The transmission lines, which could cost up to $5 billion over the next 10 years, would run as far as 20 miles offshore from Virginia to New Jersey. The initial phase of the project would be capable of delivering 2,000 megawatts of wind energy – enough to power about 500,000 homes.”

“Google, which will own more than a third of the project, has teamed up with other technologycompanies and investment firms.”

One by one, the miners climbed into a specially designed steel capsule barely wider than a man's shoulders and took a 15-minute journey through 2,050 feet of rock to the surface.

With 29 of the 33 miners freed in a rescue operation that advanced rapidly without hitches, officials expected to have the remaining men out by the end of the day instead of in 48 hours as originally estimated.

Scenes of jubilation erupted each time a miner arrived to a hero's welcome above the San Jose gold and copper mine in Chile's northern Atacama desert.

"It's dangerous to say but things are going extraordinarily well," Chilean Health Minister Jaime Manalich said.

Most people don't love bats, but like good health, you'll realize that you miss them after they're gone. Experts believe many species of bats may vanish pretty soon, and their disappearance could bring profound and long-term changes not only to the environment but also to agriculture, landscaping and gardening across North America.

For several years now, scientists have been sounding alarms about a devastating fungus, White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), that has literally decimated bat populations in the Northeastern U.S. The fungus leaves a white substance on the bat's nose, wings and body, and disrupts

the bat's hibernation patterns, forcing it to burn through its fat reserves, which quickly leads to starvation. Earlier this year, a survey of the bat population in New Jersey estimated that 90% of that state's bats had been killed off.

"This is on a level unprecedented, certainly in mammals," says Rick Adams, a biology professor at the University of Northern Colorado and a renowned bat expert. "A mass extinction event, a thousand times higher than anything we've seen. It's going through [bat colonies] like wildfire, with 80% to 100% mortality."

"The disease is absolutely devastating, it's unprecedented," says Mylea Bayless, a biologist with Austin, Texasbased Bat Conservation International.

"It's causing population declines in wildlife that we haven't seen since the passenger pigeon."

Bayless notes that bats have slow reproductive rates, usually giving birth to just one pup a year. So bat populations, she says, are going to be very slow to recover, "if they ever do recover."

Antidepressant ineffective and potentially harmful www.telegraph.co.uk They discovered that reboxetine, marketed as Edronax by Pfizer, was no more effective at countering major depression than a placebo sugar pill, after studying all available data on the drug.

In the study, published in the British Medical Journal today (WED), the German researchers found that some trials which failed to show reboxetine worked well were not submitted for publication by academic journals.

This, they said, was "a striking example of publication bias" where academics or drug companies

Merck Sponsored Study Returns Dubious Gardasil Autoimmune Safety Results

Bill O’Reilly's Misguided $10,000 Bet with John Stossel Against California's Chances of Legalizing Pot

Tony Isaacs for NaturalNews.com:

alternet.org reported:

decide not to publish unfavourable results in peer-reviewed journals.

Overall, data on nearly three in four patients who took the drug went unpublished, claimed the researchers, working for the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care.

"Data on 74 per cent of the patients included in our analysis was unpublished, indicating that the published evidence on reboxetine so far has been severely affected by publication bias," they wrote.

If all the studies were taken into account - both published and unpublished - then the evidence showed that the risks of taking the drug outweighed the benefits.

Their analysis found that those who took reboxetine were more likely to have "at least one adverse event" than those given a placebo.

However, there was no significant difference in the rate of suicide attempts between the two groups.

They noted that guidance issued by Britain's National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), that "reboxetine is superior to placebo and as effective as other antidepressants" was in their opinion, a conclusion that "can no longer be upheld".

Danube in danger: toxic timebombs from Soviet years put region at risk www.guardian.co.uk Reported: From the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the Danube meanders for almost 1,800 miles through 10 countries, its course punctuated by areas of great beauty and industrial disasters waiting to happen.

The torrent of toxic sludge devastating tracts of western Hungary and the risk of heavy metals leaching into the great waterway have highlighted the dangers posed by the rusting heavy industrial plants lining the river's banks.

In the past decade alone, it has been accosted by Nato bombs, oil spills and cyanide poisoning. The neglect that appears to have been the source of the problem at the Ajka tailings dam has environmentalists worried that there are dozens of other "ticking toxic timebombs" primed to explode and wreak havoc with Europe's biggest river basin.

"There are a string of disasters waiting to happen at sites across the Danube basin," said a spokesman for the World Wide Fund for Nature.

The organisation has used EU data and studies to compile lists and maps of pollution hot spots in the Danube area. Hungary has many vulnerable industrial sites but so do Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria.

In Hungary, anxiety is focused on another red sludge reservoir on the banks of the Danube at Almasfuzito, 50 miles north of Budapest. The waste here is similarly produced by turning bauxite into aluminium. Seven pools hold 12m tonnes of hazardous waste, including an estimated 120,000 tonnes of heavy metals.

A new Merck funded study has concluded that Merck's controversial Gardasil HPV vaccine poses no risk for developing autoimmune conditions. The conclusions come as no surprise to those who have seen self-serving results from previous Merck funded studies, many of which were later proven false or misleading. Ironically, shortly after Merck announced the study results the FDAapproved the addition of an autoimmune related disease to the side effects listed for another HPV vaccine.

An article posted on September 3 in Infectious Disease News reported that study data was presented at the 50th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy which showed that Merck's quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine (Gardasil) did not raise the risk for developing autoimmune conditions. The study was sponsored by Merck and conducted on behalf of the Gardasil Safety Team.

Ironically, only a day earlier on September 2, a letter was issued by the FDA Department of Health and Human Services to GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals on September 2, 2010, granting their request to "add lymphadenopathy to the Adverse Reactions" in the full prescribing information for their HPV vaccine Cervarix.

