Marginal Notes

Get These Motherfuckin' Pets Off This Motherfuckin' Plane

This issue has raised controversy on my Facebook page, so I thought I'd bring it to the blog.

 As reported by the Edmonton Sun, Canada's two major airlines are now allowing pets in the cabins of planes which likely will eliminate air travel as an option for people with severe allergies and other health issues:

Karen Petcoff doesn't want to think about being on the same airplane as a cat.

  The Scarborough, Ont., mom, whose 16-year-old daughter Gillian also suffers from asthma, is looking at booking a trip to Vancouver this summer but her asthma and severe allergy to felines means she is too scared to book with WestJet or Air Canada.

"Within minutes, my chest will tighten up and I find it difficult to breathe," said Petcoff, 47, describing what happens if she happens to be anywhere near a cat or even a cat owner with cat dander on their clothes.

Air Canada recently announced it would allow pets in the cabin areas of flights.

The policy took effect on Canada Day. WestJet also allows pets in cabins.

The pet-friendly airlines have allergy sufferers like Petcoff shaking their heads and health advocacy groups like the Canadian Lung Association stepping up their public relations battle against the pets-on-board policies.

Yesterday the Canadian Lung Association launched its online campaign to get the airlines to reconsider allowing pets in the cabins.

The association is calling on Canadians to pressure Parliament to take action and rule that pets should only be allowed to be transported in heated, pressurized luggage compartments of planes.

According to the association, airline passengers who suffer from severe allergies to pets, asthma or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease would be at risk of having their attacks triggered by pets in the passenger cabins.

  According to the association, it's possible the animals on planes could trigger a potentially fatal attack in asthma sufferers.

"Profit is taking a front seat and public health is taking a back seat," said spokesman Cameron Bishop.

"From our perspective you don't have to trade one off for the other."

Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzgerald said many airlines around the world allow pets in cabins and Air Canada will do whatever it can to accommodate passengers with allergies.

When I was a little kid, I had to miss almost every birthday party because my friends had pets. The couple of times that my parents gave in, I ended up in the hospital for weeks. Still, I got to see Disneyland and later the countries that my parents came from.

I have had my chance to see parts of the world, but there are so many sick kids out there who will not be able to travel by air if pets are allowed in cabins. Do these kids who regularly go for allergy shots, blood infusions, and other rough treatments not deserve a nice trip?

Would you deny a sick kid a trip to Disneyland?!

Please send an email prepared by The Canadian Lung Association asking the federal government to disallow pets on planes.

Link:

Say No To Pets on Planes!

The Aryan Guard in Calgary and the Myth of a 'White Race'

The presence of the Aryan Guard in Calgary has been documented with increased frequency in the local media. Anti-Racist Action Calgary has held numerous rallies to confront and resist the so-called "white nationalist" movement of the Aryan Guard.

In March of 2009, more than 400 people supporting the Calgary chapter of the Anti-Racist Action group gathered outside Calgary City Hall to commemorate the UN-sponsored International Day to Eliminate Racial Discrimination. They were confronted by about 50 members of the neo-Nazi Aryan Guard. The group's members, many of whom covered their faces with scarves and sunglasses to conceal their identities, brandished White Pride flags and placards emblazoned with white pride slogans.

In response to increased violence in the Sunnyside and Kensington communities of Calgary (incidentally, the Aryan Guard has its post office box in Kensington), Anti-Racist Action Calgary held a rally on June 27, 2009 to encourage community residents to come together in the spirit of mutual aid and solidarity to resist the threat of the Aryan Guard. That same evening, one of the key organizers of anti-racist initiatives - Jason Devine - had his home vandalized with spray painted symbols such as a swastika. This is not the first time that organizers have been targeted and harassed by the Aryan Guard.

One assumes that Aryan Guard aims to intimidate organizers and community members who partake in anti-racist initiatives. It is important that we stand in solidarity with those who have been targeted and make it clear to the Aryan Guard that we will not be intimidated; we will not be silenced.

We also have to reflect on how we respond to this "white nationalist" movement. For me, a call for the end of racism is not enough; we must debunk the myth of the 'white race' altogether.

In the most recent issue of New Socialist, David McNally argues that racism is a social historical creation. It is neither essential nor eternal.

At this particular social historical moment, people would likely label me as "white." Yet, being of Irish ancestry, I would have been labeled a "white negro" or a "nigger turned inside out" along with my Irish counterparts had I lived during the 1800s. For centuries, racist ideas were used to justify a system of apartheid in Ireland and the exploitation of Irish immigrants in the Americas.

Drawing on scholarship such as William's Capitalism and Slavery and Allen's The Invention of the White Race, McNally writes:

The essential problem for the plantation owners had to do with the rebellious culture of the lower classes. In Virginia in the 1660s, for instance, the mixed “rabble” of the lower classes – “an amalgam of indentured servants and slaves, of poor whites and blacks, of landless freemen and debtors,” as one historian puts it – regularly resisted the violence and oppression of unfree labour. On occasion, this resistance could pass over into insurrection as it did most memorably in 1676.Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 was the largest popular upheaval in the history of colonial America. Of 15,000 participants in the tumultuous events, a majority were bond-labourers – 2,000 African- Americans and 6,000 European-Americans. These well-armed rebels plundered property, demanded freedom from chattel servitude and set the capital ablaze. In the process, the royal governor and his entourage were sent into hiding.

