OVER THE EDGE NEWSPAPER.

ANNA GRADOWSKA
STAFF WRITER

One of the most powerful actions of
radical environmentalists is that of eco-
tage. Ecotage is the deliberate sabotage
or destruction of property for the pur-
pose of preventing/delaying environ-
mental crises or making a strong state-
ments. However, when most people hear
about these actions, usually though the
twisted out of the media and industry,
the ecosabateurs are made out to be in-
effective and murderous villains, when
in reality the opposite is true.

Through the years of the modern
environmental battle, there have been

_ many groups who have taken it upon
themselves to put a stop to some hein-
ous crime against nature. Some actions
are passive, such as protest or tree-sit-
ting, but some are more explosive, such
as atsons or machinery sabotage. The
effectiveness of these action, which is
frequently glossed over by mainstream
media, has caused many victories.on the
legal front. As ecotage groups such as the
Earth Liberation Front cause millions
of dollar worth of damage to corporate
property, those fighting the legal battles
to prevent destructive legislation or de-
velopment have gained time and fuel.

Unlike what the industry would have
you believe, ecotage has almost never
caused harm to human life, except that
of those who would perform these ac-
tions. More harm has come to peace-
ful protest at the hands of the police,
industry workers, and other aggressive
and misinformed citizens than from the
property damage of ecosabateurs,

One of the more controversial forms of
ecotage, tree-spiking, has been demon-
ized by media, but the only reported
injury from the action was in the US
when. a disgruntled landowner decided

MUCH GRANT
STAFFWRITER ee
Their swords taised, their armor
gleaming in the late dusk, early twilight
glow. It sounds like something out of
the Dark Ages and to many first-time

on lookets it is, but the reality is, char

in this modern era, in our universitys
beautiful courtyard, light gleaming of
off both plastic and metallic armor, ‘The
Wolf pack meets for combat,

Por those who don't know, ‘The Wolf
pack is a UNBC club that meets every
Tuesday and Thursday night and prac-
tices the ancient arts of martial combat
clad in armor and carrying sword and
shield. The Wolf pack is a mercenary:
guild affiliated with a group called the
SCA, an organization that prides itself

on bringing the middle ages back to life.
through activities like fairs, and even’
“wars, Being a member can tequire a lot.

of work, one must first complete some
basic training, and then attempt to. spar
in armor (often provided as “newb” gear

by the club until you know that you v ae
ena eee apa oe fs

Monkey-Wrenching for Morality

build your honor, and Be you

NOVEMBER 8, 2006

to copycat the sabotage when.a logging
company began to develop the area
around his home. However, without
the critical step of alerting the company.
When a ecotage group spikes an area of.
active logging, its not to injure work-
ers, but to prevent the company from
entering an area due to the risk to their
extremely expensive equipment. The
feigned concern of the forestry industry
is for the benefit of their revenue rather
than the safety of their workers, as can
be seen by the massive yearly. death/in-
jury of forestry workers.

‘The goal of ecotage is not to kill or
maim fellow citizens, but to pressure the
corporations that drive the engines of
environmental destruction to reconsider
their action at the price of their property
damages at the fury of ecotage groups.
In the US, the industry leaders refuse
to release the total damage incurred to
them by ecotage groups for fear of gal-
vanizing them into more action because
of their massive victory.

The bureaucratic machine of the state
is the least effective method for immedi-
ately stoppage a environmental atrocity.
There are times when only thing that
can create enough of an impact on the
grind of resource development is the
direct involvement of people who have
enough guts to put themselves between
the gears of the industry and a disaster
waiting to happen. The power of politic-
al statement made by financial pressure
of ecotage is without equal, The hope
of industry is that we are passive and
docile enough to not stand up against
the ecological insanity they reap. If we
all stood up to say no to these infrac-
tions at all costs, we would realize that
we have more power than we have ever
been told,

basics before you can

must find a sort of character for your-
self to take on, with your area and era

of birch, as well as a name, and if you so
choose, a background. While Northern
European backgrounds are prevalent,
ranging in time from 500 AD to the end

of the Middle Ages, some also choose a

character based out of the Middle Bast,
or otient depending on personal prefer-
If what I have written sounds even

slightly interesting to you, perhaps you

should make your way to a practice, but
dont expect to start swinging right away
as they require you to watch a practice
ot two first before higher ranking pack
members will let you swing into com-
bar, so you can see for yourself what
your getting into. If you choose to join
the Wolf pack however, Dan Tissear,
UNBC graduate of 1999 a-k.a. the thir-
teenth century Scottish warrior, Argyle
Macmillan guarantees three ‘things, the
Wolf pack will “increase your strength,
208

> JEREMY JOHNSON
COLUMNIST
Whatis CRIA?
According to the
CRIA homepage,
“The Canadian
Recording Indus-
try Association (CRIA) is a non-profit
trade organization that was founded
in 1964 to represent the interests of
Canadian companies that create, manu-
facture and matket sound recordings.’
Sounds great, doesn't it? A body that
represents Canadian music. Then again,
you can look at the Altria website and it
says, ‘The name Philip Morris is truly a
tobacco name—a name associated with
a remarkable history as a leader in that
industry both in the United States and
around the world.’ That also sounds
great, a tobacco company as a world
leader. I'll let you work out-your opin-
ion on that,

For those not in the know, CRIA has
been under the gun on many fronts.
This is to the point that some are
questioning whether CRIA is even a
Canadian company these days. There's
two issues that happened in the media,
one older and one newer that makes
people wonder about this. The older
Occurrence was more dramatic then the
newer occurrence. I'm talking about
Nettwerk Records, Aquarius Records,
the Children's Group, Linus Entertain-
ment, Anthem Records and True North

OPINIONS

@» Whois the Canadian Recording Industry
| _ Association Looking Out for Anyway?

