$? Work Less Party ?$'s topics - tribe.net

Global Warming PArty 2.0

2008-01-21T21:11:20Z

Ladies n Gents, Freaks n Hipsters alike... Disaster Area is proud to present you with the next Pool Party Extravaganza! If you missed the last one, shame on you. If you miss this one? Double shame on YOU cause the last one was off the hook!

Pool party in February? Yeah I know. It's too dang cold for a pool party . . . but what if the pool was heated to a toasty 110 degrees and the steam surrounding the pool made for some delicious atmosphere and a cozy environment? What if we had some super HOT DJ's to shake your booty to after a relaxing dip and a stripper pole too?
Yes there will be a bar for all the thirsty swimmers, Beer, wine, and RedRave/Vodka will be served. Booze tickets are $4 each or 6 for 20 bux. So stock up while the quantity discount is available!

Mark Feb 9th on your calendar and click the link : [disasterarea.tempco.org] to reserve your ticket!

We will be limiting the number of tickets for this event and they will be double at the door, so get them before they are gone!

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photos from the Enchanted Forest

2008-01-17T17:27:31Z

not mine. found on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dubesor/sets/72157603729508835/

anyone else got any?

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musicben736@hotmail.com

2008-01-08T05:50:04Z

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unofficial illuminares after party: Tim Wisdom, Pheonix Olivia

2007-12-18T18:37:44Z

Patio Lanterns at 7 studios (illuminares after party).

Saturday July 29 @ 440 West Hastings (@ Richards)

Doors open at 11pm when Werdamouth will dive into a drum, dj, spoken word jam
12am Dj Phoenix rocks the crowd with progressive.
2am Timothy Wisdom drops his booty shakin’ beats till ya’ll wanna go home

$10 at the door, cash bar

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ben russ

2007-12-18T18:36:33Z

chriss ross

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Your Story

2007-11-19T18:35:39Z

Hey everyone. I am looking for some inspiration towards a life of working less. I am currently working 40 hours a week plus 2 hours a day commute time and am just looking for some inspirational stories to take the leap and WORK LESS. It is scary for me to think about especially when I have become comfortable with my pithy paycheck. I am also wondering if your journeys have you relying on other people in your life more? For example, did you transition to your partner's healthcare plan, etc. Any feedback you want to share would be great. Jen

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NCEF! Media sabotaged! Hijacked by lone wingnut! Accused of fraud and embezzlement!

2007-11-07T04:34:37Z

NCEF! Media in Humboldt County, Ca. is accused of fraud and donation embezzlement. Caution! Do not support this lone wingnut's scam! Other legitamate groups exist in the area. Caution! Do not be fooled by NCEF! Media and his fraudulent outreach. Shunka Wakan exists completely seperate from any active affinity group. Read about how he perpetuated a lawsuit under the guise of EF! against a legitamate environmental nonprofit:

Dog Days
From: http://northcoastjournal.com/100407/cover1004.html
October 4, 2007
Money On Trees

Big cash nearly fell into Shunka Wakan's lap. Other Earth First!ers are kinda happy it didn't.

by Heidi Walters

As the jury trial for the civil suit Kathryn Miller v. the Trees Foundation puttered to a start last week inside Courtroom 3 at the Humboldt County Courthouse, Shunka Wakan — a key witness for the plaintiff — spent mornings sitting on the hard wooden benches in the long hallway outside the courtroom. During breaks, Miller's attorney Linda Mitlyng, would come out of the courtroom to join him. But otherwise, as other people and their legal affairs swirled around him in a warm, odiferous bath of humanity, Shunka sat alone. Or, sometimes, he stood alone, straight-spined, his small, stocky body swallowed by the huge, stiff blue suit out of which his newly shorn, razor-scraped bald head poked vulnerably — as if, at any moment, the suit could gulp once more and he'd disappear completely. Always, he clutched a paper folder with a wolf's face on its cover.

The North Coast Earth First! Media guru had shaved off his woolly rust-tinged brown hair and beard the night before jury selection started, after discussing it with attorney Mitlyng. Now, it took an uncertain moment to recognize him. Then, of course: Shunka's light blue eyes in the pink-pale face, Shunka's closed-lip smile, Shunka's trademark husky murmur, "Mm-hmm, for sure," in response to a comment.

In Courtroom 3, the amiable but no-nonsense Judge Christopher Wilson's domain, the fate of a $185,000 donation dangled. Would the plaintiff, donor Kathryn Miller, prevail in her claim that the defendant, the Trees Foundation, was not in fact the intended recipient of her generous gift? That Shunka Wakan's NCEF! Media Center and the treesitters were? Or would the Trees Foundation convince the jury that, in fact, the money was intended all along for Trees, with no instructions attached for funneling it elsewhere?

Richard Idell, left, who is defending the Trees Foundation against a lawsuit filed by Kathryn Miller, confers with Doug Wallace, community support coordinator for Trees. Photo by David Lawlor.

In her opening arguments, Miller's attorney, Mitlyng, said the case came down to "fraud and broken promises." "She believed [Trees] would hold [the money] in trust, for the benefit of North Coast Earth First!" said Mitlyng. The defense's attorney, Richard Idell, countered in his opening argument that the donation was an unconditional gift and Miller never wrote letters of instruction — as Miller claims she did. "Ms. Miller ... didn't do anything. She took the check [from her mother's estate] and flipped it over and wrote on the back, 'Payable to the Trees Foundation,'" said Idell.

Miller's claim sought the return of her $185,000, plus interest.

Out in the hallway, Shunka waited to tell his side of the story. Maybe he thought about the magical donation that never materialized, and now probably never would. Maybe he thought about the other times he'd been in this courthouse — dozens of times, along with other activists, often before Judge Wilson, answering to charges of trespassing and other forms of civil disobedience in the woods. Likely, he wondered when they were finally going to call him in to testify — it was taking forever in there. He'd even sent out an e-mail prematurely to the several hundred subscribers to his NCEF! online group erroneously announcing he would be first up to testify.

By the end of Friday's court session, Miller was still on the stand. Perhaps Monday it would be Shunka's turn. Whenever it was, he would be testifying on Miller's behalf; but he wasn't a party to the lawsuit. And in the end, after hearing all of the evidence, the jury would be determining who was telling the truth about intentions and letters of instructions. Shunka was just there to provide context and evidence in a contract dispute.

But to a number of forest activists, including a half dozen or so who appeared in the audience last Friday to watch the trial unfold, that context matters more to them than the legal questions. They say this lawsuit has placed a strain on the environmental community that could do as much damage as an ill-felled redwood that takes down other giants in its descent. They disapprove of the lawsuit, and they blame Shunka for it. And, they say, it's just another example of how Shunka has commandeered the North Coast Earth First! identity and used it for purposes that nobody else in the amorphous but consensus-driven local Earth First! movement has agreed to.

"For a lot of us, when we read about the lawsuit, this is kind of like Shunka on trial," said long-time forest activist Deane Rimerman last Friday, calling from Olympia, Wash. "And, to what extent is he worthy of that money?"

Kathryn Miller wanted her money to go toward saving trees, she said on the witness stand last Thursday. The slender 59-year-old was dressed in a pink print skirt and white sweater, with her gray-streaked dark hair pulled back into a neat, thin braid tinted slightly green. (Little did the jury know that Miller had spent the night in jail, in blue jail duds, and then had been "dressed out," in court lingo, in her street clothes before being escorted into the court by the bailiff. Miller had been arrested the week before, on Sept. 17, when she arrived in civil court for the pre-trial readiness hearing; according to the misdemeanor criminal charges filed against her, Miller allegedly had made annoying phonecalls to Barbara Ristow of the Trees Foundation all hours of the day and night.)

On the stand, Miller described how she became an activist. She remembered how, when she was a child in Orinda, her mother decided to stop spraying the beautiful oak trees on their property after reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. "And then, when my son was 9, we were watching the news on TV about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown. And my son said to me, 'I wish I'd never been born. I don't think I'll get to live a full life.'"

She protested the building of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. She started a peace action group in the late 1980s in San Jose. She did nonviolent protests at the Nevada Test Site. And in 1990, she came up with some of her fellow protestors to help set up the camp for Redwood Summer, and to take part in demonstrations. She's been on and off involved in Earth First! actions in Humboldt ever since, she said, including huffing in supplies for treesitters and huffing out their garbage. She'd also, at one point, bought a condo in Arcata.

In 2004, Miller sold her condo and bought an acre of farmland, already planted with coffee, in Guatemala. She put in fruit trees to shade the coffee. That same year, her mother, who lived in Sonoma, died. "The last time I saw her was in 2003," said Miller. "She told me when she died, she was going to leave me some money. I told her I'd use it to further my work for the forest. And she was pleased, because she loved the treesitters and the forest."

Shortly after learning of her mother's death, Kathryn Miller sought out Shunka Wakan in front of the food co-op in Arcata, where he "tabled" to raise funds for the North Coast Earth First! Media office — selling T-shirts, and stickers, offering pamphlets, accepting donations. She'd known Shunka for about five years, she said.

"I said to him, I was going to inherit some money: What was the best way to get that to the North Coast Earth First!?"

In the spring of 2005, Shunka Wakan was floating above the treetops. "I was so excited," the 32-year-old said in an interview a few weeks ago, sitting inside his tiny but colorful North Coast Earth First! Media office in Arcata, walls covered in art and topo maps — including one of Buckeye Mountain, where in 2000-2001, during the "Mattole Free State" action, Shunka and others hiked 14 miles through waist-high snowdrifts to save trees.

