Canada has been absorbing this week the revelation of the burials of 215 children at the Kamloops Residential Schools, many of them completely undocumented in our past, and mostly completely unknown to most Canadians. In an important sense every one of these children is a crime victim, the least of which is neglect the most serious of which is genocide. Worst of all, most of us had no clue that this burial ground even existed, although that’s just a little too convenient an excuse.
This week thousands of articles have been written on the subject, news stories broadcast on radio and television. There is much hand wringing and guilty statements about Settler privilege.
What I haven’t heard enough of, or even any of, is the genocide underway in Canada today across the country. Every day children are still being taken away from aboriginal families and forced into “care” where they are neglected, abused and abandoned, with many of these children dying while in care, or shortly after “aging” out of foster care. These kids are removed from families, single parent moms mostly, because of a system that still sees “drunken indians” instead of struggling people who have been largely dispossessed from their tribal history and context by colonial exploitation and continuing subjugation by the settler cultures.
One of the things that irritates me about life in the 21st century is the constant evolution of laws and regulations designed to improve public safety, and protect people from unsafe practices. In 2018 the British Columbia government changed traffic laws related to how drivers are supposed to react when seeing flashing lights at the side of the road or highway.
I thought I knew the laws regarding flashing emergency lights or a siren from an emergency vehicle. I always do my best to move over to the side of the road, and generally get out of the way of an emergency vehicle when I see one coming up behind me in traffic. I had no idea that my obligations as a driver far exceed this simple behaviour. I always intend to obey traffic laws, within reason, and within safe driving practices on the road. But this new law catches me by surprise, although perhaps it shouldn’t.
Overview
In British Columbia, motorists are required to slow down and move over for all vehicles stopped alongside the road that have flashing red, blue or yellow lights. This includes maintenance workers, utility workers, police, fire, ambulance, tow trucks, Commercial Vehicle Safety Enforcement personnel, land surveyors, animal control workers, garbage collectors and other roadside workers.
Motorists must slow their speed to:
70km/h when in an 80km/h or over zone
40km/h when in an under 80km/h zone
If travelling on a multi-lane road, drivers must move into another lane to pass when passing stopped vehicles with a flashing light, where safe to do so. This provides roadside workers and emergency personnel with greater protection from accident and injury.
Rules and Penalties
Drivers failing to adjust their speed or failing to move over may receive a $173 traffic violation ticket that also carries 3 penalty points. Offences and infractions that include penalty points can lead to a driving prohibition.
This really sucks! Truthfully, when the young police office pulled me over I genuinely thought he was just being an ass, and had pulled me over for no real reason, just to be a smart mouth, not because I had committed an offense. I was so sure he was wrong I told him that I would meet him in court, and fight this wrongful ticket, which will cost me $173 and add three points to my driver’s license.
Unfortunately I was totally in the wrong, in this case, and the young whippersnapper police officer was totally right. So I guess I’ll hang my head and admit that I’m wrong about this, and just pay up.
But that doesn’t actually resolve the issue for me, because it begs the question as to how many other traffic laws have changed without me noticing. How many other people have missed out on knowing the changes in regulations and laws, which could cost them money, and perhaps put other people at risk because they don’t know the law.
There are thousands of new laws and regulations brought into effect in every jurisdiction every year. How in the hell does anybody know what’s illegal or not. Even if you spend every day in the library studying legislation and regulations you still wouldn’t know all of the important laws, let alone the minor irritants and misdemeanors.
“I thought we were going to be dealing with something unprecedented in that region specifically, but then it didn’t happen,” said Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba.
British Columbia’s success story shows how tried-and-true methods — when paired with strong public health agencies — can have sweeping impact, according to Kindrachuk and other scientists. Many governments embraced technology, with the U.K. using drones to help police enforce lockdowns and South Korea tapping location data from mobile carriers and credit-card transactions to track infections.
B.C. stuck to old-fashioned basics, alerting primary care doctors by fax about how to be on the lookout for the novel pathogen and tracing potential transmissions through interviews. Data compiled on May 13 show the province’s Covid-19 death rate was 3 per 100,000 residents, better than almost anywhere in North America and much of Europe.
