news

No survivors in Quebec sinkhole

/ ginny200 / 1 Comment

No survivors in Quebec slide – The Globe and Mail.

The ancient ice age has taken its modern victims. Only the family’s golden retriever, tied outside to a tree, survived.

The article linked above describes the land left behind when  the inland Champlain Sea receded,  and how the clay shifted, creating the sinkhole. The clay itself is  well described in a Wikipedia  article. The link follows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_clay

The Champlain Sea extended to the Upper Ottawa Valley. A map is available here:

http://hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca/2001_champlain2_mb/history2.htm

Minor earth tremors, human drilling, and excessive rain and snow, are among the factors that can change the quality of the clay in an instant. I grew up in the Ottawa Valley, not knowing the land below could be so treacherous.

Sinkholes

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

CBC News – Montreal – 4 missing after Quebec sinkhole hits home.

Dreadful news out of Quebec this morning. A huge sinkhole in the small town of St. Jude, Quebec, has swallowed up a home with a family asleep in side. Two adults and two children are believed to be inside. The following link has excellent pictures of sinkholes in various parts of the world and information regarding their formation.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5o5r2p

Other links are found here:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5ejype

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2eqol6j

The town is called St. Jude, after the patron saint of  the hopeless. Let’s hope his help isn’t needed.

And now the funding cuts.

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

Women’s groups decry Tory funding cuts – The Globe and Mail.

Eleven women’s groups have had their funding cut in the last two weeks , plus three more who are  silent  for fear of further repercussions, according to this article in the Globe and Mail today. All these cuts were then followed by Senator Ruth’s advice to “shut the fuck up”. The Globe in its editorial supported the notion that there are other ways to support women’s health besides focussing on the reproductive issues.

They just don’t seem to get it. All the other measures don’t matter if a woman is burdened by a pregnancy every year. The body just wears out. Reproductive choice is the starting point, the foundation for women’s health. Not much worry about heart disease if you die in childbirth.

The Globe makes the valid point that there are other conversations worth having. Are we only allowed one at a time? And does the Tory caucus decide which conversations we can have when, and only the ones that don’t offend them?

Now they’re telling us to shut up.

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

CBC News – Politics – Tory senator to women’s groups: shut up.

Nancy Ruth, appointed Conservative senator, philanthropist, failed politician(several election tries) and high-profile supporter of women’s equality rights tell the international groups assembled for a conference on those rights to”shut the fuck up” about the inclusion of reproductive rights in the Canadian proposal to the G8.

Senator Ruth sits in the Conservative caucus and she is quoted as saying that if more pushing goes on there would be a backlash from the government. Unspecified threats but it sounds that at the least she meant that the inclusion of contraceptive rights would be removed, or the government funding these groups may receive. (Government, from me and you, not just Conservative supporters.)

Those rights were only included because of pressure from women’s groups. She thinks the Canadian people have no time for such altruistic matters as the provision of reproductive health care to women in other countries. Apparently the Canadian people only have time for mortgages and other personal concerns. She also declared that  ” we still have the right to abortions in this country.” What does she mean “still”?  Another threat?’

Senator Ruth has a background that includes education at a prestigious Christian college in Washington State, and a degree in political science from York, as well as theological diplomas, unspecified. She has been a member and supporter of many groups active in the area of women’s rights. It would seem that the atmosphere in the Tory caucus is so schoolyard that the chief bully can convince even a woman with the Senator’s activist credentials that she has to toe the line.

I am surprised that someone with her background would suggest that the way forward for women is to sit quietly and wait for the government ie Mr. Harper to do the right thing. That hasn’t worked out well so far in this and many other issues. Silence never works for women, ever.

No, it doesn’t, Mr. Harper

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

CBC News – Canada – Maternal plan should unite Canadians: Harper.

Apparently Mr. Harper doesn’t believe that those of us who are pro-choice have strong feelings about it. He thinks we will ignore those feelings in order to “unite” with those who are anti-choice. I don’t care to do that. And I don’t care to “unite ” Canadians by ignoring the realities of women’s life in the third world.

No abortion in Canada’s G8 maternal health plan

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

CBC News – Canada – No abortion in Canada’s G8 maternal health plan.

The Harper government is in a minority position. Lucky for all of us who remember the fifties and early sixties – the backroom abortions, the deaths, the infections and resultant infertility, the pregnant thirteen-year-olds. what happens if they achieve a majority next time?

