Thursday, February 17, 2011

RAJN(A): Mother, on what would have been her 100th

She would have been a century young today
but for a broken hip
suffered in a fall where she lay
for hours on a cold front porch
in March, at 0 degrees
until her cries brought
help and an
ambulance
surviving the surgery,
she proclaimed,
"I did it!" to her
waiting daughter
only to slip away in her
sleep
the next night
after 91 years of
struggle for a point of view
conditioned by a
birth in Sudbury, the
bush in Brent, the
nuns in St. Mike's, the
ravages of a tortured
torso that saw too many
scalpels
and an irritable
skin from exzema that
interrupted her nurse
training for one year
and then her mother's
untimely death at 51
from  dreaded cancer
and her father's demise
at 63 from cardiac arrest
after a second marriage she
never accepted...
she survived her spouse's
passing by four years
after a 63-year-long
tenure in marriage often
through long silences in deep
differences
mostly in degree, rather than
substance
her's was a restless spirit yearning for
perfection while his
a more placid and gentle
acceptance of things
as-they-are-were-wouldbe..
a soprano voice of power and
training echoed in make-up
choirs for The Messiah
and hands that moved
ceaselessly in knitting,
crewel, needlepoint, baking,
gardening, seamstressing and
nursing her hundreds of
private patients before
teaching the RNA students...
she swam, if there were no
ice in the bay,
she walked whenever she could
she entertained sumptuously and
travelled to her last day..
even in a Rotary film on
Ireland....
high standards, no apologies
relentlessly upheld, no apologies
with pulsing heart, mind and spirit
and thanks to her God
always!
17/02/11

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Benghazi, Libya and Dubai, Bahrain see protests...where next?

From Reuters, in Globe and Mail, February 16, 2011
Hundreds of people clashed with police and government supporters overnight in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, a witness and local media said, in a rare show of unrest in the oil exporting country.

Libya has been tightly controlled by leader Muammar Gaddafi for over 40 years but has also felt the ripples from popular revolts in its neighbours Egypt and Tunisia.
Libyan state television said that rallies were held in the early hours of Wednesday morning across the country in support of Mr. Gaddafi, who is Africa’s longest serving leader.

Reports from Benghazi, about 1,000 kilometres east of the Libyan capital, indicated the city was now calm but that overnight, protesters armed with stones and gasoline bombs had set fire to vehicles and fought with police.
The protesters were angry about the arrest of a human rights campaigner and demanded his release.
The online edition of Libya’s privately-owned Quryna newspaper, which is based in Benghazi, said 14 people were hurt in the clashes, including 10 police officers. It said none of the injuries was serious.
“Last night was a bad night,” a Benghazi resident, who did not want to be identified, told Reuters by telephone.
“There were about 500 or 600 people involved. They went to the revolutionary committee (local government headquarters) in Sabri district, and they tried to go to the central revolutionary committee ... They threw stones,” he said.
And this...
By Brian Murphy, Globe and Mail February 16, 2011
Dubai:Thousands of protesters took over a main square in Bahrain's capital Tuesday — carting in tents and raising banners — in a bold attempt to copy Egypt's uprising and force high-level changes in one of Washington's key allies in the Gulf.
The unrest in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, adds another layer to Washington's worries in the region. In Yemen, police and government supporters battled nearly 3,000 marchers calling for the ouster of
The move by demonstrators capped two days of clashes across the tiny island kingdom that left at least two people dead, parliament in limbo by an opposition boycott and the king making a rare address on national television to offer condolences for the bloodshed.
Security forces — apparently under orders to hold back — watched from the sidelines as protesters chanted slogans mocking the nation's ruling sheiks and called for sweeping political reforms and an end to monarchy's grip on key decisions and government posts.

Calgary commits to eliminate homelessness in 10 years! (3 cheers!!)

By Joe Fiorito, Toronto STar, February 16, 2011
Calgary has a superlative housing strategy, based on a 10-year plan to end homelessness. That strategy is why Tim Richter came to town the other day.

