"Harper not keen to supply peacekeepers for Mideast mission"

July 25, 2006 at 5:36 pm (Uncategorized)

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he does not favour sending Canadian troops to southern Lebanon as part of a multinational peacekeeping force, adding that countries in the area should be responsible for resolving the conflict.

Harper said it would not be Canada’s “first choice to have Canadian or foreign troops” sent to enforce peace between Israel and Hezbollah. On Tuesday, Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz said Israel would be willing to hand over control of a security zone in southern Lebanon to an international force.”

In fact, Mr. Harper has made it quite clear that, in his opinion Canada should be taking sides, rather than adopting the historic Canadian role of impartial peacemaker.

A sad day for Canada….

It is offensive to the history and nature of Canada and Canadians that our leader should abandon Canada’s traditional role and morally despicable for him to openly and officially voice support for Israel.

That he should express the view that Israel’s act of carpet-bombing of civilian targets, including the bombing of clearly marked emergency medical vehicles, killing hundreds of innocents in retaliation for the killing of 6 (count ’em — six!) soldiers (by terrorists) is “measured” is beyond belief. I assume he considers the US’ illegal invasion and continued involvement in Iraq despite a proven lack of responsibility in the 9/11 events and, indeed based on pretexts long proven unfounded, “regretable”… No, he in fact supports the US’ position.

We now know Mr. Harper’s position on international matters.

Sad and morally reprehensible.
…and on that note:

“Israel “regrets”“….

“”We do not target UN personnel and, since the beginning of this conflict, we have made a consistent effort to ensure the safety of all members of (the UN peacekeeping force). This tragic event will be thoroughly investigated,” Mr Regev said.
Earlier UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was “shocked” at Israel’s “apparently deliberate targeting” of the UN post in Lebanon.

Mr Annan described the strike as a “co-ordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long established and clearly marked UN post.””

and, as mentioned in the above posting:

“It is meant to be a universally recognised symbol of neutrality and a guaranteed passage of protection for the victims of armed conflict.

But at least 10 Lebanese ambulances bearing the emblem of the international red cross have instead become targets in Israeli air strikes that have killed more than a dozen civilian passengers being transported to hospitals in the south of the country.

The latest attack occurred on Sunday night near the small village of Quna, where two ambulances travelling in convoy were fired on by an Israeli Apache helicopter as they sped to the besieged port city of Tyre .”

and ….

“The Israeli Defence Force has not commented about its targeting of ambulances, but in the past has said militants in the West Bank and Gaza had used them to transport weapons and fighters, in contravention of laws governing armed conflict.”


…of course, invading armies are free to blow up civilians and emergency personnel in ambulances while engaged in an illegal war…

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Driving Video

July 25, 2006 at 2:24 am (Uncategorized)

Some months ago, I was contacted by a designer called Christian Marc Schmidt, who was in the process of creating a video called “Driving“.

Constructing narrative from disparate, yet thematically related elements, the basis of this piece is video footage found through Google Video using “driving” as the search query. I chose results which depicted the road from a first-person perspective. Footage matching this criteria was edited and sequenced to create a narrative spanning various locations around the world, different weather and traffic conditions, highways, country roads and city streets, as well as different times of day. The result is a commentary on the construct and use of space as defined by the path—told through the lenses of individual agents, acting independently, yet brought together by means of a single, external objective and curatorial intent.

Christian was interested in including one of my “driving” videos from Google Video in the larger piece comprised of videos made by others on the same theme. I gave him permission to use any of the videos I had on Google Video. He had suggested he might use one called “Driving Home around Dows Lake, Ottawa“. I also suggested he might choose “Tummy-button Hill, Kemptville, Ontario” or another. As it happened, he chose to use part of the latter one.
That video is now available on Christian’s website.
The video, itself, is in a series that he calls “Adaptive Landscapes“

Tummy-button Hill, Kemptville

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