Mark May 10th on your calendars and get ready to do a little shopping that will help to make a big difference. With Mother's Day coming up, the Ten Thousand Villages store near you makes a great place to take part in Fair Trade Day and take care of Mom's gift, all at the same time. You can browse their gifts for "glam moms" and 'earth friendly moms" and know you're acting globally when you take your selection up to the cash register. "At Ten Thousand Villages, we've come to know that when producers earn a decent living they invest in their environment. The more support there is for Fair Trade, the more chance there is for development goals to be reached both locally and globally. This year's theme for World Fair Trade Day — Fair Trade Creates Good Climate — draws attention to the fact that Fair Trade helps advance human rights and environmental justice. On May 10th, World Fair Trade Day events will take place in over 70 countries, as well as across Canada." There are stores in Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario, Quebec, and Saskatchewan. Click here to find the locations for your province. If you live in the United States, and the idea of supporting Fair Trade appeals to you, follow this link to find a listing of every location in the States, along with their phone numbers and e-mail info. It doesn't get any easier than that. No matter where you live in North America, visiting a Ten Thousand Villages location on May 10th, or any other shopping day of the year, will be an easy way to help support commerce with a conscience.
Christian Horizons is an evangelical organization that runs 180 group homes for 1,400 people with developmental disabilities, here in Ontario. It does so under an annual $75 million contract with the provincial government, employing 2,500 individuals to staff the residences. Each one of those employees has to sign a "morality pledge" as a condition of their employment with CH. The pledge requires the future employee to promise they will refrain from a list of proscribed behaviours that includes homosexual relationships, extra-marital dalliances, pre-marital intimacies, "endorsing" alcohol or cigarettes, and lying. Yep, lying. Of course, everyone who signs that pledge is telling the truth; the whole truth; and nothing but the truth. Aren't they? It all makes me think of the staff members at the Catholic schools at which I taught through my years before the blackboard. They were all supposed to live a life that embodied all the tenets of the catholic faith, both on school property, and off it. The funny thing was that the vast majority of those staff members had just two children. They would never have used birth control to achieve that, which made it the strangest coincidence imaginable that all those schools hired all those people who all had the same limitations on their reproductive capabilities. They would all be eschewing birth control, since his holiness Benny continues to declare it to be a no-no. Wouldn't they? Don't get me wrong. I'm quite sure there must be at least one or two staff members, both at those aforementioned schools, and at the residences run by CH, for whom the pledged living of christian values is actually more than a convenient fudging of the truth in order to land a job, but you know bloody well they are few and far between. For the rest of the employees and the pledge wielding employers, it's all hypocrisy. That pledge has now gotten the CH into trouble with the OHRC (Ontario Human Rights Commission), because it has used it as the grounds on which to terminate the employment of one Connie Heintz, who realized herself to be a lesbian, after she inked her name on the pledge's bottom line. When CH forced Heintz out, she brought a complaint against them and the OHRC has ruled in her favour, ordering Christian Horizons to pay Heintz two years' wages and benefits, plus $23,000. in compensatory damages. The OHRC has also ruled the CH must "develop and adopt an anti-discrimination and an anto-harassment policy" in compliance with Ontario's human rights legislation. The ruling has some people bleating now about the OHRC being "thought police" and whining that the ruling proves the commission is out to make everyone think the same way they (read 'the government') do. Lorne Gunter is one of those expressing outrage at the ruling. Gunter, a columnist at the Edmonton Journal and a commentator for both CBC Radio and Global TV, is calling the OHRC Ontario's "thought police". Gunter and all the others adding their voice to the chorus of complaints about the ruling should give it a rest. The Commission is not trying to tell anyone how to think. Anyone who gets their jollies from being homophobic is free to think all the narrow-minded thoughts they want. They simply are not free to act on those thoughts. Whether the group takes government funding or not, the point is they are operating here in Ontario where we, as a society, are guided by principles of inclusive acceptance of all, including bigots. Even Gunter himself, if he stops to give it a rational thought or two, should actually be grateful that the OHRC ruled as it did. Their ruling represents a continued societal striving for equality and fairness for all. While Gunter feels himself to be a part of the moral majority, the power group, right now; he should keep in mind that when you back a system built on any kind of exclusion, there is never any guarantee that you might not one day find yourself on the wrong side of the guidelines used to set some apart. Arbitrary guidelines have a bad habit of being no more firm and lasting than a bowl of jello left out under a scorching summer sun. Thank heavens for the OHRC, I say. It is doing the best it can to drag narrow-minded types like Gunter, kicking and screaming into the 21st century, in spite of themselves. I think their ruling on this case is cause for celebration.
nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey yeah, goodbye!
Montreal just beat the shit out of Boston - 5 to zip, nada, zilch, to be precise. There are one hell of a lot of happy, happy, happy Canadians going to bed wearing a big grin tonight.
Two events made themselves known to me this past weekend. One brought me to tears; the other just left me feeling disgust. The first event I learned of was the April 10, 2008 document released by the International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC), a non-governmental body established by indigenous elders. It lists the location of twenty eight mass graves of aboriginal children murdered in the Indian Residential Schools across Canada. The other event was Pope Benny the PeaBrain mumbling mass at Yankee Stadium and exhorting the benighted faithful to concede the authority of the church. Since being named as the latest successor of Peter, the pope has stressed his opposition, among other things, to administrative transparency within the church. That is not all he opposes, of course. Pretty much anything that seems to require a functioning brain on the part of church congregants is against what this man wants. After having spent some hours shaking my head in sorrow and incomprehension over the sadism inflicted on the innocent Aboriginal children victimized by the residential schools, looking at any picture of Benedict parading in his fancy robes was like looking at something vaguely pornographic. The list of mass graves was distributed to the world media and to United Nations agencies, and yet it has not made the big splash in the media that the pope's latest departure from rationale has. Why is that? By now, the list will have been presented at the United Nations, and the request will have been made that United Nations' agencies protect and monitor the graves as part of an independent, non-governmental inquiry and judicial prosecution of those responsible for what the First Nations are calling the Canadian Genocide and the Aboriginal Holocaust. (When you know that the United Nations' definition of genocide includes "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" you know you are seeing a finger pointed directly at the government-sanctioned Indian Residential Schools.) Hereditary Chief Kiapilano of the Squamish Nation, Chief Louis Daniels (Whispers Wind), Anishinabe Nation Chief Svnoyi Wohali (Night Eagle), Cherokee Nation, Lillian Shirt, Clan Mother, Cree Nation Elder Ernie Sandy, Anishinabe (Ojibway) Nation Hereditary Chief Steve Sampson, Chemainus Nation, and Ambassador Chief Red Jacket of Turtle Island will serve as the presiding judges of the inquiry's Tribunal. They have indicated in their press release a total lack of confidence in the "institutions of church and state that are responsible for these deaths (to) conduct any kind of impartial or real inquiry into them." Imagine the Native Peoples lacking confidence in an institution headed by someone like Benny the PeaBrain. They have sent a letter of demand to his Better Than Thou-ness and demanded the details of how the children died in the catholic-run schools, and where each one of them lies buried. I do hope none of them is holding their breath on a reply. Benny would just as soon see them all dead as he would acquiesce to their demands for his hierarchy to be held accountable. Those schools were run by the Catholic, Anglican and United churches of Canada, and they were places of horror, at best. Officials of all three churches want to pretend now that they never existed and so they have refused to respond to the native demands for disclosure of all burial sites, resulting in peaceful occupations of churches across the country, with some of them taking place here in Toronto. Most of the occupations consisted of a group of aboriginal protesters marching up to the front of a church during a Sunday service, and there unfurling a banner demanding the return of the victims' remains, and declaring "All the Children Need a Proper Burial". Some of the protesters are school survivors. I would imagine the pope would like to see residential school survivor Rick Lavallee of the Cree Nation silenced in any way it took to stop him from telling how he saw his brother Randy murdered by a catholic priest at the Pertage La Prairie school. Lavallee and other vocal survivors like him are challenging the authority of the church and demanding administrative transparency, aren't they? Such impudence. At Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Vancouver, Lavallee handed one of the letters of demand to the priest, Glen Dion. Dion took the letter, smiled at Lavallee and said, "You people are just exaggerating. No children died in our schools." Such an attitude is commonplace among the clergy of the three churches complicit in the murders of the children, even though it flies in the face of mounting evidence; even though Bob Watts, head of the government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has stated that criminal acts had gone on in the schools - acts that accounted for the deaths of "unknown" numbers of children. The children who died were the innocent victims of the hate perpetrated by members of the clergy; clerics who saw the children as less than human. Those murderers were members of a clergy who saw themselves as above the need for accountability. You just know they all espoused the same unquestioning acceptance of the authority of a clergy who have lost all sight of the gentle founder of the faith. It is time for the churches who took part in this genocide to stand up and publicly admit their guilt. It is time for them to be held accountable. Above all, it is time for them to see the children are given proper burial.