In Wikipedia lymphadenopathy is described as "a term meaning 'disease of the lymph nodes.' It is, however, almost synonymously used with 'swollen/enlarged lymph nodes'. It could be due to infection, auto-immune disease, or malignancy.

Autoimmune etiology includes sarcoidosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and rheumatoid arthritis all giving a generalized lymphadenopathy."

Further casting doubt on the Merck study is the fact that thus far over 300 events have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) where the vaccine is HPV or HPV4 (Gardasil) and the symptom is lymphadenopathy. Norma Erickson, President of S.A.N.E Vax, Inc., referred to the Merck funded study as "an outrageous excuse for a scientific study. There are over 60 autoimmune disorders reported to VAERS and the 16 least likely to exhibit (even with Gardasil) were chosen with percentages compiled on only 11 of those - and they were probably randomly sampled."

The new study is hardly the first Merck funded study that has vouched for the safety of its pharmaceutical products which was later proven false. The most blatant examples were the Merck funded studies on what came to be known as "the Vioxx Scandal". Besides self-serving studies, Merck was found to also be guilty of hiding proof of harm, especially increased risks of heart attack. Merck was also found to have paid doctors and researchers to put their names on papers Merck wrote. Before Vioxx was finally pulled from the shelves over 60,000 deaths were attributed to Vioxx.

Merck has invested huge amounts of money and efforts to lobby governments in the U.S. and in other countries to make HPV vaccinations mandatory for young school girls, and it has vigorously maintained that Gardasil is safe. Critics have noted that the figures do not support Merck's claims of safety.

For example, Gardasil causes 400% more deaths than other common vaccines.

G20 ‘Officer Bubbles’ sues YouTube and users over cartoons The Toronto Star reported: “When he first saw a video of a Toronto constable threatening to arrest a G20 protester for blowing bubbles, one YouTube user was so livid, he couldn’t stop writing comments.” “In fact, the man, who uses the alias “theforcebewithme,” can’t even remember writing the specific comment that now has him defending a $1.2 million defamation lawsuit launched by Toronto’s now notorious ‘Officer Bubbles.’”

“Const. Adam Josephs seeks to compel the Google-owned YouTube to reveal the identity of the person who created and posted the videos as well as any information it has on the 24 other users who made allegedly defamatory remarks.”

Cancer ‘is purely man-made’ say scientists after finding almost no trace of disease in Egyptian mummies dailymail.co.uk reported: “Cancer is a man-made disease fuelled by the excesses of modern life, a study of ancient remains has found.”

“Tumours were rare until recent times when pollution and poor diet became issues, the review of mummies, fossils and classical literature found.”

“A greater understanding of its origins could lead to treatments for the disease, which claims more than 150,000 lives a year in the UK.”

On Oct 19 on the O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly bet guest John Stossel $10,000 (to a charity of the winner’s choice) that Proposition 19, the California ballot measure that would make marijuana legal for all adults, will fail. Stossel, who supports Prop 19, said that it’s time to end marijuana prohibition because “it’s a war on our own people.”

“A war on our own people?” asked a bewildered and defiant O’Reilly.

“What does that mean? They’re breaking people’s doors down?”

In another poor and puzzling attempt to defend our failed status quo, O’Reilly tried to compare marijuana to tobacco, by saying “marijuana is exactly as addictive as tobacco.”

Once again, he’s wrong. From TIME magazine: “Estimates vary, but compared with tobacco, which hooks about 20% to 30% of smokers, marijuana is much less addictive, coming in at 9% to 10%.”

And according to the most recent poll, it looks very likely that Mr. O’Reilly could soon be out $10,000.

SurveyUSA shows Prop 19 leading among California voters 48 to 44.

German "heatball" wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban news.yahoo.com reported:

Queen Elizabeth cancels Christmas party in tough times Reuters reported: Queen Elizabeth has canceled a planned Christmas party at Buckingham Palace after deciding it would be inappropriate to celebrate as ordinary Britons feel the pinch from tough economic times.

The royal household thought the event, paid for by the Queen herself and usually staged every two years, would be unseemly as Britons cope with deep public spending cuts to bring down a record peacetime budget deficit.

"The queen is acutely aware of the difficult economic circumstances facing the country," a palace spokeswoman said on Thursday.

The Sun newspaper said the Christmas shindig, planned for December 13, cost 50,000 pounds ($79,000) and was to have been enjoyed by 1,200 guests.

A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.

Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs -by producing them in China, importing them as "small heating devices" and selling them as "heatballs."

To improve energy efficiency, the EU has banned the sale of bulbs of over 60 watts -- to the annoyance of the mechanical engineer from the western city of Essen.

Rotthaeuser studied EU legislation and realized that because the inefficient old bulbs produce more warmth than light -- he calculated heat makes up 95 percent of their output, and light just 5 percent -- they could be sold legally as heaters.

On their website (http://heatball.de/), the two engineers describe the heatballs as "action art" and as "resistance against legislation which is implemented without recourse to democratic and parliamentary processes."

The Agora | 25

NEWS BLITZ continued....

Surge Training is a Powerful Anti-Oxidant Dr. David Jockers reported for Natural-News.com: Oxidative stress represents an imbalance between the production of reactive oxygen species (free radicals) and the body's ability to detoxify the reactive intermediates and repair the result-

ing damage. High levels of unmanaged oxidative stress accelerate aging and disease formation. Anti-oxidants are a primary defense against the damaging effects of oxidative stress. The latest research in the fitness world indicates that high intensity exercise acts to enhance the body's anti-oxidant defense systems.

Our body is designed to adapt to the ever-changing demands of nature. Exercise enhances our metabolic rate and dramatically increases oxidative stress levels in our body. In response, the body builds up its anti-oxidant reserves in order to successfully adapt to the greater level of stress.

Two particularly dangerous metabolic byproducts include the hydroxyl free radical and malondialdehyde (MDA). The hydroxyl free radical is highly reactive and is produced in abundant amounts when the body is under stress. When hydroxyl free radicals interact with cell membranes they cause lipid peroxidation. This produces highly reactive cross-linking agents such as MDA that further damage cellular components leading to accelerated aging.

