April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Debra

Revolution

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And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?

You may have noticed my blog tagline, one of the great quotes from George Orwell: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

This same premise is highlighted in the story of Mouseland, made famous by Tommy Douglas. When the mouse posits, “Why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?” “Oh,” they said, “he’s a Bolshevik. Lock him up!” So they put him in jail.”

Truth incites revolution. Truth is in fact the enemy of the ruling class. Truth should set you free but in all likelihood will get you arrested.

With the current swing to the right governments of all stripes are promising tax cuts. It plays well with the populace,yet taxes are what keeps us running as a society.

Look around your community. Your roads, government services, water, hospital, doctors, parks are all a result of taxation. The health card in your wallet that allows you free health care is a result of taxation. That health care is becoming more and more tenuous and why is that? It is not as some would have you believe because public health care is unsustainable, it is not because people are fatter and it is not because the sky is blue.

It is because the burden of taxation has been almost entirely lifted off of corporations and placed squarely on the shoulders of the citizenry. These tax cuts were promoted to us as necessary to keep and create jobs and wealth. Yet more and more jobs are being moved off shore and jobs which are being created are those in the service industry which require a household to secure employment with two or three employers just to keep the basic necessities.

Growing Gap.ca shows very clearly that truth is being subverted.

Canadian families are putting in more work time, yet most — 80% of them — are getting a smaller share of Canada’s growing economy

The rate of unemployment in Canada is lower than it has been in more than a generation.

Despite these changes — all of which were supposed to ensure greater prosperity for every Canadian — the reports continue to come in indicating the gap between the rich and the poor is greater than it was 20 years ago.

There is growing consensus that Canadian provinces must do more to bring the minimum wage up to a living wage (above the Low-Income Cut Off, or LICO).

As Jacobs writes, “We need to move faster. This is not new terrain; we’ve been here before. In the 1970s workers earning the minimum wage received a rate that was roughly equivalent to $9 an hour today. Thirty years later the Canadian economy is producing much higher levels of wealth and profit, but paying its most vulnerable workers less.”

A CBC headline states that Homelessness ‘chronic’ in Canada. Yet a story in today’s news reports,

Homeless people in Canada have more mental health problems than the rest of the population

people who are homeless tend to report higher stress, lower self-worth, less social support and different coping strategies, factors that are associated with depressive symptoms, substance abuse, suicidal behaviours and poor self-rated health.”

Well you could knock me over with a feather at these results. Higher stress, lower self worth, depression amazing. Interesting is it not, that after reporting on how homelessness is ‘chronic’ the story is followed up by one which attempts to place the blame on the moral or psychological deficits of the homeless themselves. Thereby mislaying the blame and misleading readers from the truth.

In cost cutting efforts the Harris government cut new affordable housing, reduced welfare to unsustainable amounts, closed a number of group homes that allowed the functionally disabled and those with diagnosed “mental health issues” to live in dignity.
Now those cuts and closures are coming home to roost.

If we continue to allow our truths to be substituted with bigotry, prejudice, half truths and downright lies, we allow ourselves to just follow orders. We allow ourselves to see our fellow human being as less worthy, as less important and as less. We trade our humanity for the crumbs that fall from the masters table and the dangled suggestion that one day we may sup there.

Now is the time for truth. Now is the time for revolution.

Lyrics from Pink Floyd Wish you were here.
Youtube Video

Democracy? Fuck that shit

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Title shamelessly stolen from Mike in a comment at Unrepentant Old Hippie

Anyone who still believes Canada’s New Government™ has any concept of democracy, decency or shame, must surely be disabused of that notion by this from Blogging a Dead Horse;

“Three days ago, Dick Harris, the Conservative MP for Cariboo-Prince George announced that the Conservatives have named their local candidate Sharon Smith the “Skeena-Bulkley Valley liason to the federal government.

That’s right, seems that after only 20 months of trying it, the Conservatives have decided that listening to MPs – particularly those from other parties – is way too onerous and distracting. The solution is obvious really: replace them with compliant and agreeable people who look like MPs, pretend to be MPs, but have absolutely no legitimacy.”

Many parties with a minority government have thought of ways to have more members elected next time round. None have dared to dispense with the electoral process and simply install members as they see fit.

This is not simple partisan politics. This is a reshaping of the very foundations on which our government, our country is built.

Harper’s Government™ must hear loudly and clearly that this heinous assault on our democratic process will not be tolerated.

Motherhood–hold the apple pie

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Apple Pie
A society will sentimenalize and moralize about the things it wishes it cared about. Pregnancy and motherhood being no exception.

Plenty of moralizing, lots of cooing over womb contents like children oohing over puppies in the pet shop window, but little actually being done to support pregnant women and mothers.

We begin with the moralizing over what you may or may not eat/drink while pregnant.

You say you just can’t help super sizing. You look at the that hamburger and all you can think is more bacon!!!!!!!!!! You have started getting slushies by the garbage pail.

No need to take responsibility folks. Good news it’s your mom’s fault!!

Our study has shown that eating large quantities of junk food when pregnant and breastfeeding could impair the normal control of appetite and promote an exacerbated taste for junk food in offspring,’ she said Dr Stephanie Bayol.

‘This could send offspring on the road to obesity and make the task of teaching healthy eating habits in children even more challenging.’

link

Now don’t you feel better? Have a cookie.

In an effort to prove two can live as cheaply as one pregnant women are now being told they must keep weight gain to 10lbs less than the current guidelines.

According to current guidelines, which IOM announced in 1990, women with low body mass indexes should gain up to 40 pounds during pregnancy, women with normal BMIs should gain 25 to 35 pounds, and most obese women should gain about 15 pounds. In 2003, about 25% of pregnant women in the U.S. gained more than 40 pounds during pregnancy, compared with 20% in 1990, according to the AP/Standard-Times.

