TRANSLATED BY JEFFREY COOPER

El pasado 31 de agosto Mercado News Magazine en conjunto con CityEvents celebraron en Spacco Restaurant “La Ultima Fiesta del Verano”. Al ritmo de la samba se fue desenvolviendo la noche.

La presencia de Garotinhas hizo temblar la pista de baile. Los aperitivos servidos hacían que se te hiciera agua la boca.

Una diversidad de personas asistieron al evento, entre ellos jóvenes  profesionales, Torontonians, y medios latinos. A medida que la fiesta se iba desenvolviendo entre tragos y risas, un invitado especial hizo acto de presencia.

Nada más y nada menos que Rocco Rossi, uno de los  postulantes para alcalde de  Toronto. Rossi estuvo   compartiendo con los  invitados durante  toda la velada. Además  de eso los asistentes fueron  sorprendidos con una  introducción de  bienvenida en español  que dejo boquiabiertos a  más de uno.

El discurso dado por el candidato para alcalde de Toronto fue totalmente conmovedor y alentador. Sin duda Rocco Rossi sembró a muchos un granito de esperanza para un mejor futuro.

Mercado News Magazine celebrated the last part of summer at Spacco Restaurant, in a joint effort with CityEvents. The rhythm of the Samba music and the sparkling dancers shaking and twirling to the beat got the night started off right.

A vibrant and distinct audience made up of all sorts of Torontonians lit up the dance floor: young professionals, Latin-Americans, and Spanish-language media. As the night went on, some began to notice a special guest among the crowd.

It was not until Rocco Rossi opened his speech with an endearing introduction in Spanish that the crowd went quiet and some jaws began to drop. Then, Toronto’s multicultural candidate for mayor showed his verbal and cultural duality, his understanding of the city’s real issues and its citizens’ true concerns and obstacles.

Mr. Rossi’s heartwarming and reassuring speech certainly instilled a sense of hope among the crowd, proving that –regardless of background—Toronto is comprised of a diverse and constantly changing spectrum of culture that must be embraced.

 BY DEBORAH LEWIS

Toronto’s 29th annual Hispanic Fiesta came to a close on Monday night and, despite what seemed like summer’s bitter goodbye throughout a brisk and overcast weekend, Mel Lastman Square was as vibrant as ever.

Hundreds of families, Hispanic and Hispanic culture enthusiasts alike, came out to celebrate Latin American food, music and dance. Those unfamiliar with the North York mega event were surely shocked at the vast array of authentic foods from different countries and the incredibly genuine folkloric music and dance of the highest caliber. However, it was the dancing, cheering, effervescent crowd facing the stage that evoked my awestruck enjoyment.

The event kicked off on Friday night with Havana Express, an extremely high-energy, five-man ensemble originating from Cuba and Argentina. This really set the bar high for the next few days of performers, all of which met the standards to say the least. Among the many crowd-pleasing acts was Esmeralda Enrique, founder of Canada’s famous Esmeralda Enrique Flamenco Dance Company, offering a magnificent display of Spain’s flamenco tradition of delicate guitar and rhythm accompanied by three of the finest twirling and stomping flamenco dancers. Other ‘fan favourites’ included Cuban-Canadian Reggaeton/Merengue trio “Zona Franca” as well as highly esteemed Colombian singer/songwriter Gabriel Romero, who had many swaying, star-eyed ladies singing along with him in the front row. The audience was also blessed with fantastic folklore music from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Nicaragua, Panama, Chile and Mexico—all performed with unbelievable respect for tradition (and often the most authentic attire too!).

Sunday’s crowd got the pleasure of enjoying my favourite act, an appearance by members of Toronto’s Escola do Samba including their founder as the MC/Singer/Drum line conductor. Aside from the astonishing talent in the rear half of the stage, the synchronized multitude of drums were accompanied by a couple of the finest Samba dancers shaking almost unnaturally to the beat of the tambores. The mostly Canadian-born students of Samba did a great job in getting the crowd’s blood pumping on a grey afternoon on Yonge St, and were thanked with a typically warm applause from the Latino audience.

The event also included a variety of sponsor booths such as artisanal Latin-American clothing, Mill St. Brewery, Orbitel, Western Union, Mercado News, and a large humanitarian effort from Canadian Blood Services’ onematch.ca campaign to find matching samples for Leukemia patients in and out of the Hispanic community.

Finally, the food vendors were the best way to continue on a cultural journey during intermissions. From Salvadorian pupusas to Colombian empanadas to the most authentic ripened plantains with cheese, the variety of Latin American food was a welcome reminder of the cultural diversity and diffusion of Hispanic Culture in our great city.

BY JEFFREY COOPER

Officials explain that HAARP is communications and surveillance related research into electrical properties of Earth’s ionosphere. Skeptics see HAARP as a geophysical weather dominating device orother such technology.

Scientific research and discovery or science fiction-esque weapons conspiracy?