Henry’s soft-spoken authority — she’s on TV every day, often repeating her mantra, “Be kind, be calm, be safe” — won over British Columbians. When her favorite local shoe designer offered a limited edition Dr. Bonnie Henry Mary Jane heel ($240 a pair with all profits going to food banks), the website crashed.
“She was able to galvanize the public across British Columbia to understand that this was something new and very different,” Kindrachuk said.
Bonnie HenryPhotographer: Don Mackinnon/AFP via Getty Images
Like other countries, Canada has an uneven history with infectious diseases. In 2003, the country’s first SARS cases appeared at hospitals in Vancouver and Toronto on the same day. Vancouver quickly contained transmission, while Toronto would suffer the worst outbreak outside Asia.
An independent commission later noted that Vancouver’s public health system had swiftly put emergency rooms and physicians on the lookout for unexplained fevers and immediately scaled up protective gear for health workers.
In Toronto, Henry, then that city’s associate medical officer of health, tried to issue warning of the emerging SARS epidemic in Hong Kong, but her office’s email-distribution list wasn’t extensive enough and many doctors missed the alerts.
In British Columbia, she became the top health official in 2018 and has been in charge of the province’s rapid mobilization to contain the virus. Within days of Chinese researchers releasing the genetic sequence of the virus on on Jan. 10, the province became one of the first in the world to develop a test. A week later, before Case One in B.C. emerged on Jan. 26, it had the chemical reagents necessary to carry tests out, said Reka Gustafson, deputy provincial health officer.
Early testing helped the province pounce on transmissions before they spiraled, crucially at long-term care facilities. Canada has the highest share of Covid-19 deaths in care homes, according to an international study of 13 countries published on May 3, a disturbing distinction fueled by facilities in Ontario and Quebec that have been ravaged by the virus.Michael Schwandt@MichaelSchwandt
If anyone tells you that massive and deadly #COVID19 outbreaks in #LongTermCare are “inevitable,” please tell them otherwise. We’ve managed 17 LTC outbreaks in Vancouver Coastal Health and have developed some useful measures, which we think are life-saving. 1/
British Columbia commandeered nursing homes at the first sign of infection, barring visitors. Employees were forbidden from working at more than one facility, a move other Ontario and Quebec didn’t make until later in the crisis.
The ability to manage nursing-home outbreaks played a key role in limiting deaths in B.C., said Patricia Daly, chief medical health officer for Vancouver Coast Health, one of the regional public-health authorities. “We could get in and get in front of it.”
Some steps defied the prevailing wisdom at the time. The province didn’t attempt the mass testing South Korea did and, unlike the government in Wuhan, China, didn’t aggressively hospitalize those confirmed positive, sending 80% of cases home to recover.
Henry has become the public face of the crisis. A former military doctor who helped track down Ebola infections in Uganda earlier in her career, she also personally handled the contact tracing of Patient Zero’s family in Toronto’s SARS outbreak.
“She’s really been trained for this,” says Perry Kendall, her predecessor. “She’s not scared of giving orders.”
British Columbia’s top politician, Premier John Horgan, has taken a back seat in the public eye; it’s Henry who presides over daily briefings.
That has been key, said Peter Berman, a public-health expert at the University of British Columbia. “The same scientist who was empowered to lead this effort also has the authority to issue instructions.”
Henry is the first to caution against complacency. “We don’t know what is going to happen with this virus,” she said at a recent briefing, where she underscored how the province could quickly lose all the gains it’d made by easing restrictions too far. “We need to hold the line.”
During this coronavirus I have been pretty much contributing very little or better said, nothing, to the blogosphere about the pandemic, and how it is affecting my life, or for that matter, how it affecting anybody or anything.
It’s not that I don’t have anything to contribute to the conversation. It is that this thing is a really, really big deal, and I don’t want to diminish its importance to anyone by failing to reflect just how important it really is, to me, and to the world around me.
