4TheRcrd Mag.

With the power out in my office downtown, there is little to do but pine for the glorious weekend ahead. Starting on Friday night, two equally exciting music festivals will kick off their festivities in the GVRD. The Fusion Festival, in Surrey, and the Vancouver Folk Music Festival will both run from July 18 until the 20^th, with each showcasing an exceptional spread of local and international talent.

Vancouver’s veteran music festival is in its 31^st year, and offers a solid line up that combines music legends like Madagascar Slim with bright new talent, including Halifax darling Jenn Grant. With so much talent to take in, and so many stages to visit, the festival experience can prove daunting. For this reason, I strongly recommend attending the workshop components of the festival. During these sessions, a handful of musicians collaborate on stage in a free jam. These musical forums allow participants to deviate from their usual set lists, and show their skills.

In addition to the full schedule of workshops on Saturday and Sunday, I’ve compiled my personal picks for this year’s Folk Music Festival below.

Friday:

Aimee Mann 8:00 pm

Saturday:

Eneida Marta 10:00 am

Jason Collett 12:30 pm

Pascale Picard Band 1:45 pm

Sunday:

Luther Wright 12:00 pm

Harry Manx and Kevin Breit 1:15 pm

Surrey’s Fusion Festival took me by surprise when it announced a solid lineup of multicultural music and performances. It seems that the city of Surrey has been crowned the Cultural Capital of Canada for 2008, and that this music festival is a part of the celebration inherent. While it saddens me that this is not a yearly event, I look forward to attending this year’s free festivities.

In embracing diversity, the festival includes many cooking demonstrations, and hosts an international pavilion for patrons to explore. While the global feel of this event excites me, I am even more impressed by the number of local artists that the festival has invited to participate. Fusion Festival will be a great place to make acquaintances with emergent Vancouver talent. I tried to balance local and international artists in my picks for this festival.

Friday:

Fresh Groove 6:30 pm

A-Slam 8:00 pm

Saturday:

First Nations Fusion 1:00 pm

Nathan 6:50 pm

The Chieftains 8:30 pm

Sunday:

Delhi2Dublin 4:30 pm

Jully Black 7:00 pm

For tickets, and more information on the artists, visit the festival websites.

And remember, festivals are more fun when you take public transit or bike (because no one wants to be in a traffic jam after a day of beautiful music).

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*****SPECIAL REGGAE EVENT!!*****

Wednesday July 23rd
Shine Nightclub (Newly Renovated)

Main Room:

BRUKOUT!
Reggae, Dancehall, Soca, Roots
Feat. DJs Arems | Rexx | & Brukout! DJs

Back Room:

COOLOUT!
90’s R&B, Remixes, & GoodShit!
Feat. DJ Juice & DJ Hustle

***Tickets Only $7!***
(incl. drink before 11pm)

FOR TICKETS PLEASE EMAIL: nosh@phreshvibe.com with the subject line “Shine Tickets”

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Bill C-52 will put that to a stop! have willingly self-shamed myself for allowing myself to be so busy co-running a business, working long hours and 7 day weeks; that I have totally forgotten about the world around our little business. My sources to keeping me up-to-date are our customers, with a recent wake-up call to Bill C-52.

If Bill C-52 goes through I, along with any reader of this peer-reviewed article faces criminal prosecution.

It took a moment for the information to digest through the constant dynamic business- focused brainwaves, to pull a recall celebration of the closure of Bill C-51 from a remarkable protest of more than 3 million Canadians. I am not sure what the other 30 million are doing or thinking? Maybe they are in the same limited media arena as me? Maybe the information about the escalating corruption and outright unconstitutional abuse by both the government and sidekick Health Canada is just not reaching the full 75% of the Canadian population that use a natural health product on a daily basis.

The creation of the Natural Health Products Regulation (NHPs) was created as a separate ambassador to protect Canadians’ highly demanded access to NHPs, apart from Health Canada and the Food & Drug Assoc. And yet, with the demand from 75% of our population, we are to witness over 20,000 US NHPs being removed from shelves in Canada. These products have been in our Canadian market for over 20 years with a proven effective track record. Even Canadian-made NHPs have been stopped at the customs and refused exporting rights due to the new NHPs Regulation.

It is like Big Pharma took some boot camp training with Homeland Security to further empower their psychopathic corporate business model.

One of the most shocking amendments to C-52, which was not in C-51, is that an investigator has, without warning to enter your business or home to inspect if you are in possession of a controlled herb or vitamin without a perscription, or have any peer related printed material or media you could face seizure of home, $5,000,000 fine or imprisonment. The maximum fine for carrying or possession to sell drugs like marijuana, cocaine, heroin is 18 months and/or $2000. If in possession of 3kg or more one could face 3years to life imprisonment. These are drugs that kill people or destroy lives. NHPs are safe, improves quality of living and generally have no outrageous side effects like BIG Pharma Drugs.

Any business that carries NHPs must pay a fee, apply for a license for each individual product. The license and right to carry or sell the product expires annually, so the business owner must re-apply and pay a fee again, every year for each product.

We were once a nation that housed over 100 manufacturers of NHPs. This regulation has been going for over seven years resulting in only 10 manufacturers left in Canada.

In short, healthier Canadians mean less money for the Government and Health Canada. It is above and beyond control with a simple message, contrary to the government healthycanadians.gc.ca website.

The message is clear from our Health Minister Tony Clements & Health Canada, “They do not want healthy Canadians!”

Please review the information @ http://www.stopc51.com/ all the information you need to know is there. Stay informed, stay alert and lets add to the other 3 million Canadian protesters to continue our constitutional rights and freedoms. Our quality of life and healthy living options are at stake.

I have a strong suspicion that is in part with the North American Union of Canada, US and Mexico that is occurring behind closed doors, but that’s another story.