Kathryn Miller, he recalled, had come up to him excitedly as he walked along the sidewalk outside the Arcata Co-op and said, "I just donated $185,000 to North Coast Earth First!'"

She'd talked to him the year before about making the donation — she'd said she was anticipating an inheritance from her mother's estate, and she wanted to make a big donation to his group. He'd told her to make it through the Trees Foundation, which handled the NCEF! Media office's finances through an arrangement that had been established years ago. (The Trees Foundation is an umbrella organization formed in 1991 to assist smaller environmental groups. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, it can accept large, tax-deductible donations on behalf of affiliates, and provide professional resources. And it can lead large campaigns, like the one to save the Headwaters Forest back in the '90s.)

Well, now she'd finally done it.

Miller and Shunka agreed to meet at Fiesta Café in Sunny Brae, so she could tell him how she wanted the money spent: She wanted, straight away, for someone to organize a mediated workshop for the local Earth First! activists on ageism and sexism, issues she thought were fracturing the movement. And, she wanted the bulk of the donation to help support the forest activists who blockade logging roads and hunker up in ancient redwoods to fend off loggers' saws.

Not long after, Shunka was on his way to have lunch with some folks from the Trees Foundation, where they'd talk about Miller's wishes.

"Our media outreach was going to get a big boost," Shunka said. "The donation would keep the EF! office going for many years. So I walked into the Wildflower Café feeling elated, thinking we got all this money."

Barbara Ristow and Doug Wallace of the Trees Foundation were there. "I was super excited," Shunka said, "and I said, 'This is great, this big donation. Isn't it wonderful?' We ordered food, and still I'm all excited, talking about the money, but I notice they're looking nervously at each other. [Finally], they said, 'Well, we're just shocked that you think this money was for you.' And I was like, 'I just met with the donor, and that's what she said.' And they're like, 'Well, let's go ahead and plan the workshop and deal with that later.' I remember that, because it put me at ease."

After that, Shunka said he gave Trees a list of people he thought might benefit from the mediator-run workshop. "Some were people I knew had beefs with me, but I was willing to bring 'em into the circle and talk about it."

According to some vague accounts, the workshop was a disaster. One person who was there claims that Shunka, at one point, pounded his fists on the floor, blustered, then got up and stormed out, yelling as he walked away. Shunka says that's overblown.

"The letter from Kathryn Miller to Barbara Bristow said she wanted the mediation to be a safe place, safe to be emotional," he said. "And I think people are saying 'I freaked out.' The freak-out reports are exaggerated. It's just part of this ongoing character assassination. People say I was 'red-faced.' But my face is naturally red."

In late 2005, while Shunka was in Seattle, a friend called him from Arcata to say a woman had come by asking for the office key. She had a list of equipment she wanted to take away. The friend didn't give her the key.

When Shunka got back from Seattle, he discovered his reimbursement funds from Trees had been "frozen." He also learned about a letter someone in the NCEF! movement had circulated for signatures and then sent to Mark Knipper, who handled the Trees Foundation transactions for the NCEF! Media office. It said, in essence, "We don't want Shunka running EF!"

"I called the Trees Foundation," Shunka recalled. "I was sick, it was the middle of the winter, I'm trying to table, it's raining, it's cold. And Barbara Ristow told me, 'You just need to have a meeting [with the other Earth First!ers] and come to a group consensus on what the Trees Foundation funding should be used for."

The meeting never happened — nobody could agree to meet, said Mark Knipper, also in an interview last week. Knipper is a social worker and a long-time activist who had been the contact person between Trees and NCEF! Media. "So it ate itself," Knipper said. "And although I'm former Navy, a mariner, I said I'm not going down with this ship. So I divorced myself from it ... and signed it all back to Trees."

The NCEF! Media office was dropped from the Trees Foundation altogether.

Shunka and the NCEF! Media office never did see any of the big donation. Miller didn't even know that, he said, until she phoned him up in the summer of 2006, more than a year after she made the donation, to ask about a guy named "Jungle," who had been reported as missing on the NCEF! hotline. Miller was spending much of her time in Guatemala now, where she was raising fruit trees; after she'd made her big donation, Hurricane Stan had struck — she spent the ensuing year mopping up the mess.

First, Shunka told her Jungle was still missing. Then he told her about the money.

"I said, 'Yeah, they told me it wasn't for us,'" said Shunka. "And she said, 'I meant for all of it to go to you guys.' She sounded real upset. And I was like, 'I knew it! I knew it!'"

Shunka tried to sue Trees in small claims court, but it went nowhere.

Miller filed a claim against the Trees Foundation on Oct. 5, 2006, in Humboldt County Superior Court, seeking the return of the $185,000 plus interest so she could distribute the money herself.

And if she wins? "She may just spread it out more," said Shunka. "She's got tree planting ideas. Maybe she could buy a grove. She'd maybe not give it all to Earth First! this time. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Trees blew for us."

On an uncomfortably hot afternoon last week, four forest activists who'd agreed to an interview for this story — Jeff, Shaggy, Sparrow and Farmer — sat on the ground at the Arcata Marsh next to a log bench on which a teeming crew of red ants worked a splintered notch. Someone had come along here in 1999 and carved a grouping of faces — bearded, grimacing, possibly mourning faces — onto the log and signed it Daniel. The carving had been drenched in red paint, and burnished by years of sitters.

"It kind of reminds me of the memorial for Gypsy," said one of them. "With the red paint."

Gypsy was the forest name of David Nathan Chain, who in September 1998, during an Earth First! action at Grizzly Creek, was crushed to death by a tree felled by an enraged logger. Farmer, actually, was there — he was just 16, but had a year of activism already under his belt. And Shunka was there — it was Shunka's first forest action.

Farmer, Shag, Sparrow and Jeff first made it clear that they spoke for themselves alone, although they participate in various forest defense affinity groups: Farmer works for the Mattole Wildlands Defense Group now, watchdogging the California Department of Forestry for new timber harvest plans, and keeping an eye on a Pacific Lumber Co. watershed analysis. Shag, who saw his first redwood about five years ago, helps keep the Fern Gully treesit village in Freshwater functioning. Jeff, who grew up in the high desert, and fell in love with the woods, works with the Nanning Creek treesit just outside of Scotia, as well as other groups. Sparrow, who was drawn to forest action because the cultural landscape was "like a folktale" he couldn't resist, is with the Fern Gully affinity group. These groups are all part of the Humboldt Forest Defense Association, a collective with a website but no formal structure.

The HFDA sprang into being six years ago — about the time the entity called North Coast Earth First! had essentially dissolved. It would take a book to describe that drawn-out dissolution — a book of lost causes, won causes, waning media interest, Judi Bari's death, Gypsy's death, ego-spurred squabbles, interpersonal catastrophes, a war overseas, hurricanes. And while the HFDA activists might still cherish the Earth First! name — the movement — in their hearts, it's now been further complicated by what you might call the Shunka effect.

"I still feel in many ways solidarity with the greater Earth First! movement abroad," said Farmer. "But in this county, in this climate, if you say you're with the North Coast Earth First!, many people associate you with North Coast Earth First! Media."

Shunka revived the North Coast Earth First! office around 2002. And he did what previous office managers had done — tabled, put out news releases, wrote articles for other publications. But it wasn't like the old days, in the '90s, when hundreds of people were getting arrested in forest actions and the jail support phone and legal resources were in constant use.

Shunka first worked in an office in Eureka, then later moved to Arcata. He called his outfit the NCEF! Media Center. For a time, he and other "affinity groups" tried to work together. But he alienated some people. He took over the North Coast Earth First! website. He controlled the North Coast Earth First! email list of 300 or more subscribers to the news alerts. He sent out press releases on his own.

"I felt the North Coast Earth First! Media Center was a unilateral effort on Shunka's part," said Farmer. Whereas, in the old days, "spokespeople were decided on by the group. And if you wrote an article it was passed by everyone. I feel Shunka appointed himself spokesperson at some point."

Many also claim they've been subject to a lashing anger from Shunka.

"I won't work with him because I pledge nonviolence in my actions," said Shag. "I don't believe he pledges the same thing. He has exhibited violent behavior towards me and towards other activists in my presence."

"He's a bear," said Jeff, making claw-fists with his hands.

But the sad thing is, all of this infighting probably has done nothing to help the actual trees. And the mediation workshop Kathryn Miller wanted didn't fix matters. Now, there was her lawsuit.

"When I heard about this lawsuit, I thought, the Trees Foundation does not deserve to be attacked in that way," said Farmer. "There's much bigger issues that need to be dealt with — with Maxxam and old-growth logging. ...If you look at Fern Gully and Nanning Creek (the Bonanza timber harvest plan), there's hundreds of old growth acres still standing whose fate is unclear."

Shag put it more bluntly: "If [Miller] knew Shunka and wanted to get the money to North Coast Earth First! Media, she should've given it to Shunka. But if she was trying to get it to treesits and forest defense, then the money went to the right place.

"My problem is this whole representation thing. There's people in the trees — how do you know who to get the money to, to help them?"

Shunka knows that a lot of fellow activists aren't happy with his role in the donation dispute. He also knows how some people talk about him and say he's hard to get along with. "I'm just standing up for the truth," he said. "And people don't like it. To me, it feels like a small clique of people who don't like me. I feel a lot of love and support in this community."

He certainly doesn't come off right away as someone who's angry, or who lashes out, or who locks the office and doesn't let people in. Why, recently, he helped a young woman hook up with the treesitters so she could learn the ropes. (Shaggy said that's proof Shunka doesn't have direct connections with the people doing direct action; but you can't deny it's a connection.)