The end product of the damage MDA produces in the body is a pigment called ceroid lipofuscin. This is a product of oxidized cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes. These pigments appear as "age spots," or "liver spots," on the skin of our hands and face. They are a sign of excessive oxidative stress and internal damage within the body.

A recent study in rejuvenation research demonstrated the effects of high intensity exercise training. The study looked at 6 individuals exercising at several different intensities. When the subjects exercised at a higher intensity level they had a greater anti-oxidant effect. Additionally, the study showed that each participant produced less hydroxyl free radicals at a higher intensity than at a lower intensity.

Another recent study published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning showed that high intensity resistance training decreased MDA and increased glutathione content. Glutathione is the major antioxidant that our cells produce.

Higher levels of glutathione are associated with great health and anti-aging effects on the body.

Higher intensity exercise maximizes the body's anaerobic exercise system. The anaerobic system produces lactic acid due to the lowered oxygen state. Most people associate lactic acid with the burn they feel

The Agora | 26

when they exercise. The greater the intensity of exercise = the greater the lactic acid secretion. Researchers now believe that lactic acid may actually act as a free radical scavenger.

High intensity exercise also enhances certain critical enzymes that produce glutathione. This is a natural adaptation the body makes due to the higher free radical load. The combination of increased glutathione and lactate gives high intensity exercise an incredibly powerful anti-oxidant and anti-aging effect.

Surge training utilizes the principles of very high intensity anaerobic exercise for short spurts of time. This style of exercise produces large amounts of lactic acid. A consistent training program challenges the body to become more effective at buffering acidity and free radicals in the system. This bodily adaptation lessens the burden of oxidative stress and allows us to age with grace and beauty.

Surge Training Tips: 1. Warm-up for 5 minutes at a lower intensity 2. Do speed drills where you run (or cycle/elliptical/etc.) for 30 seconds and walk for 30 seconds for 5-10 minutes and then cool down for 5 mins.

3.Perform high intensity resistance training exercises 4.Aim to surge train 2-3x each week and do resistance training 2-3x each week.

Russia’s International Reserves Advance to Two-Year High as Euro Surges Bloomberg reported: Russia’s international reserves rose to the highest in two years last week as the strengthening euro bolstered the world’s third-largest foreign currency stockpile.

Reserves jumped $6.7 billion to $501.1 billion, Russia’s central bank said in a statement on its web site today. It’s the first time the reserves have broken $500 billion since mid- October 2008, a month after the collapse of U.S. brokerage Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. triggered the global credit crisis.

“This is only because the euro moved so much,” Alexey Moiseev, chief economist and head of research at VTB Capital, the investment banking arm of Russia’s second-largest bank, said by phone in Moscow today. “Russia will give up the 500 level as soon as the euro starts to pare back its gains.”

Know what’s important: Having a Healthy Food Supply like eFoodsDirect is Essential (AD) The euro climbed 1.1 percent against the dollar last week, its fourth straight week of gains, as investors shunned U.S. assets amid concern the economic recovery will slow and the Federal Reserve may ease monetary policy further. Euros account for 41 percent of Russia’s reserves, while dollars constitute 47 percent, British pounds 10 percent, Japanese yen 2 percent, along with a small amount of Swiss francs, First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said in June.

India 'to be given place at UN top table' London Telegraph reported: According to Indian diplomatic sources, New Delhi will use its place at the high table of the world's leading powers to push for UN reform to reflect the rise of growing powers like itself, Brazil and South Africa.

India will take up its place on the 15 member council as a regional representative of Asia following a vote at the United Nations General Assembly. It will join its ally South Africa, Colombia and two countries out of Germany, Canada and Portugal.

Should Germany win the election, three members of the Group of Four alliance pushing for an expanded Security Council – Germany, Brazil, India and Japan – will form an influential pro-

reform caucus. Brazil is currently serving the second of its two year term as a regional representative.

In any case, all four of the 'BRIC' countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China, the world's fastest growing economies – will sit together on the Council for the first time, strengthening the hand of the world's growing powers.

Pranab Mukherjee, India's finance minister and second most powerful figure in Indfia after the prime minister, last week intensified New Delhi's campaign for a permanent seat at the Security Council and a shake-up of the global power structure which emerged following the second world war.

During a visit to Washington last week, he said:"I do hope that as and when the expanded Security Council along with the general reforms of the United Nations take place, India's claim for being a permanent member of the Security Council will be considered and accepted."

India's former foreign secretary and High Commissioner to London Lalit Man Singh said his country will now use its influence, along with its allies, to intensify the pressure for reform.

"The Security Council needs reform. Permanent membership went to the victors of the Second World War but so much has changed since then. It should reflect the reality of 2010 not the reality of 1945.

"India joining the Security Council takes us a step closer to permanent membership, things are looking hopeful," he said.

grow faster or larger as carbon dioxide (CO2) levels increase, the higher growth rates cannot be sustained because the availability of soil nutrients remains finite, suggests the study

by US and Australian scientists published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, led by Dr. Richard Norby of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, included Professor Ross McMurtrie of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

It updates a long-running experiment in a deciduous forest stand in Tennessee that has been exposed to elevated CO2 levels about 25% above the current atmospheric concentration – effectively exposing the trees to what that ambient CO2 concentration is expected to be in about 2050.

It had been widely thought that increasing CO2 concentrations would stimulate plant growth, which in turn would absorb enough carbon from the atmosphere to slow the rate of CO2 increase.

That belief appeared to be confirmed by the first six years of the experiment, during which the net productivity of the forest was significantly increased. But the new report has revealed that in the subsequent five years the net productivity of the forest has declined, a fall attributed by the researchers to the limited availability of nitrogen in the soil.