To those out there who believe that the government is overstating the dangers of Covid 19, and they can cheerfully go on about their business without changing anything, well, thanks for less than nothing, since your ignorance may already be having a serious effect on the lives and well being of thousands of people, some right in your own neighbourhoods, some physically a long ways away. Like maybe even in other countries or even continents.
Like it or not, failing to self isolate yourself is reckless endangerment, and potentially, mass suicide/murder.
Canada’s Healthy Minister Patty Hajdu
You see, normally I’m a skeptic when it comes to government health warnings, and generally dismiss most as merely propaganda to serve the interests of an overbearing nanny state.. Not this time, not now and not ever. This virus kills people, lots of people, including people like me, with immune deficits that mean infection will mean a ferocious battle for my very life.
If I’m really lucky, most people in my own area, Vancouver, British Columbia and Metro Vancouver will have been helping the Provincial and Federal governments by isolating themselves at home as much as is humanly possible, and help slow the disease so that by the time I get it, there will still be hospital resources available, and I’ll get whatever it is I need from medical treatment whether it includes Intensive Care, Respirators or other devices. Hopefully there won’t be so many of us sick at one time that the system simply collapses after being overwhelming by the demand created by our citizens being unwilling to do what it takes to flatten the curves, or plank it.
Because isolating ourselves doesn’t necessarily mean that people like me who are vulnerable in the extreme won’t get it. It might, if I get incredibly lucky, and it passes me by. But most scientists believe that eventually this virus will infect somewhere between 50 and 70% of people in the world. The only real question is whether or not society can slow down the spread to give medical professionals and researchers the time to effect solutions that will reduce the numbers of us that are going to die as a direct result of the Covid 19 pandemic.
Even if everybody does everything right, and socially isolate themselves, a lot of people are going to die from this disease. No matter what we do this is true. All ordinary people can do is take whatever precautions are available to allow treatment by skilled professionals to those of us who catch this damn thing, under circumstances that increase the odds of finding an effective treatment and a vaccine that stops it dead in its tracks.
Neither of these is guaranteed, but we have a hell of a lot better chance if we all follow the best advice. Stay at home and socially isolate yourselves. Help our front line defensive workers, like nurses, doctors, researchers survive and get their work done for all of us.
Don’t be stupid. Wake up. Sometimes you just have to listen, and do whatever the hell somebody who knows a lot more than do you, tell you. Now.
Sometime today I had my 2000th reader Follow me on WordPress and 750th Follower on social media outside of WordPress. Wow! Thank you to everyone who has followed this blog, as well as to the many people who have responded to my blog with numerous “Likes” and even more views. 2750 Followers as of today’s date.
Blog Statistics January 1st, 2019 to January 15, 2020
Pied Piper fable is a curious analogy to a 21st Century blogger on health and lifestyle.
TOTAL POSTS 60
TOTAL COMMENTS 472
AVG COMMENTS PER POST 8
TOTAL LIKES 4,194
AVG LIKES PER POST 70
TOTAL WORDS 44,081
AVG WORDS PER POST 734.68
When I first started writing this blog in 2011 I expect to have only a very few followers, likes and views, and didn’t really take blogging all that seriously until spring of last year, when I started to blog about the health challenges I am currently facing, as well as about various strategies related to a lot of different issues. Still, it is currently focussed around health issues, with a subtext running through about the story of my family and my romantic relationships.
So my blog is being read by a lot of you, and I really appreciate your genuine responses and comments over the past year. You’ve given me a lot to digest, and have made me feel both heartbroken, from time to time, and inspired, from other letters and comments. Your courage at facing real physical and emotional health problems inspires me to continue with this blog. If the information the blog conveyed gives anyone comfort knowing that they are not alone, or inspiration to take action to improve their situation, or simply education that allows them to understand someone with these problems, then I have done a service.
I am a true believer in the concept, “Tu Um Est”, which roughly means, It is Up to You! which is the motto of my undergraduate university, The University of British Columbia. I’m also a strong believer in lifelong learning, and acknowledge that while knowledge and information are purely temporary, changing moment by moment in ways we can’t even begin to anticipate, learning is an abiding, persistent process resulting in our constant evolution as human beings.
