serendipityoucity

My friend Kerry Pither’s book, "Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror," will be in stores August 26.  Any one who knows Kerry knows, that whatever she does is exact and complete.  She wrote this book and she did the behind the scenes communications work on the Maher Arar case, dedicating years of her life to do something, simply because, it is the right thing to do.  She did the same on the East Timor Issue here in Canada.  I am thankful for what she has done on both of those issues as are many others, and those intimitately affected by them.

Congatulations Kerry!

There will be two launches — one in Toronto on Tuesday, August 26, and one in Ottawa on Wednesday, August 27, starting at 6. Details TBD.

Penguin Books Write Up:

On August 26, 2008 Penguin Group (Canada) will release Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror by Kerry Pither. Dark Days is an exposé of Canadian national security investigations, told for the first time through the eyes of four of their targets: Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, Maher Arar and Muayyed Nureddin. All are Muslim-Canadian men who were accused of terrorist links, then imprisoned abroad, tortured and interrogated with questions that point to Canada’s involvement in the process. All were eventually released without charge. Through first-person testimonials and government records, Dark Days argues that what happened to these men is rooted in a systemic pattern of complicity in torture, and cannot be explained away as coincidence or a series of mistakes.

Since the attacks of 9/11, much has been published about "terror suspects" through the eyes of investigators. Very little has been written about these agencies through the perspective of the people and communities they have targeted. Dark Days chronicles the human stories of these men—from their first encounters with CSIS and the RCMP, to their overseas incarceration, torture and interrogation, to their eventual release and the long wait for answers.

Written with the narrative drive of a thriller, Kerry Pither’s Dark Days exposes a disturbing record of human-rights abuses, both at home and abroad, and ultimately questions our notion of the "Just Society".

I never thought that my work would show up on a CBC program like the Passionate Eye which aired a program on Homelessness called the Devil Plays Hardball which discusses a radical interventionist documentary of the same name.  The page includes a link about facts related to Homelessness in Canada which refers to indicators I helped developed as part of work related to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Quality of Life Reporting System and a report Trends and Issues in Affordable Housing and Homelessness.

From a CivicAccess.ca perspective, this project is excellent as one can download all of the data from the FCM site in both English and French, Reports, Explanations about the geography, and each spreadsheet includes metadata.  The unintended outcome and audiences of ones work are the most intersting and surprising.

This work was done with Acacia Consulting and Research. 

I never thought I would ever be excited by a camp with a name like that! But dam it, I totally am. 

I love fighting with all the boys, but there comes a time where you actually want to fight someone your size, age, weight and someone who does not have whiskers.  Most Judo clubs have a minority of womyn, and in Canada I would wager less than 5% womyn per club which makes it hard to train top femyle athletes and to have a critical mass of fighters.  It is a shame that so many womyn stop this type of sport after having children and rarely do we see womyn over the age of 30.  So I will be eating my wheaties and doing some pushups & some running soz I can do some tossing around!

I am also really glad to have been introduced to the Internatial Women’s Judo Alliance as that may provide the opportunity to meet some like minded gals.  My judo club is going to start a womyn’s only class which should encourage some older womyn to start and keep some of the younger new comers engaged. 

This was an amazing guy!

Do sit through his last lecture, it is absolutely wonderful. 

my comp paper!  Urgh!

incremental infrastructure, and here is more recent reference/use of the term !  It is a great concept that i think is perfect with a learning by doing environment, particularly for community communication infrastructures! 

This is just a way cool way to communicate, modify symbols and aesthetically embellish the infrastructure!  The artist is Roadsworth and the article below appears in Spacing and there is a video here.

Via: Drawn the Illustrating and Cartooning Blog. 

Corina is my friend and she is going to a cool computer camp -  Virtual Ventures at the big Carleton University for the first time all by herself.  She has just made her first website!  Way to go CoCo!

somethin’

• I read about a winery in the golan heights whose future is uncertain, and it got me thinking alot about the arbitraryness of territorial claims, shifting borders, which side of the border you are, who gets to administer you, and impermanence. 
  
