VUE Weekly

Eleven years ago, Public Enemy released There's a Poison Goin' On ... online months before the CD would be in stores. Remember, this is 1999. To most people, the word "MP3" sounded more like a car model than music. Today, iTunes allows people to buy an album on their phone with credit, and own it in minutes. PE's album, one of the first by a major group sold on the Internet, required buyers to go to atomicpop.com, download a 48-megabyte file, pay $8, check their emails for a purchase code that would unlock the file and—voila!—14 brand new songs.

Disturbing visuals across the city this past week. First, the body of a 25-year-old man was found on steps leading to the River Valley and was witnessed by numerous transit users throughout the day. Then another early morning murder on Tuesday and, recently, the court showing of the violent curb stomping of a transit driver captured on video. In addition to the persisting image of the attack on Shannon Barry, it's been difficult to have a positive image of our city and police force.

Last week a lawyer for Syncrude, Robert White, told provincial court Judge Ken Tjosvold that Syncrude can't be legally responsible for the birds that land in its tailings ponds as preventing all birds from touching the contaminated water is impossible. If Syncrude is guilty in the case of the 1600 ducks that died in its tailings pond in April 2008, White argued, so is every other company with a tailings pond.

Changes to the Local Authorities Election Act, passed into law last month, will affect city council candidates in this fall's municipal election campaign.

The Syncrude duck trial is expected to reach a verdict in June. Robert White, lawyer for Syncrude delivered his closing arguments to the court on May 12. For over two months Syncrude has faced the charges of violating Section 155 of the Alberta Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act for failing to prevent hazardous chemicals coming in contact with animals and plants, as well as the federal charge of premitting a harmful substance to be deposited in areas frequented by migratory birds, which is found under section 5.1 of the migratory birds convention act. White's closing statements articulated the reasoning behind Syncrude's not guilty plea and an interesting mention of the provincial and federal government's role in approving tailings ponds to exist. Here are some quotes taken from White's closing statements made on May 12 from the court transcript.

OIL AND ART Not limited to just paints, like most everything else the oil economy plays a role in the way Albertans  think about and use art. In a continuing lecture series this Spring, academics and activists are being asked to think about how oil impacts our use of art. This week activism is the topic of discussion. Muralist Ian Mulder, and artists Brenda Kim Christiansen and Sherri Chaba will present their ideas. The series continues on May 27 with a discussion on art as a form of protest with presentations by Greenpeace campaigner Mike Hudema and Eriel Deranger of the Rainforest Action Network. Thur, May 20 (7 pm) Oil and the Arts: Public Lecture Series Natural Resources Engineering Facility 1-001 University of Alberta Free DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM Five Cuban men are serving a total of 75 years in an American prison. The were accused by the US government in 2001 of committing espionage against the US. The campaign to free the Cuban five has defended their actions as preventing a terrorist attack against Cuba by terrorist groups operating out of Miami. Since their arrest in 1998 Cubans have fought for their release.  The Trial, a documentary on the Five narrated by Danny Glover, will be showing Tuesday, May 25 along with a brief presentation from the People's Poets on their recent trip to Cuba and the history of the Romerias De Mayo festival. Tue, May 25 (6:30 pm) The Trial: The Untold Story of the Cuban Five Education Building 129 University of Alberta Free

I just wanted to drop you a note to thank you for the recent piece ("Are there no prisons?" May 13 – May 19, 2010)

Most Albertans associate tar sands impacts such as land and water contamination and rising health concerns like cancer and respiratory disease rates with Fort McMurray. But Citizens for Responsible Development, a group of concerned farmers and residents in the Fort Saskatchewan area are trying to raise awareness about the tar sands' impacts right here in Edmonton's backyard.

In 1994 Ralph Klein's Minister of Municipal Affairs, Dr Steve West, made the following statement in the Alberta Legislature:

Last week Industry Minister Tony Clement unveiled the government's much-anticipated Digital Economy Strategy consultation. The consultation is slated to run for two months and includes an online forum, face-to-face meetings and a 40-page document that sets out key areas of concern. Five areas for discussion are identified: capacity to innovate, building a world-class digital infrastructure, growing the ICT industry, creating digital content and building digital skills.

