Friday, June 23, 2006

Rock For Peace.


If you are able to be in Vancouver, Canada on Saturday afternoon, please join us to mingle with the crowd and wish for peace, justice, and sustainability. While you're there, please also explain to me what the Hell is sustainablity. Also, if you will, explain why a child throwing a rock is a worthy image for a peace conference. Finally, give me one good reason why Cindy Sheehan is still finding an audience. I will pay one nickel to anyone who can do all three tasks or cleean the Augean Stables before sunset.

What? My hair is growing down to my shoulders. I'm wearing "love beads"? What is this paisly shirt? What's happening to me? Oh no! Man, I'm havin' this flash-back to the 60s. I'm hearing Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, like, you know, man, Zappa doing that tune "The Torture Never Stops."

Bum-mer, man. This ain't no flash-back from years of dropping bad acid in the 60s: this is reality! Oooh bummer, fer sher, man.
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Vancouver Schedule of Events

*Get organized to join the big Peace Walk today!

On June 24, as part of the World Peace Forum in Vancouver, join a peace walk to say:

No War, No Where- Walk for Peace, Justice and Sustainability

Saturday, June 24

-Gather at 12 Noon at two starting points: Seaforth Peace Flame Park (south end of Burrard Bridge), or Waterfront Skytrain Station in front of Canada Place

-March at 1p.m.

-Rally and Festival 2p.m.-5p.m. at Sunset Beach on English Bay (at Bute and Beach Ave)

Featuring Cindy Sheehan and local and international speakers...
http://palsolidaritygrp.org/
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Our Mission

Palestine Solidarity Group - Vancouver believes in the full political, economic, and national liberation for the Palestinian people in its entirety. Striving for a full and unconditional end to the Israeli occupation of the 1967 territories, including the unconditional right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and full political, legal, and economic equality within the 1948 territories.

PSG is opposed to all forms of racism, including Anti-Jewish racism and Anti-Semitism. Our solidarity is based on internationalism. With this in mind, PSG activities seek out alliances with like-minded groups and individuals.

PSG recognizes the full implication of imperialism and it's role in the oppression and degradation of the Palestinian people. We therefore focus our efforts not only on the entire state of Israel, but the Zionist material and ideological supporters in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. PSG works to promote greater education and action on the subject of Palestine within working-class and progressive circles in their own areas, as well as beyond.

http://palsolidaritygrp.org/about-us.htm

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June 9, 2006

Peace forum coming to town

Questions remain over involvement of Jewish community.

KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR

The co-chair of the forthcoming World Peace Forum (WPF) in Vancouver believes the event will provide a balanced view of the Middle East conflict, one of the many topics under discussion when peace advocates from around the world gather in the city June 23-28.

The forum is organized through a central board, but topics for workshops have been decided via various working groups. In addition to working groups covering topics of particular interest to women, First Nations delegates and youth, as well as those addressing issues in Africa and Asia, there has been a Middle East working group. As of press time, its co-chair, Paul Tetrault, had not responded to requests from the Independent for more information on the Middle East-related workshops.

Though there has been concern in some quarters that the organized Jewish community would be underrepresented at the forum, WPF board co-chair Ruth Herman said, "I think there are going to be many people who are Jewish who are coming to the World Peace Forum. My understanding is that the program workshops that are being put on with respect to Israel do have people from both Palestine and Israel in them, so I'm not hugely concerened about the fact there will be no people representing a point of view from Israel - keeping in mind that there will be diverse points of view within Israel itself."

[....]

Vancouver's main organized Jewish community groups – Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, the Canada-Israel Committee, Pacific Region, and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver – will not be participating in the WPF.

[....]

Michael Elterman, chair of CIC Pacific Region, said there was no communication between his organization and the Middle East working group until such time as he was informed the proposals had been rejected.

[....]

When asked if he felt there was any anti-Semitism at play, Elterman replied, "Well, it's anti-Semitism to the extent that [they] discriminate against one group and don't use the same treatment against all the other groups."

http://www.jewishindependent.ca/archives/June06/archives06June09-02.html
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The acid trip has worn off, and I'm now back to the real reality. True, sorry to relate, the fascists will be out in force on Saturday. But too cool to pass up, we'll be there to protest 'em, man. Dig it!


