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reporter
We ain't done yet...folks!
Stones concert swells to size of Halifax as 350,000 fans stream to SARS show
at 16:29 on July 30, 2003, EST.
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Keri Austin from Owen Sound, Ontario puts on a mask as she walks through the concert for SARS relief at Downsview Park in Toronto Wednesday. (CP/Aaron Harris)TORONTO (CP) - Hours before Rush, AC/DC and the Rolling Stones were to take to the stage as headliners in an 11-hour concert designed to show the world Toronto's SARS outbreak is over, more than 350,000 people descended on the grounds of an abandoned military base primed to take in the biggest concert ever staged in Canada.
By mid-afternoon, Downsview Park - a massive sprawl of grass and tarmac equivalent to 540 football fields - had been transformed into a city the size of Halifax, and it would only get bigger, as police described the unusual sight of 60,000 people walking to the grounds on a temporarily shut-down highway.
It was Canada's largest rock concert, and many in the crowd wore their patriotism on their chests. The throng was a sea of Maple Leafs, although others opted to face the sweltering heat shirtless, in bikini tops and in some cases bras.
One exuberant blonde woman was heartily cheered as she danced naked on top of a truck, encouraging others to do the same.
Far south of the stage, politicians were working over hot grills at the Quarter Mile Barbecue - adorned with U.S. and Canadian flags and signs for food items like Sticky Fingers. They also worked the media cameras desperate to show Canadian beef was safe for consumption. In a rare show of national unity, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein ate P.E.I. mussels, while Ontario Premier Ernie Eves dined on Alberta beef.
There were sweaty bodies in every direction. Lineups greeted hungry and thirsty fans, with the longest ones nearest the stage. Groups huddled together trying not to lose friends in the mob of people moving up and down the centre of the field, once used to land military planes.
"Some nerves are already frayed,"said 51-year-old Pam McIntosh, of London, Ont. "People should have more tolerance . . .It's pretty good for slapping it together in a month and a half."
By 1:30 p.m. when Ottawa's Kathleen Edwards took the stage, the ground was littered in plastic water bottles and pizza boxes.
There was some commotion as trucks carrying more water to thirsty fans stalled in a crush of people.
"A lot of people are running over our stuff," said Jane Truman, who was sitting on a blanket with her two kids near one of a limited number of thoroughfares and feared she would be trampled.
Nicole Kornblum, from Belleville, Ont., said a passing vehicle nearly ran over her foot.
Early on in the day, police had dealt with at least one unruly fan and paramedics treated several people already in distress.
But police and organizers tried to play down any trouble, saying they'd anticipated some difficulties.
"It's not an issue,"said Senator Jerry Grafstein early in the day. "Statistics are that there will be some people acting up but overwhelmingly it's a mellow and happy crowd."
About 1,300 officers - one-fifth the size of the city's entire force - were conspicuous as they roamed the grounds keeping the peace.
For the most part, the concert-goers - everyone from preteens to people in their 50s - moved in an orderly fashion as they travelled the route from their blankets to the 500 concession stands and any of the 3,500 portable toilets.
But before the gates opened, a man who appeared to be in his 30s was arrested for assaulting a police officer, said Staff Sgt. Chris Hobson. At least four people passed out - one as a result of drunkenness - and were treated on site.
"As the day goes on, more and more people are going to be sick," said Larry Roberts, a spokesman for Toronto Emergency Services, adding that dehydration is a concern because of the heat.
One patient was moved to hospital, said Roberts. Other minor injuries reported were sprained ankles, and minor cuts and scrapes because of the unnevenness of the field.
Although police had said they would search thoroughly for drugs, the scent of marijuana was in the air.
Steven Bacon, one of the first Canadians legally allowed to smoke pot for medicinal purposes, waved a Maple Leaf flag adorned with a hemp leaf as he smoked a joint.
"I got a bit of the activist in me out here," he said. "It makes people gleeful to see the flag."
Some 60,000 fans who camped out outside the gates of Downsview Park overnight were treated to breakfast courtesy of the Stones. They were served danishes, bagels and that all-Canadian favourite - peameal bacon.
Some concert-goers said they were overwhelmed by the thought of taking in such big-name acts as the Stones, AC/DC and Rush all in one day, and also by concern about how the long day would progress.
"I'm a little dizzy," said Rebecca Elias, 22, one of the first to enter the park.
Elias expressed some safety concerns, although officers were to patrol the grounds throughout the day and countless security guards were charged with keeping things in check.
"I'm actually a bit nervous," said Elias. "I've spoken to some police officers and some security and they are really too lax for my peace of mind."
