Here’s the most recent news reported elsewhere on the presence of SARS on Prince Edward Island:

• Prince Edward Island reports suspected SARS cases [Journal-Pioneer, April 1, 2003]
• Islanders on SARS alert [CBC, April 1, 2003]
• SARS concerns on P.E.I. [CBC, March 31, 2003]
• Island families stay home to be checked for SARS [Guardian, April 1, 2003]
• Chief Health Officer Issues SARS Update [Chief Health Officer, March 31, 2003]
• Prince Edward Island Reports Suspected SARS Cases [Chief Health Officer, March 31, 2003]

The Chief Health Officer has established a telephone line to answer questions about SARS. Islanders with concerns, or questions can call 368-4532.

Steven Garrity’s Acts of Volition website got “real” RSS syndication tonight, and for discussions posts too: AOV in RSS \| Reader Replies in RSS. Thanks, Steven.

Sean Williams (Ian’s brother) writes about living in New York City:

She called me on her cell the minute she got out of the train, and then she called me from work to tell me about another Food Trade Show that we are invited to. But it sucks. Every time we do our daily shit, it feels like it could be waltzing us into a bad situation. Michelle is too scared to take the train, Ian and Tessa are almost never in the city, and we have devised a plan for what to do when the attack hits and our phones don’t work. It isn’t If, it’s When.

But it is still New York. It’s still home. It is still the Mecca for people like me. I kind of understand why some Jews won’t leave Jerusalem, no matter how bad it gets. I still see the Empire State Building every day, so it just doesn’t get any better.

Here’s Walter Cronkite on Peter Arnett in an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times.

Let’s say it’s ten or twenty years into the future. After flirting with socialism, Islanders elect a right-leaning government that, as its term plays out, comes to espouse a form of radical Presbyterianism. The transition is gradual enough that by the time anyone notices, government control over Islanders’ daily lives has increased dramatically, and the “Island way of life” is heavily policed, managed and restricted. Whatever protest gets raised is swept away almost instantly by special squads of government-sponsored goons. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are both relics of an earlier time. There is rumour that there have been kidnappings and government-sponsored murders west of O’Leary.

Now let’s say that an outside force — maybe it’s America, maybe it’s Ontario, maybe it’s Ireland — seeing this tyrannical chaos, decides that Islanders must be liberated from their Presbyterian oppressors, and, after massing resources in New Brunswick for several months, launches a dramatic military assault. Charlottetown is bombed nightly. Summerside, originally to be bypassed, is under siege. Hundreds of Islanders, some in the army, others simply bystanders, are killed.

Let’s say this is our future.

Setting aside the implausibility of the conceit, consider this question: if you were in the middle of this situation, if buildings around your house were being bombed every night, if your kids could no longer go outside, if you feared for your life constantly, if your old friend from high school was blown up because he happened to work at the phone company, if your neighbour’s kids were incinerated before your eyes in the Sobey’s parking lot. If this was your reality.

How would you regard your liberators?

I don’t know the answer to that question.

Here’s the latest (Monday, March 31) from Chief Health Officer Dr. Lamont Sweet on the SARS situation on Prince Edward Island.

Here’s Peter Arnett, quoted by Yahoo! News which is, in turn, quoting the Daily Mirror:

“I am still in shock and awe at being fired,” Arnett wrote for the newspaper, which is vehemently opposed to the war. “I report the truth of what is happening here in Baghdad and will not apologize for it.”

News Interactive reports the Daily Mirror’s head was “Fired by America for telling the truth … Hired by Daily Mirror to carry on telling it.”

The cover image from the Daily Mirror is at right.

Last night’s Passionate Eye was another good one: the documentary Blue Vinyl by filmmaker Judith Helfand. Billed by the CBC as “a humorous but sobering and uniquely personal exploration of the relationship between consumers and industry,” the film uses what Catherine Hennessey calls “vinylizing” as a starting point to explore corporate chemical America.

Coming up next week is Star Wars Dreams by British filmmaker Leslie Woodhead, a film that’s a “critical look at President Bush’s proposed Star Wars program.”

First we had the war in Iraq, then the ever-nearer spectre of SARS, and now Philip Brown is advocating for voodoo crows. We live in fragile times.

Island Tel has a brand has finally given way completely to Aliant.