be the change you want to see in the world

Lisa and I just spent a week in Vancouver. We stayed at a friend’s apartment west of Denman right beside Stanley Park. The weather was fantastic, the food great, the sights and shopping beyond reproach. Saw the Rodin show. High tea at Bachus. Brunch at Lift. Pizza at Hell’s Kitchen. Breakfast at Tomato. Sooo much good food. Met with many friends and had fine conversations and many laughs.

Is there a more beautiful city when the sun is shining and it is warm on the patios until midnight? Too bad its like that for only about sixty days a year. We were lucky.

A recent survey of Americans and Japanese citizens discovered 6-in-10 Americans feel World War Three is likely. Big surprise. America is now driven by an ideology of war, and of being “at war.” It is how people are distracted and focussed on issues outside the domestic scene, and how dissent is quashed. Being “at war” is now the standard mode for the USA. With the War on Terror, American leadership now has an open-ended excuse to wield the military is support of whatever foriegn policy agenda they like, and simply lie to the public by telling them its about the War on Terror. As long as a majority of Americans allow themselves to be duped in this manner, or to agree that this is the proper strategy, the rest of the world will continue to push back, and we will indeed remain at war.

Reported in The Independent but unavailable to non-suscribers. Allow me to do you the service or reproducing it all here.

Found: Europe’s oldest civilisation

By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent
11 June 2005

Archaeologists have discovered Europe’s oldest civilisation, a network of
dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and
cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000
years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The
Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an
appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later
than in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

In all, more than 150 temples have been identified. Constructed of earth and
wood, they had ramparts and palisades that stretched for up to half a mile.
They were built by a religious people who lived in communal longhouses up to
50 metres long, grouped around substantial villages. Evidence suggests their
economy was based on cattle, sheep, goat and pig farming. Read more

Came across a really good blog on the situation in Iraq, written by an Iraqi.

The Winter Patriot in the USA has started a fascinating site that equips people with handbills and posters to be distributed or posted in public places. The materials contain news stories that would never make it into the mainstream media. What a great concept.