Today We Are All Scot's

A'hae toast ya laddie with a wee dram.
It is Robbie Burns Day around the world.





In commemoration I link to my previous posts for your enlightenment, entertainment and erudition.

Happy Burns Day-2007

Happy Rabbie Burns Day-2006

Radical Robbie Burns, Peoples Poet-2005

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Blogging For Choice III

As follow up on my previous Blogging For Choice articles; I and II here is more evidence that the Supreme Courts decision over abortion left the door open to privatization of health care in Canada, in particular the privatization of abortion services.

That meant a restriction of genuine choice for women who need or want abortions to using Morgentaler Clinics or else leaving their provinces for clinics in other provinces or in the U.S.

Many Canadian women lack access to reproductive health services

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Blogging For Choice II

I got chastised for having assumed that Blogging For Choice was all that was occurring around the upcoming 20th Anniversary of the Morgentaler Decision that saw the Supreme Court abandon all laws aground abortion.

I stand corrected it appears there will be blogging bursts and public events occurring around this. In fact Antonia Zerbisias kicked it off on her blog last weekend

However one of points which I raised in my post and my comments in response to my commentators remained unanswered. So I will ask it again. Why is it that 20 years later Morgentaler has a great private medical business going, and women still do not have access to publicly funded abortions.

Toronto, Friday, January 25, 7:30pm. Fundraising Reception for National Abortion Federation Canada ’s Patient Assistance Fund. Many women lack the resources to pay for costs associated with abortion care, such as transportation, childcare, and medications. Also, some women cannot access medical coverage and require financial support. Donations to this fund will allow NAF Canada to provide financial assistance when it is urgently needed.

And once this money is raised will it be used to lobby for womens right to free publicly provided abortions? No of course not it will be used to top up Morgentaler's private clinic fees. The Left and the Womens movement need to move beyond supporting Morgentaler and demand fully funded abortions to be provided by public hospitals.

On the other hand the libertarian right need to advocate for choice, after all thats the credo of the right, by defending a woman's right to choose against their social conservative allies and defend Dr. Morgentaler since his clinics provide an example of a privatized alternative to the public system that has worked quite effectively for twenty years.

That is the real debate that would move this beyond the moral pretenses of the religious right which have shaped the debate since the Supreme Court decision twenty years ago.

Twenty years ago the movement for Womens Reproductive rights got side tracked into a single issue campaign around abortion and then that became reduced to the defense of Dr. Morgentaler. An honest assessment of that needs to be done twenty years later by the Feminist movement, the Left and the Libertarians.

A possible reconciliation between these two apparently contradictory positions would be the creation of co-operative Womens Health Clinic. Medical practitioners would be on salary, workers in the centre would be on the co-op board, a combination of Doctors and Nurse Practitioners, as well as specialists Gyn-Ob would work in the clinics as well as Mid Wives. The centre would provide contraceptive and family planning information, natural child birth options as well as a full delivery centre and abortion services. As well a health spa could be part of the services provided, using the European methods of non-osteopathic therapies, as well as having certified acupuncturists, massage therapists and naturopath's available. In other words a holistic approach to womens health and especially reproductive health.Those services could be covered by benefit plans when not covered by Medicare. Extra costs that are not covered by medicare, benefit plans, or third party insurance, could then be covered by annual membership fee.

Finally let us look at the root of the problem of abortion. The failure of contraception and family planning.

Here is an interesting post I came across that points out a significant challenge to popular misconceptions about teen pregnancy.

Teen Pregnancy Does Not Perpetuate Poverty

I just read an interesting article about a study by Frank Furstenberg that shows that teen motherhood does not perpetuate poverty.

According to the 30-year-study, postponing motherhood does not have a significant impact on a person’s chances of escaping poverty. For all intents and purposes, impoverished girls who bear children tend to do just as well economically and educationally as the ones who do not.

In other words, poor teens tend to get pregnant more often, but teenagers who get pregnant have the same odds of educational and financial success as the ones who do not.

Mainly, the economic conditions in which a person grows up determine their odds of ending up poor. Whether or not the person gets pregnant as a teenager has little affect.