Determined to eliminate the threat of revolution from below, the owners devised a new system of social control. Seeking a buffer group from the lower classes that could reinforce the established order, they relaxed the servitude of white labourers, intensified the bonds of black slavery and introduced a new regime of racial oppression. From about 1660, a steady stream of legislation sought to separate black and white servants and to prevent “mixed” marriages and the procreation of “mixed-race” children – a crime known as miscegenation. Increasingly, colonial law imposed lifetime bondage for black servants and their offspring. (Prior to 1660, many black servants appear not to have been indentured for life.) Central to this process was political disenfranchisement: the denial of the right to vote which most Anglo-American colonies had previously granted to free blacks.

In these ways, a system of white supremacy and black inferiority was constructed in which freedom was increasingly identified with race, not class. White supremacy was thus meant to give white workers a “racial stake” in the system. And a new mental universe – the ideology of modern racism – was constructed as an inherent part of this process.

This process unfolded over centuries and it was not until the 18th century that European Americans began to identify as "white." McNally argues that racism could not have had its durability unless large numbers of the working class had a vested interest in regarding themselves as "white."

This dimension of racism, its power of attraction for white workers, was brilliantly analyzed by the historian W.E.B.Du Bois in a famous passage in his book, Black Reconstruction in America. Explaining the widespread racism of poor whites in the US South, Du Bois wrote: “It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks . . .”

One wonders what sorts of feelings of impotence and alienation must plague the members of the Aryan Guard in Calgary that they must grapple for some form of social wage by clinging to the notion of "white supremacy" and a mythical, ahistorical concept of a "white race."

For now, I'll leave you with McNally's concluding thoughts for anti-racist organizers:

But for anti-racist and socialist movements, understanding both the economic and psychological roots of racism involves two things. First, it means seeing racism as historically created and thus eliminatable. And, second, it means understanding that we need to organize simultaneously against the economic conditions that foster racism and against the ideologies and practices of white supremacy that distort our humanity and block working class people from discovering their common interests and their necessary solidarity. It means, in short, being unconditionally and simultaneously anti-racist and anti-capitalist.

Link:

Anti-Racist Action Calgary

O Canada...Our Home and Imperialist Land

As many of you know, the Canadian national anthem actually begins:

O Canada!
Our home and native land.

Seriously, is that an acknowledgment that this land was stolen from indigenous groups?
Growing up, I took it to mean our land of origin or natural land...What did you think?

Anyway, studying migration over the past few years in world that cannot be described as anything other than a system of global apartheid, I have become leery of nationalism and associated holidays.

I've been slowly making my way through Yves Engler's recent book 'The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy' which is described as follows:

This book could change how you see Canada.  Most of us believe this country’s primary role has been as peacekeeper or honest broker in difficult-to-solve disputes. But, contrary to the mythology of Canada as a force for good in the world, The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy sheds light on many dark corners: from troops that joined the British in Sudan in 1885 to gunboat diplomacy in the Caribbean and aspirations of Central American empire, to participation in the U.N. mission that killed Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, to important support for apartheid South Africa, Zionism and the U.S. war in Vietnam, to helping overthrow Salvador Allende and supporting the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, to Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Anyway, I have to work today so I don't have time to develop this entry as much as I would like to...but I will leave you with a recent article by Todd Gordon which analyzes Canada's official response to recent events in Iran, Honduras and Peru in an article titled 'Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression: A Lesson in Canadian Imperial Hypocrisy.'

June has been a difficult month for progressive activists around the world. Mass protests in Iran and indigenous blockades in Peru were met with heavy repression, while a left-of-centre President in Honduras was ousted in a military coup. What these tragic events do offer us, however, is a very clear perspective on Canadian foreign policy.

Consider the Canadian response to the events in Iran. Canada issued three press releases on the events in Iran, all by Foreign Affairs Minister, Lawrence Cannon. The first was on June 15 after the repression against the protests challenging electoral fraud began. It called for an investigation into the allegations of fraud by the Iranian government and condemned the government’s move to ban protests.

On June 21, after perhaps the worst day of violent repression of protesters in Iran up to that point by government security forces and the government-aligned militia, in which more than a dozen people were killed, Canada issued a sharp condemnation of the Iranian government. In the press release, Cannon stated that:

“Canada condemns the decision of the Iranian authorities to use violence and force against their own people … The Iranian people deserve to have their voices heard, without fear of intimidation and violence. Canada condemns the use of force to stifle dissent, and we continue to call on Iran to fully respect all of its human rights obligations, both in law and in practice, and to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the fraud allegations.”

A third statement was released on June 25 calling for the release of political prisoners and personally criticizing the Iranian official put in charge of the investigation of the detained reformist leaders.