It's probably a bad idea to ask Darryl Cherney, one of the founders of the local Earth First! movement, what he thinks of Shunka Wakan, whose real name is Jason Wilson. (Shunka tells a story of how he was named by a Lakota medicine man on the banks of the Cheyenne River in South Dakota in 1995. "Shunka Wakan," meaning "great dog," is only part of it. There's a secret part after that — altogether, his name means "the humble man called horse.")

"Shunka's a wingnut," Cherney said over the phone last Friday, sounding cheerfully vitriolic. "I have a 10-verse song about Shunka."

Here are the last few verses:

Who's at the co-op spanging a donation
Shunka, Shunka
Who's got a lawsuit 'gainst the Trees Foundation
Shunka, Shunka
Shunka, Shunka
Who's gonna keep on fighting the fight
Shunka, Shunka
With four of his friends at swimmers delight
Shunka, Shunka
Shunka, Shunka (Shunka voice: It's the last of the revolution)

There's no other word for it but "mean." But Cherney and Shunka have history — not all of it sour. Cherney said Shunka laughed when he heard the song, at least the first time.

"I met Shunka in 1998," Cherney said. "And I know he knew Julia ["Butterfly" Hill, whom Shunka had come west to find]. That was a good thing, helping Julia. That was good Shunka."

Cherney had even pushed for Shunka to go to Houston to talk with Charles Hurwitz, whose Maxxam Corp. bought out the old Pacific Lumber company back in 1985 and quickly became the forest activists' number one villain. Shunka went.

But now? "The current status of Shunka and me," Cherney said, "is that Shunka has sent me five or eight or nine e-mails threatening to sue me. Shunka is a joke."

Cherney can talk for hours about the problems he's had with Shunka over the years. His main point, though, is what has Shunka done for the trees lately?

"My question is, where's your topo maps?" he asked. "Where's your wilderness preservation proposal? Where's your lobbyist team in Sacramento?"

It has to be that, on some level, even the people in the movement who don't like Shunka understand somewhat where he's coming from. So he's emotional. Passionate. Perhaps he's caught up so completely in the cause he can't let go. Or, who knows — maybe he's a phony, like he accused Knipper of being back in 2005.

But being a forest activist comes with perils beyond the obvious physical ones.

"I'm really trying to have compassion for Shunka, even though he's kind of attacked us," said Susy Barsotti by phone from Laytonville a couple of weeks ago. Barsotti is president of the Trees Foundation board, and she says the lawsuit has held Trees hostage, unable to function fully. "I've been mystified and dismayed that he's participated like this in the suit. But Shunka witnessed Gypsy's death. And I think he may have post-traumatic stress syndrome. I don't think he's recovered from it. And that can affect your behavior."

A number of people mentioned this, actually, about Shunka. And he often refers to Gypsy's death himself. In an article titled "What Luna has taught me," posted on the website of Julia "Butterfly" Hill's organization, Circle of Life, Shunka writes: "I decided to commit to doing ground support after witnessing the death of David Nathan "Gypsy" Chain on September 17, 1998 ... I remember looking across the valley as we hiked up that day, seeing the rolling hills of forests and clear-cuts, and thinking out loud, "That's why we're here!" Seeing Gypsy's life taken from him, and then seeing the corruption and lies of the Humboldt County Sheriffs ... really opened my eyes to the situation our old-growth forests face."

Later, he did ground support for Hill in her second year in Luna. And in the same article on her website, something else Shunka writes indicates how ready he was to devote himself to a cause: "Being on the support team was the top priority in my life, and I was happy knowing that everything else revolved around when I'd be needed for the next supply run. I never felt lost because I knew what I was doing. That was a feeling I had not felt in years, between feeling dissatisfaction with life in college, and then more dissatisfaction with life as a minimum-wage worker after college. Before joining Julia's ground support team I was unhappy, even to the point of tears, wondering if my entire life was going to be a minimum-wage nightmare ...."

Pure devotion, without benefit of a little hypocrisy, could drive anyone batty. Deane Rimerman, the activist from Olympia who said it is Shunka who is on trial, said it's not uncommon for intense, stressful movements like Earth First! to produce an army of walking wounded. And he's been around, in forest actions up and down the coast, for long enough to know; he was the one, in fact, who "got the maps and led the first hikers up to the hill" to the Gypsy Mountain campaign and Luna treesit.

"In the forest activist movement, there's very little that's rewarding," Rimerman said. "There's a lot of post traumatic stress syndrome. All of us get it. Once you've been through the court process, and the jail process, and seen 1,000-year-old trees get cut down that you really cared about and thought you could save — it's devastating."

That alone, setting aside the troubles with Shunka, could explain the many rifts that have occurred within the local EF! ranks over the years. Josh Brown, who moved to Humboldt in 1995 right before the peak of the Headwaters campaign, said one of the unique qualities of Earth First! is that it "is primarily a youth movement."

"A lot of people that come through are young, are passionate — and it's a wonderful thing," he said. They get thrown into leadership positions quickly — and then they get burned out. Many move quickly on to other things. Brown stayed in longer than most. "When I left [in 2001], I was 30 years old. And I'd been a full-time activist since I was 18."

Paradoxically, said Brown, the youthful draw and the departure of seasoned activists leaves the movement with "no elders to kind of sit around and coach the [new kids]."

The movement also draws strong personalities, he said. Tenacious ones, too, like Shunka's.

"Shunka, I think he really does have a big heart," said Brown. "And I think he does care for the forest."

Last Friday, following the morning session of Miller v. Trees, a group of the Humboldt Forest Defense Association activists stood on the courthouse steps talking. The door opened, and Shunka walked out and down the steps toward the group. They didn't greet him. After a time, he tried to talk to one of them, Jeff. Jeff walked away. Shunka followed him, then stopped and talked to another guy. Then he stood alone again.

From: http://northcoastjournal.com/101107/news1011.html

Trees Foundation Wins

October 11th, 2007

The jury in the civil case Kathryn Miller v. the Trees Foundation decided in favor of Trees, after deliberating all day Tuesday. (See "Money on Trees," Oct. 4).

Miller is the long-time forest activist who inherited a bundle from her mother and then signed $185,000 over to the Trees Foundation. In her lawsuit, she claimed she had intended the money to be passed through Trees to one of its affiliates, North Coast Earth First! Media, run by Shunka Wakan. She claimed she had made her intentions clear, verbally and in writing, and that Trees had agreed to the conditions, then broken its promise and kept the money. Trees denied making such promises, and said it had never seen any letters or heard of instructions to give the money to NCEF! Media. (Also, somewhat relatedly, in criminal court on Tuesday Miller pleaded no contest to charges that she had made annoying phonecalls to Barbara Ristow of the Trees Foundation.)

So, that's that. Now, there are only the pieces to pick up.

For Shunka Wakan — featured in last week's Journal as a central figure in a messy nest of infighting that has fractured the current ranks of local Earth First!ians — it could be a long, lonely patching together of lost friends and broken alliances. Not only did he and Miller lose their attempt to retrieve her donation, but now he's been banned from the North Coast Co-op.

Yes, that happened last week. It was Thursday, around 4:15 in the evening, and two activists with the Humboldt Forest Defense Association were tabling — hawking brochures and such — outside the Co-op. It's an activity Shunka himself has spent many a day doing in that very same spot, raising cash to pay for his NCEF!Media outreach work and other causes. And, well, these two fellows, Jeff and Farmer, were on Shunka's shit list, now. They'd spoken gently, but unfavorably, about Shunka's doings in the North Coast Earth First! arena — said he lashed out at people, said he commandeered NCEF! resources, and so forth. Here's a snippet of Jeff's account of what happened, which he sent to the NCJ in an e-mail on Friday:

"Shunka was removed from the Arcata Co-op yesterday after a scuffle with myself and another activist around 5 p.m. Well, he wasn't exactly removed, but APD was called. He was asked to leave after threatening to flip over the HFD donation table while stating he was 'like Jesus in the marketplace ...'"

Sue Coulter, manager of the Arcata Co-op, recounted on Friday how an employee walking by heard the argument and went inside to get her. "So I went out to talk to [Shunka], because it's not the first time we've had problems," she said. "Most of the time, he's fine. Most of the time, I stick up for him." One time, she said, she even called the police to protect Shunka after someone had threatened him. "But he gets into arguments. I tried to talk to him. I told him to leave. ... He was causing a scene, right by the door, and I can't have it. He refused to leave. ... I said, fine. I went into the store. He followed me into the store, and he was still yelling at me, 'Oh, now you're going to call the police on me.'" Coulter called the police, but Shunka left before they arrived.

Shunka, waiting in the courthouse for the jury verdict Tuesday, said Coulter did indeed ask him to leave and he did, indeed, refuse to. As for the HFD tablers, he said he merely asked them why they had Trees Foundation literature on their table. "I said, 'Why do you want to represent these people?'" And then, he said, "Jeff accused me of embezzling — he said this in public. He said, 'You've embezzled thousands of dollars from the Earth First! movement through the years.' And I complained to one of the employees who was walking by. Because that's serious, accusing someone of embezzling."

But Shunka said the whole thing's yet another attack on him. "I don't consider I was yelling. We were talking. I'm an emotional person, I concede to that. I speak from my heart. I don't scream at people. I would love to — but I don't."

In his email, Jeff with HFD predicted Shunka would leave town within weeks, if not sooner. But at the courthouse, even before the verdict, Shunka said he wasn't going anywhere.