Although the findings go against the common perception, I guess it makes sense. A poor girl will likely end up in poverty later in life regardless of whether or not she gets pregnant as a teenager. A wealthy girl’s parents can still ensure her success with their money even when the girl gets pregnant as a teenager.

I still see teen pregnancy as a significant mistake, but we have such a classist society that making mistakes has little statistical effect on who ends up poor and who does not. While we need to help people not make mistakes, we have to find a way to eliminate the classism of our society to ever end poverty.

Jamie Lee Spears is a perfect example of the challenge of teen pregnancy, and of unplanned unwanted pregnancies. But unlike working class and poor teen age girls, she is rich. Of course that does not mean she will make a good or responsible mother, just look at her sister.

However her pop star status makes it seem like its a lesser sin to have pre-marital sex if you are willing to stay pregnant and keep your child. This leads to a social acceptance of teen pregnancy, rather than teen sex per se, that is teen sex with protection to avoid pregnancy. That would never do. She of course has become a poster girl for the right wing anti-abortion hypocrites.

The Anti-Abortion movement opposes all forms of family planning and contraception, they oppose public health and sex eduction as well a relationship education based on humanistic principles. They demand sex education be moral education based on their particular religious view in opposition to ethical humanist sexuality/relationship education.

They push abstinence as an alternative to contraception, in perpetual denial that teens are sexually active. They deny the pleasure principle which challenges their ideology of sex for reproduction only. They hate the sexual revolution that occurred in the sixties with advent of the development of the birth control bill, which allowed for sex for pleasure rather than reproduction. In fact they continually blame the sexual revolution and the pleasure principle it embraced as the cause of all social evils.In doing so the followers of the patriarchal Abrahamic religions deny the fact that in their holy book the pleasure principle was first espoused.


And here again is where the Left and the Libertarian wings of feminism can align; the need for making informed responsible choices. The right loves choice and of course responsibility, versus rights. Yet when it comes to human sexuality and relationships they deny the very information needed and access to contraception, that would allow for an informed responsible decisions by anyone intending on having sex. Hence their continued attacks on planned parenthood.

Thus they create the conditions for the continued emotional plague where we see teens taking the lives of other teens because of their emotional immaturity in dealing with jealousy, or we see young women giving birth in denial and abandoning their babies. Such is the moral consequence of the anti-abortion advocates of abstinence, which is simply denial of reality. Teens and adults have sex, for pleasure, not for procreation.

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings

can master their sadistic destructiveness.

Wilhelm Reich, on Sigmund Freud's hope

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Mr. Dithers II

It's clear that dithering is now an official Liberal leadership trait.

Dion did not respond specifically when asked if Liberals are prepared to defeat the government over Afghanistan, should Harper make extension of the mission a matter of confidence.

SEE

Liberals Gain Third Party Status

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Manley Whines

On Don Newman's Politics show yesterday Newman interviewed John Manley about his recommendations to the Harprocrites about Afghanistan.Manley complained, predictably, about media coverage of the war. His example was interesting he said a press conference had been set up to show the success of a CIDA program in Kabul, but it happened the same day another Canadian soldier had been killed. He complained that this good news story then got lost while the media covered the soldiers death, his ramp ceremony and his return to Canada.

Now I won't comment on the callousness of this example. Rather I found it interesting that the good news story was Kabul, not Kandahar. We are doing little PRT work in Kandahar, mostly it is support for infrastructure needed for the troops.

Our real aid work is still occurring in the North in Kabul. So why are we in the south. Manley undermines his argument for Harpers War in the South. Instead the NDP is proven right again, we need to withdraw our troops from counter insurgency operations and move them back to the North, to defend the PRT projects that are really what we should be doing. And of course backing the malleable Karzai government in its attempts to come to a peace agreement with the Taliban and Pashtun war lords.

Mullah Naqib shakes hands with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in March, less than two months after the Kandahar elder helped free the main suspect in Glyn Berry’s death.


SEE:

Surprise

Don't Bother Writing Us

Rogues Gallery

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Blogging For Choice

This is a belated Blogging For Choice article. Yesterday members of the Progressive Bloggers joined their American counterparts in Blogging For Choice.