But what did the Canadian government say following the first rumblings of a potential military coup against the moderately left wing Honduran president, Jose Manuel Zelaya, on June 25? Nothing. As of the evening of June 29, it had issued one rather tepid press release late on June 28, more than 12 hours after the coup became known outside Honduras.

And what did the Canadian government say when over 50 indigenous activists in Peru were gunned down on June 5th by military and police forces for protesting their government’s free trade policies? Nothing. The massacre of indigenous protesters in Peru, many of whose bodies were then dumped by police in a river, didn’t rate any mention at all.

So why does Iran rate a sharp rebuke, but a military coup in Honduras and brutal repression in Peru inspire cautious condemnation and silence respectively?

Canadian Economic Interests versus Human Rights

For starters, the Iranian government is a part of the “Axis of Evil” in the war on “terror,” of which Canada is an eager member. Thus Iran is a fair target for criticism when it moves to crush dissent, as it should be. (Though we should be mindful that the interests of Canada, like those of the U.S. or U.K., aren’t necessarily a democratic Iran but a compliant one; one need only look at the history of foreign intervention in Iran in the 20th century to be skeptical about the intentions of imperial powers.)

But the situation is different when it comes to Honduras and Peru.

In Honduras, Canadian corporations – largely, though not exclusively, in mining – are major economic players. According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, from 1996-2006 Canada was in fact the second largest foreign investor in the Central American country. Mining companies like Goldcorp, Yamana and Breakwater Resources benefit from a mining law passed in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 that strongly favours foreign corporations over the rights of local communities. The mining law and Canadian investments, particularly Goldcorp’s San Martin open pit mine, have been the target of large demonstrations and blockades over the last few years by indigenous peoples and small farmers whose lands and livelihoods are threatened by the expansion of – well documented – ecologically-disastrous Canadian mining.

In active support of Canadian capital (and foreign capital more generally) in Honduras, the Canadian government has supported, through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), structural adjustment (now described as Poverty Reduction Strategies). Structural adjustment is aimed at the neoliberalization of the Honduran government and its public policies. Among other things, CIDA committed $1.5-million from 2004 to 2010 toward a program at the Universidad Nacional de Honduras to assist in the development and implementation of the country’s Poverty Reduction Strategy process. The Canadian government has also been pursuing a free trade agreement (FTA) with Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

It should come as no surprise, then, that social movements opposed to mining investment and reactionary mining laws are a threat to well-established Canadian interests in Honduras. President Zelaya was also not on the best of terms with the mining industry. In his inaugural address in January 2006 he declared a moratorium on the granting of new mining concessions. While by no means stopping existing exploration or halting operational mines, this move was nevertheless seen as a threat to the security and stability of mining in the country, and industry officials responded with lobbying and advertising campaigns to push their interests.

Zelaya’s tenure also saw the adoption of a minimum wage increase, measures to nationalize energy generation plants and the telephone system, and Honduras’s entrance into the Venezuelan-initiated Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, a political and economic formation that seeks to counter imperialist influence in the region.

Against this backdrop Zelaya, supported by trade unions and social movements, called a vote for June 28 to determine if a majority of Hondurans wanted to have a referendum during the upcoming elections in November on convening a constitutional assembly. If called, the constitutional assembly would seek to replace the current constitution, adopted in 1982 by a brutal American-backed military regime, with one more inclusive and democratic. Such a constitution could very well further jeopardize mining interests in the country.

But the vote – to decide whether or not to have a referendum – was strongly opposed by the anti-Zelaya-dominated Congress and Supreme Court and by the military, all of whom claimed it’s illegal. Their efforts to block the vote in the days leading up to it brought thousands of Hondurans onto the streets, as the first concerns about a potential coup were raised. But early in the morning of June 28 the military made its move, violently detaining Zelaya at his house and then deporting him to Costa Rica. Anti-Zelaya President of the Congress (and fellow member of Zelaya’s Liberal Party), Roberto Michelletti, read a letter of resignation later in the day allegedly signed by the ousted President, but Zelaya denies signing the letter. The military occupied the country, establishing checkpoints at the entrance of towns, while the national telephone system, cell phone service and the energy grid has been shut down in a number of areas.

The threat to the interests of the Canadian government and corporations has subsided, at least for the time being.

And so the Canadian government is much cagier around the situation in Honduras than it is with respect to Iran. The Organization of American States (OAS) did pass a resolution on Friday June, 26, after the first rumblings of a coup were heard, which called for the maintenance of democracy and the rule of law. Yet, at the same time, in the special session of the OAS Permanent Council on the situation in Honduras held that same day the Canadian representative remained silent. Foreign Affairs and International Trade issued no press release on the 26th or the 27th condemning the clear threat to Honduran democracy.