• I was at a party with 2 psychologists, 1 social psychologist, 2 geeks, a top class skater, some amazing cartographers/geek/ontologists, a privacy lawyer, a northern sea ice researcher and a kinestheologists.  This consisted of alot of water - aka gin tonics and fruit salad - aka vodka & fruit.  The conversation somehow got to yentil, statistical definitions of identity, identity bound into territory, norms attached to identity, wishing to move beyond identity politics, the politics of identy and political correctness and reverting to manitoba proud!
• i watched the movie archangel, filmed in russia, it included an archivist who was a lenin expert who uncovers the secret that lenin bore a son who was brought up in the deep rural north of russia who was about to be introduced to the world.  The terrain in Russia was fertile for his homecoming and followers were waiting for a return to the good old days!  The images, manufacturing of ideology, iconography and idolatry soup creating a context for people to still believe and want back to that time of control and certainty.  How easy it would be to revert back to that.
• I met an elderly academic who is devoting the rest of his life to the Bhutanese refugees of Nepali descent, and to reveal how the the Happiness index loving king has created such a wonderful persona that the world is just not ready to hear about the fact that there are so many exhiles from this seemingly perfect country.  The gentlemen has sent numerous kids to school, changing peoples hearts one child at a time.
  
• I sold a ton of my old junk on the side of the road to friends, some really cute young couples, some honest kids who came and paid later, a local hooker and the pimp she beats up as well as a latino family who was so happy to get new stuff!  I also traded my music infrastructure for some music.  Some great friends also now have some of my stuff in their house - physical memories.
  
• I then had breakfast with a nanotechnologies, an organ donor researcher, a person conducting a comparative analysis between Korea and Turkey and an egg marketing specialist.
  
• Later i had dinner with a couple of Nagas, their Somali Friend, 2 french friends, and my fave pals.  Brochette and a wonderful talk about the changing nature of relationships.
• I then communicated with many cities officials related to some really interesting work
  
• Worked on a travel visa related to research
• read about a strange lenin experiment where he was trying to genetically create an ape type of human that would be muscle, no brains, to be an army, the geneticists involved, and then i thought of lord of the rings and the orks.
• went out with two great friends on elgin street and got completely pickled on a school night
  
• and now i am getting ready to go to a farm in castleman to erect a teepee and get the place ready for 60 judoka for the first ever annual judo party for my club!
• I also had a wonderful conversation on what it is that defines a people
  
• The week before was equally as amazing and i left out a bunch of details for this week, and i have a special homework assignment for next week! 
  

Fellahs & muscully ladies!

Can any of you donate 2+ hours Saturday Aug 2, 10:00am sharp to help me move?  All will of course be packed and much small stuff will be moved the day before, however I need some muscles for some big stuff & have dollies etc.  My eldest son as you know will not be here as he will be doing training in the army.

I do not need help unpacking just muscle to help move!

There will be beer, bloody marys (virgins if you prefer!) and some pizza, and if there are any vegans then i will figure something out!  I will  also have a thermos of coffee for those of you who use Friday nights for recreational purposes!

Please let me know so that i can plan!

P.S. Of course when house is painted, floors redone (sept) there will be a party - maybe related to my last year before being officially middle aged birthday!

I was looking at the following report: 

POVERTY, HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS: ISSUES AND OPTIONS

First Report of the Subcommittee on Cities of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology

Released on June 8, 2008. 

Chair
The Honourable Art Eggleton, P.C.
Acting Deputy Chair
The Honourable Wilbert Keon

and discovered that the work I did on developing risk of/and absolute homelessness indicators for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities are quoted on numerous occasions.  You just never know where your work is going to wind up, I just need to remind myself of this when I think that what I am doing is useless and futile!  But really, there are times, when I think that I just need to trust my gut feeling when taking on certain jobs, to just do them because they feel right no matter how the odds against recommendations are or how seemingly impossible change is on a topic or for a particular fellow group of humans.  In fact sometimes I get the feeling, that just imagining un autre monde, or being a naive optimist is most of the work.  Anyway, I feel a little less tired now! I also discovered the following announcements calling homelessness a national disaster also related to that work.  When I hear some power shovels digging some foundations, then I will really know that the work was worth while!

via Ted at the SPNO who sent around the following Star Article: The Road to Reduce Poverty about the Senate Report.