Oh yeah, before I forget, "Peace, Man."

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The mis-named World Peace Forum—which Vancouver, to its shame, is hosting—is nothing but a platform for the most virulent anti-Israel speakers and organizers the loony socialist left has to offer.

Harvey Enchin, Vancouver Sun

Published: Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Vancouver is hosting a major anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-globalization, anti-capitalist conference starting Friday that will draw apologists for terrorism and champions of failed states from all over the world.

The reason you haven't heard about it is that it goes by the misnomer, the World Peace Forum.

There is nothing peaceful about the message these deluded propagandists are preaching.

[...]

http://www.proudtobecanadian.ca/index/weblog/let_the_hatefest_begin/
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ruth Herman says that representtives of Israel will be present at the Peace forum but she qualifies it with, "keeping in mind that there will be diverse points of view within Israel itself."

That qualifier hints that they will be bringing some Jews from Israel that aren't exactly pro-Israeli -- like the Jews from Israel that Nathan P., a friend of Peace Forum organizer Ann Roberts, used to bring to his talks on the Israeli-Palestinian issue at the Carnegie Learning Centre. These Jews, some from Israel and some local, were critical of Israel and sympathetic to the Palestinians. He also brought a Palestinian, who had grown up in Canada, to criticize Israel. There were even Mennonite women brought in, armed with a slide show, to critize Israel.

The only pro-Israel person I ever saw at those talks was a Downtown Eastside resident -- named Israel incidentally -- who used to drop in as an audience member ... and squirm.

Nathan is an American Jew who makes no attempt to mute his criticisms of Israel. He's quite a nice guy in general though.

Maybe the Peace Forum organizers will attempt to have some balance. Ann Roberts, afterall, teaches City Politics in the Journalism program at Langara College so she no doubt has to at least pretend to care about getting different points of view.

But the fact can't be overlooked that the organizers, Ann Robberts and Ellen Woodsworth (the granddaughter of the CCF founder), are part of the Committee of Progressive Electors [COPE] crowd that use the Carnegie Centre as their political base. I've never seen anything favouring Israel at the Carnegie. The Carnegie newsletter has carried pro-Palestinian material.

When I say Roberts and Woodsworth are the organizers, I mean that they were the ones who pushed for the Peace Forum while on Vancouver City Council. It was granted to them by the Mayor and other councilors as a concession to get some of the infighting to stop -- around the time the Mayor started to accuse them of being "too ideological". Peace is certainly not something these City Councilors -- who destroyed their own party -- will be remembered for.

Anonymous said...

Dag,

The "double double" has finally arrived in the land of double trouble. Tim Hortons arrived in Kandahar yesterday and will be opening on Canada Day.

Fifteen Canadian workers have been flown in to re-create Tim Hortons just like it is back
home -- except for the panhandlers.

The menu will be slightly more limited than it is in Canada though. But they will serve staples like Karla Homolka's favourite iced cappuccino. And they will have muffins. No mention of whether they will carry their flavour that you brought to my attention after a guy (presumed Arab) blew himself up when his bomb went off in the washroom of a Toronto Tim Horton's -- "fruit explosion".

Dag said...

Jane, you are one fine correspondant here. Thanks for the tips. One can only hope your efforts will help bring down the rotten system of Left dhimmi fascism as practiced in Vancouver. I'm optimistic. And if it should so happen, you can count on my vote. In the mean time, coffee's on me any Thursday evening at the public library.

Dag said...

We wrapped up our counter-protest today in front of the Orpheum theatre in Vancouver, Canada.

I'm exhausted at the moment but will do what I can in the evening to give some detail from my point of view regarding what occured. charles will write the lead feature here, and Truepeers is covering the meeting of minds and the mindless at http://covenantzone.blogspot.com/

In all, we had a successful morning. We are also movie stars, being now on a CBC/Radio Canada documentary.

Reminder to Dag: "Lose a lot of weight, mate."