Richter runs the Calgary Homeless Foundation, which has public and private-sector elements; it has persuaded the Alberta government that the best way to end homelessness is to build housing.
That’s point of view.
I met Richter the other day at Sagatay, a residence on Vaughan Rd. where native men can spend as long as a year pushing back their demons, taking classes, and rebuilding their lives.
Why there?
I wanted him to meet some men who have first-hand knowledge of homelessness in Toronto, and I wanted to know what the men thought about the goings-on in Calgary.
We were sitting in a ceremonial room at Sagatay, with a fireplace, lots of light, and five residents. Richter said, “One of our goals is that no one should be outside or in a shelter for more than seven days. If we can move people into homes, that’s part of it; building housing, that’s also part of it.”
The men nodded.
He said Calgary has the fastest-growing homeless population in the country. He said aboriginal people were over-represented on the streets.
The men also nodded.
Richter said that in two years Calgary has managed to drop the homeless population by 22 per cent; they have moved 2,300 people out of shelters; they have built more than 2,000 units of housing.
Eight years to go.
Go, Flames.(The Calgary NHL hockey team.)
And then Richter stopped talking about Calgary and started asking questions; always a good strategy.
A man wearing a toque said, on the subject of supportive housing in Toronto, “There’s a lot of people who get turned down; it kicks you when you’re down; you start doing stupid things. If you have people working with you on a daily basis, it gives you a reason to be off the street.”
A man in a black shirt said, “We need better mental health access. Some shelters aren’t equipped to deal with issues; people go from jail to the street to the hospital to the shelters.”
And a man with a maple leaf on his T-shirt said, “I think landlords should be pressed to maintain higher standards. I’ve been in four separate rooming houses since 2006; four times I moved because of bedbugs.”
Richter said, “If you have guys who have been on the street for a while, if you are starting from square one, you can’t expect them to maintain a house or a job.
“We have housing for people who have completed treatment; we provide help. We plug in the police, child welfare, addictions and corrections. Homelessness isn’t a crime, but we keep arresting people.
Finally, a city in Canada determined to eliminate homelessness! Congratulations!
And may every city and town throughout the land learn from our Calgary colleagues in this file!
It truly is a point of view, and for decades, if not centuries, the point of view of many municipalities, provinces and the federal government is that "if we don't look that way, the problem will eventually evaporate".
Not only will it not evaporate, but it will get worse through neglect, or negligence, if you want to use a criminal word.
There is no reason, not a budgetary reason, not a "how-to" enigma that we can't solve, not a statictical reason, and not political reason NOT to resolve this problem....except that last reason, political, seems to be the one we don't want to talk about. Politics is about winning; winning is about associating with winners; it is winners who have money, status and power all three of the things politicians consider "mother's milk" to their hungry appetites and their mostly so far empty hearts and souls, needing the filling that comes from associating with successful people "on the other side of the street" from the homeless.
There has to be a political will, in Calgary, to address the problem of homelessness in a way that is not tokenism. And there will have to be a political will everywhere else to address the problem in all of its complexity.
And that does not start with a new house for each person who has not lived in a house for perhaps decades. It means support, and programs and treatment to make the necessary adjustments; to grow the trust, to grow the belief that "I" can make it with help; to grow the relationships that haven't been available, or accessible; to integrate opportunity into lives devoid of opportunity for decades; to develop the skills to care for oneself; to develop the skills and the habits that sustain both oneself and helps others; to reduce, if not eliminate, dependency on non-prescription drugs and chemicals; in short to re-build those lives that have for so long lain dormant, barely subsisting, on the streets.
And that takes public commitment, and courage and determination, the kind that confronts all the naysayers who don't want public funds spend in such a "wasteful" manner on the people who are society's forgotten.
And those naysayers prevent many good programs from sustaining themselves, because the really effective programs, like this one to eliminate homelessness in ten years, will require a sustained budget line in more than one city department, if it is to be successful.
And hundreds of cities and towns around both the country and many other countries will be watching, to see if Calgary continues for another eight years on this enlightened path.
Those of us who believe in the program know that it will more than pay for itself not only in reduced expenditures but in significantly enhanced civic self-respect and dignity and humility.
If only that lesson could be demonstrated to the naysayers in every city and town everywhere.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Iran threatens death to leaders of protest...