Records leaving CRIA stating, “It has
become increasingly clear over the past
few months that CRIAs position on
several important music industry issues
are not aligned with our best interests
as independent recording companies”
Significant? Well, if you classify Sum
41, Social Broken Scene, Avril Lavign,
Barenaked Ladies, Murray. McLauch-
lan, 54-40, The Guess Who, Rush,
Cape-Breton, among many others major
Canadian musical acts, then, yes, this is
probably significant. Then again, a well
used fact among advocates is that 90% of
Canadian music is made by independent
acts (and yes, those listed above are, in-

deed, independent)

“some are questioning
whether CRIA is even a
Canadian company these

days.’

Though a lesser known area in this
issue-is who are ‘Class A and ‘Class B’
labels? I.cannot confirm all who are class
‘A or‘B’ labels, but what is confirmable is
that all six of those labels that left CRIA
are, helieve it or not, class ‘B’ labels. So
who are class‘A labels? I would very eas-
ily suspect it’s the big four multinational
labels — you know, Sony, EMI, Warner
and Universal, Yeah, those guys that
have a thing for suing American music

fans over file-sharing,

So what happened lately? Appar-
ently, there are arguments going back
and forth over putting a tariff on online
music downloading. This tariff doesn't
necessatily have money tied to it yet,
but it asks every Canadian online music
store to put DRM (Digital Rights Man-
agement) into the music they sell. In
short, a measure that is supposed to stop
people from making a copy of a song or
burning the song onto CD (The CSI
tariff). A tariff I'm willing to call ridicu-
lous, but I won't get into thac.

Apparently, CRIA thinks that some
of its remaining Class ‘B’ labels might
object to the tariff. What's a CRIA sup-
pose to do? Well, not represent them.
The dispute is whether or not CRIA
is obliged to tell them that they will
not represent them in favour of major
foreign record labels (this is with the
Copyright Board of Canada mind you)
They took this dispute to the Federal
Court of Appeals and CRIA lost the
case (and had to pay the court costs as
well over this). So now CRIA is forced
to tell these smaller Canadian labels that
they wont represent them. One might
wonder, just who is CRIA representing?
It sure seems like they like representing
foreign interests with lobbying the gov-
ernment to ‘conform to national obliga-
tions” (even though some say Canada
already does), Do they really represent
Canadian interests?

War on Time

JOSEPH JEFFERY
STAFF SATIRIST

Another year, another war.

As this is the Remembrance Day issue,
a day to remember those who lost their
lives in war's past, I take a lighter tone as
I look to the war of the future.

First there was the war on terror, now
Americas number one idiot and pres-
ident returns in another fun-filled caper:
‘The War on Time!

George Wubya has pledged to fight to
eradicate time itself after it was estimat-
ed to be the number one world killer in
2006. Anti-war-on-timeactivists pointed
out that time had nothing to do with the
deaths, Bush administration gave what
they saw as conclusive proof that time
was the killer; an old saying “Every hour
wounds, The last one kills.’ America
has devised the ultimate weapon in
this fight strangely reminiscent of a
superman movie, The weapon against
time involves “turning the clock back”
by using a fast moving spaceship to
travel round the Earth, in a direction
opposite its revolution, at blistering
speeds, American Scientists believe
this will not work but when have they
been listened to anyway? The coden-
ame for this was originally Operation
Killtime but Bush in his infinite wis-

dom felt this would be too easy for

time to guess and thus with the use of a
thesaurus Operation Procrastinate was
born. The war has begun immediately
and quarantine camps have been set up
for those affected by this “terrible dis-
ease’, Other casualties have come from
the media; TIME magazine was forced
into a name change due to the sudden
onset of the war. Bush has also made
it clear that he plans to invade anyone
who he thinks might be attempting to
use time as a weapon. Former British
Prime Minister John Major was recently
arrested when it was decided that his
“back to basics” plan was an underhand
way of using time as a weapon. Con-
doleezza Rice, America’s secretary of
state, was unavailable to comment due
to having spent the last year shopping

rather than doing her job. However
close personal compatriot of Bush, the
Prime Minister of England, Tony Blair
said that he would unanimously support
Bush's controversial war on time, much
like his previous war on terror. “I do not
care if the people don't want it, we as a
nation are proud to stand together with

. the American's on this one and today is

about the day and is not a day for sound
bites and I do feel the hand of history on
our shoulders today.’

‘This is Joseph Jeffery, reporting from
somewhere in the near satirical future.

Over the Edge is hiring!

Over the Edge is hieing

ine the position of

Managing Editor

Lear aboor-the business af newapapers, Galb valuable wouk
experience. Gee bodgem, work witha hoakaeeper. get on knee the

aC Secu Act.

loterwnted? Sirp ay die office (ime the Wietergarden: bredde (ELI,
cman grenahered pegiasabe.ca, or call Sh.

{Cont worey, it Gras hoving as &-ncighe mand. In fact, i kind of fan
like plapingdsud. And wha doesn’t onane we do thac?]