Jak's View From Vancouver

Bands of Gold

Soon silence will have passed into legend.

"Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.  Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding and trilling bolster his ego."  -- Jean Arp

The Far Rights' Values

At the far-right's "Value Voters Debate" the other night, the program began with a singing of "God Bless America". However, the lyrics were changed to the following:

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land

The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray

Why should God bless America?
Shes’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right

But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

This is what the core republicans truly believe about America today. They hate it. They hate you and your friends for making it what it is.  They are desperately filled with hate and self-loathing, and thet will continue to thrash about until someone gets hurt.

That's scary enough. But can you imagine the vitriol from O'Reilly and Hannity and Coulter and the others had a Democrat changed the song to meet "liberal" views?  But the hypocrites are silent, of course.

I guess Giuliani, Romney, McCain and Thompson deserve some sort of credit for  refusing to take part in this  charade debate.

Free Geek Vancouver

A very good friend passed on this link to Free Geek Vancouver.  I haven't used them or assisted them yet, but from reading their materials, this seems to be exactly the kind of anarchistic cooperative enterprise we need to support and to build more of.  I am glad to spread this link.

Leaves, With Tree

9/11 -- Thirty Four Years On

Today is the thirty-fourth anniversary of the coup in Chile; a coup in which a terrorist superpower brutally overthrew a democratically-elected government.

Few Americans will remember this anniversary, they'll be solemnly remembering one of their own -- an anniversary brought about, in part at least, because of the kind of imperialist despotism that September 11, 1973 so clearly reminds us.

Long live the memory of Salvador Allende and the brave Chilean people!

Echoes of Childhood

100 Years: Vancouver's Racist Riot

On September 7, 1907, white racists rioted in Vancouver.  They attacked and rampaged through Chinatown, and they attacked and were beaten back from Japantown.  No one died, but only through luck.  The riot was spurred by a march of the Asiatic Exclusion League, a labour union-supported group of racists seeking to exclude all non-white labour from British Columbia.

We can tell ourselves that this was now a hundred years ago.  Unfortunately, the riot was only the beginning. Over the next fifteen or so years, these same racists managed to have laws passed that reduced Japanese, Indian and Chinese immigration to a trickle.  They also had the Native Canadians moved to reserves.  The Chinese Exclusion Act stayed on the books until 1947; and Natives were not given the vote until as late as 1960.

Canada's racist past is nowhere near as deep nor as broad as that in many countries, but it does exist, and we will be obliged to repeat our sins if we choose to forget the sins of our own history.

RIP Maestro

Urban Sunset