By Parisa Hafezi (Reuters) in Toronto Star, February 15, 2011 
TEHRAN—Iranian lawmakers called for the death penalty on Tuesday for opposition leaders they accused of stirring up unrest after a rally in which a least one person was killed and dozens were wounded, state media said.
Clashes broke out between security forces and protesters when thousands rallied in sympathy for popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. They revived mass protests that shook Iran after a presidential vote in 2009.
Kazem Jalali, a member of parliament, told the student news agency ISNA that two people were killed at a banned opposition rally in Iran.
“At Monday's rally . . . two people were martyred and many were wounded; one person was shot dead,” Kazem Jalali was quoted as saying by ISNA.
An opposition website said at least 1,500 people were arrested while taking part in the banned protests.
The protests amount to a test of strength for the reformist opposition which took to the streets in mass protests in 2009.
“(Opposition leaders) Mehdi Karroubi and Mirhossein Mousavi are corrupts on earth and should be tried,” the official IRNA news agency quoted members of parliament as saying in a statement. The statement was signed by 222 lawmakers out of 290.
So while the people of Yemen march through the streets of their capital Saan'a, and the people of Algiers mount their campaign against another oppressive regime, the situation in Iran, different from all the other Middle Eastern countries, could easily turn very ugly, if we are to believe those commentators willing to speak about that country.
Even U.S. President Obama took the opportunity to slam Iran for its threatening attitude to protesters, in today's press conference, focused mainly on the president's budget proposals for 2012.
Television pictures of Iranian government members calling for the deaths of Karrouby and Mousavi, if such threats become reality, could be only a prelude to far worse developments in that regime.
Signs like "down with Israel" and "down with America" dotted the streets in Tehran, if we are to believe the pictures that escaped the country on social media.
The cauldron is beginning to heat to a boil, throughout the Middle East, and, for example where there is a majority of people of either Shia or Sunni, where the leadership is from the opposite sect of the Muslim faith, there is likely to be increased pressure on those leaders.
Can the cauldron boil on without boiling over?
Can the sparks of martyrdom that ignited the protests in other countries be contained in a country like Iran, where protests have been violently crushed in the not-to-distant past?
These questions cannot escape the considerations of those in both east and west who are watching and who are responsible for the maintenance of stability and non-violence there and around the globe.

South Dakota Bill 1171 makes murder of abortion provider "justifiable homicide"

By Lesley Ciarula Taylor, Toronto Star, February 15, 2011

Controversial South Dakota legislation would extend the definition of justifiable homicide to cover killing anyone trying to cause a fetus harm.
Abortion-rights activists charge that Bill 1171 would legalize the murder of abortion providers.
Eight people have died in the U.S. since 1993 in attacks on abortion clinics; hundreds more faced death threats, assault or attempted murder.
The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families calls it “the bill to decriminalize shooting doctors, nurses, patients and volunteers at clinics.”
South Dakota Republican Rep. Phil Jensen, sponsor of the much-amended bill, told the Star he’s just trying to make the laws consistent.
In South Dakota, it could become feasible under the law, for those who kill abortion providers, to be able to cite "justifiable homicide" for their actions.
So now we know that the wheels have come off the train, at least in South Dakota. The murder of a doctor, nurse or volunteer at a clinic that provides therapeutic abortions could be called "justifiable homicide".
So, Roe v Wade would, in that case, have effectively become irrelevant. If other states take up this type of legislation, (and notice there have been no abortion providers in South Dakota since 1994), then Roe v Wade would have suffered an irreversible death, along with those who have died, or have received death threats numbers in the hundreds at least.
Who says the U.S. is not becoming a theocracy? Who says there are not radical religious fundamentalist zealots who are willing to justify, in law, the murder of abortion providers, who seem to be gaining the upper hand in some states, like South Dakota?
Let's hope the Mother Jones campaign to protest against this move is successful.

