beachjustice: The Shawinigan Handshake

cameronr:vicemag:

SEW SOLIDARITY CREW - ED HALL’S PROTEST BANNERS ARE WORKS OF ART

Ed Hall is a 64-year-old retired architect. He’s also a one-man factory of positive propaganda. If you’re a facist, homophobe, warmonger or a heartless person with too much power, then it’s likely Ed has socked it to you—with a banner. Since working for Lambeth Council in the 1980s, Ed has made over 400 banners for causes he believes in. Every stitch he does himself at home and, even though sorting out the Gay and Lesbian Firefighters Union with polemic arts and crafts isn’t very profitable, he refuses to do commercial work.

After a career in which he’s supported the unions against Thatcher and hoisted anti-George W. Bush banners up Nelson’s Column, Ed’s work is now being exhibited in proper art galleries. If you’re in China, you should visit the British Council’s art collection on display at the 2010 Shanghai Expo where Ed’s work is being shown alongside Bridget Riley and David Hockney. Anyone not in Shanghai who wants to see Ed’s work should probably go to any righteous protest happening anywhere in the UK.

Read our interview with the man here!

towerofsleep: thepublics:

Some thoughts on pavilion architecture:The Canada pavilion at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics is an ugly disgrace. It’s also not up to code. But somehow its blatant shittiness exemplifies the current state of Canadian politics and culture: uninspired, uninformed and either manufactured by Americans or undermined by the impulse to ape the US. Admittedly, comparing the Expo ‘67 pavilion to the 2010 pavilion is a tad superficial, but I think it serves as an architectural metaphor for the current trajectory of the Canadian notion.

The ‘67 pavilion was designed by Rod Robbie & Paul Schoeler. Robbie was an anti-nuclear weapons activist who would go on to receive the Order of Canada for being “an architect known for his innovation.” While Schoeler is credited with bringing Modernism to Ottawa and remembered as one of Canada’s most adventurous architects. The central structure of the pavilion was an inverted pyramid, called Katimavik, which translates as “meeting place” in Inuktitut - and served as a symbol of Canadian society.

Lester B. Pearson was PM at the time of the Expo - his legacy is massive: He is the father of modern peacekeeping and won a Nobel Peace Prize in ‘57 for for his role in defusing the Suez Crisis. Universal health care, student loans, the Canada pension system, a new minimum wage, the 40-hour work week and the Maple Leaf flag were all made possible by his leadership and co-operation with Tommy Douglas. And he also instituted the world’s first race-free immigration system - the bedrock of Canadian multiculturalism, and a policy innovation that has lead Canada to have the highest per capita immigration rate in the world.

“Threats to global survival, though they are sometimes exaggerated in apocalyptic language which makes our flesh creep, are real. The prophets of doom and gloom may be proven wrong but it is a chilling fact that man can now destroy his world by nuclear explosion or ecological erosion. The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war. Therefore, the best defense of peace is not power, but the removal of the causes of war, and international agreements which will put peace on a stronger foundation than the terror of destruction.”

- Lester B. Pearson

Alternatively. The prefabricated (!) 2010 pavilion was designed and built by a US firm based in Chicago. After its unveiling, Vancouver’s premier architect, Bing Thom, called the pavilion “an embarrasment.” It’s bland aesthetic looks like something you might see left unoccupied next to a run-down strip mall. A discount furniture store, a 24-hour gym, a retail outlet, etc. It has no character and accomplishes nothing. Just like our current PM, Stephen Harper, who is an inversion of Pearson.

Whereas Pearson put in place the framework for the Canadian notion, Harper has done his best to turn Canada into USA lite. Since taking office in 2006, he has yet to accomplish anything of note other than the marginal appeasement of his critics and the doling out of populist gestures (apologies, tax cuts) so that he can maintain a useless minority government. He has failed to capture a majority twice and his party is currently embroiled in a detainee torture scandal, a situation exasperated by his boldest move yet: the wildly unpopular proroguing of parliament.

“I don’t know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.”

- Stephen Harper

That said, there’s loads of amazing stuff transpiring on all around Canada, sonically, textually, politically and so forth, but on the macro level, the Canadian notion is immobile. All of our major media outlets are bankrupt or on their way - the CBC mother corp is more irrelevant than ever, and our parliament is beyond dysfunctional and possibly broken.

The Canada of 2010 seems to have rejected the very innovation that made “Canada” possible, and has in its place adopted a policy of cheap prefabrication. Like the fake made-in-China Cowichan sweaters being sold at the Bay - it’s proven easier to outsource our brand for profit than it is to keep our cultural integrity intact and build something original.

Get well soon, Canada’s Dad!

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Iris Robinson is, at the time of writing, under acute psychiatric care in a Belfast hospital, after a BBC Northern Ireland documentary revealed that she had, at the age of 59, solicited £50,000 from two property developers to help fund a business run by her 19-year-old lover, Kirk McCambley. […]

Being mad in Northern Ireland is different from being mad in any other place. The Robinsons come from a community in which people talk to God and He talks right back to them. ‘I have forgiven her,’ said Peter Robinson. ‘More important, I know that she has sought and received God’s forgiveness.’ These communications from God can be fairly abstract, they can be politically convenient, they seldom involve what the rest of the world call auditory hallucinations, but there is no doubt that the sense of conviction they carry can be overwhelming.

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Long piece in the London Review of Books about Iris Robinson, former politician and wife of the (now stepped-down, temporarily) First Minister of Northern Ireland. This story was all over the news here last week, but from the perspective of her husband’s political career. Anne Enright’s essay presents some interesting background regarding Robinson’s mental state and the effect her religion and Irish politics in general may have had on the situation.

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Can we not see a world of difference here even in the cuts of their suits, and the width of their ties? Also are you allowed to have NOTES at the debate? Because boy, it looks like you are.

kennedys: Kennedy v. Nixon (1960)

The Economist vents spleen on PM's decision to prorogue - The Globe and Mail →

towerofsleep:

lukesimcoe:

Influential British magazine decries Stephen Harper’s ‘naked self-interest’ in thinking ‘Canadians care more about the luge than the legislature’

Link to the original piece in The Economist.

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Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to [staph infection]. But Norway’s public health system fought back with an aggressive program that made it the most infection-free country in the world. A key part of that program was cutting back severely on the use of antibiotics.

Now a spate of new studies from around the world prove that Norway’s model can be replicated with extraordinary success, and public health experts are saying these deaths - 19,000 in the U.S. each year alone, more than from AIDS - are unnecessary.

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Solution to killer superbug found in Norway: AP News : TheMonitor.com (via quietbabylon)

Has any nation ever had a leader who had to try so hard to seem like a relatable human being?

"In early July, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper traveled to New Brunswick to attend the funeral of former Governor General Romeo LeBlanc. At the funeral, the prime minister was given communion. Video footage shows him accepting a wafer from the priest, but cuts away before anyone can see him eat it. Nobody thought much of this until the Telegraph-Journal, a New Brunswick paper, published a front page article claiming that the prime minister put the wafer, which represents the body of Christ, in his pocket. Then everyone piled on the story. Eventually, the prime minister and his spokesman issued strong denials."

Regret The Error’s year in corrections column is out!