"Tell me and I will forget;
show me and I may remember;
involve me and I will understand."
(Confucius,
450 B.C.,
Chinese Proverb)
EVENTS/NOTICES
Peoples' Social Forum: Fighting Harper and beyond. The Peoples’ Social Forum due to be held in Ottawa from August 21st to 24th 2014 is more than a one-off major event. It has the potential to provide a framework for unity and coordination of all political forces opposing Harper and neoliberalism. Using a horizontal approach to decision-making, organizers from diverse labour unions, community groups, student and youth organizations have been reaching out to a plurality of social movements across Canada, Québec and Indigenous communities. While the short-term goal of the Peoples Social Forum is to form a cohesive front against the Conservative agenda of austerity, its long-term goal is to transform the current political, economic and political paradigm. Website: http://www.peoplessocialforum.ca/
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/ForumSocialDesPeuples
DOCUMENTARIES
http://www.filmsforaction.org/: Watch
1000s of documentaries for free - Films For Action uses the power of film to
raise awareness of important social, environmental, and media-related issues not
covered by the mainstream news. Our goal is to provide citizens with the
information and perspectives essential to creating a more just, sustainable, and
democratic society.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ Overall at Top Documentary Films
you can find 2100+ (more to come) stunning, eyeopening and interesting
documentaries. We always have to keep in mind that a Documentary,
after all, can tell lies and it can tell lies because it lays claim to a form of
veracity which fiction doesn’t. Some of the documentaries are made just to
discredit some particular person, party, organization, system etc, but most of
them here on TDF are non biased, without prejudice and worth watching.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ-J91SwP8w&feature=player_embedded
A 5 minute animated documentary about the history of fossil fuels
http://www.storyofstuff.com/ The Story of Stuff
http://vimeo.com/3829682
a poem on speaking with conviction or the
sad state of how so many young people of today speak
http://therealnews.com/t2/component/hwdvideoshare/?task=viewvideo&video_id=75339
Anonymous: A message to Canadians
ARTICLES
Robert Reich on Inequality for All
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/robert-reich-on-inequalit_b_3977266.html
Alberta Oilsands Projects -
Canada's Hiroshima:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/alberta-oilsands-projects-canadas-hiroshima/5365273
(Discipline of) Economics (not) in
Crisis:
http://www.pieria.co.uk/articles/economics_not_in_crisis
The academic discipline of
economics ought to be in crisis. Its reputation has been
severely damaged by the financial crisis. The implosion of
finance and the slowdown in economic growth has left economics
floundering. Economists have routinely assumed that markets work
more or less perfectly and have assumed away the possibility of
crisis. These assumptions betray an economics that is out of
touch with reality and in need of revision. Yet in several
ways mainstream economics is continuing as if the events of
recent years had never occurred.....
Tunisia embeds climate protection in
constitution
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/02/01/tunisia_embeds_protection_of_climate_in_new_constitution.html
The hypocrisy:
Conservative federal government using tax payers $ to fund their propaganda
campaign for a job training program that doesn't even exist: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-job-grant-ads-cost-2-5m-for-non-existent-program-1.2495196
The stupidity of
Alberta and other provincial governments' refusal to have natural resource
extraction corporations pay their fair share of taxation, along with the
Conservative federal government and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (an
extremist right wing anti-tax group) seeking further tax cuts that just benefit
the owning class and hurt the working class,
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/01/15/If-Every-Norwegians-a-Millionaire-Whys-Alberta-in-Hock
Harper's Conservative goverment attack on
science:
http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment/
and their attack on libraries:
http://mjbrown.com/canadas-chaotic-dismantling-of-science-libraries/
Links between CSIS & Enbridge
- who cares
about conflict of interest? Harper doesn't:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/wayne-k-spear/enbridge-stephen-harper_b_4552210.html?utm_hp_ref=canada-
From middle-class to minimum wage.
