Propagandhi

Propagandhi Podcast(e) Episode #2

Click here to regret the next 55 min­utes of your life. 

Pro­pa­gand­hi tour date announce­ment. Record­ing updates. Beave brags about how awe­some his gui­tar is. Todd explains why he can’t sleep. We inter­view a for­mer Sudanese refugee about what’s going on in his home­land and why we it should mat­ter to those of us over here in DisneyPunkland. 

Fea­tur­ing music by Sac­ri­fice, Dead­stoolpi­geon, Bob Mar­ley and the Nels Cline Trio. Giv’er!

Prairie Artists Against Enbridge

Hel­lo friends and neigh­bours. Please pass this on to any­one who you think might be interested:

Prairie Artists Against Enbridge includes some of Canada’s finest bands and cul­tur­al work­ers, a gov­er­nor gen­er­al’s award-win­ning nov­el­ist, and a for­mer Win­nipeg Blue Bomber. They all attached their names to a let­ter, deliv­ered today to the Nation­al Arts Cen­tre, protest­ing Enbridge Pipeline’s spon­sor­ship of its upcom­ing Prairie Scene! Fes­ti­val to be held in Ottawa from April 6^th to May 8^th, 2011. The let­ter is endorsed by such notable NGO’s as the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work, Sier­ra Club Prairie, the Rain­for­est Action Net­work, Dog­wood Ini­tia­tive, Cor­po­rate Ethics Inter­na­tion­al and the Polaris Institute.

For more infor­ma­tion or media inquiries, con­tact: PrairieArtistsAgainstEnbridge@​gmail.​com

Jan­u­ary 25^th/​2011 Mr. Christo­pher Dearlove/​Ms. Rose­mary Thomp­son Nation­al Arts Cen­tre P.O. Box 1534, Stn B Ottawa, Ontario Cana­da K1P 5W1 ​“Art gives peo­ple a lan­guage by which they can under­stand them­selves and their soci­ety and the cor­po­rate pow­er struc­ture is deter­mined to make sure artists speak in a lan­guage that does not threat­en their enti­tle­ment.” ‑Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize Win­ning Author Dear Mr. Dearlove and Ms. Thomp­son, We, the under­signed artists, musi­cians and per­form­ers of Man­i­to­ba and Saskatchewan respect­ful­ly request that the Nation­al Arts Cen­tre recon­sid­er its deci­sion to part­ner with Enbridge Pipelines as a Prairie Scene! fes­ti­val spon­sor. As Canada’s fore­most show­case for the per­form­ing arts, the Nation­al Arts Cen­tre should choose spon­sors that help to pro­mote its val­ues as an inno­va­tor in com­mu­ni­ty pro­gram­ming. Part­ner­ing with Enbridge Pipelines tar­nish­es that image with the com­pa­ny’s dis­as­trous envi­ron­men­tal record. On July 26 2010, an Enbridge pipeline rup­tured from unknown caus­es, gush­ing tar sands oil into a near­by creek for sev­er­al hours before Enbridge con­tact­ed state author­i­ties and shut off the flow. The EPA reports 1 mil­lion gal­lons of this dirty oil fouled more than 24 miles of Michi­gan’s Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er, pos­ing a threat to near­by Lake Michi­gan. Cleanup crews are still work­ing hard to save Cana­da geese, muskrats, and oth­er wildlife poi­soned by the spill. The pre­ventable dis­as­ter may be the worst oil spill in U.S. Mid­west his­to­ry. Despite the spill, Enbridge Piple­lines is still push­ing for approval of a new 1,200 km pipeline to car­ry tar sands crude from Edmon­ton, Alber­ta to Kiti­mat, BC. The project, opposed by a wide coali­tion of abo­rig­i­nal com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es locat­ed along the pipeline cor­ri­dor, would put Canada’s most sen­si­tive wild salmon rivers at risk. By asso­ci­at­ing with Enbridge, The Nation­al Arts Cen­tre asso­ciates itself with the com­pa­ny’s irre­spon­si­ble cor­po­rate behav­ior. For the sake of the Cen­tre’s good rep­u­ta­tion and for the sake of our envi­ron­ment, we urge you to recon­sid­er part­ner­ing with Enbridge as a 2011 Prairie Scene! Fes­ti­val Spon­sor. Thank you, Prairie Artists Against Enbridge: Mike Alexan­der Musi­cian Brad Bel­le­gard Musi­cian Rob Bos Artist Craig Boy­chuk Musician/​Producer Burnthe8track Band Susie Burpee Choreographer/​Dancer Come­back Kid Band Shaw­na Dempsey and Lor­ri Milan Per­for­mance Artists Chris­tine Fel­lows Musi­cian Dan­ny Fer­nan­dez Musi­cian Eric Gal­braith Musi­cian Noam Gonick Film­mak­er Dagan Hard­ing Musi­cian Head Hits Con­crete — Band Derek Hogue Design­er Reghan Hin­cliffe Musi­cian Charley Jus­tice — Musi­cian Jon­ak Krieser Musi­cian Pimp­ton Musi­cian Greg Macpher­son Musi­cian Mama Cutsworth DJ Chris Merk Musi­cian Robb Mor­ri­son Sound Engineer/​Producer The Paper­backs Band Joel Pass­more Musi­cian Pip Skid Musi­cian Pro­pa­gand­hi Band Riva Racette Musi­cian Andrea Roberts Musi­cian Wol­bachia — Band Thomas Roussin Musi­cian Deb­o­rah Schnitzer Writer/​Educator Ker­ri Senkow Musi­cian Leo Sepul­ve­da Musi­cian Ramiro Sepul­ve­da Musi­cian Brad Skib­in­sky Musi­cian Miri­am Toews Nov­el­ist Molten Lava — Band Vol­ca­noe­less in Cana­da Band The Weak­erthans Band Ila Wenus Musi­cian Troy West­wood Musician/​Athlete This peti­tion is endorsed by the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work, Sier­ra Club Prairie, the Rain­for­est Action Net­work, Dog­wood Ini­tia­tive, Cor­po­rate Ethics Inter­na­tion­al and the Polaris Institute. 