A press release was finally issued by Peter Kent, Minister of State for the Americas, very late in the evening of June 28. While Kent condemns the coup d’état, he “calls on all parties to show restraint and to seek a peaceful resolution” to the crisis, as if all parties, including Zelaya and his supporters, are responsible for the military-orchestrated coup or are equally unrestrained in their actions. This position is echoed in the Canadian representative’s statement to the OAS Permanent Council following the coup on the 28th. Canada has thus far failed, furthermore, to call for the reinstatement of the Honduran President, placing it politically behind the United States, which has called for Zelaya’s return, in its response to the coup.

Non-Response to the Massacre in Peru

In Peru, meanwhile, Canadian companies have over $2.3-billion in investments, ranking fourth among foreign investors in general but first in mining, according to Foreign Affairs and International Trade. In an effort to strengthen the rights of Canadian capital in the Andean nation and lock in its access to Peruvian resources, Canada signed a free trade agreement with Peru late in 2008.

CIDA has also been busy at work in Peru, spending over $24-million between 2002 and 2009 on public sector reform (aimed at “improving efficiency”), developing new institutional and regulatory frameworks in the hydrocarbons sector (promoting “international private sector investment”), and reform in the mineral sector. Export Development Canada (EDC) – a government credit agency designed to finance Canadian foreign investment – recently posted a permanent representative for the Andean Region in Lima. EDC President, Eric Seigel, proclaimed that “EDC intends to become a permanent member of the Andean financial community, supporting growth for both Andean and Canadian companies operating in the region.”

And so Canada said nothing when Peruvian President, Alan García, sent in a 600 strong police and military force – including armoured personnel carriers and helicopter gun-ships – to crush a blockade of a major highway by 5,000 indigenous activists. The military and police assault led to the deaths of fifty protesters and the disappearance of many – possibly hundreds – more, according to indigenous organizations. Nine police officers were also killed during the assault when indigenous people fought back in self defense against the massive government show of brutal force.

While Canada remained silent about the repression in Peru, it couldn’t contain itself when, a mere two weeks later, Stockwell Day, Minister of International Trade, proudly announced that legislation to implement the Canada-Peru FTA was passed by parliament. But it was precisely the neoliberal and Free Trade policies of García that sparked the blockades in the first place. García, who has a long history of violence and political corruption that led to his exile in the 1990s, has moved to open up large swathes of indigenous land in the Amazon to foreign resource companies, sweetening the deal for Canadian and other foreign companies with low tax and royalty rates and cheap government-subsidized electricity rates.

The result, predictably, has been a steady growth of Canadian and other foreign resource firms in the Peruvian Amazon, and increasing confrontations between them and indigenous communities. Canada’s FTA with Peru, along with the American FTA, will only intensify the conflicts surrounding resource development and indigenous land.

If it’s Good for Canadian Business…

It’s no accident that the Canadian government quickly and sharply condemns some instances of repression, such as that in Iran, while it ignores or tepidly responds to others. If it’s good for Canadian business, then it’s okay. This is imperialist Canada in the developing world: exploit people and their resources to make a buck, and if some repression is required along the way, well so be it. This isn’t just an American act; it’s a Canadian one too, and it’s becoming all too familiar.

It’s also worth noting here that Canadian involvement in Honduras and Peru (and many more countries besides) extends beyond investment interests and financing neoliberal reform. Canada has also trained Honduran and Peruvian military personnel through the Military Training Assistance Programme (MTAP). The MTAP provides language, officer and “peace support” operations training to roughly 1,300 military personnel from sixty-three different developing countries a year. According to its Directorate, the MTAP serves to “promote Canadian foreign and defence policy interests.” It “uses the mechanism of military training assistance to develop and enhance bilateral and defence relationships with countries of strategic interest to Canada.”

It happens to be the case that many of the participating countries are ones with which Canada has, or is hoping to develop, strong economic ties and which have troubling human rights records, including Peru and Honduras.

The reality of Canadian involvement in the third world is an ugly one, and deserves greater attention from the Canadian Left. The Honduran and Peruvian situations are not the exception to the rule of Canadian foreign policy. They represent the normal practice of the Canadian government defending Canadian business interests against the human rights of workers, poor communities, and indigenous peoples.

Link:

'Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Repression: A Lesson in Canadian Imperial Hypocrisy' by Todd Gordon via New Socialist

A Different Picture of O Canada:

The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy by Yves Engler

The Dark Side of the Nation: Essays on Multiculturalism, Nationalism and Gender by Himani Bannerji

Does Iris Evans, Minister of Finance, Know Anything About the Economy?!

Iris Evans, the Minster of Finance in Alberta, remarked today that in order to raise children "properly" one parent should stay at home while the other goes to work.

Huh?

Is the Minister of Finance aware that wages have been falling for decades and few families are able to rely on one income? Is she aware that we are in the middle of a global recession?

Somehow, I have a hunch that she'd be less than pleased that her stance may more frequently become the norm as men lose their jobs and may forcibly become the household caregiver.

Let's here what Evans has to say:

In a tangent at the end of a speech on Alberta's economy to the Economic Club of Canada in Toronto, Iris Evans spoke about the importance of teaching kids about finances and how those lessons can be empowering.