While Americans focus on Roe vs Wade in Canada the Supreme Court ruled more broadly in abolishing abortion as a crime. This year is the 20th anniversary of that decision. And it took an American campaign to draw Canadian bloggers attention to this fact. While the media have covered the 2oth Anniversary of this historic decision the Pro Choice movement in Canada, such as it is, remains silent, and politically absent from the ensuing debate.

On the other hand the Anti-Choice advocates have used it to renew calls for the Federal Government to limit abortions using the back door of a private members bill to make it a double crime of murder when a mother and her unborn child are both killed.

Any reference to this latest attack on a womans right to chose abortion was sadly lacking in most of the posts at Progressive Bloggers. Focusing again on Roe vs. Wade rather than the 1988 Canadian decision. At least the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada has provided some talking points on "Unborn Victims of Violence Act."

The Pro-Choice movement basically died twenty years ago with the SC decision. Feminists in CARAL the Canadian counter part to NARAL the American Pro Choice lobby, folded up their Abortion Rights tent and moved on to other issues; pornography, violence against women, etc.

And what did Canadian women get with the SC decision, well not access to publicly funded abortion that's for sure. What they got was privatized abortion clinics run by Dr. Morgentaler. In fact Morgentaler has always been an advocate for privatized medicine, he has always claimed his clinics deliver abortion services better than public hospitals. Ironic that. And where provinces or publicly funded hospitals did not provide abortion services, such as those hospitals run by the Catholic Church, Canadian women were still forced to go to the U.S. to get abortions.

Such was the case in Alberta for many years, and still is today. There are no abortions done in Alberta hospitals, instead Alberta Health Care contracts out the operation to Morgentaler's clinics, but does not pay his full fee.

There is an irony for you. Morgentaler has long advocated the neo-con idea of private medical services being better than publicly provided ones, his right wing opponents, as well as his feminist proponents, miss his nuanced fiscal conservatism. The right wing abandons its fiscal conservatism in favour of a political morality driven by the Church. The left wing mutes any criticism of Morgentalers pro privatization pitch because they favour a womans right to choose.

Well heck why not support the right to choose home-schooling, or the right to choose to belong to a union, or well you get the idea. Logical consistency on either side of the debate is seriously lacking.

The failure of the libertarian right in Canada was to allow the social conservatives to take this issue from them. Instead of defending a womans right to choose, and to embrace Morgentaler's private clinic alternative they instead abandoned themselves to the neo-cons and paleo-cons.

The failure of the Left and the Feminist movement was to embrace abortion and Morgentaler as single issues. Once the Supreme Court decision passed, there was no cause any longer. Instead of broadening the Pro Choice movement to include all aspects of womens reproductive rights including the right to sex education, contraception, birthing alternatives such as mid-wifery, etc. Instead as we have seen CARAL devolved into the Abortion Rights Coalition.

Womens Reproductive Rights are far broader than just abortion. It includes also the right to choose birthing options. Provinces that had restrictive access to abortion also in many cases failed to paid for Midwives. Such was the case in Alberta for many years. Linking these two issues together shows that womens health is a public health issue. The right to publicly funded medical services.

Various benefit plans in unionized work places are also affected when it comes to womens reproductive choices. Those that cover Catholic public services and public sector workers will not allow payment for contraceptives or abortions, leaving women to have to pay out of pocket for these essential medical services. Yet unions are silent on this issue afraid to challenge the service providers because of the ensuing controversial debate it will cause in the membership.

We may have come a long way twenty years ago, but in the ensuing twenty years we have not gone anywhere when it comes to providing publicly funded abortions in our hospitals.

In effect what this has meant is that in Canada there are more third month terminations than ever before. And issue that the social conservatives make much hay with. Or attempt to. Not because of the Supreme Court decision but because the left and feminist movement abandoned the fight to demand publicly funded abortions be covered by medicare and preformed in our publicly funded hospitals rather than in Morgentaler's private clinics.

The Libertarian Right in Canada abandoned the fight in the right wing mileux as well, they abandoned a key individual right, a woman's right to choose, in order to align with their neo-con and social conservative allies to gain political power at any cost. As can be seen with the launch of this new non-religious right wing anti-abortion lobby.


