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Archives -
December, 2009
Where Has My Country Gone? – December 31, 2009
I hardly recognize my country Canada these days. For the past few years, our Prime Minister Stephen Harper has
displayed an ongoing contempt for democracy, for our Parliamentary system, for
truth and transparency, for citizenship, for the issues I believe are important. But his move
this week to suspend Parliament until sometime in March is a cynical,
manipulative maneuver that is an unprecedented abuse of power and an affront to
democracy and to Canadians. Ostensibly the move has something to do with
allowing people to concentrate on the Winter Olympics being held in Vancouver and to give the
minority Conservative Party a chance to “recalibrate” its economic policy. But
there is really no reason for it other than to gain a bit more control for a
government to which voters have repeatedly refused to give a majority, and to
hide from some politically icky issues. Proroguing – as it’s called – leaves the
country without a functioning Parliament during a time when we are dealing with
fallout from the recession (which the government has handled in a ham-fisted way
that moved from denial to money throwing), when there are serious questions
about the government’s potential cover-up of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan
(perhaps violating the Geneva Convention), when we’ve become an international
laughingstock on many fronts, and when there is an urgent need to reduce the
country’s carbon footprint (oh, I forgot, they’re climate change deniers), just
to mention a few issues that will be put on hold…or, as the government
apparently hopes, will be forgotten in an orgy of Olympic cheering.
In announcing this suspension between Christmas and New
Year’s Eve, Harper calculated that few people would notice, let alone be upset
by his move. And he also must believe that Canadians simply do not care about
democracy or the role of Parliament. He might be right, sadly, because a poll I
saw a few days ago had him firmly in the lead in terms of popularly. I cannot
explain why that is because I thought Canadians were decent people who could see
through such nastiness. And I
thought I lived in a country with honest, open, accountable government. But
none of that seems true right now. And I’m not sure what to do about the
situation. But I do believe that those who are outraged by this abuse of power
and the nasty turn our country is taking need to work together in 2010 – no matter what party they support or if they’ve
ever been political before – to reclaim our country and its basic principles.
Posted: 2009/12/31 5:57PM
Progressive Is As Progressive Does – December 17, 2009
The new PDF version
Life Learning Magazine has just been published. Among the articles in that issue is one by veteran unschooling mom Gaye Chicoine,
in which she discusses the difference between education and
schooling. She quotes a university professor friend who noted that, “Sometimes the more education one gives himself or herself, the
narrower their thinking becomes.” I wonder if that is what is behind a new
academic journal article entitled The Harms of Homeschooling.
Aside from making some major errors in the article, author
Robin L West, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, attacks the
lack of regulation of homeschooling. I have written about this at length on the
Life Learning blog, so I will not repeat myself here, except to
note that unschoolers could be seen as the messengers of
the dysfunctionality of public schools and, therefore, are not to be shot at
(or, in this case, “regulated” with no evidence as to their supposed
wrongdoings.) Instead, the regulators, along with academics and educators, could
learn from unschooling families about how to fix our education system, rather
than forcing those who have given up on schools to match their questionable
record. And that is the topic of a wonderfully
outside-of-the-box article (that might be controversial in the homeschooling
community) by Eva Swidler in the January/February issue of
Natural Life
Magazine.
Posted: 2009/12/17 12:11PM
Tritium Problem Still Around
and Still Dangerous – December 6, 2009
Back in the mid 1980s, I was part of a local peace group that was concerned
about tritium and its health risks. In those days, our concerns were with
transportation of tritium from the Darlington and Pickering
nuclear power plants, just east of
Toronto. The issue has since dipped under the radar. So I
was jolted awake by a recent report from the
Sierra Club of Canada entitled
Tritium on Tap,
alerting people to the danger of potential birth defects and cancers caused by
radioactive tritium in their drinking water.
According to the report, Canada’s nuclear industry
still releases
massive quantities of tritium into waterways, sewers and the atmosphere. Levels
in drinking water remain below present federal guidelines, but Canada allows 70 times more tritium than the
European Union standard, and 473 times more tritium than California’s Public Health Goal of 14.8
becquerels per liter. Nothing has changed!
“According to the UK’s Committee Examining Radiation
Risks of Internal Emitters, current estimates of risk from tritium
exposure do not take into account the properties of tritium, especially its
ability to exchange with non-radioactive forms of hydrogen and combine with
human DNA leading to cancer and birth defects,” said Mike Buckthought of the
Sierra Club in a news release.
The report documents a nuclear industry that relies on lax
out-of-date federal guidelines in order to ignore the problem of increasing
releases of tritium from its aging reactors. Following leaks at the NRU reactor
in Chalk River, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) deliberately dumps
radioactive water into the Ottawa River, resulting in spikes in tritium levels
in Ottawa’s
drinking water. During the summer, AECL collected an estimated 4.5 tonnes of
radioactive water, leading to concerns that it may be about to dump the
contaminated water into the river.
“The problem is not just leaks and accidents. Every year
6.6 quadrillion becquerels of radioactive tritium is released into our rivers,
lakes and the atmosphere – leading to widespread contamination. Radioactive
water gets into our food and drinking water, exposing millions of people to a
known carcinogen,” said Buckthought. Monitoring of fruits and vegetables have
found radioactive potatoes, rhubarb and apples. I’m amazed, depressed and alarmed
that we are still talking about this problem after 25 years! When are we
going to stop taking and do something?
Posted: 2009/12/06 7:35PM
A Thuggish Petroleum State –
December 01, 2009
I have been struggling for a couple of weeks to write an article or blog posting
about how ashamed I am – and how worried I am – about the current Canadian government’s
behavior on the world stage, especially regarding climate change. Today, I read
this column by British writer George Monbiot. He has said it for me and I
hate to admit that he is right. Please read
it and do what you can to influence this very dangerous and arrogant government.
Posted: 2009/12/01 8:08PM
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