This blog celebrates these processes, and are in themselves evidence of constant change in my understanding of life today. Diseases thought to be incurable are now cured on an everyday basis. Things we thought were immutable truths have been proved false, or, if not totally false, incomplete. As I write into the future I will continue to seek out new ways to improve the quality of my life, through sharing the wisdom of others, passing on the things I’m learning as I go, and hopefully continue to illuminate and educate my followers, casual viewers, and fellow readers.
Once again. Thank You. It is humbling to realize that people appreciate what I’m writing, and are kind enough to say so.
Child abuse doesn’t just affect one generation. It often spans many generations and triggers numerous dysfunctional relationships over time.
People who have been abused as children have a really hard time as adults, especially as young adults trying to formulate romantic relationships. Without a solid foundation established early in life, emotions can feel like quicksand and you soon feel like you are drowning. People become desperate for love and accept all sorts of inappropriate behavior that seems like it must be some kind of love, or it wouldn’t be so intense. So this is the story of one such person, after an abusive and destructive marriage
Even after years of counseling, he still feels the desperate self-criticism of his youth, pulling him back into depression and suicidal thoughts. At the end of his first marriage, he actually tried to kill himself by sleepwalking in front of a bus
The transit bus driver drove his bus into the side of a building to avoid hitting the patient, most likely saving his life.
He went to see a doctor after this because he felt that he was in danger because of his actions. He consciously knew that he was a danger to himself and potentially others, but so deeply depressed about losing his wife that he was wandering around in a complete daze.
This was despite the fact that the relationship was fundamentally dysfunctional, and she used and abused him virtually every day from the very first moment he laid eyes on her. His self-worth was so low that he actually believed that everything that ever went wrong was his fault. He allowed himself to be her emotional and physical servant, charged with somehow making her feel good about herself.
Although she was highly intelligent and won many academic awards she required constant affirmations of her intellect, and couldn’t accept any opposition to her opinions on any subject at all. To whatever degree he differed from her point of view, she called him out and accused him of trying to undermine her and make her look like an idiot to their friends or families. He also took on responsibility for taking care of every aspect of her life, including paying all the bills, providing her with funds to pay for her advanced education, and a constant stream of extravagant gifts. Their life together was one of extraordinary social adventures, with a stream of her unusual friends variously moving into and out of their home and their lives together.
They were together for nearly ten years and had a daughter. Their divorce was highly acrimonious and as a result of an emotional breakdown, she intimidated him into giving into virtually all of her demands, including extremely restrictive access to their infant daughter, who is now almost forty years of age.
Because of his blindness to her faults and unwillingness to acknowledge her abusive behavior, He simply was not in any position to provide adequate co-parenting to their daughter, who ended up with her being physically, emotionally, and sexually abused by his ex-wife and her mother, who had previously done the same things to his ex-wife.
It wasn’t until their daughter ran away from her mother’s house to live on the streets that he became aware of all that she had gone through in her mother’s care.
The daughter suffers from multiple psychological disorders including acute anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, PTSD as a result of multiple sexual assaults starting with her grandmother as early as five or six years old. After she ran away, at thirteen years old, from her mother’s home when she came to live with his current partner and him. It was only then that he heard her story and got her into counseling. The road was very difficult, and they were not very successful in helping the daughter overcome her many conditions.
Never in all the years he had been married to his ex-wife did he realize how destructive her constant personal attacks and total narcissistic behavior had been to him. After he more or less recovered from his breakdown and hospitalization after their marital breakdown, he still blamed himself for everything that had gone wrong in their marriage.
But no more. His daughter suffers from many psychiatric and emotional defects, some of which would have been there no matter who raised her as a young child. She also has many physical disabilities including muscular and skeletal problems that have resulted in her living life in chronic pain, and incapable of independent mobility. She also had two children, which he had to have taken from her because she is incapable of providing the minimum care level necessary for their physical and emotional health. He doesn’t blame his ex-wife or her mother for all of it, as it would unfair to do so.