Link

Now some of that weight is increased uterine size, breast size, placenta and amniotic fluid. All of which on their own can add up to 15lbs. Considering that ‘obese’ women are now to only gain 5lbs, one can only assume that doctors are recommending calorie restriction (ie dieting) during pregnancy. Seems like a bad idea. In fact the current guidelines were set because doctors were recommending restricted weight gain before and it wasn’t shown to have good results for the babies.

I suppose the retro fad has hit the medical community now.

Not only that but you’ll grow hair on your chest and talk funny.

Lobby groups in Ireland are calling for regulations on anti abortion ‘counselling services’.

Niav Keating of Choice Ireland said: ‘When our activists attended one agency, they were told that having an abortion would increase their risk of developing breast cancer, becoming an alcoholic and abusing children. These are blatant lies designed to scare vulnerable women in a crisis pregnancy situation.’

Choice Ireland said it was calling on the government to bring forward statutory regulation for all pregnancy counselling services. Minimum codes of practices and standards should be imposed to ensure that misleading and incorrect information is not given to
vulnerable women.

link

You would think that groups that invoke the gord as their witness wouldn’t be playing so fast and loose with the truth….something about bearing false witness.

Adoptive parents showing appreciation for the trials gone through to create the children they want are in court complaining about birth mothers getting benefits they don’t.

adoption advocates contend that 15 weeks is far more time than the average mother needs to recover from the physical stresses of childbirth and that much of it is actually spent bonding with a new child.

But some maternity experts disagree, saying that the birthing process puts physiological stresses on a woman’s body that adoptive parents may not recognize.

‘Maternity benefits exist to recognize the unique experience of pregnancy,’ says Amy Mullin, a University of Toronto sociologist and author of Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare: Ethics, Experience and Reproductive Labor. ‘During pregnancy, a woman can undergo hypertension, nausea, heartburn and a number of other things. It’s not the norm for pregnancy to be completely easy. The government has recognized that embodied experience and I hope they continue to do so.’

Ms. Mullin stressed that the 15-week leave can start up to eight weeks before pregnancy, addressing any pre-birth health concerns.

‘That gives a mother six weeks to recover after her pregnancy,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t say that’s out of line.’

Link

Bleeding hearts. Why in my day women dropped ’em while doing the laundry and went right back at it.

Here are some of the realities of pregnancy

A dairy farmer is accused of giving a cattle hormone to a woman he got pregnant in hopes of inducing a miscarriage.

Police said 25-year-old William Stanley Sutton III added ProstaMate last week to a soda he gave to Lauren Ashley Tucker, 21.

Tucker felt sick to her stomach and vomited after drinking a 20-ounce soda Sutton gave her that ‘tasted nasty and burnt her throat,’ according to court records. She went to the hospital Aug. 9, and the hospital reported a possible poisoning to police.
The unborn child survived. Tucker, who was treated and released, is now 15 weeks pregnant.

ProstaMate is a hormone given to cows in the breeding process to bring all cows in heat at the same time. It can also be used to stimulate an early-term abortion in a heifer that gets pregnant too young or a cow that mates with an undesired bull.

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A Perth man who bashed, kicked and stabbed his pregnant, wheelchair-bound de facto wife has been remanded in custody.

Graham Leslie Garraway, 24, appeared in the Fremantle Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday charged over the alleged attack on Wednesday on his 21-year-old partner at their Langford home.

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DARTMOUTH, N.S. – A pregnant woman is in hospital with life-threatening injuries after being stabbed repeatedly with a sword in a domestic dispute.

A 43-year-old man who lives with the woman has been charged with attempted murder. Police wanted to charge him with trying to kill her unborn child, as well, but that was overruled by the Public Prosecution Service.

The stabbing happened in a ground floor apartment in Dartmouth just after midnight Tuesday. The woman was discovered by a passerby who heard her call for help from an open window. When she looked inside she saw the injured woman and ran for help.

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A pregnant woman with a chronic heart condition pleaded for doctors to abort her baby so she could live – but both she and her newborn son died.

Her ‘tragic’ story resulted in a year-long investigation by Health and Disability Commissioner Ron Paterson after her family complained about how she was treated. His report, released yesterday, criticizes poor communication between clinicians during the woman’s pregnancy and a 15-week delay in assessment for a heart condition – 15 times longer than recommended.

The family of the woman and her son did not want them named.

Paterson refused to say which hospital provided ‘suboptimal’ care but the Sunday Star-Times understands Wellington Hospital, one of two hospitals involved, was found to have twice breached the patient code of conduct.

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Atwood proves Pen is mightier than the sword

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longpen.gif

The device – built by Atwood’s Toronto-based company Unotchit – comprises a video screen and digital writing pad at one location and a video screen and automated pen at another.

The LongPen™ allows you to be in one part of the world and sign something in a completely different part. Cutting down vastly on intercontinental travel.

Estimates are, “the device has already saved more than 40 tonnes of carbon emissions by cutting down on celebrity jet-setting.”

You can see the LongPen™ in action in both still frame and video here

Story Link

This just in….

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Norman Spector calls NDP principled!!

Norman Spector, a former diplomat and chief of staff to Brian Mulroney, said the political dynamic of the current minority Parliament doesn’t favour a statesmanlike, non-partisan approach. He believes, however, that Harper has no choice but to strike a deal with at least one opposition party if he wants to preserve some semblance of his Afghan policy.

The challenge is to “reconfigure” the mission in a way that both sides can live with, said Spector. The NDP likely could never be convinced to drop its outright opposition to the troop deployment, but the Liberals and Bloc could be more amenable.

from CTV