Before the start of the concert - which coincides with the 210th anniversary of the founding of Toronto - city garbage crews were already starting the clean-up process as beer and liquor bottles were strewn outside the gate entering the park.
Sleeping bags, bicycles and lawn chairs - among the items barred from the park - lined up outside the fence.
The concert was paid for by public and private sector, with at least $3.5 million invested by the federal government, $2 million from Ontario and the rest by corporate sponsors, with Molson leading the pack.
Acts were paid, although organizers would not say how much.
Toronto tourism officials estimated the event would still pump more than $52 million into the Toronto area which has taken an estimated $2-billion hit as a result of severe acute respiratory syndrome. An outbreak of the disease has killed 42 Canadians and kept tourists away in droves.
The concert aimed at boosting the SARS-battered economy began at noon and wasn't scheduled to wind down until 11 p.m., but thousands began lining up outside the gates hours before.
Karen Tocher, 26, said that while listening to great music was a prime reason for attending the concert, she also wanted to do her share to help out Toronto's economy.
"I plan to spend a lot of money while I'm in town," said Tocher, who flew in from Banff, Alta., on Tuesday.
Kueper and Julie Kelly, 17, had driven from nearby Alliston, Ont., arriving at 10 p.m. Tuesday to ensure they were among the first to get into the park.
They joined thousands who had camped out through the night outside the chainlink fence surrounding the park.
Brian MacAskill, a Toronto chef, arrived with his wife at 5:30 a.m.
"We have the day off work," he said. "It's all we're doing today so we might as well come early."
Scalpers peddling tickets for $25 - $3 to $5 above cost - greeted some concert-goers outside the nearby subway station.
Inside the park, a large sign emblazoned with the word Toronto in giant red letters hung over the concert stage, the middle "o" replaced with a picture of the Stones' trademark tongue logo. An enormous Canadian flag was draped across the back wall of the stage.
The Rolling Stones were to play a 90-minute set to close out the show. Earlier acts were Montreal rocker Sam Roberts, Ottawa's Kathleen Edwards, The Tea Party, The Flaming Lips, Sass Jordan and The Isley Brothers. ANGELA PACIENZA
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Coverage: CBC (evening), CBC Newsworld (highlights), MuchMoreMusic (all day from noon coverage...)http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/sarsbenefit/
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Is America turning into a religion? Is the problem lack of intel sources?
by reporter inamerica is a religion
us leaders now see themselves as priests of a divine mission to rid the world of its demons.
george monbiot
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Okie dokie guys and gals.
Simon: Absolutely the Guardian is the top of the line in my books. Are people forgetting the Guardian being at the forefront of exposing JW scandals including the UN fiasco and the pedophilia nonsense? In fact, while many here were
bitching and moaningpleading and whining at the U.S. media to take up the cause of legitimate JW-misdeeds-reporting, it was papers like the Guardian who stepped up to the plate. Now we dog them. Lovely.Yerusalyim: You said...Sure, many Iraqis want to be rid of the US forces there, many more are glad we took out Saddam, and just want peace.
I'll grant you that many would rather see the hasty removal of Saddam and his sons (IMHO his sons were worse than Saddam himself...) however, Iraqis in general don't welcome the US overstay if the US overstays its welcome, if you catch my drift...
But, since when do those who want to see the US forces leave need to be mutually exclusive to those who want to see Saddam leave? I'd argue that many fall into BOTH categories. It's not dichotomous, necessarily.
And, on a final note, the business of the Bush administration and the news media glorifying killing of these two sons and trumpeting their trophies is disgusting, I think. Top that off with futures trading on terrorist attacks and future thuggery, and that is the epitome of evil and depravation!
OrbitingTheSun: I have to tell you first that your smile would melt frozen butter in a deep freezer in Antarctica. :-) Having said that, you're right, pain and pleasure, fear and reward, carrot and stick are twin motivators in humans, and religion largely feeds those twins. Thanks for your insightful answer and actually reading my article...which brings me back to Yeru...
Yerusalyim: Now that you've dogged the Guardian's liberalness, are you going to dispute anything quoted in it? What about those religious references? What about the Rudy's comment? To me, they stand on their own as strong proof of American tendencies to use provincialism and special pleading in dealing with international treaties and foreign policy. To others, they perhaps would use stronger language.
I have never seen so many treaties undone by any other U.S. administration than the current one. The problem is, America has to share this same Earth with over 200 other nations, yet, all of us outside the U.S.A. are treated like we don't or shouldn't exist a good part of the time.
Perhaps most of those insignificant other countries on this small planet don't want the "freedom" and "liberty" of the "American Dream". Perhaps certain people in certain cultures like to live a certain way, that doesn't necessarily coincide with "U.S. interests".