After struggling with finances as a mother herself, Evans said she made it her mission to teach her kids about money.

Now as adults with their own families, her kids have topped up RRSPs, live in good houses and have good savings, Evans said.

She also said good parenting means sacrificing some income to stay at home while kids are young, as her children have done.

"They've understood perfectly well that when you're raising children you don't both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise," Evans said.

"This is not a statement against daycare. It's a statement about their belief in the importance of raising children properly."

She also said a lack of education is ruining the upbringing of some children and leading to mental illness and crime.

"The huge failure of Canadians is not to educate the children properly and then why should we be surprised when they have mental illnesses or commit dreadful crimes?," she said.

"We've really got to focus on that properly and it should be financial literacy as well as anything else."

Evans said today's Canadians don't save enough money and a simple fix to avoid those pitfalls for the next generation is to teach children about finances from an early age.

"If you don't read to the child they'll never learn how to read and if you don't talk to them about money and we don't start educating this next generation they'll think that the world owes them a living," she told the small business crowd.

Not only should parents be teaching kids about money, but government should also be putting money toward financial literacy, Evans said, lamenting the lack of such funds in Alberta's recent budget.

"The great tragedy in this year's budget in Alberta ... is that we put 200 more policemen, police officers, for the next two years and more Crown prosecutors, more law enforcement people," she said.

"If we had put 200 more positions in place to help parents be better parents I would have been much happier."

Evans also spoke of the need for a national supplemental pension plan, saying provinces will be meeting in July to propose a framework to take to the federal government.

Ideally that would happen in two to three years, but even if that can't happen Alberta and B.C. will pursue their own approach, she said.

"If nationally the other provinces aren't' engaged for whatever reason or if it can't be attached to a vehicle like CPP that makes sense to the provinces, B.C. and Alberta will definitely go ahead," Evans said.

"Our savings by individuals are far too low."

So, if more parents stayed home to raise their children, children would have better financial literacy, be less mentally ill, less criminally-oriented, and less in debt?!

I cannot even touch on the convoluted reasoning of Evans' cavalier comments about mental illness and crime being linked to lack of home parenting.

But is the Minister of Finance seriously suggesting that: 1) all parents can afford to say home; and 2) financial literacy is all that is required to establish financial security?

Were all the stockbrokers and investors who lost big with the global recession financially illiterate?

Does Iris Evans know anything about economics beyond balancing a checkbook?!

Here's a thought - maybe, if the United Nations Systems of National Accounting counted care work as productive labour, we could organize a society that allowed parents to spend more time at home.

Maybe, if we did not live under Capitalism that happily sucks people away from all life-producing and enhancing activities to exploit them for profit, people could afford to spend time with their families.

Iris Evans, read up on the topic of reproductive work and economics before you make dumb and offensive comments about parents and their choices as they struggle to provide for their children.

Start with Nancy Folbre's "Invisible Heart." Then, try Marilyn Waring's "Who's Counting?" and then read some socialist feminist authors like Selma James, founder of the movement to Invest in Caring Not Killing.

At the very least, check out the Women and The Economy project.

Seriously, people, is not time to end oligarchy and Conservative hegemony in Alberta? Should our ministers not be required to demonstrate at least some expertise regarding the issues relevant to their departments?!

Links:

"Raising children properly' requires stay-at-home parent: Alberta minister" via CBC Calgary

Alberta is a Community That Cares

In mid-May, I intended to blog about the Friends of Medicare rally at the Alberta Legislature that took place on May, 2009 and drew the support of thousands of protesters but apparently not that of the mainstream media.

Today, I write about this important citizen's movement in the wake of information that the government intends to downgrade rural hospitals and after yet another painful experience at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary on my journey with chronic illness.

My condition is called CVID - it essentially makes it difficult for me to fight bacterial and viral infections. On May 29th, I went with dread to the Foothills Hospital on the sixth day of struggling with a stomach flu that literally left me unable to keep even liquids in my system. I can tell you that by the fifth day of the episode, I knew that I was in a serious state and needed hospital care but I am actually scared to go to a hospital in Alberta after all of the terrible experiences that I've had with the health care system. Fortunately, I have an incredible family that urged me to go to the emergency room and bore the painful wait in the E.R. waiting room with me.

Before I continue, let me note that anyone who knows me well knows that I am incredibly tough and can handle a great deal of physical pain and discomfort...

I lay in the E.R. waiting room for 8 hours (which is standard in my experience) writhing in pain, having to haul my body to the washroom with diarrhea, shivering with cold and breaking down sobbing in front of dozens of people. Adding to the nightmare, was the guilt of exposing my parents who are in their 70s to this mayhem. (I recently broke up with my partner who is truly the most supportive man that I have ever encountered, so believe me that I was missing him terribly too.) Also adding insult to injury was the business channel being broadcasted loudly throughout the 8 hours, including disgusting attack ads from the Harper camp against Ignatieff. (Do I really need to see the propaganda of the ideologues who crawled out of Alberta to try to destroy the rest of Canada while I lie in the third-world-like conditions that their provincial counterparts have created?!)