RIP Reid English

A kind fel­la just let us know via email the sad news that Reid Eng­lish of the leg­endary Toron­to hard­core band Sud­den Impact shuf­fled off this mor­tal coil recent­ly. They were anoth­er high­ly influ­en­tial band for us back when we were start­ing out. I remem­ber the day me and Jordy-Boy took the Grey­hound into Win­nipeg in 1985 and picked up their ​“No Rest From the Wicked” LP along with a lit­tle LP called ​“Tor­ment in Fire” by a then-brand-new band called Sac­ri­fice. It’s was one of the few records from the era that tru­ly stood the test of time. Gonna crank it tonight and Get Bent. RIP Reid. 

Hmmm, I Wonder How Much Worse Cholera is Than the Flu??!!

Hey Friend­ly Peo­ple of Plan­et Earth,

Well, here I am, poor me, deal­ing with the flu for the 5^th con­sec­u­tive day, in the con­fines of my poop-bed­ded (whoops!) home in Win­nipeg. The worst ill­ness I’ve had to con­front in 15 years, man-o-man alive, I feel like crap. Sweats, chills, leak­ing snot, sneez­ing, cough­ing up yel­low gunk, eyes that feel like Mar­ty Feld­mans’ looked, etc, etc.…yes, appar­ent­ly it’s ​“flu sea­son” in our rot­ten and nasty coun­try once again.

Being a huge suck at times like this, I moan and groan in the com­fort of my bed. I have a tub that I can fill with hot water when­ev­er i please. I have a high qual­i­ty in-house water puri­fi­er and can drink as much as I want, when­ev­er I want. Some­one spe­cial is near­by to bring me tea (and then to pause and ask a ques­tion in a strict­ly abstract the­o­ret­i­cal, non-lit­er­al way, ​“Hon­ny, did you poop the bed??” (groan…uhh..no?!). I have very lit­tle appetite, but know when it returns, there’s food in a work­ing refrig­er­a­tor down­stairs. I can pass the time lis­ten­ing to music on the radio, did­dling the inter­net, or watch­ing hate­ful non­sense on tele­vi­sion. (Sarah Palin!! What the fuck! We need to re-lock and reload against these right wing freaks!! Don’t we?? At the bal­lot box is what i mean, of course, right?!!.….uhh, yeah! with votes! go democracy!…sheesh). I sit, tak­ing crap­py pills that I don’t want to take, but do any­way, because my head and body ache so bad I can’t even sleep at night. Woe is me!!