The right to choose is broader than just the right to choose an abortion it is the right to choose to have sex or not, to have safe sex, to have access to public humanist sex education, to have access to contraception for men and women, to have birthing choices, to have the right to have reproductive medical services fully paid for by Medicare or by benefit plans, etc. A new movement is needed in Canada to demand these rights a movement of the libertarian Left and Right.

"Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it."

- Wilhelm Reich

See:

Feminizing the Proletariat

Whose Family Values?

The Sexual Revolution Continues

Unsafe Abortions Continue

God Is Pro Abortion

Abortion, Adoption, or Abandonment

Procreation To Save The White Race

Abortion Not A Sin

Pro Life?

Grandmother of Second Wave Feminism Dies

Right to Life = Right To Work


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Boycott Canadian Blog Awards

I Am Boycotting the Canadian Blog Awards.

No problem doing that since I am not a finalist.

The "Best Damn Left Wing Blog in Canada" is not a finalist, heck it's not even a category.

Better luck next year guys maybe you will move beyond Conservative and Progressive as categories. Like best Blogging Tory, Best Liblog, Best Dipper, Best Green, Best Marxist Leninist,Best Libertarian, Best Anarchist, Best Socialist, Best Trotskyist, Best Grucho Marxist,etc. might broaden the minimalist political categories that currently exist. In fact the limitations of the CBA political categories remind me of the limitations of Facebook.

And as far as Progressive being a definition of politics, its a generalization. Why indeed if we check out Progressive Bloggers we find that it is actually a front for tabloid blogging.

Yep better luck next year CBA.


















SEE:

2007 Canadian Blog Awards

I Won I Won

Lefty Blog Awards

Vote For Me

Canadian Blog Awards 2005



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Pam Barrett RIP

Pam Barrett former leader of the Alberta NDP passed away this morning after a long battle with cancer. She will be missed but her fight goes on.

In 1997 I worked with Pam on the election campaign to get the NDP back into the leg after the disasterous election of 1993 saw the party wiped off the map. With a populist and popular leaders like Pam, and in a province driven by the politics of personality, we did changed the face of NDP politics forever.



As the unpaid volunteer Co Chair of the Party's Strategy and Communications committee we made the election about Pam. Our slogan was Pam Barrett and the NDP. Never before had the party done such a thing. Secondly we ran for opposition, all the old gray beards said it couldn't be done, you run for government, but we ran as the 'effective' opposition.

Finally we launched the first cyber campaign in the Province, with web pages, internet use and email campaigns as well as using regular media. It was one of the first cyber campaigns in North America.

With little money we elected not only Pam in Highlands but Raj Pannu in Edmonton Strathcona. Two seats which the NDP have held ever since.

Yes an anarchist ran a Leninist cult of personality campaign for the NDP. And it worked. Worked so well the party adopted it nationally as you can see with Jack Layton. And they also adopted the strategy of running as an effective opposition federally.

She had arisen out of the Anti-war left influenced by the Trotskyist movement as well as the British New Left around Tony Benn and Ralph Miliband.

Unknown to many but her closest confidantes, Pam was also a pagan and we celebrated many a solstice and other special days in her Riverdale backyard.

May the Goddess embrace her daughter in the wings of her darkness.

You know how well you have done in life when your enemies praise you on your passing.

"I’ll miss her": Ralph Klein


To her admirers, Pam Barrett was feisty, fearless and passionate. To a legion of people she helped, from the underprivileged in her Edmonton Highlands riding to the unrepresented Alberta women who followed provincial politics, she was a hero.

Barrett, the former leader of the Alberta New Democrats, passed away late Monday night at age 54 from cancer at the Cross Cancer Institute. Her legacy is admirable, said longtime friend and colleague Ray Martin.


Cancer claims New Democrat dynamo Pam Barrett
Canada.com, Canada - 4 hours ago
EDMONTON - Pam Barrett, a three-term New Democrat member of the Alberta legislature who also served as party leader, died late Monday at age 54, ...