And, then there was just the terrible anger and sadness and desperation as I lay there so ill and glanced around the room and saw so may others struggling...And, don't think that I am the only one who is angry. The conversations that I could overhear in my dazed state were punctuated by remarks that the Conservative government of Alberta has destroyed our health care system and demonstrates an offensive disregard for its citizens. How, people asked, could the richest province in Canada fail to provide basic medical care for its residents?!

At about hour 7, a nurse at the triage desk put an IV in me with saline and gravol. I was then sent back out into the waiting room. As someone who regularly receives infusions, I was not made less uncomfortable by the IV but I am not sure the other patients and relatives waiting felt very reassured. When the saline solution finished draining in roughly an hour and my blood began backing up through all of the IV tubing, I would say that all the bystanders were pretty freaked out.

Fortunately, my bloodiness got me a ticket into the E.R. beds...And, trust me, the poor conditions and the malcontent does not end there. I believe the Foothills Hospital has signs that say something along the lines of "just because we don't have a room for you, doesn't mean you're not being treated as a regular patient." The nurses and doctors are clearly over-worked and struggling to do their very best in spite of the conditions that make it so much more difficult to do their jobs. In my journey with illness, I have encountered the occasional nasty medical practitioner who you can quite obviously see is overwhelmed by his or her work conditions. But, for the most part, I am absolutely amazed by the emotional and physical stamina that these people exhibit to care for people in such substandard conditions.

I was fortunate to receive exceptional treatment by both my nurse and doctor. In less than 12 hours, they were able to stabilize me with medications and a few more bags of saline solution to hydrate me. Both were caring and kind...just like the people in the waiting room who seemed so dismayed to see me left out there is such a disastrous state.

There is a myth among the Left in Canada that Albertans are a bunch of spoiled, Conservatives. As a native Albertan, I would argue that we are a collective of people who care deeply for each other; who want the Conservative government out, but who do face obstacles of democracy that have been brought about by a powerful oil corporation lobby among other factors. I would also suggest that people have become somewhat hopeless over the years and certainly living in a place where you can't even get proper medical treatment leaves people in a mode of survival that is not conducive to participation and democracy.

Still, people continue to resist and come together as a community...

As someone who is often in the advocate role, I want to thank Friends of Medicare and all my fellow Albertans who rallied at the Alberta Legislature when I was too ill to attend in early May. I cannot fully convey how much your advocacy lends a sense of support, community and hope as I struggle in this health care system. I offer you my deepest gratitude.

I offer my readers a good video clip of Brian Mason speaking at the rally and photos for people to enjoy. This display of democracy in action must be celebrated. Alberta will take its health care system and its government back!

Link:

Friends of Medicare

Related Blog Entry:

Sickening: From Illness Identity-Marketing to Health Care Solidarity

Pro-Life Campaign Falsely Linking Abortion with Breast Cancer is OK...Or So Says the U of C's New VP Academic

In October of 2005, Amy Steele - a notable writer in Calgary - wrote the following piece about a pro-life campaign that misled women to believe that an abortion could cause breast cancer:

A campaign by a pro-life group to convince women that there’s a link between having an abortion and getting breast cancer doesn’t have any credible scientific basis, says the Canadian Cancer Society.

And the executive director of the Calgary Birth Control Association Sexual and Reproductive Centre, Pamela Krause, questions the motivation behind the campaign.

(The campaign) could act as a scare tactic and is not really very helpful to a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy," says Krause.

The pro-life group LifeCanada has launched a website (www.abortionbreastcancer.ca) and has put up 38 billboards across Canada, including three in Alberta, to get their message across. The billboards feature the breast cancer ribbon used by the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation and state "Stop the Coverup."

Joanne Byfield, president of LifeCanada, says her organization decided to launch their campaign because it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. On its website, the organization argues that women who have abortions have an increased risk of breast cancer because they are delaying childbirth and breastfeeding. Both breastfeeding and giving birth to a child at an earlier age have been proven to reduce the risk of breast cancer.

This is something Canadian women should be aware of," says Byfield. "This link has been studied for over 50 years. There are 50 some studies that do show an increased risk, and by and large women are not told about the possibility of an increased risk of breast cancer when they choose to have an abortion. We think that is unconscionable.

"Informed consent is a recognized and long standing principle of health care in Canada and it strikes us as wrong that women don’t have this information." But the Canadian Cancer Society disputes Byfield’s claims."Basically, although there are some published studies that suggest a slightly increased risk of breast cancer in women who have had an abortion, the total body of scientific evidence doesn’t support this," says Lori Boychuk, spokesperson for the Canadian Cancer Society.

LifeCanada alleges on its campaign website that there’s been a major coverup of the link, and Byfield says that’s because "abortion is a sacred cow in this country."

"In Canada, to challenge the status quo on abortion makes you a complete pariah," says Byfield. "Just because we as a group do not think abortion is good for women and children does not mean everything we say can be discounted as biased and everything pro-choice groups say is truth."