The researchers say the experiment provides strong rationale and process understanding for incorporating nitrogen limitation and nitrogen feedback effects in ecosystem and global models used in climate change assessments. In short, the study suggests that terrestrial vegetation will not be as large a carbon sink as previously thought.

"We're going to have to learn not to trust in trees to remove as much carbon from theatmosphere as we had hoped," says Professor McMurtrie.

He has also been part of a similar study, the Hawkesbury Forest Experiment, near Sydney, in which the responses of Australian eucalypt trees are being followed.

The new findings may be especially pertinent for trees growing in low-nutrient soils, as occurs in much of Australia

NATO commander expresses concern over potential security issues caused by melting Arctic ice Stripes.com reported:

Study finds trees not so large carbon sinks physorg.com reported: The capacity of trees to counter rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere may not be as great as previously thought, according to a new study with significant implications for predicting future climate change.

While trees initially seem to

On the eve of meetings between Russia and NATO, the alliance’s top military commander expressed concern about potential security problems caused by melting Arctic ice sheets.

Adm. James G. Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander, said rising temperatures in coming years will open the region to natural resource exploration and could create a “zone of conflict,” according to the British newspaper, The Guardian.

Stavridis urged “global leaders to take stock, and unify their efforts to ensure the Arctic remains a zone of co-operation – rather than proceed down the icy slope towards a zone of competition, or worse a zone of conflict,” according to The Guardian report.

HISTORY VANCOUVER IN THE 1870S Granville, British Columbia, Canada This article is the third of a series excerpted from the large atlas-sized book Vancouver: A Visual History. It is a decade-based history of the city that employs a rigid format for each ten years of the city's modern development. It begins with the 1850s, when ‘Vancouver’ was still completely First Nations territory and there were no non-Native immigrants or settlers. Each decade is presented with a large and detailed colour map of the city with text describing events over the decade. These are accompanied by coloured graphs and small maps, as well as portrait photographs showing representative people and new buildings from the decade. All the photos, graphs and text are keyed to the maps.

| by Bruce Macdonald In 1870 the Hastings Sawmill had been operating for 3 years. This mill was the first large industrial building constructed in what is now Vancouver.

Next to the sawmill site a few squatters had begun a tiny settlement nicknamed Gastown. This caused the colonial government in Victoria to send a surveyor to mark off a small townsite and put up lots for sale. The official name Granville was given to the subdivision that was centred on the site of Vancouver’s first small business, Gassy Jack’s saloon. Although only 3 lots were sold at the first government auction, this site was the location from which the City of Vancouver began its explosive growth after it was established in 1886.

both company towns alcohol was prohibited, making the 4 saloons in Granville popular places for the millworkers and loggers to drink and play cards.

One manager of the Hastings Sawmill recounted, “I have known our mill to shut down for a couple of days because so many were engaged in a particularly interesting game that was going on.”

The Hastings Mill Store was built in 1868, one of the first modern buildings in Vancouver. Today it is the oldest building by far.

(City of Vancouver Archives Bu P368)

Gassy Jack’s saloon – Vancouver’s Central Business District c. 1870 John Robson was editor of the New Westminster Guardian newspaper, a future MLA and premier of BC who is remembered today by Vancouver’s Robson Street and Robson Square. In his New Westminster newspaper the British Columbian Robson observed, "On Burrard Inlet grows the finest stand of easily accessible timber in British Columbia." Some considered Burrard Inlet to have the finest timber in the world, and Greater Vancouver at the time contained some of the tallest and largest trees in the world. The Hastings Sawmill timber lease covered most of Vancouver, 19,000 acres of forest at the rate of 1 cent per acre per year, for 20 years (7,700 hectares for 2 cents per hectare per year).

Throughout the 1870s the focal point of ‘Vancouver’ remained the Hastings Sawmill. Just across Burrard Inlet was the larger Moodyville Sawmill. These were the two largest sawmills in British Columbia. At the Hastings Sawmill and at Moodyville the sawmill companies provided bunkhouses with board for their single employees, and lumber for the married workers to build their own shacks. At Moodyville the different residential areas went by colourful names such as Brigham Terrace, the Rookeries, Frenchtown, Kanaka Row, Knob Hill and Maiden Lane. The centre of social life was the Big House on Knob Hill, built by one of the mill owners, future senator and lieutenant-governor Hugh Nelson after whom Nelson, BC is named. In

In 1873 Henry Alexander became the first official White child born in ‘Vancouver.’ He was the son of Richard Alexander, the manager of the Hastings Sawmill.

Throughout the 1870s, Burrard Inlet society was a combination of Native and non-Native cultures. Many First Nations people worked at the sawmills or supplied food to the logging camps and mill workers.

Lumtinat of Khwaykhway village, today part of Stanley Park.

(City of Vancouver Archives P Port 392)

The First Nations village of Khwaykhway in today’s Stanley Park was the home of Lumtinat, a granddaughter of Chief Keyaplanough (Capilano).

Vancouver’s first modern settler John Morton had observed 2,000 Natives camped at Khwaykhway in 1862, while another source reported a population there of 700 people at some point in the near past.

About 1870 Lumtinat was the honoured woman at a potlatch held at Khwaykhway in the 1,100 square metre (12,000 square foot) old plankhouse called Tayhay. This event was attended by thousands of First Nations peoples from all over the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.

In Granville almost everyone spoke Chinook, the Native trade language, and most of the non-Native men married or lived with First Nations women. Although there were many nonNatives of English, Scottish and Irish origins, many others were sailors of other nationalities who had quit the crews of sailing ships taking on lumber at the mills. Most of the lumber produced in Burrard Inlet was exported to distant places. As a result, the millhands included people with origins from all over the world. The workers had Portuguese, Spanish, Chilean, Russian, Finnish, French, Austrian, German, Belgian, Kanakan (Native Hawaiian), Dutch, American and Swedish backgrounds. A list of 11 general merchants and hotel proprietors in Granville in 1882 included 2 Chinese, 2 Irishmen, 2 Scotsmen, a Black, a Polish Jew, a Frenchman and an Englishman.