With no
way back
http://www.thestar.com/news/atkinsonseries/2013/12/13/the_incredible_disappearing_middle_class.html
Researchers find 7,300-sq-mile ring of
mercury around tar sands in Canada
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/29/7-500-mile-ring-ofmercuryfoundaroundcanadastarsands.html
Seven ripoffs
that capitalists would keep out of the media
http://www.nationofchange.org/seven-ripoffs-capitalists-would-keep-out-media-1387205890
Gaffing all the way
http://www.nationofchange.org/gaffe-ing-all-way-1387810856
Does having money make you mean? TED talk
Paul Piff (Berkely Social Psychologist)
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2013-12-20&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_image
An
anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe.
He
put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that who ever got there
first won the sweet fruits.
When he told them to run they all took each others hands and ran together, then
sat together enjoying their treats.
When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the
fruits for himself they said: '
'UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?''
'UBUNTU' in the Xhosa culture means: "I am because we are"
HARPER'S CANADA 2015
See
Websites, organizations, individuals
to check out to get different perspectives on current issues, from local to
global.
Are you an ally?
Check out the following articles:
http://www.progressive.org/native-peoples-challenge-canada-gutting-environmental-laws#.UOwjRGAWYq4.email
http://rabble.ca/news/2011/12/attawapiskat-firing-back-racist-rants-and-ignorant-responses-facts
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/second-reading/there-is-still-time-for-idlenomore-to-learn-the-lessons-of-occupy/article7220995/
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/daniel-wilson/2013/01/time-hard-look-role-media-fostering-neo-colonialism#
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_20130113/
SUMMER 2014 COURSE
OFFERINGS
Some quotes I find
particularly enlightening during these times:
Search the internet for the following
quote:
“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human
interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” Albert Einstein,
perhaps an apt description of so many of today`s generation
"Feminism has fought no
wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps,
starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education,
for the vote, for better working conditions, for safety on the streets, for
childcare, for social welfare, for rape crisis clinics, women's refuges, reforms
in the law. If someone says, "Oh, I'm not a feminist!" I ask, "Why? What's
your problem?"
Dale Spender
"P.S. It is my
observation that too many of us are spending money we haven't earned to buy
things we don't need to impress people we don't like"
H. Jackson Brown's
mother (from P.S. I Love You)
"The earth does not belong to humans." - Arne Naess, Deep Ecology for the 21st
Century, p.74.
"As deep ecology supporters see
it, we share this planet with other life forms, including all animal life, on a
basis of equality. There is no hierarchy of life forms where humans are on top
of an evolutionary pyramid, free to do whatever they want with the rest of the
natural world."
"If you want the trees to stand, you have to stand with the trees."- Friends of
Clayoquot Sound
"They that can give up
essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty
nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin US
Statesman 1706-1790
"Charity consoles but does not question. 'When
I give food to the poor, they call me a saint, and when i ask why they have no
food, they call me a communist.' Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal
and takes place between equals, charity is top-down, humiliating those who
receive it and never challenging the implicit power relations. In the best of
cases, there will be justice someday, high in heaven. Here on earth, charity
doesn't worry injustice, it just tries to hide it."
Eduardo Galeano
"You must be the change
you wish to see in the world."
Gandhi
“The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals
are treated.”
Mahatma
Gandhi
"Civil disobedience is
not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of
people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their
government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this
obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the
face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem
is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all
the while the grand thieves are running and robbing the country. That's our
problem."
Howard Zinn
"Every gun that is
made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not
clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the
sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its
children."
Dwight D Eisenhower
"Never doubt that a
small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is
the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
"This crippling of
individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational
system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated
into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation
for his future career. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these
grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy,
accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social
goals."
Albert Einstein, Monthly Review, 1949
"The contest for ages
has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power". Daniel Webster
(1782-1852)
"The price good people
pay for their indifference to public office is to be ruled by evil men" ...
Plato
"Fascism should rightly
be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power"... Benito
Mussolini
"First they came for
the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they
came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came
for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they
came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me." -Pastor
Martin Niemoller, 1945, Germany
So what are you doing
to make this world a more peaceful place and one that will provide a healthy
planet for your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and so on...?
Copyright © 2001 by [E.W.> van der Veen]. All rights reserved.
Revised:
28 May 2014 11:22:02 -0300.
Note: I apologize to
those people or organizations where I have used their information to compile
what I am presenting and have neglected to cite them as a source.