However, Boychuk says the society carefully monitors and weighs all scientific evidence on cancer.

"Our number one priority is providing women with the best information that is available and we’re there to serve them and give them support in terms of reliable information that’s science based," says Boychuk.

Boychuk says if women want "reliable" information on breast cancer they should go to www.cancer.ca.

Krause agrees there is no conspiracy to hide information from women and describes the LifeCanada campaign as "unfortunate."

"There is nothing hidden from women who make the choice to have an abortion," she says. "The difficulty is research can be found and statistics can be developed around any issue from a particular bias, and I believe they’re operating from a specific bias."

Krause says the National Cancer Institute (in the U.S.), the American Cancer Society and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have all refuted a link between abortion and breast cancer. In 2003, the National Cancer Institute brought together 100 of the world’s leading experts on breast cancer and reviewed existing research and the experts concluded there is no link between abortion and breast cancer. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also reviewed available evidence in 2003 and concluded there was no link.

In response to this article, Dan Bidulock - the new VP Academic of Graduate Students' Association at the U of C - wrote the following letter to FFWD magazine:

Let's all follow the example of Pamela Krause, executive director of the Calgary Birth Control Association. She questions LifeCanada's motives in campaigning to link breast cancer with abortion. I don't know about cancer or alleged coverups, but I can think of two things that might motivate the monsters over at LifeCanada to spread these "lies": women's health and the welfare of unborn babies.

Every day children are sacrificed to the gods of convenience, economy, and whim in numbers that would make Montezuma himself cringe. We're a long way from the jungles of ancient Mexico, yet the savagery continues. How is murdering the most helpless among us accepted and even lauded in our society? LifeCanada's claims of breast cancer aside, there are hundreds of couples in this province alone that would adopt an unwanted baby. Abortion is selfish, senseless, and dehumanizing to both mother and child.

I am just going to make three comments about this letter and then consider the implications of this type of reasoning for someone who holds the position of VP Academic.

1. Why is "lies" in parentheses? Is Bidulock suggesting that misinforming women about breast cancer is trivial?
2. Why is savagery equated with Mexico? Does this smack of racism to anyone else?
3. Does Bidulock really think he can speak to the feelings and motives of women who get abortions?

So, it seems that the new VP Academic believes the ends justify the means.

Bidulock will fit in well, however, with the current executive of the GSA. Incidentally, he lost the general election, but effectively harassed the true winner out of her position with the help of the executive. You see Bidulock supports the GSA's anti-CFS agenda and certainly appears comfortable employing unethical strategies to meet political agendas. For certain, the GSA uses its own unethical tactics to push their agenda of de-federation from the Canadian Federation of Students.

I have seen firsthand how the executive flat out lies about the CFS, while also explicitly acknowledging that they REFUSE to invite the CFS to visit the campus to respond to any concerns U of C students may have, including those of the executive.

And while I cannot provide evidence (note: this claim could be false), I was told by a former staff member of the GSA that the executive conspired to remove all the information pages about the Canadian Federation of Students from the day planners that the CFS supplies as part of the services that students pay for with their CFS levy each year. In fact, according to the staff member, the children of the Executive Director were hired with student funds to tamper with student property.

I encourage everyone with a day planner to check to see if the CFS pages have been removed from your planner.

Finally, students should know that the GSA passed a motion in April to no longer pass on the money levied from students to the Canadian Federation of Students. So while students' accounts will show that a levy was collected for the CFS, the GSA will actually not pass on the money collected in the name of the CFS. Misleading? Yes.

Instead students' money will go into a "reserve fund" until 2015 at which time the Graduate Representative Council will decide what to do with the "fund." So know that money is being taken from students while denying them the benefit of CFS services. And likely students' will not receive any benefits of the levy since the fund will likely not be used until after paying students have graduated!!!

See what I'm saying about lack of integrity when it comes to the means this executive will employ to achieve its myopic political goals?!

Blood Money

I've been watching HBO's 'True Blood.' It is dripping with sex, rage and down-and-dirty life.

It is a strange show to watch for someone who receives blood infusions. In the narrative, Japan has invented synthetic blood so vampires have 'come out of their coffins.' Synthetic blood is commodified and sold as a beverage called Tru Blood so that vamps can subsist without feeding on humans. Likewise, vampire blood which is acquired by violently draining vampires is sold as an illegal drug called V Juice which seems like an ecstasy and acid kinda combo that makes people hyper-sensitive, euphoric and sexed up.

What I find strange is that synthetic blood plasma already exists. And, human blood has already been commodified for sale. Contrary to Canada's Blood Services, in the United States blood is not "in you to give," but in you to sell. Indeed, reports suggests that sales of blood plasma have gone up with the recession. I find it kinda freaky that I am literally getting some poor mothafucker's blood.

In any case, here is a worthwhile excerpt from a socialist take on the vampire trend via Socialist Worker:

VAMPIRES ARE everywhere: House of Night, Twilight, Southern Vampire Mysteries, Night Huntress, Savannah Vampire Chronicles, Guardians of the Night, Blood Ties, Being Human, Demons, Let the Right One In...