What on Earth ever persuaded the Mediterranean members of the European Union to join the euro? The "single European currency" is currently used by 16 of the 27 EU countries, but all the others except Denmark and the United Kingdom have expressed their intention to join, and most of them have specific target dates for doing it. Yet the euro nearly came undone this month, and it is still in serious danger for the long term.

For his talk delivered last week in Edmonton entitled "Whose Streets?" writer, activist and executive director of Queers for Economic Justice (New York), Kenyon Farrow weaved together urban renewal, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, global markets, hate crime legislation, labour, media, HIV/AIDS and a warning to be leery of World Fairs (Expos) into a relatable way of understanding the world and along with it illustrated questions on how the status quo allows for the violences of injustice to continue. And it made sense.

Parkallen Restaurant has been around for over 25 years, in one form or another. It started out as a simple pizza place, Parkallen Pizza & Donair, and over time evolved into a full-scale restaurant, offering what some say is the best Lebanese cuisine that our very un-Mediterranean city has to offer. But early this year, owner Joseph Rustom embarked on yet another transformation, and for almost three long months there was no pizza tossing or kabob-grilling happening in that once-busy kitchen. It did see power tools galore, though.

The evolution of pizza is strangely analogous to that of Darwin's finches. Darwin's finches comprise 15 species of tropical songbirds found on the Galapagos Islands, and each species evolved beak morphology suited to a specific food source. These finches likely descended from a single "parent species" that found its way to the Galapagos via tropical winds and a bit of luck. So too has the pizza evolved considerably from its parent form, which is a simple flattened disk of leavened dough anointed with tomato sauce, olive oil and cheese. Endemic to Naples, the pizza traversed choppy seas and likely emerged through Ellis Island in the repertoires of Italian immigrants seeking fortune in the New World. Not until the 1950s did pizza enjoy significant popularity, but since then its growth in status has been nothing short of exponential.

With all due respect for the looming financial disaster for vulnerable economies like Greece, the weakening Euro spells greater opportunities for wine lovers or those who've dreamt of visiting the Mediterranean to sample the world's most reputable wines firsthand amidst unforgettable backdrops.

Sure, we live in a bilingual country. But having a general population that actually speaks both English and French seems truer in Central Canada. Less so out west: get far enough away from Quebec and French seems less of an official language and more just a school course that became optional after junior high.

Walterdale's Cradle to Stage has taken different forms over the years, from a full-on playwright mentorship to intensive work with dramaturges and directors, from a mini-festival that rotates nights to a uniform, two-week program, but one thing has always been at its centre: getting a collection of new one-acts by Edmonton playwrights on the stage.

Morality is, for the great lot of us, not actually something terribly immediate. In our day to day, moral questions are usually low stakes, or at least come with fairly obvious answers, however much we like to obscure them to suit our desires (I shouldn't cheat on my significant other or I shouldn't steal an iPod). There are some grander questions that we might face regularly—what kind of responsibility does my privilege confer on me, say—but the tangible results of our decisions tend to be removed enough that it fuzzes the radar, if we bother to think of them at all.

Bertolt Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan begins and ends with some gods behaving badly, but I don't know that the man should be quick to point fingers: though he's forever willing to point out humanity's moral faults, he's less eager to offer tangible solutions, as often as not just kind of suggesting the problem and implying the solution, leaving it up to his audience to figure it all out (as is directly the case in the final scene here). But, then, maybe this is also Brecht's way of suggesting that moral adjudicators are generally better at pointing out flaws than actually helping people out (or for that matter creating systems that allow for consistent good behavior).

'I love fashioning a dialogue with the community in which I live," says Workshop West artistic director Michael Clark. "I find the discourse with the community that I live with comes through the observations that playwrights bring, in the plays that they write, to be one that is very exhilarating and current. We're creating our culture."