NDP stalwart in Alberta, Pam Barrett, dies of cancer at age 54 The Canadian Press

NDP Leader Brian Mason remembers Pam Barrett

Here is the text of NDP Leader Brian Mason's statement on the passing of Pam Barrett:

I was saddened today to hear about the passing of Pam Barrett, former leader of Alberta's NDP.

Pam will be remembered most for her fighting spirit. She was always standing up on behalf of the little person in Alberta, the person who was passed by.

She was a voice for the voiceless.

Albertans who were there will never forget her defense of the legal rights of individuals who had been involuntarily sterilized by the government; she forced the government to back down and it was her finest hour.

Her commitment to the NDP was unquestioned. She spent a large portion of her career serving our party as staff, and MLA, and as leader. Her feisty performance in the legislature is an inspiration to us to this day.

Pam's public service to our province made Alberta a better, more humane place. We are forever in her debt.

Statement from NDP Leader Jack Layton on death of Pam Barrett

Tue 22 Jan 2008 |

I was deeply saddened to learn of Pam Barrett’s death today. On behalf of all New Democrats, I would like to extend my most heartfelt condolences to her family and friends.

Albertans – and all Canadians – will remember Pam as a hard-working, impassioned and witty NDP Leader and MLA. She punched above her weight in the legislature and effected important changes for everyday Albertans – even when the odds were stacked against her. In everything that she did, Pam was driven to make life better for the less fortunate.

Pam will be missed, but she has left her stamp on Alberta and the changes that she made will continue to be felt for years to come.

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Surprise

Not.

Manley's report expected to recommend extending Afghan mission

SEE

Rogues Gallery

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Same Old Conservatives

They may have dropped the Progressive from their name but the Harper Conservative Government suddenly looks just like the old Brian Mulroney Conservative party. Coincidence? I think not.

Conservatives ensuring federal cash spent in Quebec, big time

Ministers Prentice and Fortier announced Boeing money being spread to Quebec today: Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA) says it has awarded contracts worth more than $420 million to companies in Quebec, linked to the Canadian government's 2007 order for four C-17 Globemaster 3 aircraft.The first two long-distance transport planes are already in service with Canadian Forces, having been used to support the military in Afghanistan.As part of the original order, Boeing agreed to match the price of the four aircraft with dollar-for-dollar investments in Canada through a program co-ordinated by Industry Canada....Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin also announced Monday it is providing Quebec companies with contracts worth a total of $240 million.Federal Public Works Minister Michael Fortier and Industry Minister Jim Prentice made the announcement at a news conference in nearby Laval.

Junior MacKay: "we're going to be getting our share"

The bounty spreads as we get word of a Tuesday announcement of more federal spending, following up on Monday's Quebec spending with respect to those military contracts for new transport aircraft. The Conservatives look to shore up Nova Scotia with some good old fashioned sprinkling of federal funds: Atlantic Canadian aerospace companies will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in defence contracts as the result of a move to replace the military's Hercules transport aircraft, two federal cabinet ministers are expected to announce Tuesday.The announcement of funding to aerospace companies in Nova Scotia will be made by Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Industry Minister Jim Prentice.

And remember this.....

Reports of Quebec getting Boeing spinoffs premature: Toews

Last Updated: Thursday, January 25, 2007

Treasury Board president Vic Toews denied reports that Ottawa may give Quebec a bigger share of a $3.5-billion federal contract for military aircraft — a bigger share that Manitoba worries might come at its own industry's expense.

The federal government is discussing a deal with Boeing Corp. to buy four new C-17 cargo planes.

While the Boeing airplanes would be built in the U.S., the federal deal hinges on Boeing pledging to spend an amount equal to the purchase price on projects in Canada.

About 20 per cent of the benefits could go to Western Canada. But earlier this week, federal Public Works Minister Michel Fortier said in published reports that he would not sign the contracts unless Quebec receives the biggest share.

Toews, the Conservative MP for Provencher in Manitoba, said Thursday that the reports are premature and "are completely without foundation.

The Conservatives remain the party of the Big Lie and Big Liars.


SEE

Stephen Mulroney

Stephen Mulroney Brian Harper

Canada's Real Prime Minister

Not Your Daddies Conservative Party, well...

Mulroney's Ghost

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