"Athletes for Africa is a Canadian charitable organization that has focused its efforts on building a global network of people committed to promoting and protecting human rights, and providing education and opportunities that empower youth in Africa. Best known for GuluWalk, Athletes for Africa’s mission is to (i) leverage the positive behaviours and profile of†sport to engage youth and educate them about issues facing the people of Africa, (ii) partner with, and fundraise for organizations that foster local†empowerment in Africa, and (iii) advocate to ensure that human rights are remembered and protected."
If you happen to be a basketball fan, especially of the Phoenix Suns, you're not just watching a game when you watch your team play. You're also watching a fundraising effort. Every time the Suns win, Steve Nash, together with Suns teammates Raja Bell, Boris Diaw and Leandro Barbosa will donate $1,500. to Athletes for Africa, a charitable organization of which Nash is the advisoty board chair. “What I love most about Athletes for Africa is that we’re doing more than just supporting vital programs for youth in Africa,” explained Nash, the two-time NBA most valuable player. “We’re providing opportunities for our kids to get educated and get involved. Real change is only going to happen when we’re all better global citizens.” If this all sounds like something you'd like to be involved in, just click here.
Have you been following the maelstrom whirling around plastic? The one identified by the number seven inside a triangle - polycarbonate - or PC, is one you need to be wary of, not that the others are necessarily a great deal safer. I'm just talking about that one. It contains Bisphenol A, making that number 7 anything but lucky, and it's all around you. More importantly, it's IN you. The bisphenol A (BPA) is a basic part of the clear, shatter-proof plastic used in water bottles and some dental sealants; food containers and baby bottles; and the epoxy resin lining inside most cans of food that you buy. So what's the big deal with BPA? Testing done in the States has shown that more than 90% of the population there are walking around with trace amounts of the chemical in their bodies. There's the proof that it can indeed, under a variety of circumstances, leach from the plastic container it's supposed to stay in, and accumulate in us. Are you sure you want to take the assurance of the plastic industry that it is safe in the parts per billion exposure that drinking from a plastic water bottle generally results in? You should be aware that estrogen, the hormone that BPA mimics, is active at the much lower incidence of one part per billion. This "harmless" chemical has been linked to conditions that involve hormonal imbalance, like prostate and breast cancer, as well as early puberty and fetal development affects. That's a lot to play around with; a lot to trust to the parts-per-billion safety assurances of studies funded by plastic manufacturers. Three of the major retailers in Canada have already decided they would rather err on the side of caution on behalf of their customers. Forzani Group Ltd. (think SportChek, National Sports, and Athletes' World, among others); the Bay and Zellers Stores; and Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. are removing BPA products from their shelves. There are alternatives, and it might be safer for you and yours if you look into a few of them. My family and I have made the switch to a metal water bottle for each of us. Now we all sport SIGG bottles; mine displaying a burst of flowers. SIGG water bottles, extruded from a single piece of aluminum, have an internal coating of baked-on enamel that is taste-neutral and resistant to fruit acids contained in juice for instance, unlike BPA-laden plastic. Although I wanted to go floral, if your taste leans more to other motifs, you'll find all kinds of variety at the link above. Here in Toronto, I know that breast cancer survivors can attend "survival workshops" where they are advised on steps to follow to safeguard themselves as best we currently know how. Among other things, they are told not to use plastic for food storage and never to microwave foods in plastic containers. You can make the switch entirely to glass or you can investigate some of the new bio-based plastics. They are not a miracle-cure for the problem of plastic, since some of them do not biodegrade, but those that do are certainly much more eco-friendly than those containing BPA's and other such chemicals. If you care about the health of your family, you might want to keep a watchful eye on the use of plastic in your home. If you're motivated to safeguard the environment so you have a healthy one to hand on to your children and grandchildren, you might want to beware the use of plastic. Above all, if you have any desire to do all you can to ensure you live long enough to see your grandchildren, you might want to reconsider believing those with their profit margin at stake when they assure you that their plastics are perfectly safe.