"I'm just going to continue to run the Earth First! office and continue to call Humboldt County home," he said. He's also going to write a letter to the Co-op, complaining about how he gets scapegoated and booted out of there even when other people, he says, are the culprits. And, as for the Miller v. Trees case, he said, he and Miller may now take their complaint to another venue.

-- Heidi Walters

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

photos from the Masquerade Ball

2007-10-24T00:36:54Z

by Craig Mutch

http://homepage.mac.com/imutch/PhotoAlbum85.html

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Clothes needed for my cold friend

2007-10-15T02:41:05Z

My best friend Lola came to visit me from Kentucky in August.
She brought appropriate clothing with her, mostly sundresses.

Since then she's been denied entry back into the states to return to to husband, friends & job and is stuck living with her 'rents in Penticton.
She's applying for permanent residency and expects to be home in 6 months.

She's safe, she's okay...
But she's cold!

Wanted: Warm (not totally unstylish & ugly) clothes/coats/shoes/boots to beg or borrow for 6 months.
Lola is 5'8'', wears size 12-16, large hips & bum, smaller chest.
Going to work in the Ok, so nurse's scrubs are also appreciated.

Will be visiting Oct.20 for the Work Less Party Party, so contact me this week if you have anything for her.

Thanks in advance.

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Procrastinators of the world unite...

2007-10-03T17:58:15Z

Soon as I get around to it...

L

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 1 reply

sci fi with our agenda?

2007-07-23T20:17:32Z

Is there a science fiction book, writer, or series about a world at our current level of technology where either....

the work less agenda succeeded already... if so how did they describe it?

or

the process of transition to the work less agenda, however painful or bloody it might have to get (I really don't expect many of the wealthy who think nothing about shortening lives or killing people with defective medicines, products, supporting war economies to let go of their power peacefully)

It occurs to me that if such a book exists, that can cause a person to actually feel like they are there already, in a world where things are better, an almost concrete picture of the goal and where are strivings lead us....well, it would serve our agenda to promote that book as much as possible to people who are non politically affiliated but might enjoy sci fi... it might open them up to new possibilities.

If no such book exists... hmmm. Well, does anyone here have a good facility for character development? I'm afraid my style is more fitting for the victorian era than for the present, but I'm sure someone has a knack for communication to "generation Y" in their own lexicon.

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Late Risers In Denmark Unite

2007-06-14T23:03:49Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6749791.stm

Those Danes have got some good ideas!

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 1 reply

vollunteer cooks

2007-03-28T07:13:33Z

this friday velofusion is going to have some lovely treats to suite any and all of our senses! If anyone feels so inclined to know the secrets to how we are feeding the blessed bikers and partyers, and wants to vollunteer either thursday night or friday for cooking, please call the trouthouse for Ren, 604 677 2784

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Can the Government do this?

2007-01-21T21:55:19Z

Ok. The following effects everyone working and living and paying taxes in BC so i am posting everywhere I can. please read. and then email and talk to everyone you know about it and what to do about it.

Here is some information about the unheard of Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement between BC and Alberta.

I want to make two points and then a plee before you read the article.

1)"The Agricultural Land Commission, the
Island Trusts, regional districts and land use restrictions in
provincial parks will all be vulnerable to a TILMA challenge as of next
April (2007)." - This is for any evironmentalist on the culture jamming list and beyond.

2 )"They could then be challenged for
regulating the size and location of commercial signs and billboards,
imposing height restrictions on buildings, or requiring green space
allocations from developers." - For all you cultural jammers out there, you are going to have a lot of work on your hands. all those new billboards, popping up everywhere.

My plee:we need to do something. What?Wrtie and call your MLAS, attend City Council meetings and present the council about TILMA, and ask them to adopt a resolution saying they are against it.
for even more information and what you can do check out:

www.canadians.org/DI/issues...index.html

and join the TILMA tribe:

www.tribes.tribe.net/tilma

ARTICLES:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 13, 2006

Murray Dobbin

Last April the governments of B.C. and Alberta signed an agreement
called the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA).
There was no public notice, little media coverage, no legislation
introduced to give it legitimacy and no debate in the legislature. The
Alberta-based think tank, the Canada West Foundation, says TILMA will
rid the provinces of barriers that "frustrate business".

The most draconian aspect of TILMA is its investment provisions. Once
the agreement enters into force on April 1, 2007, individuals and
businesses will gain the right to launch complaints and get up to $5
million in awards against governments just because they “restrict”
investment. Since pretty much everything a government does in some way
restricts investment, the two provinces are in for a wild ride.

TILMA claims will be decided by NAFTA-like panels.

What are some examples of government restrictions on investment that
could be challenged under TILMA? TILMA has some exceptions, but land use
planning is not one of them. The Agricultural Land Commission, the
Island Trusts, regional districts and land use restrictions in
provincial parks will all be vulnerable to a TILMA challenge as of next
April. Municipalities will have a two-year grace period before the
government extends TILMA to them. They could then be challenged for
regulating the size and location of commercial signs and billboards,
imposing height restrictions on buildings, or requiring green space
allocations from developers. And they can be challenged starting in
April if they introduce bylaws that are stricter than their existing ones.

We can get some idea of what we might be in for by looking at Oregon. A
ballot measure approved in 2004 gives property owners there the right to
sue for compensation for anything the state or local governments do that
restricts the value of their property. The result is the effective end
of land use planning. According to Sheila Martin, Director of the
Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies, the ballot measure has
resulted in over 6,000 claims totalling over $6 billion.

“The biggest impact of the measure,” says Martin, “has been on Oregon’s
land use regulations which seek to protect farm and forest land.” Land
use deregulation outside the cities has Martin especially worried: “The
urban growth boundary will become ‘leaky,’ releasing pressure for higher
density in the cities.” Many challenges have been filed against “sign
ordinances” regulating the size and location of commercial signs.

Like the dilemma BC and Alberta will face under TILMA, Oregon is now
having to decide whether to pay compensation to keep their regulations,
or waive them for the complainant. The trouble is, there is no limit to
the number of claims that can be made against a single regulation - so
if you want to keep it, you have to keep paying.

How many claims will BC get? Oregon allows anyone with property in the
state to sue over land use regulation. TILMA gives Albertans the right
to sue BC over restrictions on their BC investments, and vice versa. But
Gordon Campbell is hocking TILMA to all the other provinces to get them
to sign on, which would expand the potential number of complaints
against BC. And under TILMA complaints can be made against a wide range
of government regulations or programs, not just land use planning.

TILMA allows for a limited number of “Legitimate Objectives” so
governments can try to defend themselves before a dispute panel, arguing
their regulations were "necessary." But nothing in TILMA recognizes the
kind of quality of life objectives served by land use planning.
Moreover, a government would also have to demonstrate that its measure
is not more restrictive to business than necessary to achieve its
objectives.

BC officials are making extravagant claims about trade barriers between
the provinces, suggesting that TILMA could “save” BC $4.8 billion - an
eye-popping figure, equivalent to what BC earns annually from its
softwood exports to the US. In October, federal officials told a Senate
committee that reliable studies have estimated inter-provincial trade
barriers to be about one tenth the amount BC is claiming, and vary
depending on what is defined as a trade barrier. Is the removal of land
use restrictions part of the "benefits" to be gained by TILMA? What
about the drop in property values that could result from uncontrolled
development?

Alberta cabinet minister Gary Mar told a Richmond business audience the
easy process TILMA provides for complaints to be taken against
governments is "everything Canadian business asked for." He was right
about that. But what about everyone else?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

www.winnipegfreepress.com/westv...c.html

Agreement cuts provincial powers to govern

Winnipeg Free Press

Fri Nov 3 2006

By Murray Dobbin

WHAT if a provincial government signed an agreement forcing it to make
most of its regulations identical to those of another province? What if
this government voluntarily made itself, and every municipality within
its borders, open to lawsuits over virtually anything it did that
restricted investment? What if it tied its own hands so that, no matter
how much a region was suffering economically, it could not provide
assistance that might "distort investment decisions?"

Well, there are no "what ifs" about it. This past spring, B.C.'s Gordon
Campbell and Alberta's Ralph Klein signed an agreement with exactly
these sweeping constraints on the ability to govern. It is called the
Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement. B.C. and Alberta trade
officials are now shopping it around to other provinces to get them to
sign on. The agreement comes into effect next April.

According to Todd Hirsch of the Canada West Foundation, the agreement
could erase the borders between B.C. and Alberta so that the only
differences between them will be "voting and the colour of the licence
plate."

Except, once the agreement comes into full force, voting provincially in
B.C. and Alberta could be a waste of time.

Under the agreement, the B.C. or Alberta government will be barred from
doing anything that could "impair or restrict" trade, not only between
the provinces but also through them to another province or country. One
article just flatly decrees that there shall be "No Obstacles" to this
trade.

Governments will be prohibited from providing subsidies that either
directly or indirectly "distort investment decisions."
Click here to find out more!
Some exceptions, such as for water, are permitted but even these are to
be reviewed annually to get them reduced.

The agreement also requires B.C. and Alberta to "mutually recognize or
otherwise reconcile their existing standards and regulations" if these
"impair or restrict" trade, investment or labour mobility. Then it
prohibits new regulations from being introduced that would have these
effects. Since regulation always restricts investment in some way, the
result will be that all future B.C. and Alberta governments will be
prevented from strengthening their regulations.

How exactly is this going to work? What would happen, for example, if
B.C. voters decided they had had enough of leaky condos and voted for a
party committed to tougher construction regulations? A government
elected on such a commitment would quickly find it had to betray its
promise or be vulnerable to a trade investment challenge.