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Is America turning into a religion? Is the problem lack of intel sources?
by reporter inamerica is a religion
us leaders now see themselves as priests of a divine mission to rid the world of its demons.
george monbiot
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America is a religion US leaders now see themselves as priests of a divine mission to rid the world of its demons
George MonbiotTuesday July 29, 2003 (The Guardian) "The death of Uday and Qusay," the commander of the ground forces in Iraq told reporters on Wednesday, "is definitely going to be a turning point for the resistance." Well, it was a turning point, but unfortunately not of the kind he envisaged. On the day he made his announcement, Iraqi insurgents killed one US soldier and wounded six others. On the following day, they killed another three; over the weekend they assassinated five and injured seven. Yesterday they slaughtered one more and wounded three. This has been the worst week for US soldiers in Iraq since George Bush declared that the war there was over.
Few people believe that the resistance in that country is being coordinated by Saddam Hussein and his noxious family, or that it will come to an end when those people are killed. But the few appear to include the military and civilian command of the United States armed forces. For the hundredth time since the US invaded Iraq, the predictions made by those with access to intelligence have proved less reliable than the predictions made by those without. And, for the hundredth time, the inaccuracy of the official forecasts has been blamed on "intelligence failures".
The explanation is wearing a little thin. Are we really expected to believe that the members of the US security services are the only people who cannot see that many Iraqis wish to rid themselves of the US army as fervently as they wished to rid themselves of Saddam Hussein? What is lacking in the Pentagon and the White House is not intelligence (or not, at any rate, of the kind we are considering here), but receptivity. Theirs is not a failure of information, but a failure of ideology.
To understand why this failure persists, we must first grasp a reality which has seldom been discussed in print. The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from their darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: "Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, "come out," and to those in darkness, "be free".'"
So American soldiers are no longer merely terrestrial combatants; they have become missionaries. They are no longer simply killing enemies; they are casting out demons. The people who reconstructed the faces of Uday and Qusay Hussein carelessly forgot to restore the pair of little horns on each brow, but the understanding that these were opponents from a different realm was transmitted nonetheless. Like all those who send missionaries abroad, the high priests of America cannot conceive that the infidels might resist through their own free will; if they refuse to convert, it is the work of the devil, in his current guise as the former dictator of Iraq.
As Clifford Longley shows in his fascinating book Chosen People, published last year, the founding fathers of the USA, though they sometimes professed otherwise, sensed that they were guided by a divine purpose. Thomas Jefferson argued that the Great Seal of the United States should depict the Israelites, "led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night". George Washington claimed, in his inaugural address, that every step towards independence was "distinguished by some token of providential agency". Longley argues that the formation of the American identity was part of a process of "supersession". The Roman Catholic church claimed that it had supplanted the Jews as the elect, as the Jews had been repudiated by God. The English Protestants accused the Catholics of breaking faith, and claimed that they had become the beloved of God. The American revolutionaries believed that the English, in turn, had broken their covenant: the Americans had now become the chosen people, with a divine duty to deliver the world to God's dominion. Six weeks ago, as if to show that this belief persists, George Bush recalled a remark of Woodrow Wilson's. "America," he quoted, "has a spiritual energy in her which no other nation can contribute to the liberation of mankind." ( no, not even you, France and Germany!)
Gradually this notion of election has been conflated with another, still more dangerous idea. It is not just that the Americans are God's chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project. In his farewell presidential address, Ronald Reagan spoke of his country as a "shining city on a hill", a reference to the Sermon on the Mount. But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but the kingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan's account, was God's kingdom to be found in the United States of America, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, against which His holy warriors were pitched.
Since the attacks on New York, this notion of America the divine has been extended and refined. In December 2001, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of that city, delivered his last mayoral speech in St Paul's Chapel, close to the site of the shattered twin towers. "All that matters," he claimed, "is that you embrace America and understand its ideals and what it's all about. Abraham Lincoln used to say that the test of your Americanism was ... how much you believed in America. Because we're like a religion really. A secular religion." The chapel in which he spoke had been consecrated not just by God, but by the fact that George Washington had once prayed there. It was, he said, now "sacred ground to people who feel what America is all about". The United States of America no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. The flag has become as sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into a priesthood.
So those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or "anti-Americans". Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: you can negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. The US has a divine mission, as Bush suggested in January: "to defend ... the hopes of all mankind", and woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life.
The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted: "light the darkness of the entire world". Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.
ยท George Monbiot's books Poisoned Arrows and No Man's Land are republished this week by Green Books.
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Would you or have you used a blood tranfusion?
by TylerMacKay inwould you or have you used a blood tranfusion since you the left the wt?
i was wondering what your feelings are on it now
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Yes, that would be my personal preference....wish I had done it 5 yrs. ago when I had surgery! You cut the (abeit small) risks of disease right away.