On March 22, 2008, the Pew Research Center issued the results of a survey that examined trends in political values and core attitudes in the U.S. of A. Much of the survey is a big yawn, unless perhaps you're an American. One statement and its response, however, should make for a totally engrossing read for everyone else on the globe. It comes at the reader without any particular warning or fanfare on page 92 of the report. "American lives are worth more than the lives of people in other countries" is the pithy little assertion and the numbers of note are the 8% who "agree completely" and the 11% who agree "mostly". Do the math, folks. That's damn near 1 in 5 Americans who regard you as expendable. Bet you didn't know that, did you? Your life is not worth as much as that of an American, simply by virtue of your birthplace. Being born in the "home of the brave" apparently makes you more special than everyone else, according to an interesting number of our neighbours to the south, and you can be sure George B. is one of them. Everyone should know about this survey. The goodie on page 92 should be blazoned across the front page of newspapers far and wide. One Canadian who should be taking note of this survey is Stephen Harper. While he's kissing American ass to a boogie beat, George Bush is probably looking straight down his nose at this pathetic politician who wants to be best buddies with Uncle Sam. Those of us north of the 49th would be better off if Harper fell off the edge of the world. The rest of the globe would be better off if he were closely followed by George W. and all the other Americans of his ilk.
Got a cat in your life? How about an engineer? If the answer to either one is "yes" or even if the answer is "No, net yet, but I think I might like to try owning one", watch the video below. A little tongue-in-feline-cheek humour may send you scurrying out to the closest animal shelter to look for the kittie - or engineer - that could complete your household.
Mayor David Miller of Toronto is campaigning to have handguns banned in Canada for all uses except those of law enforcement officers. At the moment, the weapons are allowed to target shooters and collectors as well. He has released a video, now showing on the city's website, asking for people to sign an online petition pressuring the federal government to change the law governing this weaponry. "I'm asking for your help", Miller says as he speaks of the devastation wrought on the families of shooting victims and his desire to stop other families from being victimized in this way. "Handguns are only manufactured for one thing", Miller says, adding that one thing is "to be used to kill." When you know some of the stats about the impact of firearms on Canadians, it's hard to come up with a good reason not to sign the petition. In 2006, the stats tell us that Canadians were victimized by violent gun crime at a rate of almost one person per every hour in the year. On average, more than 1,200 Canadians are killed and over 1,000 injured with firearms each year, at an estimated economic cost of $6 billion per year. Canada ranks fifth among 26 industrialized countries in the rate of firearm deaths among children under the age of 14 years. This is not exactly our greatest claim to fame. It certainly is something we should be trying to change. The 2006 national rate of youth (12 to 17 years) accused of a firearm-related violent crime was an increase of 32% from 2002. If a ban on handguns helped to change these stats for the better, it would make the time it takes you to sign the petition some of the best time you have ever given to a cause. Please take a moment to follow this link. Sign the petition, and add your name to those who want to help end the handgun violence.