Plus if either province considers any new initiatives, it has to give
the other party to the agreement the right to comment in advance and is
then obligated to "take the other province's comments into
consideration." In sharp contrast, citizens in B.C. and Alberta were
never consulted by their own governments on this astonishing agreement.

As part of their sales job, Alberta's Gary Mar and B.C.'s Colin Hansen
have claimed the agreement will not result in lower provincial standards
-- just ones that are "appropriate." In reality, however, the agreement
can only lead to deregulation because businesses are only likely to sue
governments over regulations they think are too high, not ones that are
too weak. In a vastly expanded version of provisions in NAFTA, any
resident of B.C. or Alberta will gain extensive new grounds to sue
government. A dispute panel will be empowered to make binding decisions
and grant compensation of up to $5 million for any government action
that violates the agreement. Repeated complaints can be taken about the
same government policy or regulation.

Governments can go on bended knee to trade investment panels and argue
that their regulations were "necessary," but trade dispute panels rarely
accept such arguments. Plus, this agreement only recognizes a limited
list of regulatory objectives as "legitimate."

For example, a city's desire to prevent urban blight is not on the list
of legitimate objectives, so municipal bans on billboards would likely
be a violation.

No wonder Gary Mar could tell a business audience in Richmond that the
dispute process is "everything Canadian business asked for."
The pact creates endless potential for litigation against government
right down to the school board level, without any demonstrable benefit.
A 1998 study done for the B.C. government found that: "efforts to
liberalize interprovincial trade will have almost no effect on trade
flows. The reality is that interprovincial trade barriers are already
very low."

As for labour mobility, all of provisions for increased labour mobility
will already be covered in Premier Gary Doer's initiative to see
professional requirements harmonized across Canada.

To sum up, the agreement pretty much bans new regulation and government
assistance for economic development. Perhaps in anticipation of the
pact, the B.C. legislature's fall sitting was cancelled with the
government claiming there was not enough to do. When asked about the
constitutionality of the agreement, Steven Shrybman, a partner in the
law firm of Sack, Goldblatt, and Mitchell, commented that "a basic
principle of constitutional law is that a government cannot fetter its
own legislative prerogatives by abandoning its authority to govern."

Sounds like what the Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement is
all about.

Murray Dobbin is a Vancouver-based writer.

fighting till my last breath,
jax (jaxfitzgibbon@yahoo.ca)

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement between BC and Alberta.

2006-12-15T04:52:19Z

Ok. now I know that this post isn't directly relating to the Workless Party, but it effects everyone working and living and paying taxes in BC so and i am posting everywhere I can. please read. and then email and talk to everyone you know about it and what to do about it.

Here is some information about the unheard of Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement between BC and Alberta.

I want to make two points and then a plee before you read the article.

1)"The Agricultural Land Commission, the
Island Trusts, regional districts and land use restrictions in
provincial parks will all be vulnerable to a TILMA challenge as of next
April (2007)." - This is for any evironmentalist on the culture jamming list and beyond.

2 )"They could then be challenged for
regulating the size and location of commercial signs and billboards,
imposing height restrictions on buildings, or requiring green space
allocations from developers." - For all you cultural jammers out there, you are going to have a lot of work on your hands. all those new billboards, popping up everywhere.

My plee: I don't know of any actions/campaigns against this agreement, yet. I hope i will find some to inform you all of. But from where I stand, we need to do something. What? Don't know that part yet. But I think we might be able to angle it from the illegitimacy of the agreement (" no legislation introduced to give it legitimacy")
I just really want to get a discussion on this going. So any thoughts would be great.
I will attach the original article as well on the bottom.

fighting till my last breath,
jax

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 13, 2006

Murray Dobbin

Last April the governments of B.C. and Alberta signed an agreement
called the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA).
There was no public notice, little media coverage, no legislation
introduced to give it legitimacy and no debate in the legislature. The
Alberta-based think tank, the Canada West Foundation, says TILMA will
rid the provinces of barriers that "frustrate business".

The most draconian aspect of TILMA is its investment provisions. Once
the agreement enters into force on April 1, 2007, individuals and
businesses will gain the right to launch complaints and get up to $5
million in awards against governments just because they “restrict”
investment. Since pretty much everything a government does in some way
restricts investment, the two provinces are in for a wild ride.

TILMA claims will be decided by NAFTA-like panels.

What are some examples of government restrictions on investment that
could be challenged under TILMA? TILMA has some exceptions, but land use
planning is not one of them. The Agricultural Land Commission, the
Island Trusts, regional districts and land use restrictions in
provincial parks will all be vulnerable to a TILMA challenge as of next
April. Municipalities will have a two-year grace period before the
government extends TILMA to them. They could then be challenged for
regulating the size and location of commercial signs and billboards,
imposing height restrictions on buildings, or requiring green space
allocations from developers. And they can be challenged starting in
April if they introduce bylaws that are stricter than their existing ones.

We can get some idea of what we might be in for by looking at Oregon. A
ballot measure approved in 2004 gives property owners there the right to
sue for compensation for anything the state or local governments do that
restricts the value of their property. The result is the effective end
of land use planning. According to Sheila Martin, Director of the
Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies, the ballot measure has
resulted in over 6,000 claims totalling over $6 billion.

“The biggest impact of the measure,” says Martin, “has been on Oregon’s
land use regulations which seek to protect farm and forest land.” Land
use deregulation outside the cities has Martin especially worried: “The
urban growth boundary will become ‘leaky,’ releasing pressure for higher
density in the cities.” Many challenges have been filed against “sign
ordinances” regulating the size and location of commercial signs.

Like the dilemma BC and Alberta will face under TILMA, Oregon is now
having to decide whether to pay compensation to keep their regulations,
or waive them for the complainant. The trouble is, there is no limit to
the number of claims that can be made against a single regulation - so
if you want to keep it, you have to keep paying.

How many claims will BC get? Oregon allows anyone with property in the
state to sue over land use regulation. TILMA gives Albertans the right
to sue BC over restrictions on their BC investments, and vice versa. But
Gordon Campbell is hocking TILMA to all the other provinces to get them
to sign on, which would expand the potential number of complaints
against BC. And under TILMA complaints can be made against a wide range
of government regulations or programs, not just land use planning.

TILMA allows for a limited number of “Legitimate Objectives” so
governments can try to defend themselves before a dispute panel, arguing
their regulations were "necessary." But nothing in TILMA recognizes the
kind of quality of life objectives served by land use planning.
Moreover, a government would also have to demonstrate that its measure
is not more restrictive to business than necessary to achieve its
objectives.

BC officials are making extravagant claims about trade barriers between
the provinces, suggesting that TILMA could “save” BC $4.8 billion - an
eye-popping figure, equivalent to what BC earns annually from its
softwood exports to the US. In October, federal officials told a Senate
committee that reliable studies have estimated inter-provincial trade
barriers to be about one tenth the amount BC is claiming, and vary
depending on what is defined as a trade barrier. Is the removal of land
use restrictions part of the "benefits" to be gained by TILMA? What
about the drop in property values that could result from uncontrolled
development?

Alberta cabinet minister Gary Mar told a Richmond business audience the
easy process TILMA provides for complaints to be taken against
governments is "everything Canadian business asked for." He was right
about that. But what about everyone else?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/westview/story/3758460p-4345834c.html

Agreement cuts provincial powers to govern

Winnipeg Free Press

Fri Nov 3 2006

By Murray Dobbin

WHAT if a provincial government signed an agreement forcing it to make
most of its regulations identical to those of another province? What if
this government voluntarily made itself, and every municipality within
its borders, open to lawsuits over virtually anything it did that
restricted investment? What if it tied its own hands so that, no matter
how much a region was suffering economically, it could not provide
assistance that might "distort investment decisions?"

Well, there are no "what ifs" about it. This past spring, B.C.'s Gordon
Campbell and Alberta's Ralph Klein signed an agreement with exactly
these sweeping constraints on the ability to govern. It is called the
Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement. B.C. and Alberta trade
officials are now shopping it around to other provinces to get them to
sign on. The agreement comes into effect next April.

According to Todd Hirsch of the Canada West Foundation, the agreement
could erase the borders between B.C. and Alberta so that the only
differences between them will be "voting and the colour of the licence
plate."

Except, once the agreement comes into full force, voting provincially in
B.C. and Alberta could be a waste of time.

Under the agreement, the B.C. or Alberta government will be barred from
doing anything that could "impair or restrict" trade, not only between
the provinces but also through them to another province or country. One
article just flatly decrees that there shall be "No Obstacles" to this
trade.

Governments will be prohibited from providing subsidies that either
directly or indirectly "distort investment decisions."
Click here to find out more!
Some exceptions, such as for water, are permitted but even these are to
be reviewed annually to get them reduced.

The agreement also requires B.C. and Alberta to "mutually recognize or
otherwise reconcile their existing standards and regulations" if these
"impair or restrict" trade, investment or labour mobility. Then it
prohibits new regulations from being introduced that would have these
effects. Since regulation always restricts investment in some way, the
result will be that all future B.C. and Alberta governments will be
prevented from strengthening their regulations.

How exactly is this going to work? What would happen, for example, if
B.C. voters decided they had had enough of leaky condos and voted for a
party committed to tougher construction regulations? A government
elected on such a commitment would quickly find it had to betray its
promise or be vulnerable to a trade investment challenge.