They are prepared to condemn women in the third world to much worse than went on here years ago, but after all, they’re  “prepared to talk about family planning.”  No sense that multiple imposed pregnancies break down maternal health, lead to early mortality for women and children left motherless. No sense that is only when the number of children are controlled that women are able to contribute to the economy. No understanding that women drive the micro-economies in the third world as well as managing the family.

Family planning: make the itinerant trucker in Africa use condoms; keep his hands off other women in his travels; support the family he leaves behind; buy the contraceptives for his wife; indeed believe that contraception is allowed by his god. Good luck with that.

The Harper government appears to believe that they have a mandate from the Canadian people to take us backwards. After all, if they think that is the right thing to do internationally, won’t they have to do the same here? This has always been the hidden agenda of the Conservative Party and their fundamentalist supporters, the ones who think that their view of morality is the only one, and should be imposed on the rest of the world.

Abortion is a choice that women and young girls should have. Remember the pregnant eight-year-old rape victim in South America, denied abortion, because her life is less valuable than her embryo. Remember her when you vote next time. Remember them all. This link takes you to a Wikipedia entry of youngest mothers. Please note the incidence of rape, and remember that countless others are unknown. Or dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_birth_mothers

Masks Off.

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

CBC News – Nova Scotia – Masks off at G8 protest: rally leader.

Some time ago I wrote about the Black Bloc, and those who cover their faces during protests. The CBC reports today that the organizers of a rally at the G8 in Halifax are going maskless, or at least asking those who show up  masked to take them off. A good step forward, I say.

Nature or Politics

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

One modest belch, endless green moralizing – The Globe and Mail.

Brendan O’Neill writing in the Globe and Mail this morning expresses the opinion that the crisis in the sky resulted from  the EU’s usual risk-avoiding reaction.

I’ve heard that same opinion about the recent pandemic: too much hype, too much money spent, not a “real” pandemic. Tell that t0 the people who languished in emergency rooms or intensive care units, or who watched their children die. I admit those events happen in any regular flu season as well. But if no immunizations had taken place, and the population had developed wide-spread illness, and the subsequent bacterial infections, would that have been serious enough?

The same journalists who suggest the government over-reacted would have been the ones to call it to account if  one plane had fallen from the sky, its engines clogged with volcanic dust. It was the airplane manufacturing firms that wrote the specs and  manuals. Were their cautions to be disregarded?

The pandemic is over; the skies are clearing; tragedies averted or farce?

BBC News – The eruption that changed Iceland forever

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

BBC News – The eruption that changed Iceland forever.

Why the Icelandic volcano eruption could herald more dirsuption – Times Online.

Volcanic eruptions created Iceland and in 1763 almost destroyed it. But in 1816, another volcano, half way round the world in Indonesia, caused widespread weather change, dropping temperatures in Western Europe and Eastern North America. Not much, just an average of a degree or two, but enough to cause widespread crop failures and famine. Eastern U.S. farmers moved West; German farmers immigrated; as did the Irish. Mary Shelley, housebound by the miserable Swiss weather, wrote Frankenstein.
A foot of snow fell in Quebec in July of that year. A contemporary account is available at the following website.

http://tinyurl.com/y27wurs

It was called the year that summer never came. Events in many countries are detailed in a Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer#Cultural_effects

Pardoned sex offenders evade record checks due to tighter privacy – The Globe and Mail

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

Pardoned sex offenders evade record checks due to tighter privacy – The Globe and Mail.

This article suggests that the government has tightened the privacy act to such an extent that only the person involved can give permission for the record to be released. So it should work like this: Mr. X wants to work as a hockey coach in September. He applies for his police check in August, giving permission to release the contents of any record found. But when the records are searched, he has no record, because that 2 years for child sexual abuse has been pardoned and that record is not released, at least not without his permission. So it would seem that there is no protection. Clearly if the RCMP are just following the directives, then the legislation has to be looked at again.

Deep in this article is a reference to a Real Time Identification Program of automated finger-printing that would decrease the current 120-day  waiting period. According to the article the RCMP is working on a Real Time Identification Program.

The website for the RCMP is clear that this system all ready exists and is in use daily by police services for their routine work. The system requires that the fingerprints being checked are in electronic format.

In order to get a police background check,for a civilian, a full set of fingerprints must be provided. If these can be done electronically at the local police station, the checking time is dramatically reduced. Reduced, that is,  until there is a hit on a criminal record. If a criminal record is found, checking can extend over 120 days.

It seems to me, that if an individual wishes to have a police background check done, the first step should be to review the steps of the process on the RCMP website. The directions are clear. Making sure that the fingerprints are sent electronically should reduce the wait time.