Obviously, you could go with as many plans of action you can...just so you would have backup in case the blood builders weren't enough, etc.
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Would you or have you used a blood tranfusion?
by TylerMacKay inwould you or have you used a blood tranfusion since you the left the wt?
i was wondering what your feelings are on it now
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If I was having a scheduled surgery, I would tell the surgeon that I would like to avoid blood if possible, and if it would not cause any risk to my health. In that case, you can use medicines to build up your number of blood cells before the surgery. The doctors who I know and respect try very hard to minimize blood loss in everyone, not just JWs. I would also be willing to use time and iron supplements after the surgery to regain my lost blood cells. Remember when you bleed, you loose blood cells, not just blood fluid.
Concerned Mama quoted above. What would be wrong with storing your own blood, possibly in advance of elective surgery?
As you will see, the JWs came oh-so-close to allowing this on their Medical Directive cards, then pulled a bait-and-switch! For those who don't know this yet, you may find this outrageous!
If you are carrying or possess the most recent "released" version of the card which was published in March 1999, you will find it interesting to note that a new version was in fact prepared for and published in June 2001! The cards were shipped to some congregations and probably a few were actually distributed to members who were baptized over the summer and fall 2001 in congregations that ran out of the older version.
Check this out! The first one is the familiar, old version, and the second one was the proposed version! See if you can spot the difference!
Congregations were informed not to distribute these new cards, but rather destroy them. The difference is one line where the older March - 1999 card states "I direct that no blood transfusion [see image 1] (whole blood, red cells, white cells, platelets or blood plasma) be given to me...," the June - 2001 version reads "I direct that no allogeneic blood transfusion [see image 2] (whole blood, red cells, white cells, platelets or blood plasma) be given to me..." So the difference in the cards is the use of the word allogeneic in the June 2001 version.
The word "allogeneic" refers to intraspecies genetic variations. Therefore, an "allogeneic" transfusion is one derived from the blood of a different person. The implication here is clear. The Watchtower Society stood at the threshold of permitting autologous whole blood transfusions and for some reason, presently unknown, suddenly shifted and stepped back.
It seems evident there is a great struggle within the WTS leadership as to how best deal with the WTS disastrous policy on blood. Any who are still convinced that the WTS stands solidly behind this policy and are prepared to die defending the policy (or even worse - permit their children to die) have cause to soberly reflect on their support.
In our view, this may be one of those situations where the governing body voted to permit Jehovah's Witnesses to use their own blood and put the wheels in motion to change the policy - only to have one member of the body change their mind at the last second and call for a re-vote.
Remember, in Ray Franz' writings on Governing Body policy-making, it takes a two-thirds vote to establish or unseat Watchtower doctrinal policy. It would be totally logical, that, upon a member changing his vote, the vote would have been still a majority supporting this change, just not a two-thirds majority.
Would you let your child or loved one die on a voting and procedural technicality by a group of men? Do you think Jehovah and His Holy Spirit would sanction such insidious and harmful decision-making? Can the Witnesses and their Governing Body truly, honestly claim this Spirit is guiding them and blessing their actions?
Information on this can be found on Rado Vluegel's site, http://www.watchtowerinformationservice.org/bloodcard.htm with most of the above info, with my edits and added comments. Thanks as well to "Lee Elder" at http://www.ajwrb.org/index.shtml
To all you newbies out there, and the one who started this thread: Read, read, read. And read some more. Angharad and Simon posted some great links if you go to the main menu page under links...there's tons of supplemental info there, too.
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Jehovah's Witnesses asking woman to pay legal costs in sexual abuse lawsuit
by Rado Vleugel ina judge awarded vicki boer $5,000 in june.
she claimed in a civil suit that elders told her not to seek outside help or report the alleged abuse.
no no criminal charges were laid in the assault allegations.
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What the hell good is a $5000.00 court award when it gets sucked up and then much, much more in both Vicki's and the WTS' legal fees? Can't she at least net 5,000 out of this (for the very least)? If not, I think she should escalate this case.
?????
Hawkaw? What the hell happened there? It's a shallow ass victory if the judge rules she pay 80K of their 160K fees.
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Ridiculousness crosses party lines! Tom Daschle, Joe (Zionist) Lieberman, Al Sharpton, Nancy Pelosi...USELESS!!! geez I feel sorry for the Dems if that's all they got in '04. Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich are the only ones worth talking about, that are not Republican-Lites!
Other than that, it looks like it's Bush until '08 unless he's impeached.
But what if he's impeached? Do you really want John (Mr "Patriot" Act) Ashcroft as your president?
Yuck.
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