Lowering the flag on Parliament's Peace Hill has become a contentious issue here in Canada. At the moment, the flag is lowered on four days: the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women; Workers' Mourning Day; Police and Peace Officers National Memorial Day; and Vimy Ridge Day. The question of whether or not to lower it whenever a Canadian soldier is killed overseas has become the big problem. Now a panel of "experts" has recommended new restrictions on the lowering of the flag, saying that November 11, and days in honour of deceased politicians should be the only time it is lowered. I'm with Don Cherry on this one. During last night's Coach's Corner on HNIC, he said if it's made the law, fine, it's made the law to ignore the passing of soldiers. But, said he, "Don't you dare lower it in honour of some politician." The man is right. If we can not even manage to lower the flag in honour of a soldier who makes the supreme sacrifice, let's not take the practice from the sublime to the ridiculous by lowering it for some politician who kicks the bucket, safe and sound here on home soil. The women who died on December 6; those who have died on the job; and slain officers of the law are all deserving of the nation's respect, and it should be shown in a very public way, on the Peace Tower. If that's too much to ask, then limit the lowering to November 11. Period.
The current brouhaha over homework assigned to students would be a joke, if it weren't such a serious part of a very big societal problem. Get real, people. Those adults who want to succeed are only going to do so by working hard. There is no free ride in life. You know it, and I know it. WTF? What's the problem with expecting kids to learn a little self-discipline; a little acquaintance with the idea of expending effort to reach a goal? We're doing today's kids no favour by mollycoddling them to the ridiculous extent that so many advocate. The reality that's going to smack them in the face when they leave the super-sheltered childhoods they are being pampered through is going to result in more than one breakdown; more than one individual who won't be able to understand why their boss won't give them a big raise for "trying" when they always got great marks handed to them for doing fuck-all at school. Been there, done that one - from both ends of the spectrum. As a parent, I raised my own kids to understand the concept of work and putting forth their best, determined effort. As a teacher, I encountered parents who wanted their kids to learn the same, as well as far too many parents who expected me to give their snot-nosed brats an "A" simply for being. As a teacher, it was my experience that the kids (and parents) who complained the most about the schoolwork were generally the ones who expected to get the most return for the least amount of effort. Deadlines for assignments, and penalties for missing those deadlines are the reality of the world; as is the basic equation of a crappy effort equaling a crappy return. Let the kids learn a little about reality while they're still kids. It won't hurt them. In fact, it might just help them.
Continuing along the lines of young people who think the world exists solely for them - a 15-year-old thug who tried to crash an Oakville house party on March 29 is the one responsible for another 15-year-old being in a coma that has lasted a week now. He is still in the coma as of today. Who knows what the outcome will be? The big thing for me in this whole situation is that the violent-minded creep that put the lad into the hospital has been charged with aggravated assault and breach of a bail condition. Obviously, we are not talking here about some quiet type who has never been in trouble before; a kid who lost it and struck out in anger, perhaps for the first time. We are, perhaps, talking about a young hood who has not been put in touch with the reality that the world really is NOT his own personal oyster. Maybe he's had one too many "A's" given to him at school for doing basically nothing more than sitting his ass down at the school each day he deigns to attend. Maybe he can't quite understand why he didn't get exactly what he wanted, exactly when he wanted it, just like he'd always done before. Maybe the kid in the coma will end up paying part of the price tag for our society's increasing failure to demand of youth more than just looking for a free ride from day-to-day.
I grow downright weary at times of people who assert that humans are the only creatures who can boast intelligence. My own father was one who regularly trotted out the term "dumb animals" to express the lofty heights of supposed intelligence from which he looked down on every other life form which shares the planet. I hated it every time he did. Try watching the video. It seems to me to be proof that everyone who decries the intelligence level of other animals are really just creatures of arrogance.
This video by Phillip Scott Johnson looks at 500 years of female portraits in western art, set to Bach's Sarabande from the Suite for Solo Cello #1 in G Major, performed by Yo-Yo Ma. If you want a complete list of artists and paintings, you can visit http://www.maysstuff.com/womenid.htm