Ever since Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, vampire stories have exerted a consistent fascination, but the seemingly limitless list of contemporary versions is remarkable. The legend of the bloodsucking "undead" provides a potent and flexible metaphor within the rapidly changing political currents of our time.

Stoker's Dracula is rich in contradictions. It is a "St. George versus the Dragon" Christian allegory ("dracula" derives from words meaning "dragon" and "devil"). It is steeped in British imperialism's orientalist fascination with the mythical East, which represents both the evil antithesis of the West, but also the irresistible lure of forbidden desire.

The figure of the centuries-old count, inhabiting a gothic castle in Transylvania, feeding on the local peasantry, expresses bourgeois distaste for aristocratic decadence and parasitism. But the vampire offers an equally apt allegory for capitalism: the soulless boss who bleeds workers dry. (Think of Thievery Corporation's song "Vampires," dedicated "to the world banking system.")

...

TODAY'S VAMPIRE has been tamed and is more romantic heartthrob than scary monster. In a culture where youth is revered and death feared, such an embodiment of immortality is enthralling. But beyond this common factor, the 21st century vampire assumes diverse ideological guises.

Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series books are overtly conservative. The teenage heroine Bella Swan is painfully self-critical (she sees herself as ordinary, uninteresting, clumsy and plain), and worships the superhuman vampire Edward Cullen, who is richer, older (by almost a hundred years), more experienced, physically stronger and uncannily beautiful. She thus feels undeserving and insecure, convinced first that he despises her, and later that he will abandon her.

The central theme is abstinence: No drugs, no alcohol and no biting before marriage. The "good" vampires are "vegetarian," feeding only on animals. The plot turns on the question of whether vampires possess souls.

Judging by the books' immense fan base among teenage girls (which certainly can't be accounted for by their literary merit--as Stephen King puts it, Meyer "can't write worth a darn")--the series taps into something in that demographic, even though the author came of age in the 1980s, and Bella's strangely insipid world lacks many markers of modernity.

They do offer a compelling story of true love that conquers all, and imaginatively eroticize chaste displays of affection. But their popularity seems symptomatic of an era where women's rights have suffered such setbacks that a generation of teenage girls sees sex as danger, and identifies with a relentlessly self-abasing heroine willing to sacrifice everything for her boyfriend.

It is telling that Bella's worst nightmare isn't death by vampire or werewolf, but that she will get old and ugly while Edward stays eternally youthful and beautiful. The bite of the vampire trumps retinol or botox.

"Post-feminists" argue that the Twilight series is popular because young women crave "traditional romance." But this can't account for the matching popularity of other series like the House of Night novels by mother and daughter team P.C. and Kristin Cast.

...

BUT OF all the current vampire tales, the one that best captures the political sea change of the post-Bush era is the HBO series True Blood by Alan Ball (doing for the undead what he did for the dead in Six Feet Under) based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. Unlike the self-righteous Twilight and earnest House of Night, True Blood is also very funny and irreverent.

Since Japanese scientists have invented synthetic blood (Tru Blood comes in O Neg or A Neg and is best microwaved), vampires are in the process of "coming out of the coffin" to take their place in civil society.

The opening credits are exhilarating: a rapid series of disturbing, inspiring and bizarre juxtaposed images from the deep South--civil rights marches, Ku Klux Klan gatherings, sexually objectified female bodies, a decomposing fox carcass--to the accompaniment of Jace Everett's haunting song "Bad Things."

Anna Paquin plays the (telepathic) waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who, impatient with the narrow horizons of the backwoods town of Bon Temps, La., and frustrated with the petty-minded prejudices of her workplace, welcomes the first "out" vampire in town.

After a series of brutal murders, suspicion inevitably falls on the vampires, who face constant discrimination (in one of the many witty details, a church sign reads, "God hates fangs"). In a reversal of the standard crime formula, here the police are one-dimensional, incompetent and bigoted, while the quirky and complex protagonists are the regular working-class townspeople.

While the series flirts with stereotypes, this is in tension with the superb script, and in season one, the two main Black characters, Sookie's friend Tara and the gay short-order cook, Lafayette, have the best lines. In the first episode, Tara, who is reading Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, quits her job at a store called Super Save-a-Bunch. She explains, "I can't work for assholes," to which Sookie replies, "When did you get to be so picky?"

Confronted in a television interview with vampires' proclivity for violence, a member of the American Vampire League replies, "Doesn't your race have a rather violent history of exploitation? At least vampires never owned slaves or exploded nuclear weapons."

Vampires have come full circle: once representing the threat posed to bourgeois society by the oppressed (the colonized, women), in True Blood they represent a refuge for the oppressed from the monsters lurking within capitalist society itself.

Watch it. If nothing else, it's freakin' hot.

Links:

'Blood Types' by Helen Scott, Socialist Worker

'Recession Indicator: Paid Blood (Plasma) Donations Rising',  Naked Capitalism