Check out these links about the NAU - http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6346
http://www.canadianactionparty.ca/nau.html

IMAGE CREDIT: here.

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Above: Jacob Amoah (7)
Asebu, Ghana

It’s 6:30 am in Asebu, a rural community in central Ghana. All of the orphans at Asebu’s Home of Hope are fetching water for their morning baths, all of them except Jacob. ‘Jo’ as he is sometimes called, is hiding in the bushes behind his home with feces running down his leg. When I find the seven year old he’s crying, ashamed of his public accident. I plead with him to come into the house and get ready for school. He says nothing, he won’t even look at me. On the ground in front of him are small scraps of paper with his handwriting on them. One piece reads “Plece sir” while another reads, “sack”. As I try to make sense of the scraps Jo’s older sister, Grace, appears with a bucket of water and a sponge. Without saying a word she takes her brother by the hand and leads him in to some neighbouring bushes where she bathes him quietly. For the two siblings, who share one bedroom with 14 other children, the bath is a rare and necessary moment of privacy. It was a year ago this month that Jacob and Grace lost their mother to AIDS.

It was nearly three years ago that Pink Floyd united on stage and stole the show at London’s Live 8 concert. In 2005 Live 8 and the Make Poverty History campaign created unprecedented momentum for the cause of African development. That same year at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, the leaders of the world’s 8 richest countries bowed to the public pressure and made a historic commitment to double aid to Africa by 2010.

Back in Asebu it’s 2008 and Jacob is sitting down to eat breakfast. His intentions are clear, he’s the only child at the table not wearing a school uniform. Today’s breakfast is the regular fare, a small serving of rice and tomato stew. As I watch Jacob wolf down the humble meal, I stare at a small bald patch on his head, a symptom of the ringworm he was recently treated for. My mind wanders: “Did the drugs he took do anything? Why does that rice come from Thailand? The food crisis is a rice crisis, rice crisis, that’s hard to say. Rice crisis.” I snap out of it when Jacob asks me to write a note for his teacher. “What should it say?” I ask. “Please Sir, I am sick” he responds with his mouth full of rice. I feel his head and his chest, he’s very hot. Fever and bowel mishaps, these are signs of malaria. I carefully forge the note, adding a measured amount of sloppiness to my handwriting. I consider spelling “Please” with a ‘z’ but end up deciding against it. He takes the note and leaves for school, promising to return soon.

Last week the Africa Progress Panel released a report that summarized the efforts made by G8 nations towards meeting their 2005 commitments. The eleven-member panel is chaired by Kofi Annan and its members include Graca Machel, Bob Geldof, and Tony Blair. The APP report identified a 40 billion US dollar shortfall in aid.1 Simply put, at the halfway point to 2010 less than 25% of the commitments have been met.2

Jacob keeps his promise, quickly returning with a big smile on his face. He’s free from school, free to do whatever he likes. He hands me his notebook and pencil and says “Work.” I quickly fill a page with simple multiplication questions before returning the book and pencil to him. After about twenty minutes he turns in the improvised math quiz to be corrected. Three wrong answers out of fourty. I reward him by drawing a smiley face on his page. He laughs at the sight of my doodle and immediately asks for more work. He passes the rest of the day doing math work. In the evening Jacob and his housemates sit down to dinner, their second meal of the day. They eat corn which has been milled, then fermented and boiled into a sour ball of dough called “banku”. Tonight the banku is accompanied by more tomato stew and a tiny piece of fish, the only protein Jacob will eat today. He finishes the meal quickly and rubs his noticeably swollen belly, a sign of malnutrition.

Positive changes have been made with the modest boost in aid since 2005. In 2007 the number of Africans living with HIV/AIDS who were on life-saving anti-retroviral drugs jumped from 1.3 million to 2.1 million. In the same year the number of African children enrolled in school increased by over 9 million.3 These success stories make broken commitments inexcusable.

Jacob is making no excuses. Today is a new day. He’s wearing his uniform, he’s excited about school and he’s especially excited about breakfast. Something different today, a bowl of corn porridge and, as a treat, half a dozen peanuts sprinkled on top. Jacob picks all the peanuts out of his porridge and puts them in his mouth. His face contorts before he spits them out into his hand. He makes sure the peanuts are clean before carefully placing them in his pocket. Perplexed, I ask him what he’s doing. He smiles at me as he swallows a mouthful of porridge, “Lunch” he says.

Kofi Annan’s High School is less than 30 kilometres away from Jacob’s home. Last week the former UN Secretary General stated: “Africa has made substantial progress in recent years. However, the current food crisis threatens to reverse many of the hard-fought gains that have been made. With 100 million people on the brink of abject poverty, the cost of food will not be measured in the price of wheat and rice, but in the rising number of infant and child deaths across Africa…what is achieved in the months ahead will be more than a test of leadership; it will also determine the very future of the continent.”4

The leaders of the G8 nations will be meeting in Hokkaido, Japan July 7th-9th.

Sadly, there are no plans for a Pink Floyd reunion.

To learn more go to http://www.one.org
Sean Devlin is a Vancouver based filmmaker and comedian currently working in Africa.

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VIP BDAY PACKAGES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

FOR GUESTLIST OR VIP PLEASE EMAIL: nosh@phreshvibe.com with the subject line “Guestlist”

- July 5th at wild coyote.. for the first time ever at wild coyote we have one of the previous dmc champions in the house! DJ WAX!!!

drink specials:
3.00 Bacardi & Coke
3.25 tequila, baja rosa, china whites, scillion kiss
4.25 Corona

dj wax, jin, juice, hustle, pivot and alibaba Spinning the best in hiphop, r&b, reggaeton, oldschool, crunk, funk&soul

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