Gaslighting is an insidious form of abuse, but when combined with sexual and physical abuse can lead to almost untold self loathing in its victims.
But what is fair to say is that without the abuse by her narcissistic mother and a grandmother who barely survived Nazi rule in Holland as a young girl before abusing her own daughter and granddaughter, their daughter didn’t have a chance at any reasonable life. Despite years of counseling himself, He still knows that he has blinders on regarding his ex-wife and still has hard time understanding what he allowed to happen in his marriage, or what really took place in all the years she had total control over their daughter’s care and custody.
He had even blamed himself for that restricted access, and his lack of involvement in his daughter’s life. The extreme anger his ex-wife expressed towards him made a more normalized co-parenting arrangement impossible. Even spending thousands of dollar on legal fees trying to get better custodial arrangements failed.
If you are a survivor of an abusive relationship and have gotten out, don’t try to deal with this all on your own. Find a good counselor and make every effort to deal with your own demons before they drag you into yet another dangerous quagmire.
Unfortunately, you may find yourself repeating your mistakes, over and over again. Learn to recognise the cycle of abuse in your own life, and take action to change your circumstances. Leave.
Happiness is not only the absence of unhappiness, but also an affirmation of a kind of state of grace, which encompasses all the good and bad in life, but as a kind of continuing sense of gratitude. Happiness is not necessarily always being a happy person, but is rather the presence of a profound sense of joy in life itself, for good and ill alike.
The happiest person I ever met is my sister Kathryn, who had a life altering car accident in her early twenties which left her paralysed Although she died a couple of Christmas seasons ago, her joyful embrace of life made everyone around her more aware of the reasons to celebrate, even in the face of massive disabilities and chronic pain. She suffered from serious pain, life threatening deficiencies caused by her disability, and severe restrictions in mobility, or even taking care of herself physically. It used to take her hours each and every morning just to get out of bed, go to the bathroom and get ready for the day.
Through it all she spread joy to everyone she knew.
I am making only one New Years Eve vow this year. To bring an attitude of acceptance and joy to my everyday life, and to celebrate the joy that all of the people in my life bring me every day.
Global Warming is not the most important crisis facing the world’s human population at the moment.
One of the things that really concerns me about the current mass political movement around global warming is that it is distracting the human race from several other issues that are of far more immediate concern, and which also require a global response if there is not to be catastrophic outcomes, some of which are already far advanced.
And I am NOT saying the Global warming isn’t a serious danger to the health and quality of life of millions of people around the earth, mostly in the mid to long term, anywhere from twenty-five to fifty years from now. And while I believe that it is important, if we don’t address several other, far more pressing issues, half of the population of the globe with sick and dying, directly because of these other issues.
I specifically referring to serious medical problems arising from really bad lifestyle choices being promoted by governmental agencies, national and international disease associations, doctors, international food industry giants, dieticians, and the public media.
So what the heck could I possibly be ranting on and on about? There are three health crisis catastrophes happening right now that can have a bigger effect on the human race, today and tomorrow, than global warming.
Metabolic Syndrome
Antibiotic resistance and superbugs
The explosion in pollution of the world’s oceans
Religious and political fundamentalism in the political area, and erosion of political and religious freedom
Industrial corruption around the world, and its impact on the peoples of the world.
No one article could even begin to explore these five serious hazards to humanity, and the quality of our existence on the planet Earth.
Canada’s north is suffering from accelerated climate change, threatening our wildlife and the quality of our own lives.
Personally I’m optimistic that the human race will figure out how to reduce or eliminate the human contribution to global warming. It won’t stop the climate from changing, either continuing to warm for the next few hundred years, or crashing into a new ice age, which is what many scientists were concerned about only a few years ago. It took a lot of effort to stop using fluorocarbons in spray cans, which was attacking the ozone layer only a couple of decades ago. Global warming is more of a concern than fluorocarbons, and will require a much more consequential response if the human race is to find solutions that will resolve our contributions to it. But call me Pollyannaish but I do believe that we will find technological solutions to a problem fundamentally caused by technology. As someone said to me, “it’s not rocket science.” No, it’s harder. But it be done.
