It’s Friday the 13th. It’s the day before Valentine’s Day. What better bitter day to nurse a broken heart? Bring your old love letters and photos to the Railway Club, and we will shred them for you on stage in a moving ceremony, helping you cleanse your soul and move on with your life. And who knows, maybe you’ll meet another single there doing the same thing, and it could be the start of something beautiful.

Also on the bill: The Outliers, Cinderpop, Danny Echo. 9PM, $10.

You’ve probably heard about failed vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s brutal and bloodthirsty plan for aerial killing of wolves in her home state of Alaska. Her administration has actually paid hunters a bounty on wolves, since reducing the number of predators means there are more moose and caribou for hunters to kill - essentially turning Alaska into one big glorious vat of bloodshed and killing, never mind the cost to nature.

Defenders of Wildlife are pushing hard to outlaw aerial shooting of wolves, but the killing is already underway this season - please sign the petition to put an end to it as soon as possible.

Here in Canada, we have no right to judge when trophy hunters are freely killing black bears on Haida Gwaii. There is not much data on the actual number of bears living in the region, and no quota has ever been set. The Council of the Haida Nation passed a resolution over a decade ago calling for the end of recreational hunting of black bears on the Islands, but the final decision comes down to the British Columbia government.

Learn more about Taan (the bear) here, and sign this petition opposing the bear hunt. (One of the nice things about this petition, by the way, is that it suggests switching to sustainable bear viewing and ecotourism rather than trophy killing.)

Link: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ9xw6Jeszg

We’ve just made a new video for “I Heard", from Today Brought Me Here. The concept for the video came from Marcus, and the animation was done by Kirsten. We hope you enjoy it!

In a move that, sadly, has surprised almost no one, Bush’s last insult to the natural world has been to gut the Endangered Species Act by allowing federal agencies to permit commercial activities on federal land without evaluating their environmental impact.

The State of California, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club have all filed lawsuits against the federal government to overturn these changes.

During Bush’s term in office, the endangered species act was hardly taken seriously. A recent report has shown that Julie Macdonald, the head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, took every opportunity to manipulate scientific reports and avoid protecting species or land, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting lawsuits filed by environmental groups.

“Scientists were concerned that they would be subject to MacDonald’s verbal assaults and potential personnel actions,” a federal official told investigators. “The concern caused them to take into consideration how to produce a project that would please MacDonald, instead of focusing on the science.”

Macdonald resigned in May 2007 after investigators discovered she had tampered with scientific evidence and given internal documents to oil industry lobbyists.

Read more about Bush’s new regulations at the Center for Biological Diversity, and sign their petition to fight the changes. Sierra Club also has a petition here.

ARCTIC’s next show is Saturday, January 10 at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir) in Vancouver. And it will be a great evening, with Vancouver’s finest spacey, dreamy rock to lift you out of this snowy winter - Windows ‘78 are coming back from a temporary hiatus to join us, and the ever-excellent Parlour Steps will be there as well. Come celebrate the fresh start and first show of 2009 with us!

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