The British Colony of British Columbia agreed to become part of Canada in 1871. Since BC was isolated and for the most part only accessible by ship, BC joined Canada on the condition a railway would be built across North America linking Ontario and the rest of Canada to the BC coast. Although Granville was not designated the railway’s terminal until 1884, H.V. Edmonds of New Westminster appears to be the first to speculate that a transcontinental railway would most likely end in the fine harbour at Burrard Inlet. In 1869 and 1870 Edmonds acquired hundreds of acres of wilderness for $1 an acre on the south shore of False Creek. In 1888 he named the area Mount Pleasant and made a fortune selling his real estate in Vancouver’s first suburb.

With the official announcement of the railway route to Burrard Inlet in 1877, people such as Victoria’s Israel Powell (Powell Street and Powell River) and David and Isaac Oppenheimer acquired land large tracts of land. All of the available land around the government town reserve that later became Vancouver Central Business District was soon taken up. To avoid interference with the Dominion policy of concentrating First Nations peoples on reserves, the provincial government specifically prevented them from pre-empting land.

In 1872 the first bridge over False Creek was built, completing land access between Granville, through the future Burnaby to New Westminster. This stimulated the construction of a few stagecoach inns spaced along the unsettled trail, including Joseph Mannion’s Gladstone Inn, now 2201 Kingsway at Gladstone, and the Junction Inn at Vancouver’s first junction at Kingsway and Fraser. In 1875 Vancouver’s first straight road had been built south from Kingsway along what is now Fraser Street, then called the North Arm ‘Waggon’ Road. Its purpose was to connect Granville to the fine farmland along the Fraser River’s North Arm. This route permitted easier access by farmers to their customers on Burrard Inlet, the sawmills and logging camps. The success of these farms led to the rapid settlement of this land and the establishment of the Municipality of Richmond in 1879.

Despite a new road in 1876 from Granville east to the settlement of Hastings at New Brighton beach, and the improved road (now Kingsway), between Granville and New Westminster most people and goods continued to be transported by water.

The early logging was done close to tidewater and almost all the movement of logs and logging supplies was by water. Boats would move workers to and from the small service centres such as Granville, Hastings and Moodyville on the North Shore.

The only government building on Burrard Inlet was a small cottage in Granville that served as a customs house, courthouse and home to Constable Jonathan Miller. In 1886 this tiny building served as Vancouver’s first city hall.

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continued....

Miller worked for 5 years logging what later became Stanley Park, up to the time he was appointed the Constable of Granville in 1871. He

Jonathon Miller’s home, also the government office in Granville. once sat down to a potlatch feast at Khwaykhway with 2,000 Natives. He lived in the only government building in Granville, a small cottage with a tiny wooden jail in the back yard, next to Gassy Jack’s saloon. In 1886 he served as returning officer for the first civic election and afterwards was appointed the City of Vancouver’s first postmaster.

The few so-called roads in the Lower Mainland were often impassable in the wet climate, since they were “innocent of gravel and made up in depth what they lacked in width.” The steam-powered tractors introduced to the Cariboo Road by Francis Barnard were a failure, but at Jericho beach Jerry Rogers adapted the engines in the first use of mechanized logging in BC’s forest industry. The innovative Rogers had also tried using camels for logging. The steam-powered ship Beaver would occasionally dock at the pier in Granville, but in 1888 this famous Northwest Coast pioneer was wrecked at the First Narrows. The Beaver had been brought from England in 1835 by the Hudson’s Bay Company to replace 4 sailing ships. It was the first motor-driven ship in the Pacific Ocean.

METRO VANCOUVER The Fraser delta region comprised potentially productive farmland in

the lowland areas where the yearly flooding of the Fraser River renewed the soil. In the 1870s these areas were organized into municipalities—Langley in 1873, Maple Ridge in 1874, and Richmond Delta and Surrey in 1879. The heavily timbered forests occurring in the hilly and upland areas of the future Vancouver and Burnaby, along the North Shore, and in the uplands of Surrey, were located on sandy soils deposited by glaciers. Unsuitable for farming and difficult to clear, these areas tended to be developed later. By the end of the 1870s the most populated rural area continued to be the farming region around old Fort Langley, particularly the Maple Ridge area with about 300 people. In the 1870s most of the farming in BC was being done in the lower Fraser Valley and southern Vancouver Island. Farming in BC employed about 2,800 in 1871, compared to just 2,300 remaining in mining. More roads were built connecting New Westminster to the local farming regions and the Yale Road linked it by a sleigh road through the Lower Mainland to the BC interior for the first time in 1874. This trail was built to Yale to link with the beginning of the older Cariboo Road to Barkerville. The only road to the interior, it was travelled by a few dozen wagon trains drawn by oxen, mules or horses, numerous stagecoaches and hundreds of pack horses and mules.

BC ECONOMY Gold mining continued to be an important part of the BC economy, but by the end of the decade coal mining and fishing had become important as well. The demand for coal was increasing as steam-powered ships replaced sailing ships and other steam-powered machinery came into use.

In 1871 Captain Stamp had quit the Hastings Sawmill and started one of BC’s first fish canneries in New Westminster. He used tin cans fabricated by John Sullivan Deas, a Black tinsmith from South Carolina.

By 1873, Deas operated his own substantial cannery on an island near the mouth of the south arm of the Fraser River, eventually the site of the entrance to the Deas Island Tunnel.

The 1881 census listed approximately 800 Natives as living on Burrard Inlet, and there were an estimated 800 non-Natives, almost all at Granville and Moodyville. The 288 Musqueams

included in the census were mostly living at Musqueam.