I’m far less optimistic about our response to Metabolic Syndrome. Only recently have scientists started to realize the breadth and seriousness of the syndrom, which is directly caused by the consumption of excessive carbohydrates and sugars by populations of all ages, and is a now a global problem facing all of the nations of the globe. Recent research and publication have demonstrated a direct causative relationship between the over consumption of carbohydrates and sugars to the following disorders and diseases.
Diabetes
Liver disease
Cancers of the pancreas, heart, liver, kidneys
Crohn’s disease
Chronic lung disease and cancer
Heart disease including cardiac arrest, arrhythmia and death
Alzheimer’s
Inflammatory diseases
May be related to several mental disorders underlying depression and mania
The number of deaths in the world from the above categories of diseases, in 2019 caused by carbohydrate and sugar far exceeds the projected loss of life in the world from Global Warming by 2050 or even 2150 assuming that we don’t do anything to stop it. There is now solid evidence that over a third of all human beings alive today are suffering from Metabolic Syndrome, and many many many people die from it every single day. Far more than from wars, automobile accidents, distracted driving, alcohol abuse and drunk driving – all put together.
Superbugs
Superbugs present a slightly less ominous threat, if you don’t think about the fact that without effective antibiotics we are all vulnerable to diseases we once believed we had wiped out.
One in four infections is already resistant to antibiotics and other known forms of treatment, and 5,400 Canadians died last year from infections that until recently had been treatable. That’s according to a comprehensive peer-reviewed report presented by the Council of Canadian Academies this week.
That’s roughly double the number of Canada’s annual traffic fatalities and homicides combined.
These infections range from pneumonia to infections of the urinary tract, the blood stream and the skin. And their numbers are rising everywhere as international transportation carries every infection-causing microbe to every part of the world.
The report, When Antibiotics Fail, was prepared for the federal government by an expert panel. I was a member of this panel, chaired by Brett Finlay of the University of British Columbia.
Gerry Wright is a professor of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences and the Scientific Director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Oceanic pollution, including plastics and other waste
Ocean Pollution: The Dirty Facts
We’re drowning marine ecosystems in trash, noise, oil, and carbon emissions.January 22, 2018 Melissa Denchak
The fate of our seas is not only up to the government or industry. Our individual, daily actions matter, too. You can start by reducing water pollution and runoff at home, being more mindful of your plastic consumption, or organizing a cleanup of your local waterway. You can also support the work of NRDC and other environmental advocacy groups as well as other businesses and organizations that work to preserve our coasts and waters.
Religious and political fundamentalism in the political area, and erosion of political and religious freedom
The news is full of examples of political terrorism around the world, including bombings and individual acts of terrorism against innocent civilians. This is terror on a retail scale and pales into insignificance against the damage being done to our political and religious freedoms around the world as a result of religious or political fundamentalism that denies people the right to their own religious beliefs, personal development and gender identification, even the right to exist as ethnic minorities in various parts of the world.
There are more people in concentration camps today, than during the second world war, with the vast majority of them in China. We in the west have been negligent in this, but mostly because we are also complicit in our own attacks on minorities and aboriginals. The United States and Europe are split right down ideological and religious seams that threaten the future safety of the world because of the increasing intolerance being shown to people with different religious or political beliefs of large parts of the population. Christian, Muslin and Atheist fundamentalists deny the very right to exist for anyone who dares believe something different than they. The intolerance of a pulpit bully today is the concentration camps of tomorrow.
Industrial corruption around the world, and its impact on the peoples of the world.
A new report has alleged that international medical and pharmaceutical companies are complicit in China’s organ transplant scandal.
The report has, for the first time, named 20 global companies profiting from China’s transplant trade, where innocent people are murdered in a state-sponsored campaign of forced organ harvesting.