Plus if either province considers any new initiatives, it has to give
the other party to the agreement the right to comment in advance and is
then obligated to "take the other province's comments into
consideration." In sharp contrast, citizens in B.C. and Alberta were
never consulted by their own governments on this astonishing agreement.

As part of their sales job, Alberta's Gary Mar and B.C.'s Colin Hansen
have claimed the agreement will not result in lower provincial standards
-- just ones that are "appropriate." In reality, however, the agreement
can only lead to deregulation because businesses are only likely to sue
governments over regulations they think are too high, not ones that are
too weak. In a vastly expanded version of provisions in NAFTA, any
resident of B.C. or Alberta will gain extensive new grounds to sue
government. A dispute panel will be empowered to make binding decisions
and grant compensation of up to $5 million for any government action
that violates the agreement. Repeated complaints can be taken about the
same government policy or regulation.

Governments can go on bended knee to trade investment panels and argue
that their regulations were "necessary," but trade dispute panels rarely
accept such arguments. Plus, this agreement only recognizes a limited
list of regulatory objectives as "legitimate."

For example, a city's desire to prevent urban blight is not on the list
of legitimate objectives, so municipal bans on billboards would likely
be a violation.

No wonder Gary Mar could tell a business audience in Richmond that the
dispute process is "everything Canadian business asked for."
The pact creates endless potential for litigation against government
right down to the school board level, without any demonstrable benefit.
A 1998 study done for the B.C. government found that: "efforts to
liberalize interprovincial trade will have almost no effect on trade
flows. The reality is that interprovincial trade barriers are already
very low."

As for labour mobility, all of provisions for increased labour mobility
will already be covered in Premier Gary Doer's initiative to see
professional requirements harmonized across Canada.

To sum up, the agreement pretty much bans new regulation and government
assistance for economic development. Perhaps in anticipation of the
pact, the B.C. legislature's fall sitting was cancelled with the
government claiming there was not enough to do. When asked about the
constitutionality of the agreement, Steven Shrybman, a partner in the
law firm of Sack, Goldblatt, and Mitchell, commented that "a basic
principle of constitutional law is that a government cannot fetter its
own legislative prerogatives by abandoning its authority to govern."

Sounds like what the Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement is
all about.

Murray Dobbin is a Vancouver-based writer.

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Buy Nothind Day @ SFU

2006-11-22T20:26:50Z

posting this for a friend

----Original Message Follows----
From: "Loretta Laurin" <loretta_laurin@hotmail.com>
To: vancouver@adbusters.org
Subject: [Vancouver] Buy Nothing Day and Fair Trade Week at SFU
Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:20:02 -0800

Hey Jammers!

I've been working with Oxfam SFU to create a fair trade week from Nov. 20th - Nov. 24 and I figured it might be of interest to you. All week, except Thursday, we'll be selling fair trade goods on campus (Simon Fraser University, in Convo Mall) We also have some fun awareness raising activities that, if you participate in, you can be entered to win a gift basket of fairtrade items (One basket per day). We also have a gift wrapping station and cups of fair trade coffee by donation. On friday there will also be a swap meet, where you can get rid of your old junk and/or pick up someone else's "junk" for free! I encourage all of you to come out.

On Thursday, of course, it is BUY NOTHING DAY! We're going to be giving out free samples of nothing on campus and encouraging students to sign our buy nothing pledge.

On top of that, I'm also planning to do some BND things off campus, and I would love it if any of you could join in and/or help organize it. It is going to be a shopping-death-flashmob at metrotown in the evening. (Probably at around 6:30)
The details still need to be sorted out, but the general idea is that we'd gather into a big court area in metrotown mall and stage a "death by shopping" scene, where everyone runs in screaming and looking like consumourism has beat them up (bar codes stamped on skin, clothes hangers stuck in shirts, chokeing on monopoly money, etc.) and then we all die dramaticly. (Oh the creative potential!)
There will also be a more activisty part of this before the flashmob, where we will go around advocating Buy Nothing Day to shoppers. (Handing out flyers, talking to people, asking shoppers if they're aware about the impacts of consumourism, etc.) The idea is that we'd come in from all entrances in small groups (depending on how many people are participating), raise awareness, and walk towards the flashmob spot and meet up all at the same time. (of course, by meet up, I mean make a scene)
However, I'm not quite solid in this plan because I don't know how horrible the security would be with regards to our actions, so we're always open to more ideas :)
If you're interested please let me know!

Cheers,
-Loretta

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 1 reply

The power of nightmares

2006-11-01T15:33:15Z

Ben and Jerrys has started a new political campaign, I think this little video is great.

www.benjerry.com/americanpie/bens_bb.cfm

Here is a documentary that I think EVERYONE should watch, made by the BCC pointing out the facade which fuels all our Western Wars these days.

The Power of Nightmares
"In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. "

click here for the article : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

Click here for the movie:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-1002626006461047517&q=power+of+nightmares

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 5 replies

Bollywood dancers needed (especially women)

2006-08-15T03:41:07Z

Hey all Work Less Partiers,
Conrad wants to challenge the BC:Clettes to a dance-off at the next Work Less Party party on Oct 14 '06 at the Capri Hall on Fraser (near 28th I believe). So we need dancers! We're doing a Bollywood-style number with a bicycle theme, of course. So far we have lots of boys interested but not enough girls, so email me if you're interested. It's going to be lots of fun!
- Niki (viridia@telus.net)

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

check it out here is the newest version of the film up on the net... you can stream it its google video

2006-08-07T10:14:42Z

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7123489617894062318

<embed style="width:400px; height:326px;" id="VideoPlayback" align="middle" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-7123489617894062318" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" quality="best" bgcolor="#ffffff" scale="noScale" salign="TL" FlashVars="playerMode=embedded"> </embed>

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 1 reply

Looking forward to the next work less party party!

2006-04-20T21:19:55Z

Celebrate those flowers.

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Its been a while...

2006-02-28T03:11:34Z

Its been a while since I posted anything on here. Let me just say how exciting the last few months have been for me and for the party. We had a bunch of successful events got a ton of media attention, finnished fourth out of 20 people in vancouvers mayoral race, released a critically aclaimed documentary and i think we are just getting started. Did I forget to mention the release of two issues of the lazy times? Now there are plans underway for a play and a book. I am amazed and humbled by what Conrad and friends have accomplished and I have been priveldged to be a part of it. Thank you all for the opportunity to be part of something so beautiful. Much love to all of you...

If you would like to download a copy of alarm clocks kill dreams for free click on this link

http://arkady.indymedia.org/media/video/Alarm_Clocks_Kill_Dreams.avi

Its about 450 megs so it might take a while...

Download VLC, a good open source media player with this link

http://videolan.org/vlc

This is the almost final version of the film, one more edit is underway before the screening at the 30days of sustanability event being put on by the city of vancouver (www.30daysofsustanability.com)

The final edit will be available as a DVD with a bunch of extra footage and special features

I will fill you in with more info at a later date

If your interested in the DVD or have any other questions or comments about the film or whatever either respond here or email me at
westerneye@gmail.com

ben

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 3 replies

west mart

2005-11-27T02:55:45Z

I have been posting to this blog we created during the elections its url is www.westmart.org. The idea came from a critique of Wal Mart and a desire to talk about what kind of alternatives exist. Local Ethical Partnerships is our slogan as opposed to Always Low Prices. Check it out if your interested in a dialougle about local politics and global issues and how they are connected. We will continue to work on campaigns between elections and this will be a place to read about them and potentially get involved. Thanks to all of those that gave me such great support over the course of the election.

ben

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 3 replies

Work Less Party PARTY! (yay!)

2005-11-21T17:54:54Z

Come join us for the wildest circus dance party of the year. On
November 19th, you are invited to attend a celebration of dance, performance, art, acrobatics, burlesque, theatre, music and much more dancing.

Bands and Performers
All Purpose
Carnival Band
GhettoBlaster
DJ Girl
+ over 20 circus performers

Plus:
Spartakissers Kissing Booth - (Fundraiser for Spartacus Books)
Spanking Booth Body painting -
Many of Vancouver's best body artists will be present
Performance Art Challenge - $400 will be awarded to the best
performers and artists who can combine body art, music and performance.

Price:
$3 If you come in costume (Any costume, the creative decision is yours !!!)
$8 Without costume

Where:
Maritime Labour Centre - 1880 Triumph Street (corner of Victoria and
Triumph, 3 blocks north of Hastings).

Time:
Doors open at 7:30 pm

Event Website:
www.worklessparty.org/arts/party.htm

Advance tickets can be purchased at; Our Community Bikes, 3283 Main or Art-topia, 440 West Hastings

For more information please phone Conrad 604 - 537 - 2044

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 3 replies

World Premiere- Alarm Clocks Kill Dreams- the Movie

2005-11-17T23:15:39Z

So the movie is done the trailer is up on the website and the world premiere is happening Thursday November 10th in the Van East Theatre at 7th and commercial.

Man it was a lot of work... :) I hope you like it. I would love some feedback.

Here the press release...

Find out how working less can save the world!

Coming soon to a screen near you!
All the best antics, ideas, dance, debate and drama of the Work Less Party and their campaign to take over the BC Legislature are featured in this new film “Alarm Clocks Kill Dreams”.
Find out how working less can save the world!
Through guerilla media stunts, street theatre, direct action, appearances at all candidate’s debates, and more, the Work Less Party put important issues on the table in this past provincial election.
Join us in this behind this scenes adventure, spreading the word, answering the tough questions and having more fun than any other political party, hands down.

for more info go to www.worklessparty.org or contact d@worklessparty.org

thanks

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 9 replies

article: Two myths that keep the world poor

2005-11-16T00:16:16Z

www.odemagazine.com/article.php

Two myths that keep the world poor

Vandana Shiva
This article appeared in Ode issue: 28

Global poverty is a hot topic right now. But anyone serious about ending it needs to understand the true causes, argues Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva.