By 1881 the total population of BC had grown to over 49,000. This was only about onetenth the population of Nova Scotia and less than half the population of Prince Edward Island. In BC

Jonathon Miller, the City of Vancouver’s first postmaster. the First Nations peoples continued to outnumber the newcomers, but this situation was about to change dramatically in the next decade with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Bruce Macdonald is a Vancouver-born writer and a historical consultant specializing in Vancouver's past. A $100,000 university research grant enabled him to spend 10,000 hours producing this colourful award-winning history of the city on his home computer.

VA N C O U V E R J A N U A R Y 2 0 11 w w w. z e i t g e i s t v a n c o u v e r. c o m

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EVENTS | by nakedcty

ANZA CLUB - BLUEGRASS JAM November 1st, 3 W 8th Ave, Van BC - 604- 876-7128 The Infamous ANZA Club Bluegrass Jam, hosted by the Pacific Bluegrass Heritage Society and Friends. If you think you can play, or just want to hear some smokin' roots music. All welcome!

Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Pacific Bluegrass and Heritage Society (PBHS) is a not-forprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of Bluegrass and Old Time music through regular jams, workshops, concerts, and other special events. Composed of over 200 individuals and operated on a volunteer basis, the PBHS always welcomes new members, as well as people who are just curious or just want to listen. If you play an instrument and are interested in Bluegrass, Old Time, or derivative forms of these traditions, there are always plenty of people to jam with on all levels. http://www.pacificbluegrass.bc.ca/ STORIES OF MUSIC, MUSIC OF STORIES Wednesday November 3, 7pm-10pm- FREE! Carnegie Community Centre Theatre 401 Main Share an intimate and dynamic triple bill with musicians who tell stories with their music and storytellers who play music about stories.

The evening opens with a special opportunity to hear a solo performance with composer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist, Joseph 'Pepe' Danza, one of Vancouver's top percussionists. He mastered the traditional musical techniques of his homeland Uruguay, before traveling the world studying the sitar, the suling (ring flute), and the shakuhachi. Since moving to Canada in 1988 Pepe has established himself as one of the foremost drummers and bandleaders on the West Coast.

Second on the bill is Dave Paterson, a Vancouver based musician who grew up in Montreal. For the last twenty years Dave has been playing guitar, singing and accompanying himself on harmonica. Playing a variety of roots and blues, Dave shares his rich knowledge of the lore and history of this amazing 20th century American music form.

Ending the evening is writer, storyteller and musician Wong WingSiu, joined by Jim Sands and Michel Vles as The Deaf Dogs, a trio of contemporary and traditional folk balladeers. In addition to telling stories, Wing-Siu sings and plays percussion.

Michel sings and plays a multitude of wind instruments some of which he's played for upwards of thirty-five years since first falling in love with the flute.

Jim, everyone's favourite tourist from Germany, is an East Vancouver musician, actor, and songwriter who sings and plays guitar. Special guest this evening is The Deaf Pup, Andy Lang Wong, who plays fiddle with The Deaf Dogs whenever they can get him to play along. Free

The artists this evening (Danza, Paterson, Wong) offered workshops and performances at Carnegie Centre this past year through a grant from the Face the World Foundation.

IN OUR BACKYARD IS YOUR BACKYARD - opening night parade! FREE! Friday November 5, 5pm-6pm Oppenheimer Park, 488 Powell At 5pm join Oppenheimer Park artists, community members and neighbours for the Art Show Opening Night Parade, led by Brad Muirhead and the newly formed Carnegie Street Band.

Gather at the new Oppenheimer Park Field House and join the sidewalk procession to Gallery Gachet!

IN OUR BACKYARD IS YOUR BACKYARD - Opening Reception Friday November 5, 6pm-9pm FREE! Gallery Gachet, 88 E. Cordova Exhibition November 5 to 28 When the Oppenheimer Park Art Show began in 2008 it helped to bridge the community through the challenging transformations of a pre-Olympic city. Today, on the other side of redevelopment, Oppenheimer Park remains a resolute community of people upholding the Park's vision as a place for art, education, recreation, health and healing. This art show features

work by new, emerging and established artists that reflects the vibrant and creative community in and around the Park and offers a unique perspective into the heart and home of the Downtown Eastside community. For information: 604-687-2468 or www.gachet.org.

MEDIA DEMOCRACY DAY Saturday Nov, 6th, Promenade and Alice Mckay Room, Central Library, 350 West Georgia- FREE! Since 2001, Media Democracy Day has brought together citizens, academics, artists, media makers, and learners in a dynamic dialogue on the state of the Canadian and global media systems.

HOW THE ARTS SUPPORT SOCIETIES IN CIVIL CONFLICT Mon., November 8, 2010 at 7:30 pm, Royal Bank Cinema - FREE! Chan Connects Series - Arts as Activism Panel discussion - "How the arts support societies in civil conflict" Facilitated by Rena Sharon (UBC School of Music) Featuring: Lila Downs ,Dr. Erin Baines (Liu Institute for Global Issues) Michelle LeBaron (UBC Program on Dispute Resolution) Reena Lazar (Peace it Together) http://www.chancentre.com/whatson/how-arts-support-societies-civilconflict

THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL OF SOUND DESIGN CINESONIKA will run from November 12th - 21st at the Westminster Savings Credit Union Theater, Simon Fraser University Surrey Theater The theme of this international film and video festival is to celebrate the soundtrack. Usually in cinema festivals there is a fixation on movie stars, or captivating imagery, or the literary qualities of screenplays. Sound tends to be relatively unvalorized in moving-image making. The intent of the festival is to give attention to innovative work in the creation of film and video soundtracks, and to give due credit to the importance of audio in audiovisual media.

