April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

health care

Away in a manger

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Christmas Eve many focus on a birth of long ago, and so I give you a story of birth.

From the Independent

In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem – but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.

Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. “What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured,” she says.

Fadia clutches a set of keys tightly, digging hard into her skin as she describes in broken, jagged sentences what happened. “It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on,” she says. She was already nervous about the birth – her first, and twins – so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.

They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. “Obviously, we told them we couldn’t wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn’t understand.”

Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. “I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital,” she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could “certainly” have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.

A song of Peace

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Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
“He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was “Stille Nacht.” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky
“There’s someone coming toward us!” the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ’em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
“Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I’ve learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same

Foodbanking Women’s Issues

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I’m sure when foodbanks first started popping up they were considered a stop gap. A temporary fix to a major problem.

I’m sure there was an assumption that advocacy and research would be done to target the reasons for and solutions to most of the underlying causes.

Of course capitalism itself requires a certain level of poverty and unemployment to continue, it therefore, owes something to those upon whom the illusion is built.

Of course we know that despite the studies and proposed solutions the Liberal and Conservative governments have seen fit to reward corporations with tax cuts, and creating class warfare upon the poor.

The Conservative government has now taken the same approach to women’s issues. [Read more…] about Foodbanking Women’s Issues

Rebick showers on May

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Judy Rebick is no stranger to the abortion debate.

She is one of those who helped in the fight to provide women with a choice.

Ms. Rebick is seen here fending off an attack on Dr. Morgentaler at the opening of a clinic in Toronto.

Too bad the debaters club doesn’t realize that this sort of thing still happens. It happens to ordinary women making perfectly legitimate choices for themselves and to the doctors who provide needed medical procedures.

In Ms. Rebick’s own words;

Dear Elizabeth,

I would have written sooner but I have been travelling.

Since I got back, I have carefully reviewed your statements on abortion and I have to say that I am sorry but I will no longer be supporting you or the Green Party in any way.

As you know I was very supportive of your running as leader of the Green Party and despite my differences with some of the platform of the Party I have up until now felt that your presence added a great deal to the federal political scene. But now you have questioned the most important victory of the women’s movement of my generation.

If you had said that you personally oppose abortion but you support a woman’s right to choose, I would have been fine with that. Instead you said that a woman’s right to choose, something tens of thousands of Canadian women fought for for decades, was trivializing an important issue. It felt like a slap in the face.

Since you have so little respect for me or for the women’s movement which mobilized for so long to win this hard-earned right, I hope you will understand that I ripped up the cheque I had written to the Green Party and you can no longer rely on me for support.

ETA:Apparently someone at this site either thinks I am anti abortion or that it would be a hoot to send the anti choicers my way. Why do the anti choice crowd make it so easy to question their intelligence?

I May have to scream….

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After beginning this post I realized I was just too angry to write a nice explanatory post.

I’m angry…I’m angry that some really think that a womans’ right of control of her body is something they can have high school level debates about.

I’m angry for my daughters. I’m angry because of the young woman I know who was kept away from all friends and family until it was too late to abort and then beaten so badly that she miscarried at 22 weeks.

I’m angry for the victims of rape forced to carry the evidence of the sperm of the prick they never wanted in their body.

I’m angry for the women who birthed till they died. I’m angry for the women who had to beg and be shamed by a panel of doctors who decided whether their choice to abort was frivolous or not.

I’m angry for all the women who have had to deal with some bastard thinking he had any fucking right deciding what she could or could not do.

I’m angry for the women fought and bled and died to get us as far as we’ve come only to have their victories put up as dartboards on frat boy walls.

Perhaps the white knights could climb off their high white horses for just a second or two and pay attention.

Abortion= a woman’s right to control a) her own body b) her own destiny c) her own life.

Why would you even put that up for debate? Who the fuck gave you permission to discuss what goes on in my womb?

Will we next be treated to a debate on whether or not rape is really a crime? If a woman has no say over her own body then how can rape exist?

And after all we wouldn’t want women saying no frivolously.

Reproductive rights are not up for political wankers wonkers to debate.

My body MY FUCKING CHOICE!

Domestic Dispute

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Dispute: to debate, question, to argue.

Sounds so innocuous doesn’t it?

In this story three people including the one doing the “disputing” died.

Mayor Scott Lang said the shooter died of a self-inflicted wound. Police said there was an exchange of gunfire with officers and would not confirm the shooter killed himself.

The club’s owner, Tom Tsoumas of Easton, told WBZ-AM his nephew Tory Marandos, 30, who was managing the club, and a floor host, Bobby Carreira, were killed by the man, who had been told to stay away after a failed relationship with a bartender.

Tsoumas identifed the shooter as Scott Medeiros. He said the club had hired him about two years ago to install a security system.

Tsoumas said Medeiros had dated a bartender at the club, and she feared him. He went to the club about two weeks ago and Carreira told him to stay away.

‘‘He said, ‘This isn’t the place for you. She doesn’t want to see you. It’s only going to cause problems.’ And he went away, but he evidently came in last night,’’ Tsoumas said.

[Read more…] about Domestic Dispute