From rock singer Bob Geldof to UK politician Gordon Brown, the world suddenly seems to be full of high-profile people with their own plans to end poverty. Jeffrey Sachs, however, is not a simply a do-gooder but one of the world’s leading economists, head of the Earth Institute and in charge of a UN panel set up to promote rapid development. So when he launched his book The End of Poverty, people everywhere took notice. Time magazine even made it into a cover story.
But, there is a problem with Sachs’ how-to-end poverty prescriptions. He simply doesn’t understand where poverty comes from. He seems to view it as the original sin. “A few generations ago, almost everybody was poor,” he writes, then adding: “The Industrial Revolution led to new riches, but much of the world was left far behind.”
This is a totally false history of poverty. The poor are not those who have been “left behind”; they are the ones who have been robbed. The wealth accumulated by Europe and North America are largely based on riches taken from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Without the destruction of India’s rich textile industry, without the takeover of the spice trade, without the genocide of the native American tribes, without African slavery, the Industrial Revolution would not have resulted in new riches for Europe or North America. It was this violent takeover of Third World resources and markets that created wealth in the North and poverty in the South.

Two of the great economic myths of our time allow people to deny this intimate link, and spread misconceptions about what poverty is.
First, the destruction of nature and of people’s ability to look after themselves are blamed not on industrial growth and economic colonialism, but on poor people themselves. Poverty, it is stated, causes environmental destruction. The disease is then offered as a cure: further economic growth is supposed to solve the very problems of poverty and ecological decline that it gave rise to in the first place. This is the message at the heart of Sachs’ analysis.
The second myth is an assumption that if you consume what you produce, you do not really produce, at least not economically speaking. If I grow my own food, and do not sell it, then it doesn’t contribute to GDP, and therefore does not contribute towards “growth”.

People are perceived as “poor” if they eat food they have grown rather than commercially distributed junk foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in self-built housing made from ecologically well-adapted materials like bamboo and mud rather than in cinder block or cement houses. They are seen as poor if they wear garments manufactured from handmade natural fibres rather than synthetics.
Yet sustenance living, which the wealthy West perceives as poverty, does not necessarily mean a low quality of life. On the contrary, by their very nature economies based on sustenance ensure a high quality of life—when measured in terms of access to good food and water, opportunities for sustainable livelihoods, robust social and cultural identity, and a sense of meaning in people’s lives . Because these poor don’t share in the perceived benefits of economic growth, however, they are portrayed as those “left behind”.
This false distinction between the factors that create affluence and those that create poverty is at the core of Sachs’ analysis. And because of this, his prescriptions will aggravate and deepen poverty instead of ending it. Modern concepts of economic development, which Sachs sees as the “cure” for poverty, have been in place for only a tiny portion of human history. For centuries, the principles of sustenance allowed societies all over the planet to survive and even thrive. Limits in nature were respected in these societies and guided the limits of human consumption. When society’s relationship with nature is based on sustenance, nature exists as a form of common wealth. It is redefined as a “resource” only when profit becomes the organising principle of society and sets off a financial imperative for the development and destruction of these resources for the market.
However much we choose to forget or deny it, all people in all societies still depend on nature. Without clean water, fertile soils and genetic diversity, human survival is not possible. Today, economic development is destroying these onetime commons, resulting in the creation of a new contradiction: development deprives the very people it professes to help of their traditional land and means of sustenance, forcing them to survive in an increasingly eroded natural world.

A system like the economic growth model we know today creates trillions of dollars of super profits for corporations while condemning billions of people to poverty. Poverty is not, as Sachs suggests, an initial state of human progress from which to escape. It is a final state people fall into when one-sided development destroys the ecological and social systems that have maintained the life, health and sustenance of people and the planet for ages. The reality is that people do not die for lack of income. They die for lack of access to the wealth of the commons. Here, too, Sachs is wrong when he says: “In a world of plenty, 1 billion people are so poor their lives are in danger.” The indigenous people in the Amazon, the mountain communities in the Himalayas, peasants anywhere whose land has not been appropriated and whose water and biodiversity have not been destroyed by debt-creating industrial agriculture are ecologically rich, even though they earn less than a dollar a day.
On the other hand, people are poor if they have to purchase their basic needs at high prices no matter how much income they make. Take the case of India. Because of cheap food and fibre being dumped by developed nations and lessened trade protections enacted by the government, farm prices in India are tumbling, which means that the country’s peasants are losing $26 billion U.S. each year. Unable to survive under these new economic conditions, many peasants are now poverty-stricken and thousands commit suicide each year. Elsewhere in the world, drinking water is privatised so that corporations can now profit to the tune of $1 trillion U.S. a year by selling an essential resource to the poor that was once free. And the $50 billion U.S. of “aid” trickling North to South is but a tenth of the $500 billion being sucked in the other direction due to interest payments and other unjust mechanisms in the global economy imposed by the World Bank and the IMF.
If we are serious about ending poverty, we have to be serious about ending the systems that create poverty by robbing the poor of their common wealth, livelihoods and incomes. Before we can make poverty history, we need to get the history of poverty right. It’s not about how much wealthy nations can give, so much as how much less they can take.

Taken and adapted with kind permission from The Ecologist (July/August 2005), a British monthly devoted to discussion of environmental issues, international politics and globalization. More information: The Ecologist, Unit 18 Chelsea Wharf, 15 Lots Road, London, SW10 0XJ, England, theecologist@galleon.co.uk, www.theecologist.org

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist and prominent Indian environmental activist. She founded Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights. She directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy. Her most recent books are Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge and Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply.

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Anxiety Culture: A Critical Path Primer

2005-11-10T07:19:46Z

to read whole article:

http://www.anxietyculture.com/criticalpathprt.htm

Anxiety Culture: A Critical Path Primer

Buckminster Fuller's acclaimed book, Critical Path, hasn't reached the mass audience it deserves, possibly because people see it as "difficult". With the following excerpts, we hope to show Fuller's easy-to-follow ideas – the subversive (socially and economically) utopian ideas, scathing of politicians, bureaucrats and power elites, but realistic and essential.

[On money, work & idleness]
[All the passages in black are from Fuller's introduction to Critical Path.]

Those who make money with money deliberately keep it scarce. Money is not wealth. Wealth is the accomplished technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growful needs of life. […]

[Fuller shows how money was adopted as a convenient way to exchange "real wealth", leading eventually to the erroneous (and destructive) equating of money with wealth.]

History's political and economic power structures have always fearfully abhorred "idle people" as potential troublemakers. Yet nature never abhors seemingly idle trees, grass, snails, coral reefs, and clouds in the sky. […]

In 1953 my friend the late Walter Reuther, then president of the United Auto Workers, was about to meet with the board of directors of General Motors. [...] Walter had all his fine-tuning machinists put the following problem into their computers: "In view of the fact that most of General Motors' workers are also its customers, if I demand of General Motors that they grant an unheard-of wage advance plus unprecedented vacation, health, and all conceivable lifetime benefits for all of its workers, amounting sum-totally to so many dollars, which way will General Motors make the most money: by granting or refusing?" All the computers said, "General Motors will make the most profit by granting."

Thus fortified, Walter Reuther made his unprecedented demands on General Motors' directors, who were elected to their position of authority only by the stockholders and who were naturally concerned only with the welfare of those stockholders. Reuther said to the assembled General Motors board of directors: "You are going to grant these demands, not because you now favor labor (which, in fact, you consider to be your enemy), but because by so granting, General Motors will make vastly greater profits. If you will put the problem into your new computers, you will learn that I am right."

The directors said, "Hah-hah! You obviously have used the wrong computers or have misstated the problem to the computers." Soon, however, all their own computers told the directors that Walter was right. They granted his demands. Within three years General Motors was the first corporation in history to net a billion-dollar profit […]

[Fuller applies the idea of a computer – fed with all the relevant data – to other issues…]

The computer will show that 70 percent of all jobs in America and probably an equivalently high percentage of the jobs in other Western private-enterprise countries are preoccupied with work that is not producing any wealth or life support – inspectors of inspectors, reunderwriters of insurance reinsurers, Obnoxico* promoters, spies and counterspies, military personnel, gunmakers, etc. […]

We find all the no-life-support-wealth-producing people going to their 1980 jobs in their cars or buses, spending trillions of dollars' worth of petroleum daily** to get to their no-wealth-producing jobs. It doesn't take a computer to tell you that it will save both Universe and humanity trillions of dollars a day to pay them handsomely to stay at home.

[* "Obnoxico" was Fuller's invented name for enterprises which make money out of thin air with little or no benefit to humankind. ** Fuller estimates the value of the "petroleum used daily" at "trillions of dollars" based on research by oil geologist Francois de Chardenedes which quantifies the cost to nature of producing petroleum (eg in terms of energy employed as heat and pressure).]

One would hope the at-home-staying humans will start thinking – "What was it I was thinking about when they told me I had to 'earn my living' – doing what someone else had decided needed to be done? What do I see that needs to be done that nobody else is attending to? What do I need to learn to be effective in attending to it in a highly efficient and inoffensive-to-others manner?"

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

Kurt Vonnegut on PBS's NOW

2005-10-12T05:38:06Z

PBS Airdate: Friday 07 October 2005 at 8:30 p.m. on PBS.
(Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html.)