This first annual festival will showcase international works of film and video with fascinating soundtracks, idiosyncratic sound design, eclectic scoring and innovative approaches to the soundimage relationship. These works will be screened in a two weekend festival at the Westminster Savings Credit Union Simon Fraser University Surrey Theater, which feature's one of the most advanced digital theaters in Canada, with 4K HD 3D capable digital projection utilizing a Lightyear Digital system. info@cinesonika.com www.cinesonika.com HARD RUBBER ORCHESTRA 20TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT November 13, 2010, 8pm, New Woodwards Theatre

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"Hard Rubber is, no question, consistently the best Vancouver band event you can see" Discorder Magazine Special guests: Veda Hille, Joe Keithley, Hugh Fraser. Music by Veda Hille John Korsrud Bill Runge Brad Turner Tony Wilson Ron Samworth, Chris Gestrin, moog/ piano, Ron Samworth, guitar, Andre Lachance, bass, Kerry Galloway, bass, Dave Robbins, drums, Jack Duncan, percussion, Cameron Wilson, violin, Bill Runge, soprano sax, Saul Berson, alto sax, Steve Kaldestad, tenor sax, Chad Makela, bari sax, Derry Byrne, trumpet, Kent Wallace, trumpet, Tom Shorthouse, trumpet, Rod Murray, trombone, Dennis Esson, trombone, Jeremy Berkman, trombone, Brad Muirhead, bass trombone, John KorsrudDirector www.johnkorsrud.com REEL 2 REAL FAMILY FILM SCREENING Saturday November 13, 2:00 pm FREE! Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye Rooms, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street Enjoy the greatest hits from the Reel 2 Real Festival's archive, including the Youth Jury picks for animated and live action short film HOP SCOTCH FESTIVAL Vancouver's Premium Scotch, Whiskey and Beer Festival November 15th 21 Experience Vancouver's Hopscotch Festival and the more than 200 products available to taste, sample and discover. Don't miss this unique occasion of being able to truly experience some of your favorite brands and their world renowned brand ambassadors.

After yet another completely sold out festival in 2009, Foodconnect.com's Hopscotch Festival is ready in 2010 to impress Whisky, Premium Beer, and Spirit enthusiasts alike. Hopscotch continues to prove itself as the superior premium Scotch, Whisky and Beer festival on the west coast and the biggest combined Whisky and Beer festival across all of Canada. Each year the festival improves its educational component by giving enthusiasts the opportunity to learn, sip, and taste only the highest quality of liquors and premium beers. 2010 will be no different. Get Ready.

Due to immense popular demand and yearly consecutive sell outs, The Grand Tasting Hall will take place over three nights, instead of two. As well, for the first time ever, The Grand Tasting Hall will be held on a Saturday Night.

With the event selling out weeks before the actual event, it was an easy decision to open up the tasting hall, for a 3rd night.

Hopscotch's Annual Grand Tasting Hall is awesome in every sense of the word. One can not imagine the experience of the Grand Tasting until they do just that, experience it. In 2009 there was more than 60 exhibitors and 200 products.

2010 will match those numbers and include many new and exciting products to sample and learn about.

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Enjoy the 3rd year of the premium spirits section that includes premium Vodkas, Rums, Tequilas, Gins, etc...

Go booth to booth and sample your way around the world. http://www.hopscotchfestival.com/w elcome IMAGINATION! PARKS CANADA SPEAKER SERIES Wednesday November 17, 7:00 pm, FREE! Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street Celebrate 125 years of National Parks in Canada with IMAGINaNATION! Parks Canada's award-winning theater troupe, Mountain WIT, animates this family-friendly 40 minute journey through the mosaic of our country's most treasured places.

MAKELA PERFORMS MEDITATIONS PERFORMING JOHN COLTRANES, MEDITATIONS Nov 20th -$5 ADMISSION email for time and location nakedcty@gmail.com Now based in Vancouver, British Columbia, baritone saxophonist Chad Makela attended the University of North Texas on a scholarship as well as Capilano College.

Chad studied with Roy Reynolds, formerly of Stan Kenton's big band, Dr. Eric Nestler and James Riggs and played in the renowned One O'Clock Lab Band for three years, working with Randy Brecker, Joe Lovano, David Liebman, Slide Hampton, Dr. Billy Taylor and Peter Erskine. Chad has also performed with Ernie Watts, Conte Condoli, Snooky Young, Arturo Sandoval, Ross Tompkins and Chris Vadala.

HITCHHIKER'S INNOVATION EXPO Saturday November 20, 12:00 pm3:30 pm, FREE! Promenade, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street So much of Douglas Adams' vision for the future has come to pass.

Come and see what the future holds for us! Check out the latest gear, eco-gadgets and technology at the expo and electronic petting zoo.

SPECIAL EVENT WORLD PREMIERE OF SCENES 1 & 5 OF ENIGMA, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ALAN TURING BARRY TRUAX - A PORTRAIT November 19, 2010 -8PM, Scotiabank Dance Centre, 677 Davie Street Free artist chat @ 7PM Tickets: $30 regular, $20 students & seniors.

Tickets at Tickets Tonight (ticketstonight.ca/604.684.2787), and will be available at the door.

Vancouver New Music looks back over Barry Truax's impressive 40year career in music. The evening will feature a retrospective of Truax's works, beginning with Riverrun (1986), a now classic work that introduced the technique of granular synthesis to the world.

The audience will also be treated to the world premiere of excerpts from Truax's forthcoming music theatre work Enigma, The Life and Death of Alan Turing. Featuring Will George, Catherine Laub, Michael Mori and Josh Beamish.

Vancouver New Music looks back over Barry Truax's impressive 40-year career in music. Truax is a composer of national and international acclaim, and has pioneered some of the most groundbreaking work in electroacoustic composition.

Vancouver New Music is pleased to present the first Vancouver event dedicated entirely to the work of this city's most celebrated composer.

Enigma, The Life and Death of Alan Turing is a music theatre piece in five scenes, written for three singers, a dancer, and six-channel electroacoustic soundscape. Vancouver New Music has commissioned the first and last of these scenes which will be premiered this evening, and will feature performances by Will George (tenor) and Catherine Laub (soprano) of the Vancouver art-song chamber collective, Erato Ensemble. The performance will also feature a newly commissioned solo dance work from up-andcoming choreographer and dancer Josh Beamish. Enigma takes its story from the facts and words of Turing's life, as well as poetry from Alfred Lord Tennyson and others.