Shared Value:new corporate strategy...wrong note, bad source

Michael Porter, Professor at the Harvard Business School, spent an hour this morning defining and defending his theory of shared value for corporations, in a conversation hosted by Tom Ashbrook (NPR's On Point) and joined by Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labour in the Clinton administration, now a professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley.
Porter's contention is that, contrary to the approach of something called CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) which he says was an 'add-on' to corporations' agenda, to satisfy a growing complaint that big companies don't give a "rat's ass" about their social responibility, corporations should (and he says some are) changing their vision to one of shared value, that is of meeting the needs of their communities and the people in those communities, as an integral part of their "doing business" and therefore as an integral part of their profit strategy. The notion of investors' demand for higher returns on their share purchases, along with the pressure from the consumer for more value at lower prices, according to Reich, has made it difficult for corporations to serve these different masters.
However, while Reich supports the vision of Porter and his co-author, he says he has spent too many years working against a very strong initiative from those same corporations trying to wiggle out of regulations that were imposed because the companies did not wish to operate within guidelines established by government, for example, to protect the environment, or the safety of workers.
Consequently, Reich, and several callers to the On Point program, doubt whether it will be possible, feasible or just moondust, to think about Porter's vision taking shape among corporate leaders.
Turning the capitalist system loose on the society's needs, like improved health care for the workers in those companies, and like improved housing for the poor in the towns and cities where the factories and companies are located...is the kind of outcome Porter is painting of the future.
However, as we listened, we were struck by Porter's concept of placing the corporate leadership out front on what is obviously a curve to bring social needs back into the equation for all citizens, and by taking the lead, they might enhance the opportunity to guide, shape and take profit advantage of the thrust. Capitalism has not recently been endowed with leadership that exemplified a social conscience, even if that conscience were linked to the potential for profit for those corporations, and their shareholders. And to think that governments might be willing to grant regulation-negotiation opportunities to those same corporate leaders, among them the gang from Wall Street,  when the public has been so serverely burned by the excessive profits, evasion of tax through lobbied loop-holes, generated by buying those same politicians....that is a picture that creates its own dose of excess scepticism.
In the vernacular, "It ain't going to happen!"
There is, according to one caller, a current constitutional amendment that would require corporations to acquire a charter for their operations, to last for ten years, and to be re-applied for and re-acquired before a "court" of local citizens much in the manner of a Grand Jury, in the U.S. The charter would state agreed-upon goals and objectives, that had been negotiated between the local citizens and the corporate leaders before the corporation was permitted to conduct business in that municipality.
Whether such an amendment has any chance of passing is anyone's guess. It is, however, on the floor of the Congress.
Nevertheless, there are other steps that might help to turn the tide away from this religion of corporatism (see John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization, 1995).
First, we need to de-couple the corporate lobbyists from the politicians through election finance reform that removes private dollars from buying both campaigns and the elected candidates. And then we need to re-educate the business school lecturers who have pumped the "for profit" and for personal gain and the largest gain through the shortest route is the best for their innocent students....they need to teach a different business model and ethic, including the pursuit of a reasonable pay schedule and the balance of a healthy lifestyle, not only for female executives (enlightened) but also for male executives. Let's get the gender equality thing addressed within the corporations before we start taking profit to meeting society's needs.
And they need to teach the advantages and even the need for organized labour in all workplaces. Let's get past the bogeyman that unions break corporations, when reality is precisely the opposite. A good place to start that learning would be at the Harvard Business School.
In Singapore, because of Harvard Business school graduates, the political leadership has their stipend tied to the GDP of the country. The higher the GDP, the higher the politicians' salaries
I, for one, would not even offer my name for election in such a system. Imagine, the Harvard Business School being responsible for such a perversion of democracy in favour of the corporation.
Trying to take the the lead, by putting the corporations in front of this curve, as a significant and overdue attempt to restore some dignity and honour to the reputations of those corporations who have yet to atone for their decades of abuse of the system (including their people, the environment and the public) will not fly...and the Harvard Business School does not have the credibility even to put the item on the agenda, in spite of the good intentions of Professor Porter and his colleague.

Harper Conservatives:A government out of touch with reality (UPDATE 16/02/11)

