Children without a voice

Writing his regular column for the Toronto Star Martin Regg Cohn's piece today is about the failure of Ontario's children's aid societies to properly protect some of the most vulnerable and needy children.

He concludes, "Unlike the grown-ups who get all the attention, kids can’t vote, and lack a voice. But they still need politicians in power to hear them."

True as this is about the children Cohn is explicitly writing about, I believe this to be even more cogently true about kids in the womb. Kids 'in utero' do not even exist as humans in Canadian law. They suddenly appear, Voila!, and enter into the ambience of law with human rights and freedoms when they pass through the magical birth canal, or, like rabbits from a hat, are yanked out by C-section 'deliverers'. Until that moment, these are the most voiceless kids on the planet.

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch

You can read Cohn's column online here: Premier ponders blowing up our CAS mess. It's an excellent piece and I recommend it to Canadians living in Ontario. For non-Canadians, CAS is an acronym for Children's Aid Societies.

Picture credit: "The Scream" by Edvard Munch - WebMuseum at ibiblioPage URL: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/munch.scream.jpg. 
Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

Abstract musing on favourite colours

Credit: www.allaboutbirds.org

Grey, brown, black and white
are not my favourite colouring colours
drab, boring, cold, depressing

yet on a chickadee delighting,
even playing.

A zebra...
magnificent, flaunting,
shy, demure, seducing.

Credit i.livescience.com/

Touching, hearing, seeing
creatures foraging, flying,
living, breathing, laughing, crying
dispel the abstract musing
on favourite colours
as dawn's awaking
dispels the sleeping dreaming.

Indonesia is burning. Who cares?

Fires in Indonesia are currently producing more carbon dioxide than the US economy. And in three weeks the fires have released more CO2 than the annual emissions of Germany.

Photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images via www.theguardian.com.

Starbucks, PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz and Unilever are complicit in both cause and inaction.

The cost in human lives and misery is colossal as is the destruction of species. ‘Children are being prepared for evacuation in warships; already some have choked to death. Species are going up in smoke at an untold rate.’

This article was written October 30 and revised November 16. The fires continue unabated.

Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?

by George Monbiot in The Guardian.

Call for an independent, public review of the costs of nuclear stations in Ontario

No nuclear project has delivered on time or on budget in Ontario’s history. Ontario still does not have a plan for storing radioactive nuclear waste, nor does it have an public emergency plan to deal with a Fukushima-scale nuclear accident. And taxpayers are on the hook for the costs of a nuclear disaster because no private company will fully insure high risk nuclear stations.

Darlington on Lake Ontario

Ontario’s residential electricity rates rose by 3.4% on November 1, 2015. According to an Ontario Energy Board report, 45% of the rise in Ontario’s electricity generation costs is due to subsidies for Ontario’s aging nuclear reactors. The 2012 restart of the Bruce A Units 1 and 2 reactors came in $2 billion over budget and over 2 years behind schedule. Rebuilding the Bruce B Nuclear Station will cost Ontario’s consumers between $60 and $111 billion over 30 years. Rebuilding the Darlington Nuclear Station will cost Ontarians between $8 and $32 billion.

Studies show that Ontario could reduce its debt by $12.9 billion, save ratepayers over $750 million per year ($15 billion over 20 years) and secure a higher return on equity for publicly owned Ontario Power Generation if Ontario replaces high cost electricity from Darlington with lower cost water power from Quebec.

Yet, Ontario has never conducted an independent public review of nuclear costs or alternatives.

It’s irresponsible for the Liberals to spend billions on rebuilding nuclear plants without conducting an independent public review of costs and alternatives.

I therefore join the call on the Government of Ontario to conduct an independent public review of the costs of and alternatives to rebuilding the Bruce B Nuclear Station and the Darlington Nuclear Station.

SIGN THE PETITION

(Picture credit http://www.powermag.com/opg-proposes-new-nuclear-construction-at-darlington/)

November 11 - Lest We Forget

We pause to remember.

Wilfred Owen is the writer of war poetry whose works speak to me more than any other - and there are many other good war poets. Owen was killed in action one week before the end of the First World War.

On this Remembrance Day I found this poem, The Sentry, very sobering. For Owen there was nothing glorious about war even as we remember with gratitude those who died for the freedoms we take for granted.

(Whizz-bangs was the term used widely in WWI by British and Commonwealth servicemen to describe any form of German field artillery shells. The term was originally attributed to the noise made by shells from German 77mm field guns where the whizz of the shell, travelling faster than sound, was heard before the bang of the gun.)

WWI - wounded soldiers

Wilfred Owen

The Sentry 

We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,
And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell
Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.
Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime
Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour,
Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.
What murk of air remained stank old, and sour
With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men
Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,
If not their corpses. . . .
                        There we herded from the blast
Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last.
Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles.
And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping
And splashing in the flood, deluging muck —
The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles
Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.
We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined
"O sir, my eyes — I'm blind — I'm blind, I'm blind!"
Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids
And said if he could see the least blurred light
He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.
"I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids
Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there
In posting next for duty, and sending a scout
To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about
To other posts under the shrieking air.
Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed,
And one who would have drowned himself for good, —
I try not to remember these things now.
Let dread hark back for one word only: how
Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps,
And the wild chattering of his broken teeth,
Renewed most horribly whenever crumps
Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath —
Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout
"I see your lights!" But ours had long died out.