Literary giant Kurt Vonnegut has some choice words for our parties, our system, and our president in this interview with NOW's David Brancaccio.
On Friday, October 7, 2005 at 8:30 p.m. on PBS (check local listings),

http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/index.html

This week on NOW:
David Brancaccio sits down with literary icon Kurt Vonnegut to talk about his life and the current state of American democracy. With his classic wit, the legendary author of CAT'S CRADLE, SAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, and BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS comments on how American democracy works and delivers some choice words for our parties, our system, and our president. "It's the winners. And then everybody else is the losers," he says. "And the winners divided into two parties: the Republicans and the Democrats." His latest book, a collection of nonfiction entitled A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, is a bestseller.

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 1 reply

um... tea party?

2005-09-16T21:47:02Z

Hey! I was just looking at the photos... You folks had a tea party? I did not hear of this. I like it very much. Shall we have another one? I like the tent action, seems like it would keep tea party goers dry from the rain.

Was there a particular action for that tea party, or was it just a public free space to have space and tea, cookies, etc.?
MOBILE TEA PARTY!!!!
love,
silvi

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 1 reply

GMO's

2005-09-15T22:00:26Z

Does anyone know anything about genetically modified products and how they are legislated in Vancouver?

Does anyone know about people or movements rallying against their exsistance within the city?

Does anyone know anything about the state of UK's genetically modified products legislation - as I hear they are completely free of these products?

Thanks,

Dawn

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 2 replies

Vanity Fair Essay Contest

2005-09-01T02:40:59Z

VANITY FAIR Essay Contest
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/pressroom2/

GUIDELINES FOR VANITY FAIR ESSAY CONTEST

Essays must address the following topic: What is on the minds of America's
youth today?
All entries must be received by midnight E.D.T. on September 30, 2005.
Essays must be e-mailed to <EssayContest@vf.com> as a Microsoft Word document
or as an Adobe Acrobat P.D.F. file.
The text area of the submission e-mail must state the entrant's full name,
home address, date of birth, and daytime telephone number. No other information
should appear in the text area of the e-mail.
Entrant's name must not appear anywhere in the attached essay file.
Essays must be no longer than 1,500 words (excluding title and any notes or
bibliography).
Essays must be in English.
Essays must have a title.
Entrants must be 18 years of age or older and legal residents of one of the
50 United States or the District of Columbia at the time of entry.
Each entrant may submit only one essay.
Essays must be the original work of the entrants, must not violate any
copyright or other rights, and must not have been previously published in any form.
Employees of the Condé Nast Publications Inc. or of Montblanc (and their
immediate family members) are not eligible.
2005 VANITY FAIR ESSAY-CONTEST RULES
1. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY
2. ELIGIBILITY
All entrants must be 18 years of age or older and legal residents of one of
the 50 United States or the District of Columbia at the time of entry.
Employees of the Condé Nast Publications Inc. or of Montblanc (and their immediate
family members) are not eligible.
3. HOW TO ENTER
Send your essay as an e-mail attachment to EssayContest@vf.com. Essays must
be submitted as a Microsoft Word document or as an Adobe Acrobat P.D.F. file.
The text of the e-mail message must state your full legal name, home address,
date of birth, and daytime telephone number, and no further information. Your
name must not appear anywhere in the attached essay file. Entrants must
provide true, accurate, and complete information in the e-mail. E-mails must be
received no later than midnight E.D.T. on September 30, 2005. One entry per
person/e-mail address. Entries that are lost, late, misdirected, or incompletely
received, for any reason, including by reason of hardware, software, browser, or
network failure, malfunction, congestion, or incompatibility at Vanity Fair's
servers or elsewhere, will not be eligible. Vanity Fair, in its sole
discretion, reserves the right to disqualify any person who tampers with the entry
process or who otherwise violates the rules. Vanity Fair further reserves the
right to cancel, terminate, or modify any promotion not capable of completion as
planned for any reason, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering,
unauthorized intervention, or technical failures of any sort. Following
electronic submission of an essay, entrants will receive an automatic e-mail reply
stating that Vanity Fair has received the message. Entrants will not be able
to check the status of their essays and will receive no other notification
unless they are selected as a winner. However, after an essay is submitted, Vanity
Fair may contact entrants by e-mail or telephone to request additional
information.
4. ORIGINAL WORKS ONLY
Essays must be the original work of the entrants, must not violate any
copyright or other rights, and must not have been previously published in any form.
5. ESSAY FORMAT
Essays must address the following topic: What is on the minds of America's
youth today? Essays must not exceed 1,500 words of text (not including title,
notes, bibliography, and other written materials). Essays must be in English.
Essays must have a title. Essays must be double-spaced, in 12-point type, and
should follow standard essay format.
6. ANONYMITY
The entrant's name must not appear in any part of the essay. There must be
no language, symbols, or other information in the essay that indicates the
entrant's identity. The entrant shall identify himself or herself only in the text
of the submission e-mail. Each essay will be assigned a unique code which
will be used throughout the judging process to ensure each entrant's anonymity.
7. JOINT AUTHORSHIP
Essays with either one or two authors are eligible. Essays with more than
two authors are not eligible. If there are co-authors, provide the full names,
addresses, dates of birth, and daytime telephone numbers for both authors in
the submission e-mail.
8. EXCERPTS AND QUOTATIONS
Each entrant is responsible for obtaining all necessary permissions for use
of excerpts and quotations from third-party works. Excerpts and quotations
must be properly credited with footnotes, endnotes, and/or a bibliography.
Extensive use of notes is discouraged. Any essay that includes third-party material
without the required permission(s) will be disqualified.
9. JUDGING AND AWARDING OF PRIZES
Winning essays will be selected based on the quality of the writing and on
the clarity, effectiveness, and originality of the argument. Quality of writing
will count for 50 percent, clarity for 20 percent, effectiveness for 20
percent, and originality for 10 percent. Essays will be judged by Vanity Fair staff
and/or other qualified writing professionals. Contest winners will be
announced on or about June 20, 2006, and potential winners may be notified by mail,
telephone, or e-mail in advance of the announcement. All decisions of the
judges are final. There will be one grand prize: $15,000, a trip to Donnini, Italy,
including economy-class airfare and six nights of accommodation at the Santa
Maddalena writers' colony, and a Montblanc Meisterstück 149 fountain pen. The
approximate retail value (A.R.V.) of the grand-prize package is $17,725,
depending on the exact itinerary. Additional meals, transportation, and other
expenses are the responsibility of the winner(s). Trip must be completed by March
31, 2007. Certain restrictions and blackout dates may apply. There will be one
second prize: $5,000 and a Montblanc Bohème fountain pen. The A.R.V. of the
second prize is $5,355. There will be one third prize: $1,000 and a Montblanc
StarWalker Fine Liner. The A.R.V. of the third prize is $1,235. In the event
that a co-authored essay wins any of the three prizes, the prize money will be
split equally between the two authors, and each author will receive the
specified Montblanc pen. In the event that a co-authored essay wins the grand prize,
both authors will be permitted to take the trip to Italy. Thus, the A.R.V. for
each co-author will be: grand prize, $10,225; second prize, $2,855; third
prize, $735.
10. PUBLICATION OF AWARD-WINNING ESSAY
The grand-prize-winning essay will appear online at www.vanityfair.com. The
grand-prize winner(s) may be required to sign Vanity Fair's standard author
contract assigning the magazine all worldwide copyright rights to the essay.
11. PUBLICITY OF WINNING ENTRANTS AND RELEASE FROM LIABILITY
Acceptance of prize constitutes consent to use winner's (winners') name(s),
likeness(es), and essay for editorial, advertising, and publicity purposes
without further compensation, except where prohibited. Potential grand-prize
winner(s) may be required to sign an affidavit of eligibility and a
liability/publicity/permission release, along with the all-rights author contract, within 14
days of notification, or an alternate winner may be chosen.
12. TAXES
Income taxes and other taxes, if any, are the sole responsibility of the
winners.
13. OTHER REGULATIONS AND LEGAL MATTERS
a. Subject to all federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Void
outside the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and where prohibited.
b. Prizes are not transferable. No substitutions for prizes except by Vanity
Fair, in which case a prize of equal or greater value will be substituted.
Only one prize per family, household, or address. Vanity Fair and Montblanc are
not responsible for errors in the administration or fulfillment of this
contest, including without limitation mechanical, human, printing, distribution, or
production errors, and may modify or cancel this promotion based on such error
at their sole discretion.
c. All entries become the property of Vanity Fair and will not be
acknowledged or returned.
14. NAMES OF CONTEST WINNERS
For the names of the contest winners, send an e-mail requesting the winners'
list to EssayContest@vf.com. Such requests must be received before December
31, 2006.
15. SPONSOR
The sponsor of this contest is Montblanc, 430 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill,
New Jersey 07974.

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 0 replies

trailer for "alarm clocks kill dreams"- the movie now on website

2005-08-20T16:38:07Z

www.worklessparty.org

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 1 reply

political PARTY

2005-08-19T18:15:48Z

Any political affiliations here? I am socially libertarian (and ye harm none, do what ye will) and fiscally green (Economics taking into account the cost to the environment (shared resources of the Earth) and individuals (health, psycho-social values)).

politics

infinite regression of change and resistance
multi-rhythmed rhyme
singing into the winds of change
to move their vector more in line
with where we wish to arrive

(c) Laurie Corzett (libramoon)
http://www.geocities.com/libramoon.geo/

posted in $? Work Less Party ?$ - 1 reply