Editorial, Globe and Mail, February 15, 2011
Should the country's biggest job-creation program really be that of the Correctional Service of Canada? The jails plan to hire 5,000 new employees, according to Don Head, the commissioner. He says the service is trying to count up the costs of the government's multiple crime bills. Did no one think to do that first?
Even apart from all those jobs is the cost of the new infrastructure needed to house a spike in the number of prisoners. Canadians may be asked to pay billions of dollars more each year. Yet the Conservative government has provided no comprehensive costing, and none for a new bill, Bill S-10, that provides for mandatory-minimum sentences for some drug crimes, such as six months for growing six or more marijuana plants.
The costs of crime bills such as S-10 are at the heart of a dispute between the government and the opposition. The House finance committee is asking for government cost estimates. Liberal finance critic Scott Brison asked Speaker Peter Milliken last Friday to find the government in contempt of Parliament for not providing those estimates. The government claims the costs are a “cabinet confidence.”
Its position is untenable. This is a government that stresses fiscal rectitude and the promotion of financial literacy. Why should Canadians be told to ask more informed questions about private investment or borrowings, on the one hand, and give the government a blank cheque on the other?
And that's only part of the problem.
An ever more contentious issue is the complete break from reality on the part of the Conservative government in even creating longer sentences, and being, generally "tough on crime" because the Canadian statistics show a clear drop in the crime rate for all crimes over the last decade.
Law-and-order is a political hot-button from south of the border, where the inner cities have been struggling for some time, with rising crime rates. That is not, and has not been, the case north of the 49th.
Furthermore, with an increased focus on incarceration, resulting in more and not fewer criminals, there is an ideological base to the position of the government, based on some vague notion of "father knows best," of both righteousness and rectitude that seems to be attached to every word and every thought from this prime minister's mouth and mind respectively.
And yet, as in so many other cases, the reality on the ground does not support their position.
Just as with the long census form, when the government withdrew it, because of opposition and invasion of privacy, there had been so few complaints that the matter was not an issue for Canadians; yet it became so radioactive for the government, that Canadian policy scholars and planners will be robbed of much serious data necessary for them to do their work, without adequate explanation or justification.
There is no obvious reason to cut corporate taxes by $6 billion, except to please their corporate friends, either. In this decision, there are, once again, out of touch with both reality and real needs of Canadian people.
There is no military need for 65 F-35 Fighter Jets, at a combined cost with both purchase and repairs of some $20 billion, and yet the Conservative government pushes ahead stubbornly, bull-headedly, and also to be frank, stupidly.
Not only is there no reality base to their decisions, they seem unalterably opposed to thinking through those decisions. We do not need 5000 new prison wardens, guards and maintenance staff, simply because we do not need 27,000 new prison cells for prisoners 'whose crimes are not being reported', to use the government's own words.
So we are opposed not only to the government's short-sighted, intellectually challenged, and unneeded approach, they also, by omission, fail to provide the kind of programs for prisoners that would rehabilitate them effectively back into the society, where they belong. The government's approach, that of a stern, stubborn and bullying parent is precisely opposite to the evidence presented by research in the criminology departments.
By of course, those with brains, and with discipline to use those brains, we used to call them scholars, are the unnamed enemy of this government. In their view, scholars are 'snobs' as are those 4 million people who live in Toronto, expecially when compared to those this government considers its natural constituency, the rural voters from small towns and cities in every province.
Let's see, "divide and conquer"....wasn't that the approach of royalty in order to maintain control of the people so many centuries ago?
Divide the urban from the rural voter; divide the right-wing from the middle and the left; divide the provinces from the federal government; divide the outcasts from the inside circle; divide the rich from the poor....and then build walls around those divides and call those walls "A Government Action Program" and spend over $50 million advertising itself as a saviour of the people at a time of crisis....
This is a government that would approve gated communities, if it had the power to plan new cities.
This is a government that would enhance the position of the powerful at the expense of the powerless.
This is a government that would make policy on a whim, and then keep secret just what the whim was in the first place.
This is a government that literally shows contempt for scholarship, reasoned thinking, research and long-term thinking and planning. And, what's more, it is proud of its dumbness, because the rest of us are reduced to being simple 'snobs'....because we think and we believe and we know that whims have consequences and -people charged with responsibility for leadership need to take those steps of thinking through, of reasoning with the reality on the ground, and not playing "make-believe" with the Canadian people and their future.
Just in case, you thought I was alone in this assessment, try this from Thomas Walkom...
By Thomas Walkom, National Affairs Columnist, Toronto Star, February 16, 2011
From crime to KAIROS, Canada’s Conservative government has developed a novel method for dealing with inconvenient reality: If the facts don’t fit, invent new ones.
That’s why International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda is in hot water. She got caught inventing facts around her government’s 2009 decision to cut off funding to the charity KAIROS.
It’s also why Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives like a new study that supports their contention that crime rates are skyrocketing — even though all factual evidence points the other way.
To dyed-in-the-wool Harperites, the world is a scary place. It is peopled by criminals, thugs, terrorists and radical Muslims — all of whom are slavering to slit the throats of law-abiding Canadian taxpayers and steal their vital bodily fluids.
Even worse, as Harper intimated in a 2003 speech, these apostles of violence are abetted by a shadowy clique of Marxist liberals who dominate the commanding heights of Canadian thought (media, judiciary, civil service, universities) and who use their pernicious influence to spread the poison of moral equivalency throughout the land.
That none of this is true has never mattered. It is an article of faith among certain Conservatives. It is also politically useful. If citizens are convinced they are in mortal danger, they will support any leader, no matter how dubious, who promises law and order.