The report, entitled the Economics Of Organ Harvesting In China and conducted by the Institute to Research the Crimes of Communism, finds that the companies from Western countries are ‘taking part’ in China’s organ harvesting crimes, including Pfizer from America, OrganOx from the United Kingdom and Roche from Switzerland.
The report supports China Tribunal’s Final Judgement in June 2019 which exposed China’s ‘wicked’ organ harvesting crimes and murder of innocent people as ‘Crimes Against Humanity’.
Western companies allegedly involved
The new report emphasises that China’s transplant system is ‘dependent on the import of devices for organ preservation’ from the West and has accused the Western pharmaceutical companies of using Chinese prisoners for testing transplant products.
Over 1.5 million people detained in Chinese ‘camps’ are seen as ‘ideal source of organs’ according to the report and the authors are calling for companies named in the report to answer to allegations or for state offices to “investigate international criminal activity”.
Global pressure is now mounting on China to stop the brutal murder of prisoners of conscience in a scandalous industry estimated to illegally earn the People’s Republic of China over $1bn (~€0.89bn) per annum.
Susie Hughes, Executive Director, International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), stated: “These companies are in a very powerful position because China’s transplant industry would falter without them. It is imperative they withdraw from China immediately to help save innocent people who are being killed for their organs.”
Hamid Sabi, Counsel to the China Tribunal, who recently raised the issue of forced organ harvesting in China for the first time at the United Nations said: “I welcome all new research confirming this horrifying issue. Organ transplantation to save life is a scientific and social triumph but killing the donor is criminal.”
Industrial greed and complicity in the dangers to human survival, both individually and collectively cannot be pursued with enough vigor. Companies are responsible for causing untold health hazards and killing millions upon millions through smoking, dietary corruption of the food chain, false information distribution to the public over years and years.
Global Warming is a Safe Enemy
I started this blog by saying that I don’t think that Global Warming should be at the top of our concerns about the future (and present) of the human race. There are lot of things to be concerned about, and Global Warming is just one of them.
Photo by StrahilDimitrov/Getty Images
The massive obsessive focus on Global Warming is a little like the obsession in the 1960’s with the nuclear threat and the idea that the Russians were going to wipe out the human race in their global arms race with the USA and the West. The obsession wasn’t totally misguided, it just missed the point that there were other things which should have been addressed and were not. The consequence of obsessing over one significant challenge facing the world, without paying attention to many of the other issues is highly risky.
FIRST / PREVIOUS / NEXT For as long as I can remember, the Polyamory community has had a strangely sex negative segment that was largely born of the desire to distance themselves as much as possible from the widespread assumptions by people outside of the community that polyamory was all about fucking around indiscriminately. It’s […]
An antique engine still haunts the yard from the collection at The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania at Strasburg. Happy Halloween!
This train goes between cities, further between nightmares and dreams, it travels on track laid by dying men that form the body nightmares.
Familiar faces, human, leave our darkening world, shadows answering no cries in the fog.
Do we forget who ride the empty boxcars still searching for places to live in a dream country for their own sons,
We travel with their souls, here in the dining car, distinctly uncomfortable with the smell of broiled lobster and sizzling steaks.
Have we the right to say or the guts to whisper: You have it all WRONG and can we take the pervasive laughing clacking of the tracks
I wrote the poem above when I was in second year university, many years ago, influenced mostly by my experiences working on the Canadian National Railway. In the poem I am present to the existence of the thousands of workers imported into Canada to build the railways, and how many of them died in the process.
Many of the construction and railway workers were sent back home, mostly back to China, where they reunited with their families. Many, however, ended up staying in Canada, effectively separating them from their wives and children forever.
It is easy to forget that modern civilization was built on the backs of indentured and enslaved people, who still are denied any recognition for their real lives and losses.
In the current era, in a Canada now highly ethnically and racially diverse, these ancestors can finally have a say in who we are as a people. Acknowledging these people also opens the way to rediscover the indigenous peoples who have always been here. Long before European settlement the first nations were already here.
Before we can truly be the civilization we could be, we need to see and acknowledged these people, as well as the part of ourselves still enriched by their sacrifice.
Rain Coast Review 