Now imag­ine being in a place, where you might be lucky enough to have a blan­ket that keeps you warm at night. Your roof is a tarp, and the floor turns to mud when it rains. You’ve been liv­ing like this for a year, and have been told that more help is on the way, but you’re not con­fi­dent in the peo­ple deliv­er­ing the mes­sage. You don’t even have access to clean water. In fact the water might make you death­ly ill. Access to food is ques­tion­able, and is a con­cern every day, day after day after day after day. An occu­pa­tion force that’s bet­ter equipped to repress the poor mass­es than to assist in the plight of the peo­ple has intro­duced cholera to major sources of water that are heav­i­ly depend­ed upon. The inter­na­tion­al ​“com­mu­ni­ty” has recent­ly staged far­ci­cal elec­tions there, but the largest par­ty in the coun­try has been exclud­ed, along with anoth­er 18 or so… ​“Democ­ra­cy” has tend­ed to come from out­side and above, which assists in transna­tion­al exploita­tion and the inter­ests of the domes­tic elite; when it comes from below, well, the com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions rep­re­sent­ing the poor major­i­ty are his­tor­i­cal­ly met with bru­tal, dead­ly force, and are pushed into hid­ing or under­ground. The pre­vail­ing gov­ern­ment has lit­tle pow­er, and does lit­tle to alle­vi­ate the suf­fer­ing. The mul­ti­tude of count­less NGO’s have more pow­er, and some­times do a few things here and there to alle­vi­ate suf­fer­ing, but can’t get their shit togeth­er to do any­thing beyond that. Imag­ine hav­ing the flu there!! Imag­ine con­tract­ing CHOLERA there!! Imag­ine walk­ing for hours with hard­ly any food in your gut to cast a bal­lot in an elec­tion you know is a selec­tion by the inter­na­tion­al ​“com­mu­ni­ty”, step­ping over dead bod­ies of peo­ple who had cholera and weren’t lucky enough to get treat­ment by the inter­na­tion­als, only to get there and real­ize the polling sta­tion does­n’t even exist. IMAG­INE THAT!! It’s been one year since the cat­a­stroph­ic earth­quake in Haiti. Some inter­na­tion­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions such as Part­ners in Health and the Cuban Med­ical Brigade and oth­ers are doing excel­lent, respect­ful, and extreme­ly valu­able work there and are def­i­nite­ly wor­thy of sup­port. The Cana­da-Haiti Action Net­work is hold­ing events across Cana­da over the course of Jan­u­ary to bring atten­tion to the unjust sit­u­a­tion there. Info can be found here: http://​www​.canada​haiti​ac​tion​.ca/​e​vents Addi­tion­al inde­pen­dent media sites uncor­rupt­ed by cor­po­rate affil­i­a­tion can be viewed here: http://​www​.canada​haiti​ac​tion​.ca/​w​e​b​links .…oh yeah, if any­one hap­pens to have access to Bill Clin­ton, spit in his face for me. Aim for his mouth, or his eyes. Of course, I mean that fig­u­ra­tive­ly, not literally.….

Public Forum, Thursday Jan 13th: Examining the Continuing Disaster in Haiti

When Jordy-Boy isn’t instant­ly crack­ing unbe­liev­ably expen­sive 19″ crash cym­bals here in the base­ment, he works with the Win­nipeg-Haiti Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group, who are relat­ed to the Cana­da Haiti Action Net­work.

Next Thurs­day, Jan 13^th, 7PM, at the Rudolph Rock­er Cul­tur­al Cen­ter at 91 Albert St, 3^rd Floor, they are presenting: 

A Pub­lic Forum: Exam­in­ing the Con­tin­u­ing Dis­as­ter in Haiti. A year after the earth­quake in Haiti, the coun­try faces many chal­lenges that are social­ly imposed. From the ongo­ing UN occu­pa­tion and the emer­gence of cholera, to failed aid mod­els, to sham elec­tions that refuse to allow Haiti’s largest polit­i­cal par­ty par­tic­i­pa­tion, Cana­di­ans have many rea­sons to be con­cerned about what is being done there under the rubric of human­i­tar­i­an­ism. Please join us for a short pre­sen­ta­tion and for an open dis­cus­sion. Admis­sion is FREE!!!

All those believ­ing that Cana­da is act­ing as a benign force for democ­ra­cy are strong­ly encour­aged to attend.

Capital Givers/ Takers Record

Hey, check out this free down­load of this record i mixed/​mas­tered recent­ly for a great band from Long Island NY called Cap­i­tal. Cheers to these guys for let­ting me get in on it!