April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

health care

This time it’s personal

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The last few months I’ve been through numerous medical tests, and yesterday I had surgery.

I hear complaints all the time about the state of our health care system but I have to say, although I had to travel out of my community for two of the appointments, all my tests and procedures were booked and over with in record time.

In the course of about two months I had about seven different tests, four different doctors appointments and surgery.

Every effort was made to make it easy for me, including doing my pre-op over the phone. The doctors all communicated well with each other and all I needed was my health card.

One of the gentlemen in the outpatient surgery had a cataract removed. He said it was less hassle than going to the dentist and cost a lot less too.

Our system isn’t perfect of course, but it’s working pretty well despite efforts to destroy it.

Oh and if you’re interested everything went well and I should be fine.

Which is good news or bad depending on how you feel about me. 😉

Is Canada a soveriegn country?

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It’s getting hard to tell.

First we turned from peace keepers to war mongers.

Then

An American policy has forced Montreal’s Bell Helicopter to ban 24 employees from working on a U.S. military contract because of their nationalities.

and now


The Royal Bank has refused to open American dollar accounts for people of certain nationalities since April 2006, Radio-Canada reported Monday.

Canadian citizens with dual citizenship in Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea or Myanmar are affected.

The bank didn’t agree to an interview with Radio-Canada, but did confirm the report.

The Royal Bank is conforming with U.S. Treasury Department laws.

Conforming with US Treasury laws???

Holy crap did I sleep through the invasion? Are we now the Northern Division of the States?

You can’t handle the truth

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That is the message that the Washington Post has for it’s readers.

The images are contained in thousands of pages of NCIS investigative documents obtained by The Washington Post. Post editors decided that most of the images are too graphic to publish…

The descriptions of some of the photos do indeed sound brutal. A brutality the people in the pictures had no choice to avoid.

The people of America have a right, indeed they have a duty, to see what transpires in their name. It is all too easy to think of war in the abstract when you do not hear the planes flying overhead. Do not feel the earth shake and the air cloud as your neighbours die. Do not wonder where you will get food and water for you family or if indeed any of you will live to need it.

Photos help to pierce through that cloud of complacency.

For more information read Media refuses to print grisly photos

Contact the Washington Post ombudsman:

Deborah Howell

202-334-7582

ombudsman@washpost.com

Scared yet?..now?…how about now?

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Now we don’t know who, when or where.. we do know

“The technical capability required to construct and use a simple RDD is practically trivial, compared to that of a nuclear explosive device or even most chemical or biological weapons,” the CSIS study says.

A homemade radiological weapon could consist of a conventional explosive laced with radioactive material commonly found at universities, medical and research laboratories or industrial sites.

But we don’t know what they are waiting for

“Indeed, it is quite surprising that the world has not yet witnessed such an attack,” the study says, adding “it appears that we are positively overdue for one.”

Oh yes and apparently they have figured out what really matters to the leaders in the west

The intelligence service points to the notion terrorist thinking has shifted from the desire to inflict mass casualties to “one of inflicting severe economic damage.”

And so it ends..

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notebook

I had a bad feeling about this year, and I was unfortunately right about that.

Personally I lost a mom, a cat, two jobs, and had two serious health scares.

Politically saw the election of Harper and crew, a renewed and emboldened attack on women’s rights and freedoms, the realization that though the wheel was invented, many still want to put corners on it and have a nuanced discussion over who should be using it, continued death and destruction by the powerful who stand to gain more.. upon the many who have nothing left to lose, and the death of a puppet who had turned on his masters. [Read more…] about And so it ends..

Problem Solved?

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I was thinking more of the interest lately some “progressives” have been showing in the disingenuous remarks made by Elizabeth May. The responses made to those who reject the notion that anyone has the right to take a “nuanced” approach to their reproductive rights has been interesting to say the least.

We have been accused of being Green bashers, dinosaurs, radical, reactionary, Stalinist, unable to see shades of grey ( I love that one. As if there are shades to human rights. )

These same defenders of Ms Mays’ right to call women frivolous, have no qualms about trying to shut down discussion when women — remember us guys? we’re the ones with the wombs — express their discomfort and displeasure with the fact that those so willing to score political points and street cred with their reputed support of feminism and feminists are unwilling to show actual support of so fundamental an idea as reproductive freedom.

This even as they claim that their voices are being silenced.

We are allowed to be feminists just as long as we are nice little feminists who listen when the boys tell us what feminism means, how feminists should act and what issues we should see as meaningful.

Our anger is being used against us in ways that must have even the nastiest of misogynists gaping.

As if anger is an inappropriate response when ones rights are seen as fodder for debate. As if anger is inappropriate when one is asked to repeat a tour of duty. As if anger is inappropriate when the speaker of the words cozies up to the friends of the people who do this.

Anger is neither inappropriate nor enough. It is not time for nuances nor debates.

It is time to choose up sides, you believe that women have the right to live as autonomous human beings or you do not. You believe our society is better served when all people are free and equal or you do not. You believe that women’s voices are important or you do not.

You believe the behaviour shown in the shirt above is an appropriate response to women defending what has been shown to be important not only to women’s health but also to society as a whole, or you do not.