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was a British mathematician who has been widely recognized as the father of the modern computer. After his death

BARRY TRUAX - A PORTRAIT Scotiabank Dance Centre November 19, 2010 Turing became famous once his role in deciphering the German "Enigma" code during World War II finally became publicly known; this work was key to the British war effort in the Atlantic. In 1951 Turing had an affair with a 19-year old working class youth in Manchester that eventually led to his conviction under the charge of "gross indecency", the same crime that Oscar Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years earlier. To avoid a prison sentence, Turing agreed to the injection of female hormones. A year after his probation ended he was found dead, presumably from eating an apple laced with cyanide. His death was declared a suicide.

Enigma's first scene takes as its subject a 16-year-old Turing, a precocious youth given to scientific experiment and idiosyncratic behaviour. The scene revolves around Turing and his infatuation with another brilliant youth, Christopher Morcom. The final scene leaps forward in time to Turing at age 40 and takes the audience through his relationship with Arnold Murray, and Turing's final tragic days.

The evening will also feature a the Vancouver premiere of Androgyne, Mon Amour (1996-97), a music theatre piece originally commissioned by the American virtuoso performer Robert Black, performed here by Arraymusic bassist Peter Pavlovsky (Toronto).

The program includes as well

some of Truax's recent works, including The Shaman Ascending (2004-05), a piece inspired by Inuit throat singing that involves a high energy display of vocal material simulating a shaman chanting to achieve spiritual ecstasy, as well as Chalice Well (2009), a soundscape composition for 8-channel tape. Chalice Well takes the listener on an imaginary journey down into this holy well in Southwest England, passing through several cavernous chambers on its descent, filled with rushing and trickling water. Chalice Well was premiered at the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast.

Barry Truax is a Professor in both the School of Communication and the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University where he teaches courses in acoustic communication and electroacoustic music. He has worked with the World Soundscape Project, editing its Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, and has published a book Acoustic Communication dealing with all aspects of sound and technology. As a composer, Truax is best known for his work with the PODX computer music system which he has used for tape solo works and those which combine tape with live performers or computer graphics. In 1991 his work, Riverrun, was awarded the Magisterium at the International Competition of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France, a category open only to electroacoustic composers of 20 or more years experience. He is also the recipient of one of the 1999 Awards for Teaching Excellence at Simon Fraser University.

Barry is an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre and a founding member of the Canadian Electroacoustic Community and the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. http://www.sfu.ca/~truax/ MISS LANDMINE Nov. 22nd 6pm pacific time, CBC World TV Premiere, a documentary original Award-winning director Stan Feingold explores the people, events, ideas and sociopolitical context of the Miss Landmine project - an initiative started by Norwegian theatre director and philanthropist Morten Traavick. The Miss Landmine project celebrates Cambodian women maimed in land mine accidents.

Along the way, Traavik encounters his own landmines: cultural sensitivities and unsympathetic governments in his quest to empower the women of Cambodia.

With Traavik as narrative guide, Feingold weaves a dramatic and compelling arc.

SONIC PLAYGROUND - PAINTED SOUNDS Graphic Scores- notations and visual representations Sunday November 28th, 11am5pm FREE!- email info@newmusic.org by Nov 22nd to register!

Painted Sounds is a workshop on graphic notation, where signs and symbols are used to represent sounds, Using graphic notation, neither composers, nor performers need to know how to read or write traditional musical notation. All participants will be encouraged to engage in large scale abstract drawings that will form the basis for one collective or multiple graphic scores that will then be interpreted and performed by the group. At the end of the workshop participants will give a live music performance of

the pieces they've created. This workshop is for ages 14 and up- bring your own instruments and your voice! http://newmusic.org/sonicplayground2010.htm THE COCA-COLA CASE Tuesday November 30, 7:00 pm-9:00 pm, FREE! Alice MacKay Room, Lower Level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street

New World Order got you down?

ASHTANGA

YOGA

MYSORE

You'll never look at a can of Coke the same way after seeing this documentary film.

Directors German Gutierrez and Carmen Garcia present a searing indictment of the Coca-Cola empire.

HOW TO START YOUR OWN COUNTRYTHE FILM http://www.howtostartyourowncountry.c om/Country/The_Film.html What makes a country a country? What makes a state a state? A nation a nation? And what's to stop you from starting your own?

In a globe-hopping search for an answer to these fundamental but little understood questions of sovereignty, How To Start Your Own Country visits six micronations unrecognized self-declared sovereign enti-

HOW TO START YOUR OWN COUNTRY Directed by Jody Shapiro ties that you will not find on a political map.

Meet Prince Leonard and Princess Shirley of the Hutt River Province Principality, the second -largest nation on the continent of Australia; Salute President Kevin Baugh, the absolute ruler of the Republic of Molossia, entirely surrounded by the state of Nevada; say "buon giorno" to good folk of Seborga, a 1200-year-old principality which claims to have been included in Italy by mistake.

Through the lives and experiences of these micronational pioneers - whether farmer, artist, pirate or inventor -- the film lays bare the ephemeral nature of statehood while interviews with diplomats and experts in international law expose a revelation: there is no legal definition of a country in international jurisprudence. You are a country if you say you are. But declaration does not guarantee recognition.

Along the way we learn of the exclusionary membership terms of the United Nations, the ultimate country club. We realize that the maps that shape our self-image as citizens are mere representations, the boundaries they delineate relative. Wherever you look in the world - from the high seas to forsaken desert -- there is someone with a different idea of what constitutes home. And an urge to put themselves literally on the map.

From the outback soil of the Hutt River Principality to the futuristic ocean cities of The Seasteading Institute, these visionaries are challenging the status quo, setting their own course and creating nations that you will not find in an atlas‌ at least not yet.

How To Start Your Own Country explores a concept most of us take for granted: the countries we call home. nakedcty@gmail.com

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