The minstrel boy to the war is gone, In the ranks of death you’ll find him, His father’s sword he has girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him.– Thomas Moore

Devastating Applications of Comic Super-Villainy

If a well-trained opera singer can shatter glass with a well-pitched note, imagine the potentially devastating applications of a massive, multi-billion dollar high-powered transmitter capable of operating at ultra sonic frequencies.

While the conspiracies surrounding the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) may seem more like comic super-villainy than cutting edge science and technology, many are beginning to question the actual objectives of the ionospheric research being carried out in the remote Alaskan hinterlands.

From out of the Wilderness a Rain of Fire

Located 12 km outside of Gakona in southeastern Alaska, the HAARP Research Station is housed on the grounds of a refurbished radar facility and consists mostly of 180 antennas grouped on 35 acres of land. The antenna array can produce a total radiated power capability of about 3,600 kilowatts and send a signal into the ionosphere that has the capacity to excite electrons in gas molecules to produce light and even small amounts of plasma.

Along with a host of other fears, it’s this plasma that has many concerned about HAARP’s being used as a weapon. Plasma is a gas that has been ionized making it electrically conductive and strongly influenced by electromagnetic fields. Plasma is what makes new TVs so vivid and neon signs so appealing. It is also what makes various flames, lightning bolts and massively powerful stars. If it is capable of producing small amounts of plasma today, can a rain of fire be too far off on the horizon?

HAARP Researchers ‘Ameliorate’ the Record

In a February 2010 interview on Pentagon Web Radio, HAARP Air Force Research Laboratory program manager, James Battis and Naval Research Laboratory program manager, Craig Selcher defended HAARP as nothing more sinister than “a joint Air Force-Navy program to investigate ionospheric physics and radio science.”

“The ionosphere is a region of the upper atmosphere where there are a significant number of charged particles [that] can affect things like the quality of the signal from a satellite to the ground, or short-wave [ground to ground] communications. These are the transmissions which are used to communicate with aircraft and satellites, so any effect the ionosphere has on communications is important,” explained Battis.“We have ships all over the globe that we want to be in contact with at all times, so any effect the ionosphere has on communications is something that we want to study. Satellite radio and satellite television can also be impacted by naturally occurring ionospheric conditions,” said Selcher. “And trying to understand those is to begin to learn to predict, and maybe to ameliorate, the problem.”

A Qualitative Leap in Weaponry and Conspiracy

‘Ameliorate’ is an unusual choice of words. Meaning to make or become better, more bearable, more satisfactory or improve, ‘ameliorate’ is the sort of word that raises a lot of questions. Make what problem become better? Our communications or the ionosphere itself? What exactly is going to become more bearable or satisfactory and to whom? Improve on what specifically, science or nature? These are the sorts of questions that draw conspiracy theorists to HAARP like a magnet.But it is not just the usual host of Internet eccentrics who are concerned. According to a 2002 news bulletin from Moscow based Interfax, Russian parliament issued a press statement prepared by the international affairs and defense committee claiming “the U.S. is creating new integral geophysical weapons that may influence the near-Earth medium with high frequency radio waves. The significance of this qualitative leap could be compared to the transition from cold steel to firearms.”

Death, Damage, Devastation: Haiti, China and the Tsunami

The recent seismic activity that caused the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir Earthquake, the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake and the recent Earthquakes in Haiti and Chile unleashed unfathomable death, damage and devastation has all been variously ascribed to HAARP. By bouncing a specific frequency off the ionosphere at an already vulnerable fault the vibrations, according to some speculative theories, could trigger a quake. There is even photographic evidence of plasma like light signatures in the skies over China and Haiti shortly before the earthquakes occurred.This of course is only one of many unsubstantiated theories about HAARP’s supposed geophysical domination. The ability to supercharge storm cells by sonically altering temperature, affect drought by impeding cloud formation and inflict deadly UV damage by opening a temporary hole in the ozone layer are some of the other purported functions of HAARP’s weather dominating abilities.

According to mathematician and philosopher David Naiditch, HAARP is such an attractive target for conspiracy theorists because “HAARP is a gigantic, high-energy, Pentagon-funded gizmo located in the remote Alaskan wilderness that plays around with the Earth’s ionosphere, whose purpose seems deeply mysterious to the scientifically uninformed.” Or at least that’s what they want you to think…

“If it is capable of producing small amounts of plasma today, can a rain of fire be too far off on the horizon?”

HAARP is in fact the basis for many far-fetched conspiracy theories including:

- The transmission of long-range wireless microwave energy and electromagnetic pulses capable of jamming communication and killing living organisms with a Death Ray like beam
- Plasma based anti-missile defense
- The creation of electromagnetic alpha waves capable of altering mental processes and even controlling thoughts
- Gulf War Syndrome, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Seasonal Affective Disorder
- Communication with or provocation of Extra Terrestrials

BY AJ WELSH